In August 1968, delegates to the Democratic National Convention gathered in Chicago to settle their party platform’s position on domestic issues as well as a policy on Vietnam and pick a candidate for President. Meanwhile, in the streets outside the convention hall thousands of protesters drew on the methods of the civil rights movement to bend the Democrats to their will, while a pugnacious Mayor Richard Daley encouraged police to respond aggressively to the unrest in the streets. A little over a century earlier, in the crisis unleashed by Lincoln’s election in 1860, members of the Kentucky legislature determined how to reconcile varied motivations, interests, and ideologies as the nation rushed headlong toward war and the political and military situation seemed to change almost daily.
Drawing on Reacting to the Past, an active-learning pedagogy designed for higher education, students in this course will explore these two moments of deep division in U.S-American history. They will take on roles, research their historical characters, and then debate critical issues with their fellow classmates. Should Kentucky remain within the Union or should it secede and join the Confederacy? How does a nation torn apart over issues of race, gender, the War in Vietnam, and abuses of government power balance political order and democratic freedoms? Answers to such questions will shed light on not only two defining moments in U.S.-American history but also on the political struggles and challenges the nation faces today.
- Kursleiter/in: Kathleen Donohue
- Kursleiter/in: Luise Sophie Mohr