American Intellectual History

Fall 1995

Organization. The syllabus is organized around three major cycles in American thought and culture from the 1780s through the 1910s. Each involved parallel movements in social/political theory and in literature and the arts: first, the synthesis of Puritan, classical "republican" and "liberal" theory in the era of the Revolution and Constitution, accompanied by a vision of the American as a "new man" (Crevecoeur) and the young nation as a "new Athens" (as described in Richard Ellis's After the Revolution) [week 2]; second, the rise of "liberalism" from the 1820s though the 1840s (emphasizing the individual over the public good); of "democracy" (as universal white male suffrage); and of the "free market" (represented politically by the Bank war), coupled with the Emerson's call for the creation of a distinctly "American" culture and the "American renaissance" in literature [weeks 3-7]; third, the emergence of a "new liberalism" that produced the positive regulatory-welfare state of the progressive era, combined with a demand for new "realism" in the arts (Howells) and in the social sciences ("pragmatism") [weeks 8-11], and the breakdown of the progressive synthesis in literary naturalism and the prewar "innocent rebellion" [weeks 12-13]. The seminar does not deal with "modernism" in literature, arts or social thought, although its roots are examined in the intellectual pilgrimage of Henry Adams [week 14]. Nor, aside from a consideration of literary naturalism, does it consider the impact of consumerism and mass culture that were undermining the progressive synthesis from the turn of the century onward.

These changes were cyclical rather than linear, as the departures and programs of one generation became (or were perceived as) orthodoxy in succeeding decades. Thus, the transforming energies of the Revolutionary generation's faith in "reason" and "culture" hardened by the 1820s into a complacent Unitarianism in religion, into a so-called "Common Sense" moralism that defended the social/economic status quo, and into a conception of "culture" as a refuge from the turmoil of everyday life. The Jacksonian belief in the individual and the free market narrowed by the 1870s into seemingly callous defenses of "rugged individualism" and "laissez faire", while an allegedly "feminized" culture grew vapid and "genteel." In politics, the progressives' emphasis on regulation, translated into a sometimes draconian emphasis on "social control" and a cult of expertise (and "scientism") that not only threatened individual liberties but had negative consequences for women, ethnics, African-Americans, gays and any others who failed to conform to dominate conceptions of "normality" [week 11]. Meanwhile, consumerism and the emergence of mass culture provided the context for distinctions between "high" and "popular" culture that became a distinctive feature of 20th century intellectual life. Culturally, the call for "authenticity," stimulated by the early impact of European modernism, initially produced hopeful programs for "transnationalism" (Randolph Bourne) and a new literary canon (Van Wyck Brooks) before "modernism" itself (so it is charged) provided a basis for both political and cultural conservatism of the post World War II period.

Fundamental economic and social changes underlay each of these three phases: first, the flowering of the seaboard commercial and slaveowning society in the 1770s and 1780s; second, the early stages of industrial capitalism from the end of the Napoleonic wars though the 1830s, the development of a national transportation network, and the rise of a new and self-conscious "middle class"; and third, the increasingly heirarchial organization of economy and society (bureaucratization, professionalization, and class consciousness) as industrialism matured from the late 1870s through the 1890s. The first decade of the new century initiated a fourth stage, as the products of industrialism entered the home and impinged on the private sphere (consumerism, electrification, etc.), as new forms of leisure and mass entertainment emerged, and as social fragmentation occurred as a result of immigration.

Although the seminar concludes with progressivism , it is worth keeping in mind that at least two additional reorientations have occurred since that time, each again combining shifts in political/social theory and a new cultural agenda. A fifth phase saw the emergence of an agency-based, interest group liberalism in the New Deal and its later formulation in the so-called "New (or Realist) Liberalism" of the 1940s-50s (Schlesinger, Kennan, Neustadt et al), coupled with the mature "modernist" phase in culture and the arts (represented in literature, for example, by the "New Criticism" of Brooks and Warren's Understanding Poetry (1941) and Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination (1950). A sixth shift occurred in political/social thought with the addition of race, ethnicity, and finally gender to the liberal agenda in the 1960s, combined with the "counterculture" in all its manifestations and permutations through the present day (deconstructionism, post-modernism, multiculturalism etc.). Although these topics will not be explored directly, the earlier traditions will be assessed in light of issues raised by these recent developments.

Themes. Although the seminar will deal with such perennial issues as the nature of the American "liberal" tradition, the role of the intellectual in the American social order, and the impact of Darwinism, topics and readings give special attention to four issues in current debate:

(1) The politics of culture and the "diversity" debate. Among the many roots of the current debate over "multiculturalism" is the conviction that "culture," although often presented as "above politics" actually functions "politically" in a variety of ways. A second root are questions concerning the meaning of "America" that are as old as the Republic itself. These two themes run through Crevecoeur's "What is the American," Emerson's "American Scholar" address, and Bourne's "Transnational America" and other primary readings.

(2) Gender (and race). Although for reasons stated below (see "methodology") the emphasis throughout the seminar is on a dominant, predominantly European tradition that various individuals and groups shape and share for their varied purposes, a second theme is the ways in which gender (and to a lesser extent, race) have shaped this tradition. Gender, as the historian Joan Scott has suggested (see "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," American Historical Review 91 (December 1986): 1053-71) shapes thought and culture at three different levels: subjectively, as ones conception of ones manhood or womanhood; symbolically, through myths, images, and the other resources of language ; and institutionally, as occupations and physical locations are "gendered" (as in the exclusion of women from key institutions of intellectual life or, alternately, in the "feminization" of school teaching in the 19th century). For race, although the issue has been studied less systematically, the pattern is similar, although complicated by the brutalities of enslavement and perhaps by African cultural survivals and/or folk traditions.

(3) The secularization of American culture during the 19th century, and more specifically, the substitution of "science" and "scientific method" (variously defined) in place of "religion" (Protestantism, specifically) as a basis for ethics and social policy. From the Enlightenment onward, American Protestantism made successive accommodations with the latest "science," culminating in the emergence of the modern social sciences in the 1880s. Although the scope and nature of social science has been hotly debated ever since, social scientists of one persuasion or other (usually academics) have increasingly played roles earlier assigned to the Protestant clergy, telling rulers how to rule and people how to live (note, for example, that many of the readings for Swarthmore's freshman orientation have been ethical guide books by social scientists: Barry Schwartz's, The Battle for Human Nature, Arlie Hochschild's, The Second Shift, and Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand) How social scientists emerged as cultural arbiters, and the consequences of their activities in this role, is the focus of weeks VII-XII.

(4) The tension between "high" and "popular" culture constitutes a fourth theme, with reference to what the historian Alan Trachtenberg calls the "incorporation" of America, and Lawrence Levine in HighBrow/LowBrow the "sacralization" of culture in the late 19th century. This theme surfaces explicitly in several topics dealing with "popular" culture, and indirectly in such essays as William Dean Howells' "Pernicious Fiction."

Methodology. Although "intellectual historians" are conventionally grouped under various labels ("history of ideas," "sociology of knowledge,""myth and symbol"), the basic division between conflicting "schools" has perennially centered on the degree to which practitioners view the human mind and activity as autonomous or independent of experience (philosophically, as in idealism) or as a product of interaction with experience (philosophically, as in empiricism or behaviorism). The adoption of an "internalist" or "externalist" approach, as the two are termed, shapes what one considers appropriate subject matter (creative thinkers v. popularizers.), how one reads texts or other sources (underlying assumptions and logical structure v. audience reaction,), and ultimately, one's political predilections (elite v. mass). Since few, if any historians fit these ideal types, and since many have attempted to mediate between the two positions, the aim of the initial meeting is less to identify a "right" way of doing intellectual history than to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches (for schematic summary of schools see "AIH.Historiography" on fileserver.

Scope. Although we will pay attention to the socio/economic and institutional contexts of knowledge and cultural discourse, the approach of the seminar will differ from "social history " in limiting attention to those activities that have resulted in written, and to a lesser extent, visual artifacts. Thus, for example, in dealing with the ideology of the Revolution, it does not examine the anthropologically-inspired insights of Rhys Isaacs, Transformation of Virginia. For similar reason it does not explore folk or oral traditions, Native American and African-American in particular, despite the fact that they clearly have been part of an "American" cultural tradition in a more general sense, both in possessing an integrity of their own, and in contributing to the shaping of the so-called "dominant" culture (see, for example, recent discussion of Mark Twain's debt to the African-American vernacular in Huckleberry Finn). Whether one can profitably identify and discuss a "dominant" tradition apart from these other "voices" is nonetheless one of the issues I hope we will discuss during the term.

Although drawing on both "internalist" and "externalist" approaches, the emphasis is on individuals, male or female, white or non-white, who initiate and ideas and elucidate distinctive approaches, rather than those who provide leadership, who popularize, or who organize, however significant or influential these activities may be. These criteria tend to exclude public figures (even when the are ostensibly "intellectual"--a Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson, for example) and individuals known primarily for social activism (William Lloyd Garrison or Eugene Debs, or Booker T. Washington). The line is obviously a fine one, and somewhat arbitrary, and leaves lots of room for debate (why Charlotte Gilman, for example, and not Elizabeth Cady Stanton; why W.E. B. Dubois and not Booker T. Washington). The "exclusion" in part reflects the time available. The assumption , however, is that, after understanding various debates over Darwinism and biology, one could better explicate the ideas and policies of a Theodore Roosevelt A seminar on "movers and shakers" would nonetheless probably include a quite different cast of characters.