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In some aspects, the era of Populism and Progressivism has uncanny similarities with our own time. With the Populist Trump in power, elected to a large extent by a rural population that feels ignored and neglected and urban followers whose status condition appears to be precarious and anxiety-ridden, the problems of the "Age of Reform" (1877 to 1920) seem to be back on the American Agenda. To be sure, the Progressive Era resulted in a host of social reforms (taxation of personal incomes, corporations and estates; the dissolution of industrial combinations; the regulation of money and credit; workmen's compensation, the ban of child labor, compulsory education for children, inspection of factories, minimum wage and maximum hours, paid pensions etc.). But these reforms were enabled by exclusions and very problematic attitudes. Thomas C. Leonard writes: "There was a price to be paid ... the campaign of labor reformers to exclude the disabled, immigrants, African Americans, and women from the American work force." The anger, the racism, the nationalism, the classism, the Darwinism and the misogyny, which we have seen in Trumps's campaign, was also the undercurrent of the Age of Progressive Reform.
In this seminar we will study some of the seminal documents of the culture of the Age of Reform: texts by Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (two famous progressives); the muckraking journalism of Ida Tarbell at McClure's magazine; the work of Jane Addams at Hull House; the ideas of 'efficiency' of Frederick Winslow Taylor; popular thoughts on eugenics and evolution; the theme of white (Anglo-Saxon) supremacy and Du Bois's counter-narratives; Texts on New Womanhood. We will attempt to understand the spirit of the time – to the point where it will sometimes hurt.
Texts:
Text material will be collected in a reader, which will be ready for students by October 1st. Please also have a look at the Moodle Site of the seminar for information: the keyword is "Hofstadter".
The one text, which you should buy is:
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000 - 1887 (Ed. and with an introduction by Matthew Beaumont). Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.
Course Requirements:
In-class you will have to prepare an outline (summary of the most important statements) of one of the texts discussed in class. The Module Exam (MAP) is a term paper in Module 5 (in one of your seminars) or a book review in Modules 9 or 10 (in one of your seminars).
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