HI 374 Syllabus

HI 374: U.S. Intellectual History, 1900 to Present

Spring 2009
MWF 10-11
CAS 226
Instructor: R. S. Deese
Email: rsdeese@bu.edu
Telephone: (617) 458 9059
Office:226 Bay State Road, Room 502
Office Hours: MWF 11-12 (or by appointment)

FINAL EXAM: 5/7, 3:00p.m. - 5:00p.m.

This course will chart the evolution of the American intellectual tradition from dawn of the twentieth century to the present. We will examine the legacy of a broad range of thinkers and movements from the heyday of the Industrial Revolution to the current age of accelerated globalization. Topics will include pragmatism and progressivism; ethnic and cultural pluralism; Marxism and liberalism; Cold War ideology and neoconservatism; artistic modernism; psychoanalysis and modernization theory; the New Left, multiculturalism, postmodernism. We will also explore the evolution of environmentalist thought over the past century.

Requirements:

20% of grade Midterm, 2/27
30% of grade Final Exam
25% of grade 7-10 Page Analytical Paper or Digital Scholarship Project* 4/24
25% of grade Attendance and Participation.


Attendance at all lectures is mandatory. Unless you have a documented medical or family emergency, you need to come to every lecture. Turn off all cell phones and electronic devices during lectures & discussions.


IMPORTANT: Please read the Academic Conduct Code to understand policy of Boston University regarding plagiarism. The punishment for any form of plagiarism at this institution is, as it should be, very severe. As you are writing your term papers, please don’t hesitate to contact me beforehand if you have any questions concerning the proper citation of source materials.

Schedule of Lectures and Readings

Week One

1/14 Introduction; When Did the Twentieth Century Begin?

1/16 Responses to The Origin of Species

READ Menand, pp. 1-176; In AIT READ: Asa Gray, C. S. Peirce, William Graham Sumner

Week Two

1/19 MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY HOLIDAY

1/21 The Varieties of Secular Experience

1/23 Progressives and Gospel of Efficiency

READ Menand (FINISH); In AIT READ: Frederick JacksonTurner, William James, Woodrow Wilson, Walter Lippman

Week Three

1/26 “The sky-scraper and the colonial mansion”

1/28 First Wave Feminism

1/30 “The Souls of Black Folk”

In AIT READ: George Santayana, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois

Week Four

2/2 John Dewey before and After WWI

2/4 The Tradition of Homegrown Cultural Criticism

2/6 Through the Anthropologist’s Lens

In AIT READ: John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, Thorstein Veblen, H.L. Mencken, John Crowe Ransom, Margaret Mead

Week Five

2/9 Marxism in America

2/11 The Color Line

2/13 Neo-orthodoxy and Realism

In AIT READ: Sydney Hook, Gunnar Myrdal, James Baldwin, Reinhold Niebuhr, George F. Kennan

Week Six

2/17 (Monday Schedule on Teusday) The Modernist Aesthetic

2/18 Defining “The American Century”

2/20 A New Ecology of Power

In AIT READ: Clement Greenberg, Henry Luce, Henry A. Wallace, Albert Einstein, Aldo Leopold

Week Seven

2/23 Cold War Anticommunism

2/25 Ideology and Terror

2/27 MIDTERM EXAM

In AIT READ: Whittaker Chambers, Hannah Arendt, Daniel Bell

Week Eight

3/2 Modernization Theory

3/4 Rethinking the Modernist Aesthetic

3/5 Historicizing Science

In AIT READ: Walt Rostow, Lionel Trilling, Thomas Kuhn

Week Nine
SPRING RECESS

Week Ten

3/17 Letter from Birmingham Jail

3/18 “The Ballot or the Bullet”

3/19 Film (TBA)

In AIT READ: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X

Week Eleven

3/23 The Feminine Mystique

3/25 From the Frankfurt School to the New Left

3/27 The Cold War and the Academy

In AIT READ: Betty Friedan, Herbert Marcuse, Noam Chomsky


Week Twelve

3/30 Roots of Neoconservative Thought

4/1 Politics and the Construction of Knowledge

4/3 Pragmatism and Postmodernism

In AIT READ: Milton Friedman, Edward Said, Richard Rorty

Week Thirteen

4/6 Film (TBA)

4/8 Psychology and History

4/10 Psychology and Feminist Theory

In AIT READ: Erik Erikson, Nancy J. Chodorow


Week Fourteen

4/13 The “Culture Wars” and the Academy

4/15 History and “Critical Theory”

4/17 Environmental Thought in Post-Cold War America

In AIT READ: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Week Fifteen

4/22 Joan W. Scott

4/23 The Clash of Civilizations MONDAY SCHEDULE

4/24 Student Presentations / Discussion TERM PAPER DUE IN CLASS

In AIT READ: Samuel Huntington


Week Sixteen

4/27 The Demon Haunted World

4/29 Conclusion and Discussion

In AIT READ: Carl Sagan

FINAL EXAM





*Students electing to do a Digital Scholarship Project in lieu of a traditional paper must honor the following guidelines. All Digital Scholarship Projects or DSPs must contain three components to satisfy the requirements of HI 374: First, an original digital video or narrated slide show to be presented in class and published in comparable form on the course blog, Second, 2-3000 words of original text; and Third, rigorous citation of at least three types of research materials: primary sources, secondary sources, and print sources hitherto unpublished on the Internet. Electronic sources may also be included if they have been vetted for accuracy, but the inclusion of print sources not yet available on the Internet will be absolutely essential to the completion of every digital scholarship project.