Suggested topics

What, according to our authors, are the possible ways for human beings to relate to nature? Note that the meaning of “nature” may not be quite clear, or may not be the same for diﬀerent thinkers. (In one sense “nature” might be equivalent to “wilderness,” but in other senses deﬁnitely not.) Do they think some ways better than others, and/or that some ways have replaced others, for better or worse, and was that inevitable, and is it irreversible? How, if at all, does America, or the idea of America, according to them, involve such a relationship to nature, or such a change in relationship to nature? Is America, according to them, founded on natural principles (on the “law of nature”), or supernatural, or artiﬁcial?

What attitude do our authors take to materiality or corporeity (being a body), as opposed to spirituality or ideality? Are American ideals/principles/values, according to them, fundamentally materialist or somehow anti-materialist? Do they think most Americans exemplify such ideals? For some authors this will be closely connected to their attitudes towards Christianity and their beliefs about the relationship between America and Christianity (Protestant and/or Catholic, including Black Christianity); for others not. Again, for some there will be a close relationship between this and the issues about the “money culture” raised in the next prompt (so that the two prompts might be interchangeable), but for others perhaps not. (In any case, you should not confuse “materialism” as a metaphysical position with “materialism” in the sense of attaching great importance to wealth and physical possessions.)

What attitude do our authors take towards, broadly speaking, what Dewey calls “the money culture” or “pecuniary culture” (and/or what some, following Marx, call “capitalism”)? (This may have various diﬀerent aspects, types, stages, etc., not all of which go together — e.g. there is individual and corporate or state capitalism; there is focus on production, or overproduction, or on consumption; there is technical training and work ethic and discipline and thrift, or or on the other hand greed and self-indulgence, or the desire to have a modern house, or a farm with a large barn, or various nice things — e.g. large hats, nice shoes, a yellow convertible, tea and coﬀee and meat every day — or the desire and ability to own, i.e. enslave, other human beings, or to plunder them and steal their land, timber, etc.) Do our authors think of this “money culture” as fundamentally American? Or as pre-American, perhaps European? Or as a degeneration of American ideals? What has produced it, according to them? Do they think that something can or should end it?

What, according to our authors, is the relationship between America and Europe? You may want to focus on Britain, or France, or possibly Germany, or you may want to distinguish between those, or you may want to treat Europe, or even the Old World generally, as all one thing (depending perhaps on which authors you discuss: Emerson and Cordova speak of “Europe” in general, as does Thoreau at times; France plays an important role in Du Bois and in Coates; France and Britain are both important, but in diﬀerent ways, to Grant; etc.). Is or was there a good reason, according to our authors, for America to separate from Europe (and from Britain in particular)? Has this separation or independence actually been attained? Where is there more equality and/or more liberty? (Does the answer depend on exactly what we mean by those terms?) Or is what we call “America” essentially just an outpost of Europe (“Euro-America,” as Cordova sometimes says)? What signiﬁcance do or would our authors attach to America’s intervention in Europe in World War I, World War II, and/or the Cold War?

What is or might be the signiﬁcance of Canada, according to our authors? (If you write about anyone other than Jeﬀerson, Bentham, Thoreau, or Grant — which you could! — you would have to ﬁll this in by speculating as to what they might say, since, at least in the works we read, they don’t mention Canada at all.) What, according to them, does or might the existence and history of (French and/or English) Canada signify about (the United States of) America? What does or might it mean to them that the America has a border? Can America respect such a border, according to them? Should it? What might they think about Canada’s (relatively) peaceful separation from Britain, beginning in the 19th century, compared with America’s violent earlier separation? About Quebec’s continuing attachment to (a conservative version of?) France? Would they say that Canada is more or less free, egalitarian, and/or independent than America, and would they consider that a good thing or a bad? What importance might they attach to the Underground Railroad?

This is a trickier prompt to write (and perhaps trickier to respond to), but leaving it out as a suggested topic would be ridiculous: what, according to our authors, is or has been the role of race (in the common contemporary sense of the word “race,” whatever that is exactly), and in particular of Blackness and whiteness, and of the enslavement and persecution of Blacks, in the actual history and/or idea(s) of America? This is tricky in part because all the terms are questionable and might be rejected by some, also because some of our authors (e.g., Banneker, Martineau, Fuller, Thoreau, Du Bois, Coates) treat this issue as in one way or another absolutely central, whereas others (at least in what we read of their works) virtually ignore it. If you choose to write about some of the latter, as you well might, you will no doubt have to treat them as defective in some way, but you should avoid simply ranting against them. Why or from what point of view might this problem seem of secondary importance? For example (but there are probably other ways to come at this): can Americanness be seen as alike opposed to (or “dissolvent of”) all races, nations, cultures, civilizations, etc. (including even to “white,” or British/European/“Western” civilization)? Grant says this explicitly, and Cordova, at least in some moods, may think something similar, as may even Bentham. So may Dewey, although, if so, he might consider it a good thing. (Note: there are, of course, other races in America besides Black and white. Native Americans/American Indians would probably be better discussed under the next prompt. Other “racial” groups unfortunately haven’t been much mentioned in our reading, so it would probably be diﬃcult to consider them in any depth in a paper written for this course, but nevertheless their existence might be important to bring up when trying to understand the nature of diﬀerent authors’ views.)

In what way, according to our authors, is Americanness related to nationality, particular loyalty, locality, and/or “indigenousness”? One of the ﬁrst things I pointed out was that the Declaration of Independence speaks ﬁrst of the rights of “peoples” before it speaks of the rights of individuals, and apparently brings in the latter only to back up the former. Apess, at least, picks up on this fact and uses the language of the Declaration to defend the rights of his adopted tribe, the Mashpee (or Marshpee). However, I also pointed out the paradox or diﬃculty of this, since the individual rights appealed to are, or are claimed to be, universal. How do our authors propose to deal with this diﬃculty? Do they think it can be solved — the two aspects (particular and universal) reconciled — under existing terms? Or do they think one of the two aspects is not truly American? Or that a reconciliation between the two would require some radical change? And do they think that “America” is fundamentally a place (within certain borders), or not?