Meets the following requirements: W HY                                                            

This course will explore the various currents of reform and social movements in early American history from the colonial period to the end of the mid-nineteenth century.  Using religious reform, temperance, abolition, and the movement for women's rights as the centerpiece, the course will investigate a broad range of literary and historical texts that illustrate the contradictory cross-currents of the social and cultural history of the United States.  The fundamental struggle over the nature of community in the pre-revolutionary colonial society and in the emergent nation will also be a major theme.  The tension between idealist impulses in American political and social thought conflicted daily with more banal and authoritarian realities, and this provoked heated and at times violent struggles over political power, economic structures, and emergent cultural forms.  By examining major socio-cultural changes as reflected in poetry, prose and propaganda as well as historical interpretations, students will gain an understanding of the experimental and profoundly radical visions that defined American political life in the ante-bellum period.  The literary works, political broadsides, letters and other sources will also provide students the opportunity to apply humanistically informed analysis to the issues of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.  With figures as diverse as the Grimke Sisters, Sojourner Truth, preachers of the second great awakening, and Thomas Jefferson to think and write about, this course promises profound insight into the radical roots of American political and social culture.  While the faculty work from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course provides students grounding in both historical and literary analysis.  Class work will focus on close textual analysis, discussion of texts, and intensive writing (weekly critical response pieces and at least one longer project of a student's own choosing).   Evaluation will be based on class participation, development of analytical skills, and written work. 

*W* *HY*