The Walt Disney Company is today one of the most powerful cultural forces on the planet. Among its many globe-spanning media enterprises, Disney's theme parks have been especially consequential. They are immersive environments, carefully crafted places in which mythic stories are narrated in four dimensions and experienced via all the senses. In this course, we'll consider some of the stories that unfold in Disney parks, and some of the technologies used to manufacture those stories. It is said that Disneyland is a kind of map of "an American unconscious," a dream space in which the nation mythologizes itself for itself and for the world. What then are the myths we encounter—over and over again—in that American dream space (and in Disney parks abroad, too)? What histories, desires and social realities are crystallized in those myths, and what histories are excluded? Disneyland's themed lands chart our course: Adventureland (colonial encounter and "nature"), Frontierland (the nation as expansion), Fantasyland (animation, entertainment technologies, and story analysis), Tomorrowland ("progress," industry, and the future), and Main Street U.S.A. (nostalgia, simulation, and consumerism).

HISTART Concentration Distributions: Modern & Contemporary, Europe & North America