Movement Politics in Modern America

This course explores the history of political movements in the United States from Reconstruction through Trumpism—politics from the bottom up, a history of “popular politics.” The course begins with emancipation and the rise of industrial capitalism in the late nineteenth century and the civil rights, populist, and reform politics that emerged in response. The course concludes the New Right and transformations in political culture from Reaganism to Trumpism. In between, we consider civil rights, progressivism, feminism(s), the New Deal coalition, anti-communism, Black freedom, the New Left, second wave feminism, and gay rights. Major themes include: conservatism and liberalism across the twentieth century; race, class, and gender in shaping the nation’s politics; the relationship between social movements and political power; the democratic promise and the limitations of political movements and of the U.S. political system more broadly.