Key Concepts in Contemporary America

If anybody had doubts about the United States being a still evolving young republic, that became clear last year with the events surrounding the 2020 elections, the disproportionate death toll from COVID-19, and the George Flyod protests. This collective project seeks to articulate key concepts that will help us explore how they have shaped our contemporary thinking, and what has been their history. The aim is to think about how a word/ term/ concept has different, evolving, fluid - historical + contemporary - meanings that inescapably guide our everyday lives. The aim of a dictionary is to set or fix the meanings of words on the basis of past textual usage, but in this project we seek to explore and explain the social and historical contexts of particular concepts, and why they still matter. Put simply, the challenge was to answer: Why is this particular Keyword/Key Term/ Key Concept Relevant In Contemporary Times? The aim was to contribute to the ongoing discussions about the future of the young republic. Our key concepts ranged from the arts to the sciences to commerce. We tried to get to the general from the specific. We endeavored to reach the core from the periphery. We peer reviewed each other's work. We heard one another's presentations during the course. Welcome to our Manifold 2021 project. Because we are young. - Gaurav Pai

Texts

A project created by a SPRING 2021 ENG 131 class at UW: What's UP with US?

Metadata

  • publisher
    University of Washington
  • publisher place
    Seattle, WA
  • rights
    CC BY
  • rights holder
    Individual Contributors