Topics for Research

Topics in American Political Thought—

Colonial and Revolutionary Period:
Concepts of Authority in Early New England and Virginia
Concepts of God, Theocracy, and Tolerance in New England
Justifications for Slavery
Influence of Locke, Sidney, and Glorious Revolution on American Revolutionary Thought
The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson
Federalists and Anti-Federalists
The Constitution and Centralized Government
The Federalist Papers, Divided Government, and Class
Early Abolitionism in Britain and U.S.
Justifications for Slavery

Ante-Bellum Thought:
American writing on political economy (Henry Carey, newspaper editorials, etc.)
Radical Protests Against Capitalism and Industrialization
Political Theory Concepts in Slave Narratives (other than Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs)
Confederate Fire Eaters
The Political Theories of John C. Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, and Abraham Lincoln in
Various kinds of comparative formulations
Individualism
Fiction and Political Theory
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
James Fenimore Cooper
Temperance fiction like T. S. Arthur
Early African-American fiction
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, J. S. Mill’s Review of Democracy in America
Abolitionism
Concepts of the Frontier, Nature, Manifest Destiny
Native American Thought
Feminism—Seneca Falls Meeting, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Labor— Workingmen in Philadelphia, Boston, and NY
Loco Focos

Reconstruction and the Gilded Age
Socialism-- Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
Henry Demarest Lloyd
Eugene Debs
Emma Goldman

African-American
W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, Reconstruction, The Philadelphia Negro, etc.
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
Anna Julia Cooper
Ida Wells Barnett
Alexander Crummell

Feminism
Susan B. Anthony

Segregation
Plessy v. Ferguson
Pitchfork Ben Tillman
Tom Watson
D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation
Other rationalizations for segregation, lynching, etc.

Depression to Present
Conservatism
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Jose Ortega y Gassett, The Revolt of the Masses
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy and Other Studies, Thoughts on Machiavelli,
Natural Right and History
Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative
Harvey Mansfield, Manliness, Taming the Prince
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, The State, and Utopia
Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Randall Kennedy, and other black conservatives
Liberalism
J. Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Political Liberalism
Adorno, et. al., The Authoritarian Personality

Radicalism
Works by C. Wright Mills
Works on the SDS and radical student movements

African-American
Martin Luther King, A Testament of Hope, other works
Malcolm X, various works
bell hooks, various works in library
Patricia Williams
Critical Race Theory
Audre Lorde
Angela Davis
Black Panthers
Feminism
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics
Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur
Works by Nancy Chowdorow, Jessica Benjamin, Judith Butler, Wendy Brown