National Imagination: Week 5-7

Week Five-Seven: Warrior Nation. During these three weeks of the course, each professor examines a culture as a "Warrior Nation." Students and professors analyze each culture's image as a warring nation, by looking at visual symbols through art and film as well as music, literature, history and language.

• Germany's version of the Warrior Nation finds its origins in the country's militarism. One way students examine this theme, for example, is to study such visual icons as Kaiser Willhelm's reconstruction of himself as a great military man.
• Japan's version of the Warrior Nation is the samurai. Through readings and film clips, students look at how the samurai as a national symbol has been reinvented over time and today, is still a form of identification of Japan.
• Argentina's version of the Warrior Nation is the gaucho. Students examine the historically, cultural and political imagery of the gaucho in the middle of the 19th century and trace those origins to the commercial label of the gaucho today and the masculine culture of "machismo." Learn more about the gaucho culture.