미국학(미국문화연구)의 역사적 전개과정에 대하여 - 패링턴으로부터 신화상징학파, 새로운 미국학에서 다문화주의에 이르기까지

• 영문명: Historical Development of American (Cultural) Studies: from Parrington to Multiculturalism
• 발행기관: 한국아메리카학회
• 저자명: 권석우(Seokwoo Kwon)
• 간행물 정보: 『미국학논집』제37집 3호, 217~258쪽, 전체 42쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 기타인문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2005.12.01

영문 초록

  American Studies is a product of Cold War America with its consequent accumulation of wealth after World War Ⅱ. America, which had expanded its territory through ceaseless wars with the Native Americans, England, Mexico, Spain and the Philippines, emerged at the end of the 19th century as an industrial and capitalized empire. The consensus that America is a "good" nation for democracy and the guardian of the world peace was made especially after America won WWII against the "evil" fascism of the Nazi. In the midst of the war, America made a socio-cultural as well as geographical investigation of the occupied countries, the outcome of which has been realized as "Area Studies" of the Cold War Era.
  After WWII, however, American government and scholars felt the inner need to propagate its victorious and thus good nation to the world. Henry Nash Smith and Leo Marx are two prominent scholars of Myth and Symbol School in the 1950s and the 1960s, who were eager to establish American Studies as a discipline or an interdisciplinary subject. The works of American Renaissance writers as well as those of the colonial writers were appropriated to define "American character or mind." Smith and Marx often recycle and appropriate the historical and critical achievements of writers such as Frederick J. Turner, Vernon L. Parrington, Charles Beard, Perry Miller, and F. O. Matthieson as well, while defining them as initiatory figures of American Studies in the first half of the twentieth century to find out "what makes America(n)." In these decades, American Studies programs were institutionalized in many universities and colleges across the country and a great amount of money was put in the American Studies programs. As Gene Wise defines, the era of Myth and Symbol School was "the golden age" of American Studies.
  The method of Myth and Symbol School was, however, criticized by scholars like philosopher Bruce Kuklick and historian Gordon Kelly for its excessive emphasis on American character or American mind, and the idea of American exceptionalism was challenged by the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests and activities. American Studies in the 1970s and 1980s was thus a bit declining and recessive; it tends to be "an overly timid and elitist white Protestant male enterprise... reinforc[ing] the dominant culture rather than critically analyzing it"(Wise 185). The American Studies of Myth and Symbol School took almost twenty years to re-flourish itself as New American Studies while absorbing the achievements of poststructuralism and postmodernism and resisting the legacy of the "neocolonial" Reagan-Bush era (1981-89; 1989-93). New American Studies in the 1990s has shown its inter-disciplinary, multi/cross-cultural, and post-national aspects. The academic results of Afro-American Studies, Feminism and Gender Studies, anti-war movements, and the Third World Studies in the 1960s and the 1970s, Women"s Studies, Film Studies, Ethnic Studies, Native American Studies in the 1970s and the 1980s, together with the New Men"s Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, Asian American Studies, and Whiteness Studies in the 1990s, have all contributed to the formation of today"s New American Studies as a cultural critique.

목차

1. 미국학의 형성과정
2. 미국학의 개척자들 - 패링턴, 밀러, 매티슨: 1930-40년대
3. 신화상징학파(Myth and Symbol School)와 그 비판: 1950-60년대
4. 1970-80년대의 미국학의 동향과 1990년대 새로운 미국학(New American Studies)의 출범
5. 다문화주의와 미국학의 향배
인용 문헌
Abstract

키워드

신화상징학파 새로운 미국학 다문화주의 미국의 예외주의 지역학 Myth and Symbol School New American Studies Multiculturalism:American exceptionalism Area Studies