This course explores the history and meaning of September 11, 2001. We consider how and why the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred. We also contemplate the significance of the attacks in the realms of American politics, culture, film, and public spaces. How is history made? How is it remembered? Who has the power to decide? By exploring these and related questions, we come to appreciate the complexity of the question “what happened?” on this day or any other. And we become attentive to the myriad ways in which the past is ever unfolding into the present—and the present into the past.
Foundations Program
This course fulfills the Forum requirement in the Foundations Program.