History of American Thought

By mutual agreement, here is how the last unit will go.

(27) Tues 4/27 – Discussion day on Gender

(28) Thurs 4/29 – Discussion day on the American Dream

(29) Tues 5/4 – Papers due
Food, festivity, and final thoughts on “the American idea”

As you wind down your learning journal ePortfolios, consider what you’ve learned in this class and also *how* you’ve learned in this class. I’d also be curious to know what you wanted to learn but didn’t – what didn’t we cover, or get to, that you hope to explore further? What ideas, themes, or readings have been essential to your learning, or most meaningful for you personally?

(22) Thurs 4/8 Settlement and the Urban Intellectual – Big Idea chosen by today
Reading: Menand Ch 12 (285-333) and Ch 14 (377-408)
In-class link: “The Dream of America”

(23) Tues 4/13 Social Theory
Reading: ANWR: Part IX (279-309)

(24) Thurs 4/15 Democracy v. Melting Pot – Research Precis due today
Reading: Horace Kallen, “Democracy versus the Melting Pot” (1915) [pdf here]

(25) Tues 4/20 Harlem Renaissance: Black Modernist Thought – Class cancelled today
Reading: Survey Graphic March 1925: “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro” [on Google Books] – read the first two essays, “Harlem” and “Enter the New Negro”; several other essays are available but optional (“The Making of Harlem,” “Black Workers and the City,” and “The South Lingers On”); and read ANMR, The New Negro Woman – (54-60, 87-88, 168-171, 200-202). You might also want to review the part of Menand that talks about Alain Locke, at the beginning of the “Pluralisms” chapter.

Update Tues 4/20:
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be there this morning. Journal about what you would have wanted to talk about; I will check journals between now and Thursday. We will discuss Aleinikoff’s article on Multicultural Nationalism on Thursday as planned, but will hopefully also wrap into it some of the material on the Harlem Renaissance. Focus in on Locke’s two essays in the 1925 Survey Graphic: what did he mean that Harlem was a new statue of liberty? Or a “race capital”? Why was this important in the 1920s; is it still important? Do we still have/need race capitals?

Also on Thursday we will sort out the 3 upcoming presentation days. Amazingly, most of your “big ideas” clustered into 3 main topics, so it makes sense to divide up the discussion days that way.

Thanks,
Professor Hangen

(26) Thurs 4/22 Cultural Pluralism
Reading: Aleinikoff, “Multicultural Nationalism” from The American Prospect, 1 January 1998

(17) Tues 3/23 Thoreau: Transcendentalism
Reading: Thoreau, Walden (entire)

(18) Thurs 3/25 Pragmatism
Reading: Menand, Ch 13 “Pragmatisms” and William James, Pragmatism Lecture II: read at Project Gutenberg online, pp. 16-29, or here’s a 12-page PDF of the same text

(19) Tues 3/30 Civil Disobedience, Civil Liberties
Reading: Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (if your edition of Walden does not contain it, you can read it online here); King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” MLK/Malcolm X book pp. 74-90

(20) Thurs 4/1 From the Bench – Curriculum Unit due
Reading: Whitney v. CA (1927) – About the Case, Full Text
or
Korematsu v. US (1944) – About the Case, Full Text
(Aside: here’s the discussion of lawyers considering which case I should have you read)

(21) Tues 4/6 Howl: the 1960s, Liberty and Liberation
Reading: to get a sense of the voice of protest and proclamation in the 1950s/1960s, the bold yawp of a new generation, I’d like everyone to read Alan Ginsberg, “Howl” (1956). If you prefer, you can listen to Ginsberg reading his poem aloud in a 2007 special event.

Then, I’m giving you a short list of other manifestos (and consider what IS a manifesto, anyway? – and why did this era see so many of them?) and I hope that you’ll read at least 2-3 of them if not all. Think about where and why these statements were written, published, and publicized.

Young Americans for Freedom, Sharon Statement (1960)
Students for a Democratic Society, Port Huron Statement (1962)
“No More Miss America!” (1968)
Black Woman’s Manifesto (1970)
Poet Power (1968)
Indians of All Nations, Proclamation to the Great White Father and his People (1969)
James Foreman/ SNCC, Black Manifesto (1969)

(13) Tues 3/2 Female Emancipation
Reading: JSM book, “On the Equality of the Sexes” + “Gleaner Contemplates the Future Prospects…” (pp. 176-189)
In-class link: our Twitter discussion with Bonnie Hurd Smith

(14) Thurs 3/4 From Seneca Falls to Suffrage
Reading: Seneca Falls Declaration, (additional background on the event here), and The American New Woman Revisited = ANWR: Part II (pp. 93-123)
Bring to class – a written definition of SEX and a written definition of GENDER.
In-class links: Target Women: Suffrage; Power of Pink (Salon)

(15) Tues 3/9 The New Woman
Reading: ANWR Part I (pp. 29-54) and Part IV-V (157-199)

(16) Thurs 3/11 Justice, Gender and the Family – Curriculum Items are due today
Reading: Okin, Justice, Gender and the Family [pdf]

3/15-3/19 Spring Break

(8) Thurs 2/11 Abolition – Speech chosen by today
Reading (all online): David Walker’s Appeal (1829) – read at least the excerpt posted here (here’s the full text, if you’re curious for more), Frederick Douglass – read excerpts from three speeches, and Angelina Grimke, “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South” (1836) – it’s a bit long, so read more for general principles and her recommendations for action

(9) Tues 2/16 Intellectual History of the Civil War
Reading: Menand [txt], Preface and Part I (1-69)
In-class link: opening scene, Ken Burns Civil War

(10) Thurs 2/18 Racial Progressivism – turn in Bibliography for Speech paper
Reading (online): Wells, “Lynch Law in America” (1900) – (the link takes you to a site where you can choose this document as a plain-text webpage, a PDF, or an MP3 audio file) and W.E.B. DuBois, “The Talented Tenth” (1903)
In-class link: Plessy v. Ferguson

(11) Tues 2/23 Civil Rights Movement(s)
Reading: King, Malcolm X I [txt] – Part One and Ch 1-3 (pp. 1-101)
In-class links – some video clips:
Malcolm X on Chicago “City Desk,” 17 March 1963 (4:42)
Malcolm X, speech on black nationalism, Audobon Ballroom, Washington Heights (NYC) 29 March 1964 (3:44)
Malcolm X on “Open Mind” roundtable, “Race Relations in America”, 12 June 1963 (the other guests are Alan Morrison, Wyatt Tee Walker, and James Farmer) (6:04)
Martin Luther King on Malcolm X (3:31)
Martin Luther King, “Been to the Mountaintop” – Atlanta, 1968 (3:14)
Martin Luther King relates his intellectual journey, NBC special 27 October 1957 (8:59)

(12) Thurs 2/25 Racial Justice – Speech Paper due
Reading: King, Malcolm X II [txt] – Ch 4-6 (pp. 102-193)

The new issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas, the flagship academic journal for intellectual history, is hot off the presses this month. I thought you might be interested to see the table of contents. You can read all issues since 2005 as a full-text e-Journal, using WSC’s Academic Search Premier database through the library catalog, if you want to read more.

Here’s this month’s table of contents – Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 71.1 January 2010

(University of Pennsylvania Press/ Penn Press Journals http://jhi.pennpress.org/)

Beethoven the Romantic: How E. T. A. Hoffmann Got It Right
STEVEN CASSEDY

Pufendorf on Natural Equality, Human Dignity, and Self-Esteem
KARI SAASTAMOINEN

“Refer to folio and number”: Encyclopedias, the Exchange of
Curiosities, and Practices of Identification before Linnaeus
DANIEL MARGOCSY

Lovejoy’s Readings of Bruno: Or How Nineteenth-century History of
Philosophy was “Transformed” into the History of Ideas
LEO CATANA

The Lovejovian Roots of Adler’s Philosophy of History: Authority,
Democracy, Irony, and Paradox in Britannica’s “Great Books of the
Western World”
TIM LACY

“Another’’ Patriotism in Early Showa Japan (1930–1945)
TAKASHI SHOGIMEN

(1) Tues 1/19 Course Intro Day – I’ll hand out the syllabus, or you can download the PDF here. We’ll talk about some of the thinkers that we will meet in the course, and learn how to use the course tools.

In our first unit, we explore founding moments: people, ideas, thinkers, and events of the founding generation or words and ideas which “made” (or remade) America.

(2) Thurs 1/21 Words That Remade America – have your GoogleSite set up by today
Reading: Wills, “Words that Remade America” [pdf]
In-class links: WA, GPPt

Discussion questions:
What does Wills mean by his title? In what way did (or could) these words “remake” America?
Discuss the historical context of this speech – which parts of that history did you know, and which were new to you? This speech is remarkably brief. Why is it so significant, in Wills’ view? Are you persuaded? Can you think of another speech that has also “remade America”?

(3) Tues 1/26 Intellectual History: the American Mind
Reading: Guelzo, “Is There an American Mind?” [pdf]

(4) Thurs 1/28 Revolutionary Women
Reading: Kerber “The Republican Mother” [pdf]

(5) Tues 2/2 Founding Fathers
Reading: Federalist Papers 10 and 51

(6) Thurs 2/4 Founding Mothers
Reading: Judith Sargent Murray, Part 1 – read pp. 1-60 and 133-138

(7) Tues 2/9 Speeches: American Idealism
Reading: Scott, “The Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid-19th C America” [pdf]
In-class links: Alexis deTocqueville, George Catlin

Here are the books we’ll read this semester. They’ll be in the bookstore, or check used booksellers online for best prices. Additional readings will be available as PDFs on the course Blackboard page.

Sheila L. Skemp, Judith Sargent Murray: A Brief Biography with Documents (ISBN 0312-115067)

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (ISBN 978-0451529459)

Martha H. Patterson, The American New Woman Revisited: A Reader 1894-1930 (ISBN 978-081354296-6)

David Howard-Pitney, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s (ISBN 978-0312395056)

Highly recommended (we will be reading portions, and you might want to have the entire text): Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (ISBN 978-0374528492)