American Intellectual History II

AMER 358 traces how American thinkers from Reconstruction onward wrestled with the country's defining tensions—race, gender, capitalism, democracy, and America's place in the world—by reading the actual writers (Du Bois, James, Dewey, King, Friedan, Said, Huntington, and others) rather than summaries of them. Most of the work is close reading and discussion, anchored by a midterm essay, a final essay, and a presentation, with participation expected because seminars die otherwise. It builds on AMER 357 (the pre-1865 half) and gives you the intellectual backbone for upper-level AMER courses on literature, politics, and cultural studies, since most of the debates you'll encounter later started with these figures.