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Professor Freeman lays out the logic of American resistance to British imperial policy during the 1770s. Prime Minister Lord North imposed the Intolerable Acts on Massachusetts to punish the radicals for the Boston Tea Party, and hoped that the act would divide the colonies. Instead, the colonies rallied around Massachusetts because they were worried that the Intolerable Acts set a new threatening precedent in the imperial relationship. In...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway discusses how race influenced public policy by examining some of the key cultural symbols of the past few decades, all in an effort to answer the question: how is race used in our society? Professor Holloway discusses Bill Clinton's policies in particular, honing in on his ability to connect with the African American community, the controversy surrounding Lani Guinier's cabinet appointment, and his Natio...more
The sub-discipline of tropical medicine furnishes a clear example of the socially constructed character of medical knowledge. Tropical diseases first enter medical discourse as a unique conceptual field and topic for specialization at the end of the 19th century, and the heyday of tropical medicine--from the 1890s to the First World War--corresponds to the golden age of Western colonialism in Africa and Asia. This correspondence was not ac...more
Environmental Politics and Law (EVST 255) The United States' fragmented, piecemeal approach to environmental law is presented through the cases that led to the creation of major environmental statutes such as the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The variety of federal agencies and levels of government that participate in creating and implementing regulation contribute to the fragmentation of American envi...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway expands our understanding of "The Great Migration" by looking at what happens when African Americans settled in Northern and Midwestern cities. He examines the 1917 East St. Louis race riot, the 1919 Chicago race riot, and the NAACP's Silent Protest Parade from New York City's Fifth Avenue to Harlem. The second portion of the lecture is on African American soldiers' experiences abroad during World War, t...more
This lecture opens with a discussion of the myriad moments at which historians have declared an "end" to Reconstruction, before shifting to the myth and reality of "Carpetbag rule" in the Reconstruction South. Popularized by Lost Cause apologists and biased historians, this myth suggests that the southern governments of the Reconstruction era were dominated by unscrupulous and criminal Yankees who relied on the ignorant black vote to rob a...more
Having dealt with the role of violence and the Supreme Court in bringing about the end of Reconstruction in his last lecture, Professor Blight now turns to the role of national electoral politics, focusing in particular on the off-year Congressional election of 1874 and the Presidential election of 1876. 1874 saw the return of the Democrats to majority status in the Senate and the House of Representatives, as voters sick of corruption and ...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway gives a brief summary of what was happening in the decades leading up to the Civil War, including the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry. He discusses the Civil War, focusing specifically on the Emancipation Proclamation and the Conscription Acts of 1863. Professor Holloway spends the duration of the lecture focusing on the labor and racial tensions that ...more
Professor Blight offers a number of approaches to the question of southern distinctiveness. The lecture offers a survey of that manner in which commentators--American, foreign, northern, and southern--have sought to make sense of the nature of southern society and southern history. The lecture analyzes the society and culture of the Old South, with special emphasis on the aspects of southern life that made the region distinct from the ante...more
In this lecture, Professor Freeman discusses Benedict Arnold as a case study of the ways in which ideas about regionalism, social rank, and gender--and the realities of the Continental Congress and the Continental Army--played out in this period. Like many Americans during this period, Benedict Arnold thought that he could improve his social rank and reputation in the military, but he was unable to advance due to the Continental Congress's...more
In this lecture at the midpoint of the course Professor Hungerford takes stock of the syllabus thus far and to come by laying out her guiding thesis of the Identity Plot, a rubric for understanding novels in the twentieth century as, she argues, the Marriage Plot is a rubric for understanding novels in the nineteenth century. Referring to examples throughout the syllabus, but especially Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior, Hungerford desc...more
Professor Blight follows Robert E. Lee's army north into Maryland during the summer of 1862, an invasion that culminated in the Battle of Antietam, fought in September of 1862. In the wake of Antietam, Abraham Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a document that changed the meaning of the war forever. Professor Blight suggests some of the ways in which Americans have attempted to come to grips with the enigmatic Lincol...more
