Reacting to the Past: Conflict and Revolution in Early America

Catalog description

Students will be assigned texts that prepare them for roles in “role playing game” re-enactments of famous intellectual and political confrontations in Early America. First, we will engage in the debates that surrounded women, power, community and theology in Puritan Massachusetts during The Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637). Second, you will become residents of New York City in 1775 to 1776, debating the causes of revolt, enduring the chaos of revolution, and justifying or repudiating violence in the pursuit of political power. Using a series of political texts of the period and related literary works, students will analyze, argue, and ultimately become subsumed in these conflicts.