 |
This course explores significant themes in
20th-century intellectual and cultural life by engaging a series of
conversations about the place of the individual in a modern, mass society.
The emphasis in this course will be on the work of people--mainly social
reformers, social critics, and social scientists--who self-consciously
formulated arguments about the thing we call “society.”
|
|
We will begin by asking some basic questions. Who are
intellectuals? What work have they done, why has their work mattered, and
what is involved in thinking historically about ideas? At the beginning of
the course, we will consider why race and nation matter in contemporary
culture and strive to understand the history of today’s conversation about
diversity, multiculturalism, and the enduring challenge of forging a common
culture in a multiethnic, multiracial society.
|
|
The course will then move on to consider how three of the
most important legitimizing ideals of 20th-century life--democracy, science,
and personality--have shaped the cultural meanings of individual and
collective experience. Never straying very far from the social environments
that nurtured these ideals, we will consider them from the vantage points of
Progressive-era reform, the dramatic expansion of the welfare state from the
New Deal through the 1960s, and the dramatically changing international role
of the United States during world wars and Cold War.
|
| Format:
 | This course will combine lectures with frequent discussions
and occasional films. Students are expected to come to class with the
required reading for that day completed and ready to talk! Active
participation is the most important part of the course. Graduate
students will meet separately with the professor, at a time to be
arranged. Additional reading and writing will be required. |
|
|
Writing
Requirements:
|
There
will be two short Internet exercises, two five-page essays, and a
take-home final exam.
 |
The
first essay (due on November 2) will be devoted to one of the first
three required texts: McBride, Hollinger, or Tocqueville. The choice
of which book to write about will be left up to students, but the
expectation is that the paper will take the form of a book review
attentive to the historical context of the author’s ideas. |
|
The
second essay (due on November 23) will be a short intellectual
biography of a 20th-century thinker whose ideas are relevant to the
subject matter covered in this course. The choice of who to write
about will again depend upon student interest, but you are required
consult with the professor early on in the term for help in
selecting a figure and identifying appropriate material about him or
her. The final week of the course will be devoted to group
presentations of these intellectual biographies.
|
|
|
The final exam will consist of essay questions that integrate
major themes from the course as a whole. It will be handed out in class
on December 2 and will be due exactly one week later, on December 9. |
|
|
Lateness Policy:
|
No late assignments will be accepted and no makeup exams will
be given. Students who miss deadlines will be given an F for that
assignment.
|
|
|
Academic Honesty:
|
If this course is to be a worthwhile educational experience,
your work must be original. Plagiarism and other forms of cheating are
very serious infractions and will not be permitted. Students who are
uncertain about exactly how to cite published, electronic, or other
sources should feel free to consult with the instructor. There will be a
brief essay-writing tutorial during class time before the first essay is
due.
|
|
|
Accommodations:
|
If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing
accommodations in this course, please arrange to see me soon and request
that Disability Services send a letter verifying your disability.
|
|
|
Grading:
|
attendance and participation: 20%
|
|
exercises and essays: 55%
|
|
take home final exam: 25%
|
|
|
week 1: Men and Women Thinking
|
|
weeks 2 and 3: Solidarity
|
Tuesday, October 5: Descent, Difference, and the Problem of
Commonality
|
continue
reading The Color of Water
|
|
|
Thursday, October 7: Race and Its Meanings
|
finish
reading The Color of Water
|
|
|
Tuesday, October 12: Between Universalism and Tribalism?
Whatever happened to the family of man?
|
begin
reading Postethnic America
|
|
Check
out the following web page: http://www.expo98.msu.edu/
(Pluralism and Unity)
|
|
This
cite contains information about pluralism, including the debates about it by a
range of early 20th-century American intellectuals. Write one concise,
carefully crafted paragraph describing some aspect of pluralism’s history
that you encountered there. Due today, at the beginning of class.
|
|
|
Thursday, October 14: Nation and Its Meanings
|
finish
reading Postethnic America
|
|
Michael
Walzer, “What Does It Mean to Be an American?” Social Research
(Fall 1990):591-614. Reprinted in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds.,
The American Intellectual Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. II: 1865 to the
Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 388-399. [CP]
|
|
|
|
week 4: The Historical and Institutional Geography of
Intellectual Labor
|
Tuesday, October 19: In and Out of the Ivory Tower
|
Louise
L. Stevenson,”Colleges and Universities” in A Companion to American
Thought (Blackwell, 1995), 134-137. [CP]
|
|
American
Association of University Professors and Association of American Colleges,
“1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure With 1970
Interpretive Comments,” http://www.aaup.org/1940stat.htm
[CP]
|
|
James
E. Perley, “Tenure Remains Vital to Academic Freedom,” Chronicle o f
Higher Education, April 4, 1997, http://www.aaup.org/jeped44.htm.
[CP]
|
|
|
Thursday, October 21: Industrialism,
Interdependence, and the Problem of Value in a Disenchanted World
|
William
James, “The Will to Believe” [CP]
|
|
brief,
in-class essay-writing tutorial
|
|
|
|
weeks 5 and 6: Democracy
|
Tuesday, October 26: Tocqueville and Democracy in America
|
Democracy
in America, vol. 2: part 1, chaps. 1-5 (3-28); part 2, chaps. 1-8, 20
(94-124; 158-161); part 3, chaps. 1, 5, 8-12 (162-167; 177-185; 192-214); part
4, entire (287-334).
|
|
Check
out either of the following Tocqueville web pages:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/intro.htm
(Democracy in America: Tocqueville’s America)
|
|
http://www.tocqueville.org/ (The Alexis de Tocqueville Tour)
|
|
Write one concise, carefully crafted paragraph describing
some aspect of Tocqueville’s life, travels, or historical moment that you
encountered. How does it illuminate the ideas expressed in Democracy in
America? To be turned in today at the beginning of class.
|
|
|
Thursday, October 28: Tocqueville and Democracy Today
guest lecture: Ed Weeks, UO Deliberative Democracy Project
|
Robert
Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal
of Democracy 6 (January 1995):65-78. [CP]
|
|
|
Tuesday, November 2: Jane Addams: The Reformer as Thinker
|
Essay
#1 due at the beginning of class
|
|
Jane
Addams, “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements”; “Why Women
Should Vote”; “The Progressive Party and the Negro”; from Peace and
Bread in Time of War, in Christopher Lasch, ed., The Social Thought of
Jane Addams (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 28-43, 143-151, 169-174,
231-249. [CP]
|
|
Jean
Bethke Elshtain, “A Return to Hull House: Reflections on Jane Addams,” in Power
Trips and Other Journeys (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990),
3-12. [CP] |
|
Check
out the material on Addams’ life and ideas at the Dead Sociologists’
Society web page: http://www.runet.edu/~lridener/DSS/DEADSOC.HTML |
|
|
Thursday, November 4: Towards Social Democracy
|
Jane
Addams, from Democracy and Social Ethics; “A Modern Lear”;
“A Function of the Social Settlement” in Christopher Lasch, ed., The
Social Thought of Jane Addams (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 62-84,
105-123, 183-199. [CP]
|
|
|
|
weeks 7: Science
|
Tuesday, November 9: Social Knowledge and Social Engineering
|
begin
reading Walden Two
|
|
|
Thursday, November 11: B.F. Skinner: The Experimentalist as
Public Philosopher
|
finish
reading Walden Two
|
|
Thomas
Kuhn, selection from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), in
David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual
Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. II: 1865 to the Present (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 317-325. [CP]
|
|
film: “Margaret Mead: The Observer Observed”
|
|
|
|
weeks 8 and 9: Personality
|
Tuesday, November 16: The Psychological Society
|
Warren
I. Susman, “`Personality' and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture,” in Culture
as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century
(Pantheon, 1984), 271-285. [CP]
|
|
Lawrence
K. Frank, “Society as the Patient,” American Journal of Sociology 42
(November 1936):335-44. [CP]
|
|
film: “In Search of Ourselves”
|
|
|
Thursday, November 18: Sex, Gender, and the Therapeutic
Sensibility
|
begin
reading The Feminine Mystique
|
|
|
Tuesday, November 23: Society as the Patient
|
finish
reading The Feminine Mystique
|
|
|
Essay
#2 due at the beginning of class.
|
|
November 25: THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
|
|
|
week 10: Student Group Presentations
|