Amer Political Thought

(4 Credits)

Study of American political ideas and debate from colonial times to the present. Topics include Puritanism, revolution and independence, the Constitution framing, Hamiltonian nationalism, Jeffersonian republicanism, Jacksonian democracy, pro- and antislavery thought, Civil War and Reconstruction, social Darwinism and laissez-faire, the reformist thought of populism, progressivism and socialism, legal realism, the New Deal and 20th-century liberalism, modern conservatism, civil rights, and war protest. Readings and discussion are based on original and interpretative sources.