3:35-5:30     T     BH335

Above section open to majors only
Above section COAS intensive writing section and requires
registration in COAS W333

In this course we will explore how individuals have tried to make a
difference in larger events as they have lived their individual lives.
How have individuals experienced and constructed intersections of
their intimate lives with the rhythms of conventional units of
historical analysis: nations, cultures, classes, and institutions?
How have individuals changed and been changed by the larger "course of
history"?

The topic of our inquiry stems from three assumptions:  First, the
postmodern turn in scholarship has led us to interrogate traditions of
historical writing in which individuals were seen more or less as
examples of larger-scale phenomena like Mexican immigration or the
Democratic party or World War II.  Instead of assuming that
individuals are somehow examples of genders or classes or culture or
events, we will explore just how they have (or have not) connected the
intimate rhythms of personal experience with larger-scale ones.  How
have they constructed their larger world as they lived their everyday
lives?  Why have they identified with family or class or nation or
humanity?  And we will explore how elites and large-scale units, in
truth, have sought to get individuals to identify their personal
experiences and narratives with those leaders created for
institutions, cultures, and public policies.

Second, the need to explore fresh perspectives for studying history's
traditional concern the study of change and continuity has become more
urgent as the world has become more global.  The widening and
deepening movements of peoples, ideas, institutions, and cultures
across national boundaries have raised basic challenges to traditional
units of historical analysis: that nations are the most natural or
important points for people to identify with and that national states
are the most important means for people to act collectively to shape
their fates.  History grew up in the 19th century to encourage people
to think in nation-centered terms.  New developments leave us with the
opportunity, the necessity, to step back and inquire just how well
nations have and have not met the needs of people.  And this course
therefore returns to the starting point, to individuals, to ask what
they expected of collective and public action as they tried to connect
their personal lives to larger phenomena.  We will look at what
individuals have expected for the nation and the nation state.

Third, one of the major themes of American life from the most academic
or philosophical "thinkers" to the most market-driven Hollywood
producers has connected the fate or mission of the United States as a
nation with the empowerment of individuals and the fulfillment of
democratic promise.  Some of the most creative American cultural and
political theory and practice have grown up around precisely these
issues.  In this course we will read and discuss some examples of this
literature much of it recognizable as "cannon" in American Studies as
our sources for exploring how individuals connect (and refuse to
connect) their individual identities and values and narratives to
conflicts over change and continuity in the larger society.

We will concentrate on several writings in each of three periods when
patterns in the larger world created special challenges and forms for
individuals as they related to the larger world.  The heart of the
course will be weekly discussions of the readings.