Imagined Communities

Students will use social media to explore Anderson’s concept of “Empty Homogenous Time.” For him this simultaneity imagined through a shared print culture, particularly of newspapers in the 20th century, is what helps to cement a feeling of belonging or participation in a nation.

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To explore this notion in the 21st century, students will use Instagram to post simultaneously at a designated time under our class hashtag. With a gallery of simultaneous snapshots, we will discuss the nature of shared time and simultaneity when the boundaries of print culture have been torn open by the immediacy of social media. Can we interpret this gallery like a newspaper? How might we rethink the idea of “nation” and camaraderie in the modern age?