POL S 318 A: American Political Thought from the Colonial Era to the Civil War

FULL SYLLABUS: APT 1 Syllabus - Spring 2021.pdf  

American Political Thought from the Colonial Era to the Civil War

This course surveys American political thought from the colonial era to the Civil War. Topics include the meaning and consequences of the first encounters between American Indians and Europeans; Puritan and Quaker conceptions of conscience, community, and liberty; work, political economy, and the idea of the “self-made” man in the eighteenth century; the ideology of the American revolution; debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the Constitution; the relationship between power and property; Jeffersonian republicanism and Jacksonian democracy; the market revolution, class conflict, and racial identities; democratic culture; the conflict over slavery; the gendered dimensions of citizenship; and the relationship between freedom, the rule of law, and popular sovereignty.

Learning Objectives

- To obtain a basic knowledge of the history of American political thought from the colonial era to the Civil War, as well as a sense of the historical trajectory of American ideas about freedom, equality, and democracy.

- To track the changing relationship between labor conditions, on the one hand, and race and class identities, on the other.

- To expand our ability to connect past to present, so that our political arguments are more historically informed.

- To conduct political dialogue with sympathy, critical attention, passion, and respect.

- To strengthen our command of English prose through careful writing.