HIST 6724: American Thought and Politics, 1877 – Present 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., Thursdays Dr. Christopher R. W. Dietrich [email protected], DE 639, Office Hours by Appointment
Despite the common conception of American culture as both profoundly political and anti-intellectual, we will evaluate how thought and politics have indeed been forces in American society. Specifically, we will examine some of the different political, moral, and social persuasions and sensibilities that have played prominent roles in American public life over the course of the last century.
The course is designed for historians and students of other fields interested in exploring the life and politics of the mind in the twentieth-century United States. One aim is to investigate the contested meaning and place of the intellectual in a democratic, capitalist culture. Another no less important goal is to examine the production and dissemination of ideas in their political context. Finally, we must examine the role of political change itself, as it shaped, constrained, and otherwise interacted with ideas.
To this end, the course traces the history of the United States—from the end of Reconstruction to the War on Terror—through its ideas. How have American intellectuals and politicians understood, reacted to, or participated in such developments as the growth of the corporation, the rise and fall of European imperialism, the wars of the twentieth century, the United States’ rise to global prominence, and a diverse array of social, political, and economic movements? How has the role of intellectuals changed with the growth of the university, the rise of planners, and the emergence of novel sources of information? Where do politics and ideas come together in classic topics of pragmatism, populism, political economy, liberalism, imperialism, and race? What did prominent intellectuals and politicians believe about the major events of their era? Such questions and others will drive us forward this semester.
Requirements and Grading
By the end of the semester, students will have had ample practice writing about intellectual history. Each student is asked to turn in a 1-page review essay of the each week’s reading at the beginning of each class. The essay should provide a concise summary of the contents of the book, situate its argument in the context of existing scholarship, and offer a critical evaluation of its contribution. The page limit must be adhered to strictly by all participants. (You should find this a very useful strategy for synthesizing the reading and focusing your thoughts.) The professor will record comments on each essay each week. The reviews and your participation will comprise 20% of the final grade.
Each student will lead class three times during the semester. This is a relatively light sentence—in addition to the weekly summary, the student will circulate a minimum of 5 discussion questions via Blackboard by 5 p.m. the Tuesday before class. The same student will provide 5-10 minutes of introductory remarks at the beginning of class. Each round will comprise 10% of the final grade, for a total of 30%.
Each student will turn in a 15-20 page essay on a subject of their choice at the end of the semester. Students are encouraged to investigate any of the topics under consideration in the syllabus or investigate their own eclectic interests in minor fields, including science fiction, pedagogy, environmentalism, jazz, legal theory, etc. Topics will be discussed and assigned in individual meetings with the professor, who will help each student arrive at an individual reading list. The final paper will be worth 50% of the grade.
Readings
All books will be available for purchase at the Fordham bookstore. Article- and chapter-length readings for each week will be available on Blackboard, but must be printed for class.
Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898, 35th anniversary edition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011) Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005) Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) David Ciepley, Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006) David Oshinsky, A Conspiracy so Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005 [1982]) Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression (Harvard University Press, 2012) David C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) Penny Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997) Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2003)
Calendar of Classes
Week 1: Intellectual and Political History – The Search for Order - Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Harper, 1960 [1936]), Chapter 1: “Introduction: The Study of the History of Ideas,” 3-23. - Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, ed. James Tully (Princeton University Press, 1988), 29–67. - Anthony Grafton, “The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950–2000 and Beyond,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67: 1 (January 2006): 1–32. - John Higham, “Beyond Consensus: The Historian as Moral Critic,” American Historical Review, 67 (Apr. 1962): 609-25. - Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Harper’s Magazine (1964): 77-86.
Week 2: Victorian Thought and its Discontents - Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Harvard University Press, 2000). - C. Wright Mills, introduction to Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1953).
Week 3: Pragmatism and Democracy - Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). - “Roundtable: Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club and the Problem of Pragmatism,” Intellectual History Newsletter, 24 (2002), 84-124.
Week 4: Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism - Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898, 35th anniversary edition (Cornell University Press, 1998). - Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (Hill and Wang, 2011).
Week 5: Populism, Traditional and New - Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Cornell University Press, 1998). - Michael Kazin, “Hofstadter Lives: Political Culture and Temperament in the Work of an American Historian,” Reviews in American History 27: 2 (1999): 334-348.
Week 6: Liberalism, Elites, and Wealth - Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2005). - James T. Kloppenberg, “In Retrospect: Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America,” Reviews in American History 29: 3 (September 2001): 460-476. - Rogers M. Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America,” American Political Science Review (1993): 549-566.
Week 7: Modernity and Anti-Modernism - Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920- 1940 (University of California Press, 1985). - Ann Douglas, “Periodizing the American Century: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Postcolonialism in the Cold War Context,” Modernism/Modernity, 5: 3 (Sept. 1998), 71-98.
Week 8: The Global Interwar Years - Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan- Islamic and pan-Asian Thought (Columbia University Press, 2007). - Erez Manela, “Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of East-West Harmony and the Revolt against Empire in 1919,” The American Historical Review (2006): 1327-1351.
Week 9: World War and Political Thought - David Ciepley, Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism (Harvard University Press, 2006).
Week 10: American Anti-Communism - David Oshinsky, A Conspiracy so Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (Oxford University Press, 2005 [1982]). - Marc Selverstone, “A Literature so Immense: The Historiography of Anticommunism,” OAH Magazine of History 24: 4 (2010): 7-11.
Week 11: Modern Economic Thought - Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression (Harvard University Press, 2012). - Daniel Immerwahr, “Polanyi in the United States: Peter Drucker, Karl Polanyi, and the Midcentury Critique of Economic Society,” Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (2009): 445–466. -Jennifer Burns, "Godless Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservative Movement,” Modern Intellectual History 1: 3 (2004): 359-385.
Week 12: The Politics of Knowledge in the Cold War - David C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (Oxford University Press, 2011). - David Armitage, “The Fifty Years’ Rift: Intellectual History and International Relations,” Modern Intellectual History 1 (2004), pp. 97–109.
Week 13: Revolutionary Nationalism and Civil Rights - Penny Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Cornell University Press, 1997). - Cynthia Young, “Havana up in Harlem: LeRoi Jones, Harold Cruse and the Making of a Cultural Revolution,” Science & Society 65: 1 (Spring 2001): 12-38. - Peniel E. Joseph, "Dashikis and Democracy: Black Studies, Student Activism, and the Black Power Movement," The Journal of African American History (2003): 182-203.
Week 14: The Vietnam War and Dissent - Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). - Mark Atwood Lawrence, “Mission Intolerable: Harrison Salisbury's Trip to Hanoi and the Limits of Dissent against the Vietnam War,” Pacific Historical Review 75: 3 (2006): 429-460.
Week 15: Historicizing the War on Terror - Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Henry Holt, 2003). - Marilyn B. Young, “The Vietnam Laugh Track,” in Vietnam in Iraq: Tactics, Lessons, Legacies and Ghosts, eds. David Ryan and John Dumbrell (Routledge, 2006): 31-47 - Amy Kaplan, “Violent Belongings and the Question of Empire Today,” American Quarterly 56: 1 (2004): 1-18.
Week 16: Final Papers Due.