This course examines the impact of American models of modernity – myths, ideologies, technologies, cultures – in the world over the last hundred years, and the strategies evolved by societies everywhere to cope with ‘the American challenge.’ From the era of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to Google, from Hollywood to Silicon Valley, from the Marshall Plan to the ‘Washington consensus,’ nations everywhere have evolved patterns of adoption and adaptation, of competition and resistance, to whatever big innovation came out of America. These dynamics have conditioned the efforts of all to construct their own balance between tradition and modernity, and have given the US a form of ‘soft power’ now much discussed and emulated. Course examines themes such as ‘the politics of Americanization,’ ‘anti-Americanism’ and the production and consumption of models of progress generally, in the context of the – now ending? – American century. (Cross listed American Foreign Policy/European Studies)