Rogers Smith

There's lots of scholarly thought on the importance and the role of civic narrative in constructing and reconstructing Republican nations.

I'm talking about writers like Roger Smith and Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha.

And each of them, in fact, writes about how important cultural production is to the development of Republican nations.

Among the things I am most surprised about is how little you see their work within scholarship on historical American art.

There are a whole bunch of reasons for that, many of them really good reasons.

But given how much influence historical American art has had on the country, it's pretty surprising how Relatively little work has been done in that area.

But...

You know, there are, you know, one of the richest cultural traditions among California Native Americans is basket-making.