Syllabus
Course Content:
Class meetings and readings to be completed in preparation for them:
Wednesday, February 17:
Session 1
General Introduction
Wednesday, February 24:
Session 2
Ideological Foundations of American Society I
Main reading assignment:
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), "Circles," from Essays: First Series (1841), www.rwe.org.
Texts, parts of which may be used in class as a commentary on the main topic:
All of the readings below will be found in the file resp20r1.doc, to be supplied by the instructor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Selections (1842-1871);
Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), on Emerson, in "Conversation on New England Authors" (1872);
J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur [Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur], (1737-1818), Letters from an American Farmer (1782), "Letter III. What is an American?";
Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America" [1784];
George Washington (1732-1799), Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island (1790);
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), Democracy in America (1835, 1840);
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Selections (1776-1801);
Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Selections (1855-1871);
Tom Robbins (b. 1936), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976);
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), Selections (1895-1899);
Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Selections (ca. 1950);
Maya Angelou (Marguerite Ann Johnson, 1928-2014), "Caged Bird" (1983).
Wednesday, March 3:
Session 3
Ideological Foundations of American Society II
Main reading assignment:
David Lee Robbins, Supplementary Essay 1, Colonization, in the file Supplementary Essay 1, Colonization.doc, to be provided by the instructor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), "Spiritual Laws," from Essays: First Series (1841), and "Politics," from Essays: Second Series (1844), www.rwe.org.
Texts, parts of which may be used in class as a commentary on the main topic:
All of the readings below will be found in the file resp20r2.doc, to be supplied by the instructor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Selections (1844-1861);
Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937), Mason & Dixon (1997);
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), excerpts from Democracy in America (1835, 1840);
George Santayana (1863-1952), "Materialism and Idealism in American Life" from Character and Opinion in the United States (1920);
Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Selections (1855);
Washington Irving (1783-1859), excerpts from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1819-20);
William James (1842-1910), excerpts from Principles of Psychology (1890), Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907), and A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures [1908] at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy (1909).
Wednesday, March 10:
Session 4
Antebellum South, Rhetorics Employed to Justify and Oppose Slavery and Racism.
The Civil War and the Meanings of Freedom
The Traditional, Southern Rendering of Reconstruction that Became the Nation's Interpretation in the Early 20th Century
Main reading assignment:
David Lee Robbins, Supplementary Essay 2, Slavery, in the file Supplementary Essay 2, Slavery.doc, to be provided by the instructor.
Racial Bias:
Pro-slavery argument on Negro intellectual and moral inferiority, to be provided by the instructor in the file secess1.doc.
Lincoln on Negro intellectual and moral inferiority, to be provided by the instructor in the file secess2.doc.
Dred Scott case 1857, Negroes cannot be citizens, to be provided by the instructor in the file secess3.doc.
Wednesday, March 17:
Session 5
Early American Feminist Writing: “First-wave” Feminism, 1848-1960
David Lee Robbins, Supplementary Essay 3, Antinomianism, in the file Supplementary Essay 3, Antinomianism.doc; and
David Lee Robbins, Supplementary Essay 4, Revolution, in the file Supplementary Essay 4, Revolution.doc, both to be provided by the instructor.
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” [1855], Stanza 24, excerpts, in file whitman.doc, to be provided by the instructor.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Women's Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York, July 19-20, 1848, http://www.sjsu.edu/people/cynthia.rostankowski/courses/HUM2BS14/s0/Womens-Rights.pdf
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), "The Solitude of Self" (Address to Congressional Judiciary Committee, January 18, 1892), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Solitude_of_Self
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), excerpts from Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), in the file refullem.doc, to be supplied by the instructor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Woman” (1855), in the file refullem.doc, to be supplied by the instructor.
Wednesday, March 24:
Session 6
Presidential Reconstruction and its Achievements.
Meanings of Freedom for African Americans after the Civil War
Main reading assignment:
David Lee Robbins, Supplementary Essay 5, Constitution and Parties, in the file Supplementary Essay 5, Constitution and Parties.doc;
David Lee Robbins, Supplementary Essay 6, Westward Expansion, in the file Supplementary Essay 6, Westward Expansion.doc; and
David Lee Robbins, Supplementary Essay 7, Abolitionism, in the file Supplementary Essay 7, Abolitionism.doc, all three to be provided by the instructor.
Fourteenth Amendment, 1868, made Negroes citizens, to be provided by the instructor in the file secess4.doc.
Fifteenth Amendment, 1870, promised Negroes political rights, to be provided by the instructor in the file secess4.doc.
Slaughter-House cases 1873, began gutting of Fourteenth Amendment, to be provided by the instructor in the file secess5.doc.
Wednesday, March 31:
Session 7
The “Jim Crow” Era
David Lee Robbins, Supplementary Essay 8, Republican Ascendancy, in the file Supplementary Essay 8, Republican Ascendancy.doc, to be provided by the instructor.
Charles W. Mills (b. 1951), The Racial Contract (1997), Overview, pages 9-40, to be supplied by instructor in the file Charles Mills — Racial Contract.pdf.
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), Up From Slavery (1901), http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2376, Chapter XIV: The Atlanta Exposition Address.
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963), The Souls of Black Folk (1903), http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/408
Chapter I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings;
Chapter III: Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others; and
Chapter VIII: Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece.
Jim Crow - separate but equal:
Civil rights cases 1883, continued gutting of Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, to be provided by the instructor in the file secess6.doc.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, validated the segregationist doctrine of separate but equal, to be provided by the instructor in the file secess7.doc.
Wednesday, April 7:
Session 8
The Women’s Rights and Gay Rights Movements of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
Their Various Rhetorics and Manifestations
Gender Bias – from the days of Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to those of the National Woman's Party (1916-present, founded and led for fifty years in seeking an Equal Rights Amendment for women by Alice Paul)
Second-wave Feminism, 1960-1990 (Betty Friedan); and Third-wave Feminism, 1990-present (Judith Butler and Angela Davis)
Betty Friedan (1921-2006), The Feminine Mystique (1963),
Chapter 1: The Problem That Has No Name,
<a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ows/seminars/tcentury
Annotation
An overview of U.S. cultural history from the perspective of its racial, ethnic, and gender "minorities." The course examines the notions of ethnicity, cultural diversity, and the "other" in the U.S. present and past. It focuses on the -- a society that prides itself on its openness, pluralism, and equality of opportunity. We shall see that, rather than attacking the hypocrisy of this society, minorities have now and again chosen to appeal to the problematic struggle of various disempowered, marginalized "minorities" in American society to gain recognition as full and equal members of a society that claims to be a haven for all oppressed from the rest of the world fairness of the very people who exclude them. It is quite surprising that the speakers of the disempowered have, historically, been the most hopeful, most ardent proponents of the country's ideals. We shall examine the rhetoric of their attack on -- or appeal to? -- the "majority" and the majority's response.
BA Elective Seminar; course open to 2nd year, 3rd year, and exceptional 1st year BA students, MA students, and Erasmus students
Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Philosophical Faculty, Charles University, Prague
Summer Term (Spring Semester) 2021
Wednesday 12.30-14.05, Room 111, Main Building, Philosophical Faculty, nam. Jana Palacha 2, Praha 1
David Lee Robbins, Ph.D.
Consultation Hours: By appointment (arranged by e-mail, David.Robbins@ff.cuni.cz).
Please note: For the Summer Term of 2021, all teaching in this seminar will be done on-line via Zoom during the scheduled class hours (Wednesdays, 12.30-14.05). The instructor will contact all registered students by email to provide Zoom access information.