Haverford College

Department of History

History 255b: American Intellectual History

This two-semester course will reconstruct our national historical "project[s]" from the landing of the first Africans at Jamestown in 1619 and the founding of Plymouth Plantation in 1620 to the present. Our Ariadne's thread will be the persisting problems of race, class and regional differences for a would-be republican commonwealth.

Reading widely in the sources, we will relate the architecture of public discourse in America--its rhetorical scaffolding, its recurrent themes, and its alternative blueprints for a well-ordered society--to the perceived constraints of a changing political economy.

This course may be divided, with the instructor's consent. The second semester will cover the years 1863 to the 1980's

Information

Time & Place: Monday, Wednesday 12:30 pm-2:00 pm, Hall 07.
Office Hours: 1 College Lane Apt. 1, by appointment, or Faculty Lounge, Hall Building.
Phone/Email: [610] 649-7841; pjeffers@haverford.edu

Course Requirements

1) Close reading and careful discussion of the assigned texts.

2) A take-home hour [and a half] exam, due February 17, 2006.

3) A short [5-7 pp.] essay on a topic or [choice of] topics to be assigned, due March 24, 2006.

4) A self-scheduled 3 hour final examination, or a substantial [12-15 pp.] final essay on a topic to be negotiated.

Texts to Purchase

Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910; 1961; 1981)

Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888; 2000)

Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (1979)

Alex Haley, ed., The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965; 1987)

David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006)

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968; 1992)

Reference Text

Richard Wightman Fox and James T. Kloppenberg, eds., A Companion to American Thought [1995] Magill Reference Room: E 169.1 C685 1995

Calendar of Readings

NB: #ed# texts [xeroxed primary materials] will be made available in class.

January 16. Opening Remarks: Anticipating Modern America.

January 18. Reconstruction: Political Blueprint and Constitutional Postscript.

#Gilbert Osofsky, ed., The Burden of Race: A Documentary History of Negro-White Relations in America (1967), pp. 130-133, 136-153.#

#Hand Out: 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution.#

January 23. Undoing Reconstruction, I: [Unmasking] The Politics of White Supremacy

#Gilbert Osofsky, ed., The Burden of Race: A Documentary History of Negro-White Relations in America (1967), pp. 165-176.#

#W.E.B. Du Bois, "Reconstruction and Its Benefits," American Historical Review, 15 [July 1910]: 781-799.#

January 25. Undoing Reconstruction, II: Law as Public Discourse.

#David M. O'Brien, ed., Constitutional Law and Politics, Fourth Edition (2000), pp. 1317-1331 [The Civil Rights Cases (1883); Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)]#

#Hand Out: Pyramid of Civil, Political and Social Rights#

January 30. Political Economy and the New South, 1895-1915.

#Booker T. Washington, "Atlanta Exposition Address" (1895) in August Meier et al., eds., Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (Second edition, 1971), pp. 3-8.#

#William Baldwin, "The Present Problem of Negro Education," Journal of Social Science, 37 (December 1899), pp. 52-63.#

February 1. Toward an Alternative Racial Project.

#W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Twelfth Census and the Negro Problems" Southern Workman, 29 (May 1900), pp. 305-309.#

#W.E.B. Du Bois, "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" (1903) in August Meier et al., eds., Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (Second edition, 1971), pp. 37-47.#

W.E.B. Du Bois, Selections from The Souls of Black Folk [1903], in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 148-153.

February 6. Middle-Class Perspectives on the Social Question, I.

Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888; 2000), pp. v-xiii, 1-104 [chs. 1-14]

February 8. Middle-Class Perspectives on the Social Question, II.

Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888; 2000), pp. 105-220 [chs. 15-Postscript].

February 13. Middle-class Women and the Problem of Vocation.

Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910; 1961; 1981), Editor's Foreword, Preface and chapters 1-9.

February 15. The Social Settlement Movement and Urban Reform.

Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910; 1961; 1981), chapters 11-15 and 18.

TAKE-HOME HOUR EXAM due on Friday February 17 at 4:00pm in Hall 101

February 20. Philosophy to the Rescue: Vindicating "Faith" in an Age of Science

William James, "The Will to Believe" [1897], in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 63-76.

February 22. Humanizing "Science": A Practical Theory of Meaning and Knowledge.

William James, "What Pragmatism Means" (1907), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 154-164.

February 27. Rethinking the Bases of Cultural Authority: A "Power-Knowledge" Hypothesis.

#Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (1977), pp. 31-35, 136-158.#

March 1. From Social Reform to Social Science: Post -War Professionalization of Public Discourse.

#E.W. Burgess, "The Social Survey," American Journal of Sociology, 21 (January 1916), pp. 492-500.#

#David Eakins, "The Origins of Corporate Liberal Policy Research, 1916-1922: The Political Economic Expert and the Decline of Public Debate," in Jerry Israel, ed., Building an Organiza-tional Society (1972), pp. 163-179.#

March 4-March 12: SPRING VACATION.

March 13. Who Are We/Who Should We Be? Reimagining America, 1915-1924: The Cul-tural Politics of Difference.

Randolph Bourne, "Trans-National America" (1916), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 170-180.

#Milton M. Gordon, "The American Immigrant Revisited," Social Forces, 54 (1975), pp. 470-474.#

March 15. Black Perspectives on Cultural Politics: The Harlem Renaissance.

#Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro (1925), pp. xv-xvii, 3-16, [optional: 47-53, 301-311].#

#Langston Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," and E. Franklin Frazier, "Racial Self-Expression," in August Meier et al., eds., Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (Second edition, 1971), pp. 110-121.#

#Hand Out: "The New Negro: An Interpretation"#

March 20. Growing Up Black and Female in the Rural South.

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968; 1992), chaps. 1-17.

March 22. Personal Politics: Coming of Age in Missisippi.

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968; 1992), chaps. 18-29.

Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" (1963), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 414-421.

SHORT ESSAY due on Friday March 24 at 4:00pm in Hall 101.

March 27. Growing Up Black and Male in the Urban North.

Alex Haley, ed., The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965; 1987), chaps. 1-9.

March 29. Toward a Modern Black Nationalism, I: Inventing a New Self.

Alex Haley, ed., The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965; 1987), chaps. 10-16

April 3. Toward a Modern Black Nationalism, II: The Legacy of Malcolm X.

Alex Haley, ed., The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965; 1987), chaps. 17-19 and Epilogue

April 5. The Civil Rights Movement is Radicalized: Black Power, 1966-1970.

#Massimo Teodori, ed., The New Left: A Documentary History (1969), pp. 271-275.#

#August Meier et al., eds., Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (Second edition, 1971), pp. 373-380, 469-484, 551-567.#

April 10. [Re] Framing Public Discourse: Ideological Conflict or Ideological Consensus?

Sidney Hook, "Communism without Dogmas" (1934), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 229-238.

Daniel Bell, "The End of Ideology in the West" (1960), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 361-367.

April 12. Politics and Philosophy of the New Left, 1960-1970.

Herbert Marcuse, selection from One Dimensional Man (1964), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 445-454.

#Massimo Teodori, ed., The New Left: A Documentary History (1969), pp. 163-172, 182-188, 228-233.#

April 17. Toward the Modern Women's Movement, I: Self-Discovery.

Betty Friedan, selection from The Feminine Mystique (1963), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006)
pp. 384-390.

Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (1979), pp. 3-125, 233-238.

April 19. Toward the Modern Women's Movement, II: Self-Determination.

Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (1979), pp. 126-232, 238-242

April 24. Postscript, I: [Re] Theorizing Gendered Differences.

Nancy J. Chodorow, “Gender, Relation, and Difference in Psychoanalytic Perspective” (1979), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 476-487.

April 26. Postscript, II: What is “Black” in a Democratic Republic [of Letters]?

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., selection from Loose Canons (1990), in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, fifth edition, volume 2 (2006), pp. 505-515.

TERM PAPER OPTION

Seniors: Papers due 5 PM Saturday May 6, 2006.

Others: Papers due 12 Noon Friday May 12, 2006.