Editorial

This issue of Snapshot brings together students’ highly personal responses to four texts taught in American Literature. At La Trobe, this subject is premised around the origins of America, not only as a place, but as an idea. This second emphasis means that our examination of this literature is far less tethered to a geographic locale; rather it is expressed and contested in words, images and sound; whether from supporters or critics, who focus on the significance of American literature wherever they find it. Notions of an ‘American dream’ (or nightmare) are embedded in how people everywhere read the cultural and political environment of today. Therefore, I thought it would be fruitful (and fun!) to consider how, in exploring the story of the American dream, we might also be discovering something about ourselves.