Unity in Diversity

This course is the first half of a two-semester sequence that unfolds the history of the American regime through a careful study of key public documents, speeches, and literary works. Special attention is given to the colonial antecedents of the American republic, the principles and practice of the founding generation, and the controversies among the second and third generations of American statesmen over slavery and democratization and the reconceptualization of the American regime that supported them.

This course is the second half of a two-semester sequence that unfolds the history of the American regime through a careful study of key public documents, speeches, and literary works. Special attention is given to the rise of Pragmatism, Pluralism, Progressivism, the internationalization of American politics, the growth of the American state, the question of American supremacy or decline, and debates over the trajectory of the American regime in the twenty-first century.

This course focuses on African Americans’ unique theological interpretations and the central role of the exodus in their understanding of the Bible. It traces the development of what is arguably the central institution in the Black community in the United States, the Black Church, from slavery through emancipation, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The course examines key issues in the theology, history and sociology of the Black Church.

This is an advanced course in constitutional law that examines the constitutional basis for civil rights and civil liberties and the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement emerged in response to a regrettably long history of race-based discrimination in the United States. One peculiarity of American history is that both critics and defenders of slavery and segregation cited the Christian Bible in support of their views. The course also considers more recent arguments for constitutional rights, some of them highly controversial.

A survey of historical and contemporary readings on America’s race history from the Jim Crow era to the present. The course will introduce students to a range of perspectives on the political, economic, and religious contributions to challenges of race that surfaced during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. Students are expected to engage in careful and close readings of primary texts by leading scholars in the national discourse.

This course will examine and evaluate the political thought of Abraham Lincoln in dialogue with his key contemporaries, especially John Calhoun, Stephen Douglas, and Frederick Douglass, and consider its place in pursuing justice in our own day.

This course explores the history of slavery and its philosophical underpinnings in the Western world, looking primarily at North America and the Caribbean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The course also considers different forms of opposition to slavery, including slave revolts and abolitionist movements, while seeking to explain why slavery persisted for so long in the United States. The course concludes by attempting to identify some important consequences of slavery after its abolition.