Primary Source: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 

 

Guided Discussion Questions 

  • What can we see in this scene that tells us about George Lucas’s interpretation of U.S. foreign policy?
  • Why does Lucas place so much importance on Yoda, a small, old man who lives in a tiny hut?
  • Luke in this scene (and in the Star Wars films) is obsessed with his father. Can we meaningfully connect that with U.S. politics at the time?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Immerwahr

Daniel Immerwahr

Daniel Immerwahr (Ph.D., Berkeley, 2011) is an associate professor at Northwestern University, specializing in twentieth-century U.S. history within a global context. His first book, Thinking Small (Harvard, 2015), offers a critical account of grassroots development campaigns launched by the United States at home and abroad. It won the Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians and the Society for U.S. Intellectual History’s annual book award. His second book, How to Hide an Empire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), tells the history of the United States with its overseas territory included in the story. That book was a national bestseller and a New York Times critic’s choice for one of the best books of 2019. Immerwahr’s writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, Dissent, Jacobin, and Slate, among other places.