History A421 /
AmSt 421 Jack
McKivigan
Fall 2001 Cavanaugh
531
CA 215 Off.
hrs.: 2:30-3:15 T&R
11-12:15 T&R Phone # 274-5860
Email: jmckivig@iupui.edu
AMERICAN REFORM MOVEMENTS
A. COURSE
DESCRIPTION:
This course will examine popular movements for social, economic, and
political change in U.S. history. The
course will present an overview of the phenomena of protest and reform, and
then single out a number of cases for closer inspection. Among topics for intensive study are:
temperance, abolitionism, communitarianism, pacifism, nativism, labor rights,
Populism, women=s rights, socialism, the Civil Rights
movement, and environmentalism.
Emphasis will be placed on: evaluating different approaches to the study
of collective action; understanding the social, political, and cultural
contexts from which protest developed; and uncovering what protest movements
reveal about the nature of American society and politics.
B. COURSE
REQUIREMENTS:
The success of this course depends upon the completion of reading
assignments and participation in class discussion by the students. If a student falls behind in her/his
readings he/she will soon find it difficult to follow the subject matter of
class discussion or join in it.
Students should feel free to talk to the instructor about any course
related problems especially in cases when a student believes that her/his
assignment grades do not accurately reflect his/her performance in the
course. Students should plan to meet
individually with the instructor at least once during the semester to discuss
the progress of their journal-keeping and preparation of their autobiographical
statement.
There will be three types of graded assignments for students in this
course of the semester:
(1) Students are required to take two take-home mid‑term
examinations tentatively scheduled to be returned on October 16th
and November 13th and an in-class final examination during
Examination Week. On all of the
examinations, students will prepare answers for two out of four essay questions
presented by the instructor. The
general content of these questions will be drawn from the topics dealt with in
course reading and class discussion.
Each question will be framed to encourage students to exercise their own
judgment and interpretative skills in dealing with an important subject of
historical debate. The subject matter
covered on each of the three examinations will not be cumulative. (Value: each exam = 20% of course grade;
total = 60%)
(2) In addition to the two
examinations, there will be five in-class quizzes during the course of the
semester. The subject matter of these
quizzes will be the current course reading assignment. The format of these quizzes will be mini‑essay. There will be no make‑up for these
quizzes but the instructor will count only the student's four best scores to
determine this portion of the grade.
(Value: 20% of the course grade.)
(3) Students also will prepare a research paper on a topic of the
student=s choice related to one movement for social
change. Expected minimum length of these papers are 10‑12 typed pages for
undergraduate students and 15‑20 typed pages for graduate students. The completed paper is due on December 4th.
The student can elect to explore her/his topic either through the investigation
of primary sources or through a critical analysis of the existing historical
literature. The topics of these papers
should be determined in coordination with the instructor. A one-page
prospectus briefly
describing the topic of the paper and the major sources for research is due on
September 20th. Students are required to meet at least once
with the instructor before submitting this prospectus. This assignment is intended to permit students
to strengthen skills in
selecting a feasible
topic, finding and exploiting available sources, and presenting the results of
their research. (Value: 20% of the
course grade.)
The instructor regards deadlines as extremely important. Failure to take an examination or turn in a
quiz by the announced deadline, without prior permission from the
instructor, will automatically result in a penalty in grading. Although specific grade values have been
apportioned to each assignment, elements such as effort, interest, improvement,
attendance, and participation in class discussion all will be weighed by the
instructor in determining final course grades.
C. REQUIRED READINGS:
Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America=s Pre-Civil War Reformers (1995)
Mintz chronicles America's first age of social reform with profiles of
leading reformers and
movements and analyses of religion, politics, and society. He examines moral
reform, social reform, and radical reform as distinct responses to the country's
pre‑Civil War social problems, and concludes that reformers were both
moral critics and cultural modernizers who smoothed the transition from a
preindustrial to an industrial order.
Steven J.
Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era
Diner compiles a cohesive look at one of the most change‑filled
eras in American history. Diner's view of the Progressive Era, stressing the
effects of the Industrial Revolution on American society, concentrates on the
lives and experiences of workers, women, African‑Americans, immigrants,
and politicians of that period. Diner asserts that the acts of progressive politicians and social reformers
were sometimes genuine but other times self-interested. Diner is left to conclude that
Aprogressives, like other Americans, joined a
contest for control under rules set by industrial capitalism.''
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards, 2000-1887
Bellamy's classic look at the future was the most widely read novel of
its time. A young Boston gentleman is mysteriously transported from the
nineteenth to the twenty‑first century‑‑from a world of war
and want to one of peace and plenty. This brilliant vision became the blueprint
of utopia that stimulated some of the greatest thinkers of Bellamy=s and our age.
James J. Farrell, The Sixties
The Spirit of the Sixties explains how and why the personal became
political when Sixties activists confronted the institutions of American
postwar culture. After establishing its
origins in the Catholic Worker movement, the Beat generation, the civil rights
movement, and Ban‑the‑Bomb protests, James Farrell demonstrates the
impact of personalism on Sixties radicalism. Exploring the Sixties not just as
history but as current affairs, Farrell revisits the perennial questions of
human purpose and cultural practice contested in the decade.
Daniel Pope, American Radicalism
Beginning with the American Revolution, this volume looks at the
radical tradition in American history and the social movements that have
unfolded over the last two hundred years. It provides a key to understanding
how such movements and the thinkers behind them emerge. The chapters each
contain one substantial article by a modern scholar and four primary‑source
documents that bring to life the ideas and people involved in particular
radical movements.
D. TENTATIVE
COURSE OUTLINE:
The following as a description of course lecture/reading/discussion topics
on a weekly basis:
Part One: Antebellum Reform
Aug 23 Introduction
Aug 28&30 The
Nature of Social Change and Reform
Pope, Introduction
Mintz, Introduction
Sep 4&6 Background
of Movements for Social Change: Religious, Intellectual, and Socioeconomic.
Pope, Chap. One
Mintz, Chaps. One, Two & Three
Lois W. Banner, AReligious Benevolence as Social Control: A Critique of an
Interpretation,@ Journal of American History,
60(1973): 23-41.
Sep 11&13 Temperance:
The First War Against Drugs
Mintz, Chaps. Three & Four
Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper=s Millennium: Society and Revivals in
Rochester, New York, 1815-1837
(1978), 55-61, 79-83.
Sep 18&20 Communitarianism:
Search for Heaven on Earth
Mintz, Chaps. Five & Epilogue
Research Project Prospectus Due
Sep 25&27 Abolitionism:
Human Rights v. Property Rights
Pope, Chap. Three
David H. Donald, AToward a Reconsideration of Abolitionists,@ in David H. Donald,
Lincoln Reconsidered (1961), 19-36.
Oct 2&4 Women=s Rights: Questioning the ANatural Order@
Pope, Chap. Two
Barbara Welter, AThe Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1869,@ American Quarterly, 18 (Summer 1966): 151-74.
Part Two: Late Nineteenth/Early
Twentieth-Century Reform
Oct 9&11 Labor
Movements: The Nature of Work
Diner, Introduction, Prologue, Chaps. One and Two
Pope, Chaps. Four and Six
Oct 16&18 Utopianism: Looking Backwards?
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards
First Take-home Examination due back on 16th
Oct 23&25 American
Political Radicalism: Alternatives to Revolution
Diner, Chaps. Three, Four, and Five
Pope, Chap. Five
Eric Foner, AWhy Is There No Socialism in the United States?,@ History
Workshop:
A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Historians, 17(Spring 1984): 57- 80.
Oct 30& Progressivism:
Middle Class Reformers
Nov 1
Diner, Chap. Seven, Eight, and Nine
Part Three: Late Twentieth Century Reform
Nov 6&8 AInstitutionalizing Reform: The Maturing of the Modern Welfare State@
Farrell, Preface, Chaps., One, Two, and Three
Nov 13&15 Civil
Rights Movement: The Meaning of Freedom
Pope, Chap. Seven
Farrell, Chap. Four
Manning Marable, AEpilogue: The Vision and the Power,@ in Manning Marable,
Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America,
1945-1982 (1984),
200-212.
Second Take-home Examination due on 13th
Nov 20&22 Thanksgiving
Break
Nov 27&29 The
Sixties Counterculture: Peace and Love
Pope, Chap. Eight
Farrell, Chap, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, & Conclusion
ANOTHER ESSAY
Dec 4&6 Prospects
for Reform Movements in the Twenty-first Century
Pope, Chap. Nine
Research Project Due on 4th
Dec 11 Final
Examination (1-3 PM)