This course concentrates on the individual's
role in politics and society and traces the development of citizenship and national
character (what it means to be an American) from the colonial period to 1860.
Topics to be discussed include Puritan communalism, the relationship between
American freedom and American slavery, contrasting assumptions regarding the
individual in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the
tension created by presumptions about race, gender, morality, and citizenship.