UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
FALL
2007
HISTORY
132 B
U.S. INTELLECTUAL HISTORY,
MID-19TH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT
Professor Richard Cándida Smith
Tu/Th
3:30-5:00
101
Morgan
office hours: Tu/Th 1:00-3:00, GSI:
Sam Redman
and
by appointment office
hours: Wed 1:00-3:00
2207
Dwinelle Hall
@ Brewed Awakenings
candidas@berkeley.edu redman@berkeley.edu
In this course we will
examine key developments in U.S. thought and culture since the middle of the
nineteenth century, roughly beginning with the reception of Darwin in the 1860s. The story told in the class weaves
together the history of science, the arts and popular culture, philosophy, and
education. Our goal is to trace
the effects that ideas—whether they are dominant, challenging, or
nostalgic—have had on how the people of the United States live
together. The sciences and the
arts have provided raw material for an on-going reconstruction of how to
understand and interpret the world.
They have inspired legislation and regulatory policies. We will consider how intellectual
theories have contributed to the growing power of the U.S., to inequality and
injustice, and to efforts to reform the nation. Key topics to be addressed include
·
nineteenth-century
revolutions in science and religion
·
the
emergence of pragmatism, the first original contribution to philosophy
developed within the United States
·
early
twentieth-century debates about modernity, urbanization, economic development,
democracy, and pluralism
·
the
impact of psychoanalysis, other new theories of psychological development, and
existentialism on U.S. life and thought after World War II
·
debates
over the linguistic turn, feminism, multiculturality, gay rights, and new
developments in science
·
how
contemporary issues relate to earlier debates covered in the class
Readings bring together
a selection of primary texts from the period along with historians
reconstruction and interpretations. Primary readings will be discussed in
lecture. Students should come
prepared with their questions, or you can send the professor an email outlining
sections of the readings that you are having trouble understanding or would
like more explanation. The
professor will answer these question in the lecture.
Students
will write a 10 to 15-page research paper on a topic of personal interest
related to the course material. Students will work with the GSI to develop a
topic proposal, prepare a short annotated bibliography of primary sources and
relevant secondary literature, and then to develop the paper, which is due the
last week of classes. Please turn
in TWO copies of all assignments.
There
will be a midterm and final examination.
The grade will be calculated on the following basis: midterm exam, 25%;
term paper, 40%; final exam, 35%.
Assigned texts
David Hollinger and
Charles Capper, eds., American
Intellectual Tradition: 1865 to the Present (5th ed.), noted as A.I.T. reading assignments
Jacques Barzun, A
Stroll with William James
Terry Smith, Making
the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America
Richard King, Race, Culture,
and the Intellectuals, 1940-1970
Hannah Arendt, Crises
of the Republic
Christopher Butler, Postmodernism:
A Very Short Introduction
There are also
several texts assigned that will be found on the web.
Class schedule
WEEK 1: THE GENTEEL TRADITION (AUG 28-30)
Introduction
to course--the “Genteel Tradition” in America defined--the influence of John
Locke and common sense philosophy--ideas of moral and material progress
READINGS
FOR WEEK
Santayana,
“The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” A.I.T., 101-113
Higginson,
Selection from A Plea for Culture, A.I.T., 11-14
Royce,
“The Problem of Job,” A.I.T., 77-89
Howells,
“Pernicious Fiction,” A.I.T., 41-44
WEEK 2: THE RECEPTION OF
POSITIVISM AND DARWIN (SEP 4-6)
Positivism and new ideas of science--changing
definitions of “natural law” and cause and effect--feminist intellectuals and
the new science--Darwin and the revolutions in space and time--the hypothetical
deductive method--Lyell and new geological science--the polygenesis
controversy--science and religion in the 19th-century U.S.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Gray,
Selection from “Review of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species,” A.I.T., 5-10
Briggs,
Selection from Biblical Study, A.I.T., 36-40
Stanton,
Selection from The Woman’s Bible, A.I.T., 50-53
Gilman,
Selection from Women
and Economics,
A.I.T., 89-95
Veblen,
Selection from The
Theory of the Leisure Class, A.I.T., 126-139
WEEK 3: THE RISE OF
FEMINISM--HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS (SEP 11-13)
The women’s movement from 1848 to 1892--the 14th
and 15 Amendments and the writing of gender into the constitution--Elizabeth
Cady Stanton’s “Solitude of Self”--development of an African American women’s
movement--the transformation of higher education and the emergence of the U.S.
research university--education and specialized knowledge in the formation of a
new middle class--intellectuals and experts--questions of values, questions of
ideology--the Negro college system--Du Bois versus Booker T. Washington on the
purposes of education and the types of leadership African Americans needed.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Stanton,
“Solitude of Self,” A.I.T., 45-49
Addams,
“The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements,” A.I.T., 120-125
S.
Elizabeth Frazier, “Some Afro-American Women of Mark” African
Methodist Episcopal Church Review (1892), online at http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/page.cfm?ID=2374
WEEK 4: MODERN SOCIAL SCIENCE
(SEP 18-20)
The emergence of sociology, anthropology, and
psychology as sciences of human behavior--habit, culture, social control
as
explanatory frameworks--Lewis Henry Morgan and American understandings of
kinship/family--Sumner and social darwinism--naturalism, vitalism, and the
metaphor of the “organic”--Franz Boas and cultural relativism--Robert E. Park
and the Chicago School of sociology--assimilation cycles and “functionalism”--cultural pluralism.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Turner,
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” A.I.T., 54-62
Wilson,
“The Ideals of America,” A.I.T., 140-147
Sumner,
“Sociology,” A.I.T., 26-35
DuBois,
Selection from The Souls of Black Folk, A.I.T., 148-153
Frederick
Douglass, “The Color Line,” North American Review (1881), online at http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=/moa/nora/nora0132/&tif=00605.TIF&view=50&frames=1
WEEK 5: PRAGMATISM AS A THEORY OF
KNOWLEDGE (SEP 25-27)
Modernity and new conceptions of the self--
pragmatism defined and explored--Charles Sanders Peirce and William James as
contrasting founders--Peirce on objectivity and community--Peirce’s semiotic
systems--James’s psychological critique of systems of representation--questions
of faith in action and in the formation of scientific understanding--the
international impact of pragmatism.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Peirce,
“The Fixation of Belief,” A.I.T., 15-25
Barzun,
A Stroll with William James
James,
“What Pragmatism Means,” A.I.T., 154-164
James,
“The Will to Believe,” A.I.T., 63-76
Holmes,
“Natural Law,” A.I.T., 197-200
DUE
NO LATER THAN OCTOBER 2 – PAPER TOPIC PROPOSAL
WEEK 6: RELIGION IN MODERN LIFE
(OCT 2-4)
The “debate” between science and
religion--accommodation in modernist theology, rejection by fundamentalist, the
middle ground of values--should faith in a modern society be purely a personal
matter?--Social Gospel and Walter Rauschenbusch--ethnicity, race, and
religion--religion in the emergence of African American nationalism--James’s Varieties of
Religious Experience--scientifically
defining the functions of religion.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Mencken,
“Puritanism as a Literary Force,” A.I.T., 188-196
Niebuhr,
Selection from The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, A.I.T., 279-285
Murray,
Selection from We
Hold These Truths,
A.I.T., 353-360
WEEK 7: PRAGMATISM AND
DEMOCRACY (OCT 9-11)
James’s political values: writings on lynching,
the Philippines, Ph.D.’s and the functions of education; “The Moral Equivalent
of War”--John Dewey as the third major figure in pragmatism--Dewey on
educational reform, the relationship of experts and intellectuals to the
public, reconciling the contradiction between values and scientific expertise--
Bourne’s criticism of Dewey--what were the limits of pragmatism? what value did it have for a world
increasingly engaged with concepts of the unconscious, social structure, and
class struggle?--radical turns after World War I--the end of American
innocence?
READINGS FOR WEEK
Dewey,
“Philosophy and Democracy,” A.I.T., 201-209
Bourne,
“Trans-National America” and “Twilight of Idols,” A.I.T., 170-187
Lippman,
Selection from Drift and Mastery, A.I.T., 165-169
WEEK 8: MODERNIST SOCIAL
SCIENCE (OCT 16-18)
Women in ethnography--Margaret Mead, Ruth
Benedict; Zora Neale Hurston; Josefina Mireles González; Ella Deloria-- José
Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio in Chicago--Robert E. Park on the marginal man--
theories of modernization and of cultural hybridity--the retreat of scientific
racism--eugenics and 1920s legislation to improve the nation’s “stock”.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Adams,
“The Dynamo and the Virgin,” A.I.T., 96-100
Mead,
Selection from Coming
of Age in Samoa,
A.I.T., 210-216
WEEK 9: CULTURAL MODERNISM (OCT
23-25)
Modernism defined--the avant-gardes of the 1910s
and 1920s--Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Margaret Sanger--Freud
in the U.S.--new psychological concepts of culture and self--the Harlem
Renaissance--discovering folk and “roots” culture--rewriting the history of
U.S. culture and ideas.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Smith,
Making the Modern
Ransom,
“Reconstructed but Unregenerate,” A.I.T., 217-228
Trilling,
“On the Teaching of Modern Literature,” A.I.T., 376-389
Greenberg,
“Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” A.I.T., 250-259
TAKE
HOME MIDTERM EXAM DUE OCTOBER 30
WEEK 10: THE DEPRESSION AND THE
POPULAR FRONT (OCT 30-NOV 1)
Efforts to explain the great depression--the
challenges of fascism and communism to liberal democracies--“roots” cultures as
a source of national renewal-- developing a popular front to oppose war and
fascism--new approaches to popular culture--organizing society to solve its
economic problems--mobilizing society for total war.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Arnold,
Selection from Symbols of Government, A.I.T., 239-243
Luce,
Selection from “The American Century,” A.I.T., 260-264
Wallace,
Selection from The Century of the Common Man, A.I.T., 265-269
Hook,
“Communism without Dogmas,” A.I.T., 229-238
WEEK 11:
AUTHORITARIANISM--PREJUDICE AND THE LIMITS OF U.S. DEMOCRACY (NOV 6-8)
Hannah Arendt and the theory of totalitarian
social movements--Gunnar Myrdal on race relations in the U.S.--the Studies in
Prejudice program--“prejudice” and “authoritarian” tendencies in modern,
liberal societies--new ideas about social group interaction—debates over
“conformity” and the “two cultures”--FDR’s Four Freedoms and new concepts of
human rights--a new civil rights movement emerges--Ralph Ellison on masking.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Arendt,
“Ideology and Terror,” A.I.T., 342-352
Myrdal,
Selection from An American Dilemma, A.I.T., 270-278
Baldwin,
“Many Thousands Gone,” A.I.T., 314-323
King,
Race,
Culture, and the Intellectuals, 1-119
WEEKS 12 and 13: EXISTENTIAL
REBELLIONS--POSTWAR SYSTEMS THEORY (NOV 13-15-20)
Existentialism--theories of the “absurd”--holistic
psychology and ideas of personal development--psychological explanations of
social phenomena--the combination of legal, sociological, and psychological
evidence in the legal briefs prepared for Brown v. Board of
Education--responses
to the Cuban revolution--C. Wright Mills, Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire and the
new “liberation” movements--Betty Friedan and second-wave feminism--from civil
rights to black nationalism--the fracturing of national unity--systems theory
as an outgrowth of new developments in physics and biology--applications of
systems theory in the social sciences--the heyday of the U.S. research
university.
READINGS FOR BOTH WEEKS
Erikson,
Selection from Childhood
and Society,
A.I.T., 299-313
Bell,
“The End of Ideology in the West,” A.I.T., 361-367
Friedan,
Selection from The
Feminine Mystique,
A.I.T.,
422-428
King,
Selection from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” A.I.T., 414-421
Malcolm
X, Selection from “The Ballot or the Bullet,” A.I.T., 437-444
Marcuse,
Selection from One-Dimensional Man, A.I.T., 445-454
King,
Race,
Culture and the Intellectuals, 121-316
DUE NO
LATER THAN NOV 13 -- ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR PAPER
THANKSGIVING
NOV 22
WEEK 14: THE LINGUISTIC TURN
(NOV 27-29)
The crisis of the social sciences in the 1960s
and 1970s--language theory in relation to systems theory--cybernetics and new
turns in social science--social difference as a linguistic phenomenon--language
acts (Wittgenstein), structuralism (Saussure), and critical theory (the
Frankfurt school)--redefining the role of gender, race, and sexuality in
society--implications for public policy and political agitating--changes in the
U.S. university after the 1960s.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Arendt,
Crises of the Republic
Kuhn,
Selection from The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, A.I.T., 405-413
Sontag,
“Against Interpretation,” A.I.T., 429-436
Chomsky, “The
Responsibility of Intellectuals,” A.I.T., 455-464
Scott,
Selection from “The Evidence of Experience,” A.I.T., 516-527
Chodorow,
“Gender, Relation, and Difference in Psychoanalytic Perspective,” A.I.T., 476-487
PAPER
DUE DECEMBER 4
WEEK 15: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN
U.S. INTELLECTUAL LIFE (DEC 4-6)
Postmodernism and
poststructuralism--multiculturality and American national
identity--globalization and national difference--the market versus the
community as the basis for democratic modern life?--The return of
religion--what is the relationship of democratic rule and personal
liberty?--conservative movements--chaos theory as metaphor--summing up the course.
READINGS FOR WEEK
Butler,
Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction
Rorty, “Science as
Solidarity,” A.I.T., 488-498
Sagan,
Selection from The Demon-Haunted World, A.I.T., 535-546
Gates,
Selection from Loose Canons, A.I.T., 505-515
Friedman,
Selection from Capitalism and Freedom, A.I.T., 390-399
Huntington,
“The Clash of Civilizations,” A.I.T., 528-534
FINAL
EXAMINATION DUE IN PROFESSOR’S OFFICE
2207
DWINELLE HALL
TUESDAY
DECEMBER 11
NO
LATER THAN 5:00 PM