The United States has experienced three periods of sustained interest in reforming its political and social life: the first in the decades preceding the Civil War, the second in the decades preceding the First World War, and the third in the two decades following World War II. The course examines aspects of these reform movements, particularly their connection to religion and Protestant theology.
Instructors: Robert Norrell is Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, where he holds the Bernadotte Schmitt Chair of Excellence. He is the author of The House I Live In: Race in the American Century; Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee; and Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. Natalie F. Taylor is Assistant Professor of Government at Skidmore College. She is the author of The Rights of Woman as Chimera: The Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft and the editor of the forthcoming A Political Companion to Henry Adams.