American Intellectual History II

This course will deal with the intellectual history of the United States from 1865 to the present. It will explore such topics as the pragmatist tradition, the plight of African Americans and their struggle for civil rights and economic betterment, the American social sciences, intellectuals and the public sphere, feminist thought, trends in American literary studies and cultural studies, debates over multiculturalism, the controversy over the "clash of civilizations", and recent American thought on the philosophy and history of science. Writers to be considered include: Lester Frank Ward, William Graham Summer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, W.E.B. Du Bois, William James, John Dewey, Margaret Meadi Gunnar Myrdal, Henry R. Luce, Henry Wallace, J.K. Galbraith, Milton Friedman, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, Lionel Trilling, Susan Sontag, Betty Friedan, Gloria Anzaldua, Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, Samuel Huntington, Russell Jacoby, T.S. Kuhn, and Walter Benn Michaels.