HIST 156
Manifestos in American Politics Fall 2018
Division II Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

Is there an American style or tradition of writing political manifestos? Given the United States’s origins in revolution, the answer would seem on the surface to be a definitive “yes.” But some are skeptical; one writer has gone so far as to say the term “manifesto” connotes “a radicalism that American writers generally lack.” This course will explore that claim. How would we choose to define the very term, “manifesto?” Why have so many American writings been embraced as having the characteristics of a manifesto? We will explore these questions in two ways: first, through close readings and analyses of manifestos at three historical junctures in U.S. history (the Revolutionary era; the 1830s-1850s; and the decades following World War II); and second, through students’ original research projects into manifestos of their own choosing.