U.S. Intellectual History Survey

Ok, folks, I sent in my book requests, so I am that much closer to teaching the U.S. Intellectual History survey for the first time. After the jump, I've shared my week-by-week plan. AIT is American Intellectual Tradition, edited by Hollinger and Capper. I decided to adopt it after discussing it here on the blog and perusing an exam copy that Oxford was kind enough to send my way. My advisor (an undergraduate student of Hollinger) teaches a U.S. Intellectual History survey without AIT. I used some of his points, some of AIT's and some of my own. I'm curious to hear your reactions.

Week 1: Introduction and a few trends from American Intellectual History pre-1865

January 12: Freedom’s Ferment (blackboard)

Week 2: Reconstruction

January 17 Radical Republicans

January 19: Tiring of abolitionism—

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 1

Reading: Metaphysical Club, Chapters 1-5

Week 3: Rise of a Scientific Culture

January 24: Darwin

January 26: Social Sciences

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 2

Reading: Asa Gray, Selection from “Review of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species” (1860), AIT 6-11

            William Graham Sumner, “Sociology” (1881), AIT 27-36

            Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Selection from “A Plea for Culture” (1867) AIT 12-15

Charles Augustus Briggs, Selection from Biblical Study (1883), AIT 37-41

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Selections from Women and Economics (1898) AIT 96-102

Week 4: Pragmatism

January 31 Pragmatism

February 2: Discussion of Metaphysical Club

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 3

William James, “What Pragmatism Means” (1907), AIT 162-171

            Metaphysical Club, Chapters 6-9

Week 5: Progressivism

February 7: Progressivism in America

February 9: Progressivism across the Atlantic

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 4

Jane Addams, “The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements” (1892), AIT 126-131

            Booker T. Washington, “The Atlanta Compromise” blackboard

            Walter Lippmann, “Selection from Drift and Mastery (1914), AIT 172-176

Atlantic Crossings (blackboard)

Week 6: Reaching abroad

February 14: The US as a force in the world

February 16: Americans thinking internationally

Due before class Tuesday: Essay 1

Woodrow Wilson, “The Ideals of America” (1902) AIT 147-154

            John Dewey, “Philosophy and Democracy” (1918)

Margaret Mead, Selection from Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

Robin D. G. Kelley, “‘But a Local Phase of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–

1950,” Journal of American History 86 (1999): 1045–1077 (available online via www.jstor.org)

Week 7: Literature of the interwar era

            February 21—Wealthy of the 1920s

February 23—Proletarian of the 1930s

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 5

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Diamond as big as the Ritz (http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/diamond/diamond.html)

Sidney Hook, “Communism without Dogmas” (1934)

            Selections from James Agee, Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (blackboard)

Week 8: Dialogue about Race

February 28: Civil Rights and pluralism

March 1: Economic Equality, Separate Spheres

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 6

W.E.B. Du Bois, Selection from Souls of Black Folk (1903), AIT 155-160

            Randolph Bourne, “Trans-National America” (1916), AIT 177-187

Metaphysical Club, Chapters 13-15

            Marcus Garvey (blackboard)

Week 9: Debating a Coal Miner’s strike

            March 6 & 8

Half of the class will meet in the Special Collections during each class period. The other half will meet in the regular classroom to watch a movie.

Due: Response 7 done in class

Spring Break March 13 and 15

Week 10:

March 20: Cold War

March 22: Rise of the University post WWII

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 8

Selection from Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (blackboard)

Oppenheimer, “The Sciences and Man’s Community”

Lionel Trilling, ‘On the Teaching of Modern Literature” (1961)

Thomas S. Kuhn, Selection from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Week 11: Civil Rights Discourse

March 27—Civil Rights

March 29--Nationalism

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 9

            Pauli Murray, The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet

Week 12: Race after the Civil Rights Movement

April 3: Comedy

            April 5: Oprah and Bill Cosby’s influence

Due before class Tuesday: Essay 2

Richard Pryor (blackboard)

            Edward W. Said, Selection from Orientalism (1978) 
            Ta-Nehisi Coates, “‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’ The Audacity of Bill Cosby’s Black 
            Conservatism” Atlantic Monthly (May 2008). (Available online at theatlantic.com)

Week 13: Psychology

            April 10: Rise of a Profession and Freud comes to America

            April 12: The transition from psychotherapy to cognitive science

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 10

Freud in America—selections from Terrible Honesty and Let Your Mind Alone, New Yorker (blackboard)

            Nancy J. Chodorow, “Gender, Relation, and Difference is Psychoanalytic Perspective” (1979)

Week 14: Feminism

April 17 Feminism as an idea

April 19 Feminism as a lived experience

            Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 11

Catharine MacKinnon, Selection from Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

            Susan Faludi, Selection from Backlash (blackboard)

Week 15: Culture Wars

            April 24: Multiculturalism

April 26: Post-modernism

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 12

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Selection from Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1990)

            Joan W. Scott, Selection from “The Evidence of Experience” (1991)

            The Conscience of Television, Lauren Zalaznick (2010) http://www.ted.com/talks/lauren_zalaznick.html

Week 16: Final Exam