Daniel Immerwahr

immer@berkeley.edu

Office Hours: Thurs. 3:30-5
Office: 2108 Dwinelle Hall

Course syllabus

History 103: Twentieth-Century U.S. Intellectual History, Fall 2010

Research resources

• OskiCat: UC Berkeley's library catalog
• The Books of the Century: Lists bestsellers, Book-of-the-Month Club selections, and notable books by year
  
• American National Biography: over 17,000 short, scholarly biographical articles about prominent men and women*
• JSTOR: a database that contains the full texts of the major journals in every field, up to the last five years*
• The History Cooperative: database with a wider range of history journals and more up-to-date coverage than JSTOR*
• Google Books: many books searchable online, although few available in full after the 1910s
• Google Scholar: great search tool for  scholarly articles and books*
• Past Masters: has searchable complete works of philosophers John Dewey, George Santayana, Charles Peirce, and Donald Davidson*
• Prof. Mark Brilliant's Research Resources: links to online resources, advice for taking notes, other miscellany
• UC Berkeley Library Proxy Server How-To: for accessing subscriber-only electronic resources, including the starred items above, from home
  

* = Item that can only be used in the library or by a computer using the proxy server.

Schedule of readings and assignments

Aug. 30: Intro Class, no reading due

Sept. 13: Darwinism, Biological and Social

-          Asa Gray "Review of Darwin's On the Origin of Species" (1860) in AIT

-          William Graham Sumner, “Sociology” (1881) in AIT

-          Lester Frank Ward, “Mind as a Social Factor” (1884) in Course Reader

-          MEMO 1 DUE

Sept. 20: Thorstein Veblen

-          Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), chaps. 3–4, 6–8

-          C. Wright Mills, 1953 introduction to Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class in Course Reader

Sept. 27: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Race

-          W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of Races” (1897) in Course Reader

-          W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), forethought, chaps. 1, 3, and 5–6

-          MEMO 2 DUE

Oct. 4: William James and Pragmatism

-          William James, Pragmatism (1907), table of contents, lectures II–III and VI–VII

Oct. 11: The Boasians and the Idea of Culture

-          Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (1934), chaps. 1–3 and 7–8

-          Richard Handler, “Boasian Anthropology and the Critique of American Culture,” American Quarterly 42 (1990): 252–273

-          MEMO 3 DUE

Oct. 18: John Dewey and the Idea of Democracy

-          Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (1991), preface and chaps. 2, 4–7, 9, and 12

Oct. 25: World War II and the Search for a National Morality

-          Dwight Macdonald, “The Responsibility of Peoples” (1945), in Course Reader

-          Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., selections from The Vital Center (1948) in Course Reader

-          MEMO 4 DUE

Nov. 1: Postwar Economic Thought (guest instructor: Ryan Acton)

-          F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944), chaps. 3, 5–6, and 11 in Course Reader

-          Karl Polanyi, “Our Obsolete Market Economy” Commentary 3 (1947): 109-117

-          Chester Bowles, Tomorrow without Fear (1946), selections in Course Reader

Nov. 8: The End of Ideology

-          Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (1955), chap. 1 in Course Reader

-          W. W. Rostow, “Some Lessons of History for Africa” (1960) in Course Reader

-          Daniel Bell, "The End of Ideology in the West" (1960), in AIT.

-          MEMO 5 DUE

Nov. 15: Thomas S. Kuhn and the Scientific Community

-          Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

-          MEET WITH ME DURING MY OFFICE HOURS THIS WEEK IF YOU ARE WRITING A PRE-PROSPECTUS

Nov. 22: The Age of Contradiction

-          Michael Harrington, The Other America (1962), chaps. 1 and 9 in Course Reader

-          Harold Cruse, “Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American” (1962) in Course Reader

-          Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964), chap. 1 in AIT

Nov. 29: Postmodernism

-          Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp’” (1964), in AIT

-          Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, and Denise Scott Brown, Learning from Las Vegas (1972)

-          NON-BINDING PREPROSPECTUS OR MEMO 6 DUE

Dec. 6: The West and the Rest

-          Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 3 (1972): 229–243

-          Edward Said, Orientalism (1978), chap. 1 in AIT

-          Samuel Huntington, excerpt from The Clash of Civilizations (1993), in AIT

Dec. 10: SUBMIT LIST OF TEXTS (AT LEAST SIX) THAT YOU WOULD PARTICULARLY LIKE TO DISCUSS FOR ORAL EXAMINATION.

Dec. 13-14: ORAL EXAMINATIONS