DOCSLIB.ORG

Upper Division Courses

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Upper Division Courses Fall 2015 UPPER DIVISION COURSES MILITARY HISTORY OF THE U.S. SINCE 1900 HIST 386B: John Carlton Section 1: Tuesday/Thursday 5:30-6:45 PM 3 credits "The nation's military history is a constant factor in the evolution of American life. … The result is the average American cannot move without bumping into the country's military past. … At a thousand unnoticed points, America's military past impinges on his daily life. Far from being separate and apart from it, that history helps make his life what it is, has been, and will be." (Geoffrey Perret, A Country Made by War) During this course, we will focus on America's wars and conflicts, campaigns and battles, strategies and tactics, and the human cost of combat, but not in isolation. As noted above, military actions are an integral part of the general history of this nation. Therefore, to provide a more complete perspective, to try to answer questions of how and why, we will discuss the United States' military history since 1900 in the context of political, economic and social conditions of the relevant period. REQUIRED READING: Allan R. Millett & Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States, 1607-2012 Thomas Cutler, The Battle of Leyte Gulf 23-26 October 1944 Joseph R. Owen, Colder Than Hell A book on Vietnam to be determined Selected articles on e-reserve in the Lied Library RECOMMENDED READING: Jerry K. Sweeney, ed., A Handbook of American Military History Conduct of the class will consist of lectures, class discussions, video presentations. Grading will be based two exams, each covering approximately one half of the course material, short papers based on assigned readings, battle presentations, and classroom participation and attendance. GREAT PERSONALITIES ABRAHAM LINCOLN HIST 388: Michael Green Section 1: Monday/Wednesday 1:00-2:15 PM 3 credits From the penny to the $5 bill, from Daniel Day-Lewis’s emancipator to the vampire hunter, Abraham Lincoln is an iconic figure in American (indeed, world) culture. Almost everyone has her or his own version of Lincoln: the Great Emancipator who was a white supremacist and only reluctantly supported freeing the slaves; the military genius whose ignorance of strategy and tactics may have prolonged the war; the master manipulator who claimed that events controlled him; the devoted husband who supposedly never loved his wife; the honest man who also was a superb politician and at times devious attorney. This course provides an opportunity for us to find and learn about Lincoln together. We will examine his life, but also his times. We will look at how he shaped and was shaped by politics, the law, the West, his personal life, and, above all, issues of race and slavery. We also will consider his reputation during his lifetime and especially afterward, as he became what some scholars have called America’s leading secular saint—and how he also was and is hated for some of the changes to which he contributed. The course format is a combination of lecture and discussion. There will be a project that you will decide upon in consultation with the instructor, take-home essays related to the assigned reading and what we do in the classroom, and some shorter assignments. REQUIRED READING: Gregory A. Borchard, Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery David S. Reynolds, ed., Lincoln’s Selected Writings Kenneth J. Winkle, Abraham and Mary Lincoln The above books are available in UNLV’s bookstore. I also will provide some articles in class and you will be responsible for those. AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL HISTORY I HIST 401A/601A: David Tanenhaus Section 1: Monday/Wednesday 1:00-2:15 PM 3 Credits The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow- men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. In order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1881) This course is the first half of a two-part survey of American constitutional and legal development from colonial times to the present. Though designed to complement one another, each half of this course may be taken independently. The quotation from Holmes captures the central perspective of this course: that the law is a social process that can be best understood in historical context. In this course, we examine select topics concerning the life of the law in America from its colonial origins until the Civil War. REQUIRED READING: Craig Yirush, Settlers, Liberty, and Empire: The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675-1775 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) ISBN 978-0521132466 William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 978-0807846117 Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (Simon & Schuster, 2011) ISBN 978-068486554 Robert J. Cottrol, The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere (University of Georgia Press, 2013) ISBN 978- 0820344317 John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (Free Press, 2013) ISBN 978-1416576174 Grading will be based on class participation, short essays, a midterm, and a final examination. There will be extra reading and writing assignments for graduate students (HIST 601A). AMERICAN WEST SINCE 1849 HIST 406B/606B: Greg Hise Section 1: Monday/Wednesday 1:00-2:15 PM 3 Credits This course examines the Trans-Mississippi West from the Mexican-American War to the early twenty-first century. We will consider the West as an empire in our coverage of the wars against Mexico and Indian nations and as a colony of the East in our coverage of economic developments. We will also examine the West as an arid region and explore the relations between environment and political, economic, and cultural developments. The American region with the most wide-open spaces is also the most urbanized part of the country and we will assess the West as a metropolitan trendsetter. In addition, as we explore political developments in the region from the Progressive Era to the present we will consider the West as a place of ideological contrasts—from Populism to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s to Ronald Reagan’s successful Southwest Strategy. Throughout the semester we will examine representations of the region in art, literature, film, television, and advertising. REQUIRED READING: William Deverell and Anne Hyde, The West in the History of the Nation: A Reader, Volume 2, Since 1865 (Bedford, 2000) William Wyckoff, How to Read the American West: A Field Guide (UWA Press, 2013) Articles and essays available via Lied Library and WebCampus Grading will be based on class participation, a midterm, and a final examination. Graduate students enrolled in HIST 606B will read additional texts and produce a historiography or a research paper in consultation with the instructor and peers. UNITED STATES FOREIGN RELATIONS II HIST 407B/607B: Tessa Winkelmann Section 1: Tuesday/Thursday 2:30-3:45 PM 3 Credits Over the course of the 20th century, the U.S. rose to superpower status, largely due to its increased involvement in global affairs. Conversely, the actions of the United States in the world have profoundly impacted the affairs of other countries. Taking a cue from recent calls to internationalize the study of U.S. history, our readings and class discussions will move beyond a nation centered approach, exploring such topics as orientalism, empire, militarism, Americanization, consumption, globalization, the Pacific world, migration and transnationalism. While we will seek to understand what the role of the U.S. has been at various times in the larger global community since the early 20th century, we will also foreground what the U.S. presence in the world has meant for other countries, particularly those that we would identify as “developing” or third world countries, highlighting non-U.S. voices and perspectives. Students will leave the class with a broader sense of how the U.S. has historically acted outside of its own borders, how these intrusions have continued to shape world politics, and how increasing global connectedness is often accompanied by increasing global inequalities. REQUIRED READING: Schaller et al., American Horizons: U.S. History in a Global Context, vol. 2, Since 1865 Schlesinger, et.al., Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala Lederer and Burdick, The Ugly American Gillem, America Town: Building The Outposts of Empire Additional selected articles and excerpts UNITED STATES: NATIONAL PERIOD, 1815-1860 HIST 414A/614A: Elizabeth Nelson Section 1: Tuesday/Thursday 11:30-12:45 AM 3 Credits This course examines the major issues and themes in the formation of a national identity in the years between 1815 and 1860. The advent of this new nationalism prompted an examination of the meaning of citizenship, freedom, and self-identity, in both politics and culture. The struggles of women, slaves, and immigrants for political and economic equality shaped both public and private definitions of citizenship. The growing tension between the North and the South over the expansion of slavery in the West brought the issue of national identity to a head in the crises of the 1850s.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Measure of Detachment: Richard Hofstadter and the Progressive Historians
    A MEASURE OF DETACHMENT: RICHARD HOFSTADTER AND THE PROGRESSIVE HISTORIANS A Thesis Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS By Wiliiam McGeehan May 2018 Thesis Approvals: Harvey Neptune, Department of History Andrew Isenberg, Department of History ABSTRACT This thesis argues that Richard Hofstadter's innovations in historical method arose as a critical response to the Progressive historians, particularly to Charles Beard. Hofstadter's first two books were demonstrations of the inadequacy of Progressive methodology, while his third book (the Age of Reform) showed the potential of his new way of writing history. i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................................i CHAPTER 1. A MEASURE OF DETACHMENT..........................................................................1 2. SOCIAL DARWINISM IN AMERICAN THOUGHT………………………………………………26 3. THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION…………………………………………………………..52 4. THE AGE OF REFORM…………………………………………………………………………………….100 5. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………139 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..144 CHAPTER ONE A MEASURE OF DETACHMENT Great thinkers often spend their early years in rebellion against the teachers from whom they have learned the most. Freud would say they live out a form of the Oedipal archetype, that son must murder his father at least a little bit if he is ever to become his own man.
    [Show full text]
  • Imperialism, Racism, and Fear of Democracy in Richard Ely's Progressivism
    The Rot at the Heart of American Progressivism: Imperialism, Racism, and Fear of Democracy in Richard Ely's Progressivism Gerald Friedman Department of Economics University of Massachusetts at Amherst November 8, 2015 This is a sketch of my long overdue intellectual biography of Richard Ely. It has been way too long in the making and I have accumulated many more debts than I can acknowledge here. In particular, I am grateful to Katherine Auspitz, James Boyce, Bruce Laurie, Tami Ohler, and Jean-Christian Vinel, and seminar participants at Bard, Paris IV, Paris VII, and the Five College Social History Workshop. I am grateful for research assistance from Daniel McDonald. James Boyce suggested that if I really wanted to write this book then I would have done it already. And Debbie Jacobson encouraged me to prioritize so that I could get it done. 1 The Ely problem and the problem of American progressivism The problem of American Exceptionalism arose in the puzzle of the American progressive movement.1 In the wake of the Revolution, Civil War, Emancipation, and radical Reconstruction, no one would have characterized the United States as a conservative polity. The new Republican party took the United States through bloody war to establish a national government that distributed property to settlers, established a national fiat currency and banking system, a progressive income tax, extensive program of internal improvements and nationally- funded education, and enacted constitutional amendments establishing national citizenship and voting rights for all men, and the uncompensated emancipation of the slave with the abolition of a social system that had dominated a large part of the country.2 Nor were they done.
    [Show full text]
  • Uncovering the Reformation Roots of American Marriage and Divorce Law
    Uncovering the Reformation Roots of American Marriage and Divorce Law Judith Areent INTRO D UCTIO N ............................................................................................... 30 I. SIXTEENTH CENTURY EUROPEAN MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAW R EFO R M .............................................................................................. 34 A. Luther Advocates Civil Marriage and Fault-Based Divorce .......... 35 B. Zwingli Inspires Zurich to Enact the First Modem Marriage and D ivorce Law ....................................................................... 44 C. Calvin's Geneva Adopts a Civil Marriage and Divorce O rdinance .................................................................................. 49 II. REFORMATION IN ENGLAND ............................................................... 53 A. Henry VIII Opposes Divorce ..................................................... 53 B. Archbishop Cranmer Proposes the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum....................................................................... 54 C. The Rise of Godly Puritans and Support for Marriage and D ivorce Reform ......................................................................... 59 III. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAW IN COLONIAL AMERICA .................... 61 A. Civil Marriage in Plymouth Plantation ...................................... 61 B. Civil Marriage and Divorce in Massachusetts Bay Colony ........... 64 C. Civil Marriage, but No Divorce, in the Colonies Outside New E ngland ...................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Age of Reform After Fifty Years
    Downloaded from https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781400001961 FORUM: RICHARD HOFSTADTER'S THE AGE OF REFORM AFTER FIFTY YEARS https://www.cambridge.org/core [Note: The following two essays are revised versions of presentations made by Robert Johnston and Gillis Harp at the annual meeting of the British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) in Cambridge, England, in October 2005. BrANCH invited SHGAPE to help organize the conference. Based on a suggestion by Robert Johnston, SHGAPE con- tributed a session commemorating Richard Hofstadter's book on the Populist and Progressive movements, first published in 1955 and much-acclaimed and much-criticized since. While Professor Johnston had the assignment of assessing The Age of Reform in retro- . IP address: spect, Gillis Harp attempted to put the book within its contemporary intellectual context. Beyond evaluating this noteworthy book, the session had the intention as well of prompting memories from a few people in attendance who knew Hofstadter as a friend and colleague. 170.106.35.229 In this, the session succeeded, reminding those present that The Age of Reform reflected the personality of its author and is more than a historiographic interpretation against which one measures one's own views.! , on 25 Sep 2021 at 06:23:25 The Age of Reform: A Defense of Richard Hofstadter Fifty Years , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at On* Robert D. Johnston, University of Illinois at Chicago When we attend academic history conferences, it has become common to hold sessions honoring important books of the moment. This makes con- siderable sense, as authors get to engage with thoughtful critics in a process that, we hope, advances the discipline.
    [Show full text]
  • 0 George W. Goethals: Life and Reform in the U.S. Army, 1876
    GEORGE W. GOETHALS: LIFE AND REFORM IN THE U.S. ARMY, 1876-1919 Rory M. McGovern A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School. Chapel Hill 2017 Approved by: Joseph T. Glatthaar John C. Chasteen Wayne E. Lee Michael C. Morgan Benjamin Waterhouse 0 © 2017 Rory M. McGovern ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Rory M. McGovern: George W. Goethals: Life and Change in the U.S. Army, 1876-1919 (Under the direction of Joseph T. Glatthaar) In the culminating achievements of a lengthy career in the U.S. Army, George W. Goethals led the construction of the Panama Canal and managed the effort to sustain an army of approximately four million soldiers during the final year of the First World War. At the outset of that career, neither he nor the U.S. Army was prepared to meet such challenges. Using biography as a vehicle to examine a larger problem, this dissertation follows Goethals’s career in order to understand the nature of change in the U.S. Army during the late-nineteenth and early- twentieth centuries as it transitioned from a frontier constabulary and coastal defense force to a modern army capable of projecting power abroad and meeting the challenges of twentieth- century warfare. Goethals’s story reveals that the legacy of the Civil War and the army’s failure to keep pace with changing social norms and practices in training, education, and perceptions of professionalism created a traditionalist culture that did not embrace the new structures imposed by the Root Reforms at the turn of the century, but sought to apply them to comfortably traditional norms, values, and practices.
    [Show full text]
  • A Short History of the United States
    A Short History of the United States Robert V. Remini For Joan, Who has brought nothing but joy to my life Contents 1 Discovery and Settlement of the New World 1 2 Inde pendence and Nation Building 31 3 An Emerging Identity 63 4 The Jacksonian Era 95 5 The Dispute over Slavery, Secession, and the Civil War 127 6 Reconstruction and the Gilded Age 155 7 Manifest Destiny, Progressivism, War, and the Roaring Twenties 187 Photographic Insert 8 The Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II 215 9 The Cold War and Civil Rights 245 10 Violence, Scandal, and the End of the Cold War 277 11 The Conservative Revolution 305 Reading List 337 Index 343 About the Author Other Books by Robert V. Remini Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher 1 Discovery and Settlement of the New World here are many intriguing mysteries surrounding the peo- T pling and discovery of the western hemisphere. Who were the people to first inhabit the northern and southern continents? Why did they come? How did they get here? How long was their migration? A possible narrative suggests that the movement of ancient people to the New World began when they crossed a land bridge that once existed between what we today call Siberia and Alaska, a bridge that later dis- appeared because of glacial melting and is now covered by water and known as the Bering Strait. It is also possible that these early people were motivated by wanderlust or the need for a new source of food. Perhaps they were searching for a better climate, and maybe they came for religious reasons, to escape persecution or find a more congenial area to practice their partic u lar beliefs.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Hofstadter's the Age of Reform: a Reconsideration Author(S): Alan Brinkley Source: Reviews in American History, Vol
    Review: Richard Hofstadter's the Age of Reform: A Reconsideration Author(s): Alan Brinkley Source: Reviews in American History, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 462-480 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2702106 . Accessed: 27/07/2011 09:01 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Reviews in American History. http://www.jstor.org IN RETROSPECT RICHARDHOFSTADTER'S THE AGE OF REFORM: A RECONSIDERATION Alan Brinkley Even its detractors (and there are many) might be inclined to agree that Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R.
    [Show full text]
  • Pop-Culture Politics: How Cable News Created the Tea Party, Trump, and a Fake Populist Movement
    History, Department of History Theses University of Puget Sound Year 2017 Pop-Culture Politics: How Cable News Created the Tea Party, Trump, and a Fake Populist Movement Cole Souder [email protected] This paper is posted at Sound Ideas. http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/history theses/25 Pop-Culture Politics: How Cable News Created the Tea Party, Trump, and a Fake Populist Movement Cole Souder Souder 2 Pop-Culture Politics: How Cable News Created the Tea Party, Trump, and a Fake Populist Movement “If the people shall, with a ringing an impressive voice, declare four weeks from next Tuesday that the public credit shall not be lowered; that the national currency shall not be degraded; that the peace and tranquility of this government of law shall not be broken; that the revenues of the treasury shall be no longer insufficient for the needs of the government, and that the tariff shall no longer be inadequate to protect the American workshop and the American mark, business activity will return, confidence come back again…work will be resumed, prosperity will come to bless and benefit us all.”1 -William McKinley, 1896 The catchword of the modern political moment is populism. Donald Trump’s rise in the 2016 presidential election, against all preconceived odds, has led politicians and analysts alike to declare his movement “populist,” dredging up a long-used term first popularized in the United States in the late nineteenth century. On MSNBC, commentators referred to Trump as a populist in order to avoid the more blasphemous characterization of fascist.2 Fox News, on the other hand, did so in order to explain away economic policies that differed from traditional GOP talking points.3 Trump was not the only presidential hopeful who received the populist tag, as Bernie Sanders ignited the American left against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
    [Show full text]
  • The Populist Vision: a Roundtable Discussion
    The Populist Vision: A Roundtable Discussion edited by Worth Robert Miller here is a rich and diverse literature on Populism that has made the third-party movement of the 1890s one of the more contentious subjects of scholarly debate over the past century. Were Populists backward-looking hicks trying to turn the clock back to some mythical preindustrial utopia? Were they a truly radical force seeking to fundamentally restructure American society? Or, were Populists forward-looking liberal reform- Ters embracing the twentieth century before its time?1 The most recent entry into this debate is Charles Postel’s new national study, The Populist Vision. As the winner of both the 2008 Bancroft and 2008 Frederick Jackson Turner Prizes it has been especially welcomed by scholars and the public alike. The Populist Vision presents Populists as overtly modern and progressive. According to one reviewer, this book “represents the culmination of the rehabilitation of the Populists of the 1890s.”2 Postel argues that Populists strongly believed in the power of science and technology to improve their world and adapted the model of contemporary busi- ness to their own situation. Consequently, they drew laborers and urban middle-class reformers into their ranks as co- victims of predatory corporate greed. In The Populist Vision, Populists come off as ultimately logical and sympathetic reformers, well ahead of their time. Certainly, their program for reform met with much more success during the early twentieth century than before the demise of their party in the late 1890s. Worth Robert Miller is professor of history at Missouri State University in Springfield.
    [Show full text]
  • AP US History
    ADVANCED PLACEMENT UNITED STATES HISTORY CURRICULUM 2020 I. COURSE DESCRIPTION Advanced Placement U.S. History Grade 11 - 12 Full Year – Five Credits Advanced Placement United States History is a full-year course designed to analyze and examine the political, economic, social and religious issues that shaped this nation from the Pre- Columbian Age to the present. It is a comprehensive program that culminates with the AP Examination. The APUSH course is designed to utilize and improve a student’s critical thinking skills by providing factual knowledge and use of the student’s analytical skills so they may critically assess historical materials, weigh evidence and interpretations. Much focus is also put on synthesizing information and applying what they learned through document analysis along with document based question (DBQs) and open answer essay writing. The use of maps, charts, timelines, political cartoons and other visual aids will be utilized and skills such as creating power points, outlining, and timed essay writing will be developed. Since this course is in compliance with the national Advanced Placement criteria, the historical time periods and issues are covered in greater detail and at a more rapid pace than other history classes. APUSH is aimed at providing the students with the learning experience equivalent to that obtained in most college introductory United States History classes. APUSH continues the chronological study of American History from the early settlers to the present day. The themes which will be focused on during the year will be the development of America’s identity and culture with its rich diversity. An examination of the demographic changes and economic transformations across the years will emphasize the impact on changing politics, citizenship, reform, religion, and environment.
    [Show full text]
  • Ideology and Utopia in the Works of Ignatius Donnelly 47
    ideology and utopia in the works of ignatius donnelly allan m. axelrad I Ignatius Donnelly, known to his fellow Minnesotans as the Sage of Nininger, was a colorful and vibrant political figure for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. His public life stretched from his election as the Republican lieutenant governor of Minnesota in 1859 at the age of twenty-eight, to the year 1900 when he ran for the vice presi­ dency of the United States on a ticket representing the steadfast remnant of the People's Party that refused merger with the Democrats. In addition to his long and often volatile political career, Donnelly was a popular and extremely controversial author of fiction, imaginative pseudo-scientific treatises and a voluminous tome on the authorship of Shakespeare. During the final decade of the nineteenth century, Donnelly was one of the outstanding leaders of radical farmer protest. The Donnelly legacy has added importance to the student of Populism due to the excellence of the Ignatius Donnelly Papers housed by the Minnesota Historical Society, which are the premier source of data on Populism. Both Donnelly and the Populist movement have proved something of an enigma to the his­ torian. On one hand Populism has been called the seed-bed of proto- fascism in America, and on the other it is thought the birthplace of the New Left of the 1960's. The ideological chasm separating these claims is vast. But, because Donnelly is identified with each side by historians arguing over the meaning of the Populist experience, a systematic analysis of his writings may provide a bridgework over this chasm, by disclosing the ideological principles which governed the outlook of at least one Populist.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Movements and Progressivism Part Three of the Progressive Tradition Series
    Library of Congress Students from North Carolina A&T College stage a sit-down strike after being refused service at a luncheon counter in February 1960. Social Movements and Progressivism Part Three of the Progressive Tradition Series John Halpin and Marta Cook April 2010 www.americanprogress.org Social Movements and Progressivism Part Three of the Progressive Tradition Series John Halpin and Marta Cook April 2010 With the rise of the contemporary progressive movement and the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, there is extensive public interest in better understanding the origins, values, and intellectual strands of progressivism. Who were the original progressive thinkers and activists? Where did their ideas come from and what motivated their beliefs and actions? What were their main goals for society and government? How did their ideas influence or diverge from alternative social doctrines? How do their ideas and beliefs relate to contemporary progressivism? The new Progressive Tradition Series from the Center for American Progress traces the develop- ment of progressivism as a social and political tradition stretching from the late 19th century reform efforts to the current day. The series is designed primarily for educational and leadership development purposes to help students and activists better understand the foundations of pro- gressive thought and its relationship to politics and social movements. Although the Progressive Studies Program has its own views about the relative merit of the various values, ideas, and actors discussed within the progressive tradition, the essays included in the series are descriptive and analytical rather than opinion based. We envision the essays serving as primers for exploring progressivism and liberalism in more depth through core texts—and in contrast to the conserva- tive intellectual tradition and canon.
    [Show full text]