1. Intro to American Studies: The Image of the American Businessman
Day Two: Representation, Image, Symbol, and Myth in American Studies

3. How do we know what we know?
We never actually see anything – all that we “see” is the perception of our brains, through our nerves and through electrical impulses.
Epistemology – the study of knowledge

4. Signs, Signs, Everywhere There’s Signs…

5. Names of Note, Arguments of Note…
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
Kant argued that everything we observe is a representation of a thing- in-itself that will always remain unknown.
Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957)
Barthes developed Saussure’s theories; in addition to the denotation (literal definitions) we attach a connotation (implied associations) to it, and often multiple layers that he called myths.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulcra and Simulation (1981)
Baudrillard argued that things eventually become hyperreal, when the connotation and the imaginary become more important in our minds than the denotation and the real.

7. Bad Student
Good Student

8. Name that symbol…