This course will examine the American experience of war in this century. Lectures, readings, films, and discussions will focus not only on the military experience itself, but on how America's wars, real and imagined; have shaped the country's economy, politics, and culture. The course will also examine the processes of transmission and memory: how Americans who did not fight learned about those who did, and what all Americans have remembered or have been taught to remember about the wars of this century. Finally, we will consider how the nation's wartime conduct, at home and on the battlefield, has fit into long-standing social patterns and behavior such as our alleged propensity for violence. In brief, we will be looking at the American experience of war as inclusively as a term will allow.