A GREAT NEW WORLD: AN INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN CIVILIZATION
Fall 2010
THE COURSE is designed to explore the origins of the factors which conspired to push American society in the direction of democracy, expansion and global power. Materials will be drawn from a wide variety of contexts and forms, including platforms, speeches, pamphlets, journals, letters, sermons, essays, short stories, novels and poems. Students will be encouraged to develop an understanding of how national myths are created, reshaped and misinterpreted.
Requirements: Students will be required to make three oral in-class presentations, write two short papers, and participate in class discussions of the readings. Grades will be determined as follows: oral in-class presentations 75%, two short papers 25%.
OCTAVIAN ROSKE, Associate Professor, University of Bucharest. Published Contemporary American Fiction, 1975-1985, 1989; American Conservative Tradition, 1783-1860, 1998; Repressive Mechanisms in Romania, 1945–1989. Biographical Dictionary, 2001-2009.
CLASS SCHEDULE
WEEK 1: Introduction. Method. Sources. Requirements
WEEK 2: Colonizing a Continent
Readings: William Bradford, Of PlymouthPlantation, 1630-1650, in J.A. Leo Lemay, ed., An Early American Reader, Washington, D.C.: U.S.I.A., 1988, pp. 187-210. John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” 1630, pp. 13-24 in Lemay, American Reader, pp. 13-24. Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639, in Melvin I.Urofsky, ed., Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy, WashingtonD.C.: U.S.I.A., 1994, pp. 13-15.
WEEK 3: Religious Revival and Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century
Readings: Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” 1741, in Lemay, American Reader, pp. 311-323. BenjaminFranklin, The Autobiography, 1771, 1784, in Lemay, American Reader, pp. 61-115. St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 1782, inLemay, American Reader, pp.118-129.
WEEK 4: Creating a Nation
Readings: Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, in Lemay, American Reader, pp. 688-691. Constitution of the United States, 1787, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 25-42.George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 293-301.
WEEK 5: The Expanding Union
Readings: The Northwest Ordinance, 1787, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 20-24. John L. O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity,” 1839, in M. Thomas Inge, ed., A Nineteenth-Century AmericanReader, Washington, D.C.: U.S.I.A., 1989, pp. 6-9. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893, in Inge, AmericanReader, pp. 80-85.
WEEK 6: Slavery, Secession and the Civil War
Readings: George Fitzhugh, Sociology for theSouth, 1854, in Inge, AmericanReader, pp. 309-314. Jefferson Davis, Inaugural Address, February 18, 1861, in Inge, American Reader, pp. 345-348. Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, 1863, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 159–161.
WEEK 7: The Progressive Era
Readings:Lincoln Steffens, Tweed Days in St. Louis, 1904. Muller v. Oregon, 1908, in Urofsky,Basic Readings, pp. 185-187. Theodore Roosevelt, TheNew Nationalism, 1910, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 188-199.
WEEK 8: The Roaring Twenties
Readings: Clarence Darrow, “The Ordeal of Prohibition,” 1924, in Jack Lane and Maurice O’Sullivan, eds., A Twentieth-Century American Reader. vol. I, 1900-1945, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, Branch for the Study of the United States, 1999, pp. 276-279. Samuel Crowther, “Aren’t We All Rich Now?’’1925, in Lane and O’Sullivan, American Reader, pp. 232-235. Hiram Evans, “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” 1926, in Lane and O’Sullivan, American Reader, pp. 276-279. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” 1931, in Lane and O’Sullivan, American Reader, pp. 256-262.
WEEK 9: The Great Depression and the New Deal
Readings: Mary Heaton Vorse, “School for Bums,” 1931, in Lane and O’Sullivan, American Reader, pp. 309-313. Jay Gorney and E. Y. Harburg, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” 1931, in Carl Bode, ed., American Perspectives. The United States in the Modern Age, Washington, D.C.: United States Information Agency, 1992, p. 92. F.D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, in Bode, American Perspectives,pp. 100-104. John Steinbeck, The Grapes ofWrath, 1939, in Lane and O’Sullivan, American Reader, pp. 325-332.
WEEK 10: Problems of a World Power
Readings: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Declaration of War to Japan Speech, December8,1941. Anthony Leviero, “President Truman Orders War Aid to Korea,” The New York Times, June 28, 1950. John F. Kennedy, On the Cuban Crisis, October 22, 1962. George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001. http//
WEEK 11: The Civil Rights Movement
Readings: Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 218-222. Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream,”1963, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 228-232. Civil Rights Act, 1964, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 233-236.
WEEK 12: The Struggle for Reform
Readings: TomHayden,Analyses and Proposals for AmericanSociety, 1962, in Bode, American Perspectives, pp. 200-207. Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963, in Urofski, Basic Readings, pp. 383-386. NOW Statement of Purpose, 1966, in Urofski, Basic Readings, pp. 390-394. Clyde Warrior, “We Are Not Free,’’ 1967, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 395-400.
WEEK 13: The Conservative Mind
Readings: Richard Nixon, State of the Union Address, January 22, 1970. http:/millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3889.Ronald Reagan, Economic Recovery Program, April 28, 1981. 2020.02/speeches/Economic_Recovery_Program.asp.George Herbert Walker Bush, State of the Union Address, January 29, 2001. W. Bush, Remarks on the Michigan Affirmative Action Case, January 15, 2003.
WEEK 14: The Liberal Agenda
Readings:Lyndon B. Johnson, State of the Union, January 4, 1965. Jimmy Carter, Human Rights and Foreign Policy, June 1977, in Urofsky, Basic Readings, pp. 322-327. Bill Clinton, Remarks on Affirmative Action, 1995 Obama, Address to Joint Session of Congress, February 24, 2009.
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