IDEAS IN AMERICA
History 341

This course surveys the ideas that have shaped American society and government. Throughout, the course will center on the reading and discussion of original source material and its relationship to other related materials for the periods under discussion. Viewing the core ideas, such as the term “liberty,” as “essentially contested concepts,” the course will explore consistencies and inconsistencies in the meaning of words used by separate individuals in various periods. Finally, we will examine the viability of the concept of “American exceptionalism” and its implication on the development of American institutions and character

READINGS

Students are to purchase the following books:

David Hollinger, The American Intellectual Tradition (Vols 1 & 2)

(4^th edition).

Course Reference Material:

Wightman / Kloppenberg, A Companion to American Thought

CSUSM Library Reference Section: E169.1 .C685 1995 

Course Websites:

Seymore Martin Lipset, “American Exceptionalism” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/americanexceptionalism.htm

Additional Documents Website: http://www.ukans.edu/carrie/docs/amdocs_index.html

REQUIREMENTS

Participation (50%): This grade has two parts: 1) Class participation and attendance; 2) Group desk side biographical background briefs (5-10 minutes)on assigned writers to initiate discussions. Students missing discussion sessions will lose participation credit whether or not they have an assignment for that session. Students should consider applying for a “W” grade after missing more than 6 hours of instruction (or two sessions).

Term Paper (25%): Utilizing an author from Hollinger, The American Intellectual Tradition, students will write an analytical paper on selected author placing him / her in the intellectual climate of the period. The paper will be an (6-8 pages, double spaced) analytical essay.

Exams (25%): The mid term and final exams cover the lectures and ALL reading assignments regardless of group assignment. Along with multiple choice / true false questions, the final exam will include an analytical essay (2-4 pages) assessing whether the concept of “American exceptionalism” is a useful tool in describing the major historical developments in American thought.

**PLEASE ALSO NOTE: Any evidence of cheating (including plagiarism--presenting the words or ideas of others as your own) will result in a failing grade for that assignment and possibly a failing grade for the course. See me if you have any questions about what exactly constitutes plagiarism.

This Syllabus can be found online at: http://soldier.home.igc.org/

COURSE SCHEDULE:

Week 1 Introduction

LECTURE: Course Review

LECTURE: Hermeneutics and Historical Method

LECTURE: Reformation / Counterreformation in Europe and England

Week 2 DISCUSSION: The Idea of Reformation .

Winthrop, “A Modell of Chrisitan Charity” (1630)
John Cotton, “Selection from A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (1636)
Anne Hutchinson, “The Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newtown” (1637)

Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741) (Website, not text)

LECTURE: The Enlightenment: Classical Republicanism vrs. Lockean Liberalism

LECTURE: Madisonian Democracy

Week 3 DISCUSSION: Revolutionary Enlightenment - America

Assigned Reading:

* Benjamin Franklin "To a Young Man On How to Choose a Mistress" at http://www.mendosa.com/mistress.html

Benjamin Franklin, Selection from The Autobiography (1784-88)

John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Thomas Paine, Selection from Common Sense (1776)
Alexander Hamilton, “Constitutional Convention Speech on a Plan of Government” (1787)
James Madison, The Federalist, “Number 10” and “Number 51” (1787-88)

LECTURE: Religion in the Early Republic / 1 & 2^nd Party System

Week 4 DISCUSSION: The New Republic / What is a nation?

Assigned Reading:

DISCUSSION: Religion in the Early Republic / The Expansion of Democracy

Charles Grandison Finney, Selection from Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835)
William Ellery Channing, “Unitarian Christianity” (1819*William Lloyd Garrison,

George Bancroft, “The Office of the People in Art, Government, and Religion” (1835)
Orestes Brownson, “The Laboring Classes” (1840)

Henry C. Carey, Selection from The Harmony of Interests (1851)

Lecture: Limitations of the Republican Freedom

Week 5 DISCUSSION: Limitations of the Republican Freedom

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1987)

*Benjamin Franklin” “Observations concerning the Increase on Mankind” at

http://www.jmu.edu/madison/frankpop.htm

*David Walker’s Appeal at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2931t.html

Sarah Grimke, Selection from Letters on the Equality of the Sexes,

and the Condition of Woman (1838)

Catherine Beecher, Selection from A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841)

George Fitzhugh, Selection from Sociology for the South (1854

William Lloyd Garrison, Selection from Thoughts on African Colonization (1832),

“Prospectus of The Liberator” (1837)

Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” (1852)

* Special Presentation: Francis Lieber and American nationalism

John C. Calhoun, Selection from A Disquisition on Government (c. late 1840s)

Lecture:: Kant and the Romantic Era

Week 6 DISCUSSION: The Romantic Era, hermeneutics and review

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Divinity School Address” (1838), “Self Reliance” (1841)

Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849)

Mid-Term Exam REVIEW AND ISSUE TAKE HOME EXAM

Week 7 TURN IN TAKE HOME EXAM

* Karl Marx on the American Civil War at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/25.htm

DISCUSSION: The Gilded Society

* Special Presentation: Mark Twain, Huckleberry Fin

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Solitude of Self” (1892)

W.E.B. DuBois, “From the Souls of Black Folk (1903)

William Graham Sumner, “Sociology” (1881)
Lester Frank Ward, “Mind as a Social Factor” (1884)

Lecture: Pragmatism / Progressivism / Social Democracy

Week 8 DISCUSSION: American Exceptionalsim / Atlantic Connections

William James, “What Pragmatism Means” (1907), “The Will to Believe” (1897

Charles Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877)

Josiah Royce, “The Problem of Job” (1898)
John Dewey, "Philosophy and Democracy: (1918)

Henry Adams, “The Dynamo and the Virgin” (1907)
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893)
George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” (1913)

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “Natural Law” (1918)
Thorstein Veblen, Selection from The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
Randolph Bourne, “Trans-National America” (1916), “Twilight of Idols” (1917)
H.L. Mencken, “Puritanism as a Literary Force” (1919)

LECTURE: American Exceptionalsim / Why Is There No Socialism in America?

Week 9 DISCUSSION: The Totalitarian Menace

Sidney Hook, “Communism Without Dogmas” (1934)

Reinhold Niebuhr, Selection from The Children of Light and the

Children of Darkness (1944)
Whittaker Chambers, Selection from Witness (1952)

Hannah Arendt, “Ideology and Terror” (1953)
Erik H. Erikson, Selection from Childhood and Society (1950)

LECTURE: From War to Cold War

Week 10 DISCUSSION: The Cold War

Daniel Bell, “The End of Ideology in the West” (1960)
Samuel Huntington, Selection from “The Democratic Distemper” (1975)

C. Wright Mills, “Letter to the New Left” (1960)

Noam Chomsky, “The Responsibilities of Intellectuals” (1967)

LECTURE: Civil Rights and Vietnam

Week 11 DISCUSSION: Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Selection from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963)
Betty Friedan, Selection from The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Malcolm X, Selection from “The Ballot or the Bullet” (1964)

* Port Huron Statement at http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111hur.html

Lecture/ Post Modernism – The Old Debate Again

Week 12 Lecture/ DISCUSSION: From Modernism to Post Modernism

Thomas S. Kuhn, Selection from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation” (1964)
Richard Rorty, “Science as Solidarity” (1986)
Final Exam Review

FINAL EXAM

Instructor: Lawrence P. Rockwood

email: soldier@igc.org

voicemail: 750 750-8163