Legacies of the Age of Revolutions

Catalog description

As we approach the sesquicentennial or 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, there are timeless and new issues around how we remember its origins, experience, and legacy. Situating the struggle for American independence from the British Empire amidst the broader transformations of the Age of Revolutions, this course explores the meaning and scope of revolution, in the long eighteenth century and in contested commemorations today. By considering how contact and imperial expansion in North America set the stage for global conflict over sovereignty and freedom, we will study how complex interactions between Indigenous people, enslaved people, and settler colonialists fermented equally complex views and ideologies surrounding revolution. This process was not limited solely to British North America, but as we will examine, took shape around the Haitian and French revolutions as well. Taking the vantage of how the American Revolution was remembered by subsequent generations, both as a singular event, a cluster of ideologies and protests, and in comparison with other late eighteenth century movements, we will consider how debates of what the revolution meant in and to the early United States speaks to contemporary understandings. We will especially consider whose voices surrounding revolution are celebrated, criticized, or left-out all together through various modes of communication and interpretation. In doing so, we will consider how revolutionary experiences – real, imagined, and digital – impact our present day.