POL 303 American Political Thought (3 credits)

This course introduces students to early classic texts in American Political Thought (the revolution, constitutional convention, Lincoln-Douglas debates) by linking them to other important intellectual and political movements in American thought—women’s suffrage, abolitionism, and the 20th century civil rights movements. We analyze the extent to which 1) all these movements share concepts and 2) the ways in which later movements refuted, amended, and rejected the concepts that were fundamental to the "founding." We explore the idea of two "foundings": the traditional emphasis on the forging of the Revolution and the framing of the Constitution in the eighteenth century and the community oriented religious movements of the 17th century. How can we compare the assertions of citizenship in these various movements? How do they contribute to our political vocabulary today?