AmCon 102: Democratic Vistas, 1800-1900
First Year, Semester II
In this century of institutional development, national expansion, and sectional conflict, Americans continued to define a national identity. Students probe the ways in which region, religion, race, ethnicity, and gender inform individual and group contributions to the conversation. They also analyze how geographical expansion and ideas of progress influenced different visions and versions of America. Topics, dense facts and texts include: the Second Great Awakening and the idea of social progress; Abolitionism, William Lloyd Garrison and Fredrick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, American Slave; Utopian societies in America; Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller and American Transcendentalism; Romantic landscape painting; the letters of Civil War soldiers; Civil War photography; Walt Whitman’s poetry of Civil War; Black Elk Speaks; Crazy Horse and the Battle of Little Bighorn.