We will explore how identity, nationality, and an understanding of one's place in the world are both created and challenged through war and through the writing that happens around the war. With a focus on U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and in Central and South America during the mid-20th century, we will study how racism and colonialism influenced and informed U.S. foreign policy. Our investigation of literature, historical documents, and art will prompt discussions about how these interventions shaped peoples' understanding of their nationality and their identity. We will examine the way war is constructed versus the way war is remembered in order to explore the relationship between individual memories and collective memories; how individual narratives come to stand for or lie in contrast to national narratives; how the memories of different groups can be brought together under an idea, a nationality. How do stories that dominated public imagination in the U.S. compare with individuals' stories, both at home and abroad, and how were these identities challenged or redefined by U.S. involvement? How does the US government's presentation of events compare with the way people experienced and perceived these same events? The course will culminate in a writing project that joins historical research, literary analysis, and personal experience in the pursuit of excavating the past to better understand what made us who we are as individuals and as members of a global community.