Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 08:46:06 -0600 Subject: SYLLABUS: Varieties of Populism In America (x SHGAPE)
From: Robert Cherny <cherny@mercury.sfsu.edu>
This syllabus was provided by Robert Johnston of Yale University. He invites comments, additional citations, questions, etc. Many thanks to him for sending it. Underlining of book and journal titles disappeared when I converted his text file to ASCII, but I don't think you'll have any problem identifying where they should go.
Fall 1994 Robert Johnston Th, 1:30-3:20 p.m. HGS 300F History 441A (0) 432-1396 53 Wall St., Bsmt 3 (H) 389-9184 Office Hours: Th, 10-12 Email: rjohnsto@minerva
JUNIOR SEMINAR: VARIETIES OF POPULISM IN AMERICA, 1892-1992
With our political culture in crisis, citizens and intellectuals have turned intently to a reexamination of our nation's political traditions. This work encompasses social theory, philosophy, and even theology. Yet it shares a common hope that we can uncover and recover that which is best in our heritage.
Populism--roughly defined as the call for the empowerment of ordinary people in all areas of life--is, arguably, one of those noble traditions that Americans should draw on to reinvigorate our public sphere. At the very least, populism has been one of the most powerful social and ideological currents shaping our past and current prospects. It is a tradition, or set of traditions, that demands reckoning.
That is the fundamental purpose of the course. Toward that end, we will meet in a seminar format where the main responsibility for intellectual inquiry, and hence discussion, will rest with the students.
The other major purpose of the course is to learn and practice, in a collective environment, some of the basic skills of historical research and writing. The end product will be a substantial primary-source based paper on a topic of your choice on the general theme of populism. You should leave the seminar with significant preparation for your senior essay.
Evaluation will be based equally on your written work over the semester, your final research paper, and your class participation.
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS:
READINGS:
The following books are available at the Yale Co-Op Bookstore as well as on reserve at Cross Campus Library. Books marked with a star are required. In addition, a required packet with the remaining readings is available at Minitprint, 13 Broadway.
*Francis Paul Prucha, Handbook for Research in American History,
2nd edition, revised (1994)
*C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938)
*Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the
Agrarian Revolt in America (1978) *Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920 (1981) *Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the
Question of Class, 1848-1914 (1991) *Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the
Second Ku Klux Klan (1994)
*Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin,
and
The Great Depression (1982)
*Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn
against Liberalism (1985)
*Kevin Phillips, Boiling Point: Republicans, Democrats, and the
Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity (1993)
Harry C. Boyte and Frank Riessman, eds., The New Populism: The
Politics of Empowerment (1986)
Leonard J. Moore, Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana,
1921-1928 (1991)
COURSE SCHEDULE
WEEK 1, September 1
INTRODUCTION
"The Omaha Platform," in Norman Pollack, ed., The Populist Mind
(1967), pp. 59-66
George Will, "A Pox on Populists," Newsweek, October 7, 1991, p. 76
Michael Kinsley, "Populist, Shmopulist," Washington Post, December
2, 1993, p. A21
Alan Brinkley, "Roots: The Perotist Tradition," The New Republic,
July 27, 1992, pp. 44-45
WEEK 2, September 8
WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
George B. Tindall, "Populism: A Semantic Identity Crisis," Virginia
Quarterly Review 48 (1972): 501-518 Kevin Mattson, "Populism and the NEA," Telos, #89(Fall 1991): 115-120 Michael Merrill, "The Anticapitalist Origins of the United States,"
Review 13(Fall 1990): 465-497
William F. Holmes, "Populism: In Search of Context," Agricultural
History 64(1990): 26-59
Woodward, Tom Watson, 1-243
WEEK 3, September 15
NO CLASS--YOM KIPPUR
Please read ahead, though, for next week's heavy load.
WEEK 4, September 22
DEMOCRACY GAINED, AND LOST FOREVER
Goodwyn, The Populist Moment
David Montgomery, "On Goodwyn's Populists" Marxist Perspectives
1(Spring 1978): 166-173
James Green, "Populism, Socialism, and the Promise of Democracy,"
Radical History Review #24(Fall 1980): 7-40 Gene Clanton, "'Hayseed Socialism' on the Hill: Congressional
Populism, 1891-1895," Western Historical Quarterly 15 (April 1984):
139-162
WEEK 5, September 29
GENDER, SOCIALISM, AND POPULISM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
Buhle, Women and American Socialism, xiii-xix, 49-144, 214-287
Mary Jo Wagner, "'Helping Papa and Mamma Sing the People's Songs':
Children in the Populist Party," in Wava O. Haney and Jane B.
Knowles, eds., Women and Farming (1988), pp. 319-337
Marilyn P. Watkins, "Political Activism and Community Building
Among Alliance and Grange Women in Western Washington, 1892-1925,"
Agricultural History 67 (Spring 1993): 197-213
WEEK 6, October 6 WHO IS TRULY PAROCHIAL?: FASCISM, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND THE INTELLECTUAL CONFRONTATION WITH POPULISM Richard Hofstadter, "The Agrarian Myth and Commercial Realities"
and "The Folklore of Populism," in The Age of Reform: Bryan to
F.D.R. (1955), 23-93
Peter Viereck, "The Revolt Against the Elite," (1955)in Daniel
Bell, ed., The Radical Right (1963), 162-183
C. Vann Woodward, "The Populist Heritage and the Intellectual," in
The Burden of Southern History, 3rd ed. (1993) [1959], pp. 141-166
Jeffrey Ostler, "The Political Uses of Conspiracy: The Case of
Kansas Populism," unpublished paper
WEEK 7, October 13
DREAMS OR NIGHTMARES?: RACE AND 19TH-CENTURY POPULISM
GUEST: Ron Yanosky, Harvard University
Lawrence C. Goodwyn, "Populist Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas
as a Case Study," American Historical Review 75 (December 1971):
1435-1456
William Holmes, "The Demise of the Colored Farmers' Alliance,
Journal of Southern History 41 (May 1975): 187-200
Gerald Gaither, Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry
in the 'New South' (1977), pp. 130-138
Barton C. Shaw, "The Populists After Dark," in The Wool-Hat Boys:
Georgia's Populist Party (1984), pp. 78-90
Gregg Cantrell and D. Scott Barton, "Texas Populists and the
Failure of Biracial Politics," Journal of Southern History 55
(November 1989): 659-692
Manning Marable, "Black History and the Vision of Democracy," in
Harry C. Boyte and Frank Riessman, eds., The New Populism:
The Politics of Empowerment (1986), pp. 198-206
Ron Yanosky, "The Colored Farmers' Alliance and the Single Tax,"
unpublished paper
WEEK 8, October 20
COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
Joyce, Visions of the People
Gianna Pomata, "A Common Heritage: The Historical Memory of
Populism in Europe and the United States," in Boyte and Riessman,
The New Populism, 30-50
David Peal, "The Politics of Populism: Germany and the American
South in the 1890s," Comparative Studies in Society and History
31 (April 1989): 340-362
WEEK 9, October 27
A TORTURED SOUL, OR THE TRUE REALITY OF AMERICAN POPULISM?
GUEST: C. Vann Woodward
Woodward, Tom Watson, 244-end
C.Vann Woodward, "Biography and the Biographer," in Thinking Back:
The Perils of Writing History (1986), pp. 29-42
WEEK 10, November 3
JUST ORDINARY GUYS UNDER THOSE HOODS?
MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry
Moore, Citizen Klansmen, 1-43, 184-191
WEEK 11, November 10
THE LUNATIC FRINGE, OR THE DESPERATE VOICES OF AVERAGE AMERICANS?
Brinkley, Voices of Protest
William Graebner, "Outlawing Teenage Populism: The Campaign Against
Secret Societies in the American High School, 1900-1960,"
Journal of American History 74(June 1987): 411-435
WEEK 12, November 17
MIDDLE AMERICA--CONTRA WHOM?
Rieder, Canarsie
David Levering Lewis, "Martin Luther King Jr. and the Promise of
Non-Violent Populism" Journal of African Civilization,
9 (December 1987)
Michael Kazin, "A People Not a Class: Rethinking the Political
Language of the US Labor Movement," in Mike Davis and
Michael Sprinker, eds., Reshaping the US Left: Popular
Struggles in the 1980s (1988), pp. 257-286
Bryan Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language
and the Writing of Social History (1990), pp. 120-125
WEEK 13, November 24
WEEK 14, December 1
HOPE AGAINST HOPE
Phillips, Boiling Point
Linda Schulte-Sasse, "Meet Ross Perot: The Lasting Legacy of
Capraesque Populism," Cultural Critique (Fall 1993): 91-119 Sean Wilentz, "Pox Populi: Ross Perot and the Corruption of
Populism," The New Republic, August 9, 1993, pp. 29-36 Trudi C. Miller, "What Adam Smith and James Madison Would Say About
the American Political Economy Today," Public Administration
Review 52 (January-February 1992): 70-76
Cornel West, "Populism: A Black Socialist Critique," in Boyte and
Riessman, The New Populism, 207-212
Christopher Lasch, "Right-Wing Populism and the Revolt Against
Liberalism," in The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its
Critics (1991), pp. 476-532
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