Unit 1: A New Nation’s Founding Mothers, Early Publics

by Prof. Hangen - January 30th, 2014

For the first week of February, we continue our unit “A New Nation, Conceived in Liberty” with a look at “Founding Mothers” and at the creation of a (gendered?) public sphere.

Tues 2/4 Founding Mothers. Reading: The Judith Sargent Murray book, pages 1-60 and 133-139 (bring the book to class) and also Linda Kerber, “The Republican Mother” (PDF)

Thursday 2/6: Special Meeting Place = LRC 319B, the classroom inside the UTS Computer Cluster – not in our regular classoom! We will have a library instruction session with the History liaison reference librarian, Raven Fonfa, in preparation for your speech and research papers. Bring your laptops, please. Even though we’re not having a conventional discussion day, there *is* an assigned reading for Thursday, a fascinating article by Donald M. Scott, called “The Popular Lecture” (PDF). Scott describes the age of public oratory and the lyceum movement in the early national period – part of the scene that would make Edward Everett such a superstar in the next generation.  Also: Thursday, you will receive your group assignment for the American Argument / Current Thinkers project.

journal-cJournal Prompt #3 – due Thurs 2/6 Use this week’s journal as a way to reflect on the readings in this unit, perhaps especially on Scott’s article since we won’t have a chance to talk it over in class. Or contrast the founding mothers and fathers in the texts we have considered. Or synthesize your understanding at this point in the course of what “American thought” meant to people in the founding generation.

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