신화상징학파와 새로운 미국학의 등장

Myth and Symbol School and the Emergence of New American Studies

Henry Nash Smith and Leo Marx, two prominent scholars of Myth and Symbol School in the 1950s and the 1960s, were very eager to establish American Studies as a discipline. If American Studies has developed some scholarly methods or critical terms, they must be those of Myth and Symbol School; terms like "city upon a hill," "errand into wilderness," "manifest destiny," or "the closing of the frontier" were often used for the explanation of American Puritanism and American exceptionalism. 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 as well as for its generalization not based upon empirical data and facts. The idea of American exceptional ism is challenged by the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam War protests. American Studies was then no more a study of "consensual" history and culture but of diversities and conflicts: race/ethnicity, class, and gender/sexuality were emerged as main terms and tools to analyze multi cultural America. It took almost twenty years to re-flourish as New American Studies while absorbing the achievements of poststructuralism and postmodernism and resisting the "neocolonia!" Reagan-Bush era (1981-1993). New American Studies in the 1990s has shown its multidisciplinary. multi-and-cross cultural, and post-national aspects. American Studies has produced "unexpected consequences" and "unpredictable creativity," despite its origin in the area studies of the Cold War Era.