American Intellectual History I

This course traces how Americans argued about freedom, virtue, God, race, and democracy from the Puritan settlements through the eve of the Civil War, treating ideas as forces that shaped a young republic rather than as a parade of famous names. You'll read Winthrop, Jefferson, Tocqueville, Emerson, Douglass, Grimke, Fitzhugh and others in their own words, then defend thesis-driven readings in class discussion, a midterm, and a final. As the first half of the AMCA intellectual-history sequence, it gives you the antebellum vocabulary—republicanism, transcendentalism, the slavery debate—that AMER 358 and most upper-level literature seminars assume you already own.