American Thought and Culture Since 1865

Catalog description

This course examines American intellectuals from the Civil War to the present–their lives, ideas, and respective cultural milieus. Major historical themes include the impact of Darwin’s Origin of the Species and the Civil War on American thought; the responses of artists and intellectuals to mass market capitalism, large scale industrialization and various mechanisms of modernity; the influence of European thinkers and emigres on American thought; and the decline of the public intellectual as a factor in American cultural life. In addition, the course explores the differences and complementarities in American intellectuals’ approaches to these themes and problems from various standpoints, among them, “technical” philosophy, social criticism, political thought, literary criticism, aesthetics, and philosophies of science.