American Conversations 111: Borders & Empires (2022)
Where do constitutions come from?
We read together a section from Michael Klarman's book The Framer's Coup in which he argues that the framers of the Constitution of the USA were far less devoted to democracy than many Americans today might assume. Rather he demonstrates their suspicion that allowing...
Reading de Tocqueville again
Of course I've read bits of Democracy in America from the several editions on my AmCon shelf. It was one of our original "dense facts." Usually the sections we read highlighted American ethos: individualism, voluntary associations, etc. We used to read it with...
The vanished natives
We returned to The Name of War, having considered the heady arguments for a social contract and in favor of independence from England. Lepore takes us through the changing presentations of natives into the 19th century. In doing so she does not give a single, simple...
Getting the word out: Common Sense
The Battle at Concord and Lexington is said to have included the "shot heard around the world." It is one candidate for the beginning of the American Revolution. If so, one reason would be that the battle tipped Thomas Paine's opinion firmly to the side of...
Social Contracts and stories of paradise lost
Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson: these were our conversation partners on Wednesday as we considered the thinking behind the Declaration of Independence. Although perhaps tangential, the thing that struck me about both Locke and Rousseau was their speculative imagination....
Self-Other-Another: dance or contest
Reading Jill LePore (always a pleasure) on King Philip's war and the early development of American identity requires thinking again about the ways in which identity formation involves both self and other. Kasdorf's exploration focused our attention on the individual,...
Bodies and boundaries
We read Julia Kasdorf's lovely essay that begins with her memories of Mennonite community. In it she explores the ways in which being a self requires an other who can see one whole as it is impossible to do for one's self. That insight gives a positive value to...
Good Neighbors?
02/09/2022 The first day of the "spring" semester in Borders and Empires. It was my first time with these students. We read Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" (1914) and Darrel Alejandro Holnes, "Amending Wall." The later makes explicate reference to the former. The...
