American Political Thought

Catalog description

This course is a graduate seminar that examines a selection of important texts that have helped shape and contest the political idea-and the political ideals-of America, placing particular emphasis on the dissenting traditions of American political thought. Beginning with a sermon delivered to Puritans on their way to the New World, and ending with a seminal debate between John Dewey and Walter Lippman over the very possibility of democratic self-rule in the modern age, the course will emphasize how intellectual argument in America has shaped-and been shaped by-the larger political culture of which it is a part. We will place particular emphasis on four significant periods in American political history: Puritan New England, the Revolution and Founding, Abolition and Civil War, and the Progressive Era. (GOVT-PT)