March 2010: Complex Systems offers talk by Dr. Songho Ha entitled 'The American System as a Cultural System'

Friday, March 19, Noon

CPISB, Room 120

On Friday, Dr. Songho Ha will analyze a less studied aspect of the American System--namely its cultural policies--by analyzing the various attempts of the federal government to establish national institutions of higher learning and to promote arts between 1789 and 1837. He argues that the idea of the American System originated at least from the time of George Washington's administration and its contents had been continuously refined, although the term was officially inaugurated into the political lexicon only in 1824 when Henry Clay introduced the term in his Congressional speech supporting the Protective Tariff Act of 1824.

Dr. Ha is an Assistant Professor in UAA's Department of History and recently published a book entitled The Rise and Fall of the American System: Nationalism and the Development of the American Economy, 1790-1837. Perhaps you read about it in the column written by John Havelock in Sunday's Anchorage Daily News.