HUHI 6314 081 Professor Wickberg

Summer 2005 Office Hours: MW12-1

MW 1:00-4:00 Office: JO 5.428
JO 4.312 Extension: 6222

US Intellectual History 1630-2000

This course is a graduate-level introduction to, and overview of, American

intellectual history, with a primary focus on the histories of philosophy, political and
social thought, and religion from the seventeenth century to the present. The primary
goals of the course are two: 1. to provide students with a broad context for understanding
the development of ideas in American history, including the principle canonical figures
of the American intellectual tradition and the main intellectual and cultural movements
which they represent; and 2. to develop the central skills and methods of intellectual
history: the close reading of texts paired with the identification and analysis of central
ideas, themes and patterns that tie the texts to historical movements and transformations
of which they are a part—what we might call the distinctive combination of intensive and
extensive reading that is characteristic of intellectual history as a discipline. This course
does not attempt to be an in-depth exploration of a few key texts; it sacrifices depth for
breadth, but opens the door to more detailed research in the history of American thought
by providing a broad context. Nor is it concerned with recent theoretical, critical and
historiographical debates that surround the field. The required readings are exclusively
primary sources, written by various historically significant figures, rather than the
writings of contemporary historians. However, students will have an opportunity to
explore recent secondary literature on particular topics of interest in the written work for
the course. Some key topics explored in the course: Puritanism, the Great Awakening,
Enlightenment religious and political thought, evangelical religion, Transcendentalism,
abolitionism, pro-slavery thought, racial and gender ideologies, Darwinism, science and
religion, Pragmatism, pluralism and relativisms, Cold War ideologies, social science and
psychology, liberation movements, and postmodernisms.

Course Requirements

Students will be required to do all assigned reading, and attend and participate in class
discussion. As a way of structuring class discussion, students will be assigned the role of
preparing five-minute introductions to individual reading assignments throughout the
semester. Depending upon enrollments, students can expect to do five or more such
introductions in the course of the term. If for any reason you are unable to do an assigned
introduction (e.g. sickness, emergency absence), you must let me know immediately, and
we will reschedule. These short introductions of assigned reading are critical to the class,
and the success of the class will depend upon your commitment to them. The purpose of
the introductions is to summarize the key arguments and points found in the readings and
to raise questions for discussion. See the handout provided for guidelines. In addition,
students will be required to submit two book reviews (5-7 pages) on recent secondary
texts in the field of American intellectual history. Students may wish to choose these
texts to review from the bibliographies provided in the assigned texts, or from other
sources. For guidelines for book reviews, see the handout. Grades will be determined on
the following basis:

Oral Introductions: 25%

Attendance and Participation: 25%
Book Reviews: 50%

Texts

The following texts are available for purchase at both the Campus and Off
Campus Book Stores:

David Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition ,
4th edition. Volumes I (1630-1865) and II (1865-2000) (AIT in schedule)

Make sure you purchase both volumes, and use only the 4th edition. Previous editions do
not include all the writings. Valuable resources that provide excellent and brief
backgrounds on topics in the field can be found in the reference section of the library.
They include:

Richard W. Fox and James Kloppenberg, ed., A Companion to American Thought

(Blackwell, 1995)—also available online through McDermott library webpage

Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter Williams, eds., Encyclopedia of American Cultural and
Intellectual History, 3 volumes, (Scribners, 2001)

Schedule of Readings

June 1: Introduction: no reading

June 6: REQUIRED: AIT, vol. I, pp. 3-91

RECOMMENDED:
Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century
Sacvan Berkovitch, The American Jeremiad
Edmund Morgan, Visible Saints
David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment
Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts

June 8 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. I, pp. 95-163

RECOMMENDED:
Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America
Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism
 Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of
Independence

June 13 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. I, pp. 164-240

RECOMMENDED:
Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic
Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black
Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order
Ruth Bloch, Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800
Daniel Walker Howe, The Unitarian Conscience

June 15 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. I, pp. 241-334

RECOMMENDED:
Robert Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious
Imagination
Ronald G. Walters, The Antislavery Appeal
Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers
Jean Fagan Yellin, Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in
American Culture
Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the
Transformation of Race

June 20 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. I, pp. 337-439

RECOMMENDED:
Philip Gura, The Wisdom of Words: Language, Theology, and Literature
In the New England Renaissance
Anne C. Rose, Transcendentalism as a Social Movement
David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance
Mary Kupiec Cayton, Emerson’s Emergence: Self and Society in the
Transformation of New England 1800-1845
George Kateb, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture

June 22 REQUIRED:AIT, vol. I, pp. 443-529

RECOMMENDED:
George Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War
Eugene Genovese, The Slaveholder’s Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in
Southern Conservative Thought
David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress
Waldo Martin, The Mind of Frederick Douglass
J. David Greenstone, The Lincoln Persuasion
 Michael O’Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the
American South, 1810-1860

June 27 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. II, pp. 2-51 Book Review #1 Due

RECOMMENDED:
R. Jackson Wilson, In Quest of Community: Social Philosophy in the
United States 1860-1920
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought
David Shi, Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture
Robert C. Bannister, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-
American Social Thought
Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of
Modern Feminism

June 29 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. II, pp. 52-105

RECOMMENDED:
James Turner, Without God, Without Creed
T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the
Transformation of American Culture 1880-1920
Bruce Kuklick, The Rise of American Philosophy
Kerwin Lee Klein, Frontiers of Historical Imagination
George Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture
1880-1900

July 4 Holiday, no class.

July 6 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. II, pp. 109-161

RECOMMENDED:
Morton White, Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against
Formalism
Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club
James Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural
Revolution 1850-1940
Shamoon Zamir, Dark Voices: W.E.B. Du Bois and American Thought
1888-1903
Jeffrey Sklansky, The Soul’s Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in
American Thought, 1820-1920

July 11 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. II, pp. 162-228

RECOMMENDED:
Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy
Casey Blake, Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph
 Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford
Daniel J. Singal, The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought
In the South 1919-1945
Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s
Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in
The 1920s

July 13 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. II, pp. 231-297

RECOMMENDED:
Richard Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams
Terry Cooney, Balancing Acts: American Thought and Culture in
The 1930s
Walter A. Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social
Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987
Michael Denning, The Cultural Front
James Gilbert, Redeeming Culture

July 18 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. II, pp. 298-361

RECOMMENDED:
Richard Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age
Steven Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War
Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light
Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture
In the Age of Experts
Lary May, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of
Cold War
George Cotkin, Existential America

July 20 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. II, pp. 365-421

RECOMMENDED:
Howard Brick, The Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture
In the 1960s
Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique
Christopher Shannon, A World Made Safe for Differences
Ross Posnock, Color and Culture: Black Writers and the Making of the
Modern Intellectual
Douglas Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity,
And the New Left in America
Daniel Belgrad, The Culture of Spontaneity

July 25 REQUIRED: AIT, vol. II, pp. 422-481 Book Review #2 Due

RECOMMENDED:
David Hoeveler, The Postmodern Turn: American Thought and Culture
In the 1970s
Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams
Mari Jo Buhle, Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle
With Psychoanalysis
John Pettigrew, ed., A Pragmatist’s Progress
James Davidson Hunter, Culture Wars
Thomas Frank, One Market Under God