Key Texts in American Social and Political Thought

Code

AMCS2055

School

American and Canadian Studies

Level

2

Credits

20

Semesters

Spring UK

Summary

This module will analyse key texts in the history of American political and social thought, from the colonial period to the present. Students will be introduced to debates over such issues as religion, politics, race, gender, nature and the environment, and education, as they arose at different periods in American history. Students will use primary sources to reconstruct and interpret these debates, and show how they continue to shape American society and politics in the present.

Students who need to complete one or more components of assessment during the summer, due to extenuating circumstances or for progression purposes, will be required to submit one essay of 2,000 words. This form of assessment has been set in order to accommodate early submission deadlines for candidates undertaking a year of study abroad, who will not be resident in Nottingham during the usual summer examination period. The essay will be due on the third Wednesday in July.

Target Students

Only available to Year 2 SH and JH American and Canadian Studies students.

Classes

• One 2-hour lecture per week for 11 weeks
• One 2-hour seminar per week for 11 weeks

Assessment

• 20% Participation: Seminar participation.
• 5% Coursework 1: 200-300 word critical summary
• 5% Coursework 2: 200-300 word critical summary
• 5% Coursework 3: 200-300 critical summary
• 5% Coursework 4: 200-300 word critical summary
• 60% Coursework 5: 2,300 to 2,500 words

Assessed by end of spring semester

Educational Aims

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and understanding of key texts and ideas;

• close analysis of primary source texts;
• knowledge and interpretation of historical contexts;
• engagement with overarching themes in American social and political thought;
• development of arguments and interpretations (both through oral contributions to seminars and written work in essays and the exam).

Knowledge and understanding:

• Core themes and subjects will be:
• American theology and religion (Puritanism, liberal Protestantism, fundamentalism);
• Gender and feminism; race and identity politics;
• political thought (liberalism, republicanism, radicalism and conservatism);
• Conceptions of Nature (romanticism, transcendentalism, environmentalism);

Education and intellectual life.
This module will provide a broad foundation of knowledge for the understanding of American thought and culture, as a complement to related study in American social, political, literary, or economic history and a foundation for more advanced work, including dissertation writing, in topics of American history, philosophy, social theory, literature, and culture.

Intellectual skills:

• Students will develop skills in close reading and analysis;
• contextualization and identification of key themes;
• the ability to present and refine their interpretations and arguments in both oral and written form (in seminars, the essay and the exam).

In their efforts to think about the ways that Americans have represented and understood their nation, they will be expected to relate the intellectual, cultural and historical contexts of developments in American thought and culture (which will be offered in lectures) to a series of texts (which are prescribed reading for the seminar series). They will also be encouraged to make frequent interdisciplinary connections to their first year core modules (e.g. American History I and II).

Professional and transferable skills:

• This module will facilitate the development of multiple transferable skills, including but not limited to careful and comprehending reading, textual analysis and evaluation, verbal and written expression, critical thought, and the accurate charting of competing intellectual positions. The study of ideas is particularly suited to the development of argumentative and interpretative skill.

Conveners

• Dr Robin Vandome