SEMINAR PROFILE

H11 -
Following the Flag? The Making of an American Empire

This seminar will explore the pressures toward territorial expansion that date to the very beginnings of the United States, and trace that tendency through the "long" nineteenth century, to the overseas colonies that the U.S. acquired after the Spanish-American War. Our first class will take up the ideas of Manifest Destiny and the "natural" life cycle of civilizations as well as definitions of racial differences and assimilation, in order to see how these concepts influenced westward expansion. The second class will look at the Western frontier after it was deemed "closed" leading the U.S. to search overseas for further expansion. We will study the more visible roles that white women assumed in this second "wave" of imperialism, and we will examine how Pacific and Caribbean colonies again complicated American racial politics. Readings include Teddy Roosevelt on "The Strenuous Life," historian Amy S. Greenberg on manifest destiny, Carman Randolph on the Constitution, and anti-imperialist poetry by Frances E. W. Harper and Katharine Lee Bates.

Scholar:

Laura Prieto

Location:

Harvard Hillel

Dates:

3/30/2011, 4/6/2011

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H11 -	Following the Flag? The Making of an American Empire

	This seminar will explore the pressures toward territorial expansion that date to the very beginnings of the United States, and trace that tendency through the "long" nineteenth century, to the overseas colonies that the U.S. acquired after the Spanish-American War. Our first class will take up the ideas of Manifest Destiny and the "natural" life cycle of civilizations as well as definitions of racial differences and assimilation, in order to see how these concepts influenced westward expansion. The second class will look at the Western frontier after it was deemed "closed" leading the U.S. to search overseas for further expansion. We will study the more visible roles that white women assumed in this second "wave" of imperialism, and we will examine how Pacific and Caribbean colonies again complicated American racial politics. Readings include Teddy Roosevelt on "The Strenuous Life," historian Amy S. Greenberg on manifest destiny, Carman Randolph on the Constitution, and anti-imperialist poetry by Frances E. W. Harper and Katharine Lee Bates.

		Scholar:	Laura Prieto
		Location:	Harvard Hillel
		Dates:	3/30/2011, 4/6/2011