Sustainable America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This CAD course looks back to 1850, when urban industrial America began, and looks forward to 2050, when Notre Dame promises to be carbon neutral, to critically engage competing visions of individual, communal, and ecological flourishing. Students explore how US political culture, the discipline of American Studies, and Catholic social teaching have clashed and converged over the proposed solutions to poverty, racism, and environmental degradation. After an introduction to American Studies, we turn to visions of the good life in foundational US political documents (the Declaration, the Constitution, and Inaugural Addresses) and in Catholic tradition (scriptural passages, theological reflections, and papal encyclicals, from Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si'). Then the course's three main sections consider, in turn, economic equity, racial justice, and environmental restoration. Each section ends with a "faith in action" case study and a Take-a-Stand essay. In the concluding section of the class, Learning Groups present their joint proposal, and, during the exam period, each student submits his or her own integrative essay. That essay critically and constructively engages at least three Catholic sources as the student defends a position on one of the issues—poverty, racism, or environmental degradation—and identifies what American Studies might learn from the Catholic Tradition and what the Catholic Tradition might learn from American Studies.