Isms in American Politics 46.310

Major Movements in American Political Thought

Readings for Presentations, Papers, and Pleasure

Updated on 11/28/12

You may use any of the sources* below in presentations and papers, or you may find resources on your own.  In either case, you must provide hyperlinks to all of the materials you consult in developing all coursework. 

*You must be logged in to UML Libraries to access some of these articles.

You must use the same thesis statement for your presentation and final paper. Your presentation need not be a formal lecture, and you can use slides or Internet resources or remain technology-free.  If you lead a 10-15 discussion of work-in-progress and demonstrate that you have begun to engage in thoughtful research and reflection, you will be fine.

You may choose a thesis statement from the list below, or you may write another version of one of these statements, or you may write a statement on your own.  For tips on writing thesis statements, please visit my Thesis Statement page.

Hyperlinks to sources are included within each of the statements here, but you must also incorporate at least one additional source either from a library database or from a trustworthy site on the Internet.  You must look further than Wikipedia to locate a reliable source, and you must supply working hyperlinks to every source that you use.

Even if you have already sent me a partial thesis statement, and/or you you have decided to choose one of the statements that I supplied, you must e-mail a complete thesis statement, along with your additional source(s), to Susan_Gallagher@uml.edu by 11/16/2012.

Your final paper must be at least five pages long (double-spaced, 11 or 12 point type).  Since you will be graded according to your ability to convey accurate information in college-level prose, it would be wise to take your first draft to the Writing Center to get help with proofreading and correction.  All students who earned "B-" or lower on the midterm must visit the Writing Center to avoid repeating similar mistakes, but those with higher grades would also benefit from having a tutor check their work.

You must consult the Term Paper Checklist to catch common errors before you submit your first draft.

First draft (complete and polished) due via e-mail on Monday, December 10, 2012.

Corrected first drafts returned by Saturday, December 15, 2012.

Revised Final Paper due on Thursday, December 20.

Note: First drafts received after 12/10 will be treated as final drafts.

Further Reading:

• "Senate Issues Apology over Failure on Lynching Law," New York Times, June 14, 2005.

• Transcript of Barack Obama’s Speech on Race, New York Times, March 18, 2008.

• "In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery," New York Times, October 9, 2009.

• "Are Donald Trump and his fellow 'Birthers' Racist?," Christian Science Monitor, April 30, 2011.

* Also see Section 5 below.

Sample Thesis Statement:

One of the highest expectations of Barack Obama's presidency was that the election of the nation's first African-American chief executive would transform the conversation about race relations in the United States.  However, despite Obama's re-election in 2012, many people still contend that the exchange of ideas about race in American politics, history, and society remains fundamentally unchanged.  By analyzing various explanations for our apparent inability to deal directly and openly with racial issues, this essay will explore why Obama's elevation to the Oval Office has yet to eclipse old approaches to race in American politics.

• John Cassidy, "After the Blowup; Laissez-faire economists do some soul-searching-and finger-pointing, The New Yorker, January 11, 2010.

• David Laiban, "Capitalism, Crisis, Renewal: Some Conceptual Excavations," Science & Society, July 2010.

• Naomi Klein, "Disowned by the Ownership Society," The Nation, February 18, 2008.

• John Updike, Laissez-faire Is More; A revisionist history of the Depression, The New Yorker, July 2, 2007.

• Paul Krugman, "Who Was Milton Friedman?," New York Review of Books, February 15, 2007.

• Fred Block, "A Moral Economy," The Nation, March 20, 2006.

• Michael Lind, "Can Obama be deprogrammed? The president is a prisoner of the cult of neoliberalism," Salon, August 4, 2009.

Sample Thesis Statement:

Before the advent of Keynesian economic theory, defenders of free markets usually presented unfettered competition as a natural disciplinary system that provided the most efficient means of maximizing general prosperity.  However, after the triumph of Keynesianism in the New Deal Era, advocates of free enterprise began to focus on the pursuit of self-interest, not so much as an economic benefit to society, but as an individual right.  By contrasting the views of laissez-faire economists before the Great Depression with free market theories that evolved after World War II, this essay will explore how economic theory became increasingly politicized during the second half of the twentieth century.

• Ralph Richard Banks, "The Racial Gap in Marriage: How the Institution Is Tied to Inequality," The Atlantic, October 27, 2011.

• Stephanie Coontz, "When We Hated Mom," Op-Ed, New York Times, May 7 2011.

• Hanna Rosin, "The End of Men," The Atlantic, July/August 2010.

• Linda Hirshman, "Homeward Bound," The American Prospect," November 22, 2005.

• Maureen Dowd, "What's a Modern Girl to Do?," New York Times Magazine, October 30, 2005.

• Jen Nedaeu, "Is Feminism Dead? An Overview of Post-Feminism," Change.org, October 2004.

• Angela McRobbie, "Post-Feminism and Popular Culture," Feminist Media Studies, 2004.

• Bob Herbert, "In America, the Feminist Dilemma," New York Times, January 29, 1998.

• Barbara Ehrenreich, "Silence of the Beltway Feminists," New York Times, January 17, 1997.

Sample Thesis Statement:

Since the women's rights movement arose as an organized force in the nineteenth century, feminism has been declared dead countless times.   However, no matter how many obituaries it has inspired, it seems that feminism always rises again, in part as a target for anti-feminists who like to rail against the ostensible "stranglehold" that feminists exert on various aspects of American life.  By exploring the remarkable consistency in a few of the autopsies that have been performed over the years, this essay will attempt to explain why feminism manages to maintain its vitality despite repeated reports of its demise.

• Jeffrey Rosen, "Misunderstanding Racial Justice," New York Times, November 11, 2011

• Toure, "No Such Place as ‘Post-Racial’ America," New York Times, November 8, 2011.

• Stephen F. Ostertag, William T. Armaline, "Image isn’t everything: Contemporary systemic racism and anti-racism in the age of Obama," Humanity and Society, 2011.

• Charles Johnson, "The End of the Black American Narrative," American Scholar, Summer 2008.

• Liam Downey, Brian Hawkins, "Race, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States," Sociological Perspectives, Winter 2008.

• "American Electorate Becoming More Diverse," Associated Press, November 11, 2012.

Sample Thesis Statement:

In 2008, in "The End of the Black American Narrative," Charles Johnson proposed that the time had come to discard the conceptual framework of racial inequality that had evolved over centuries of oppression in the United States.  Johnson's essay provoked widespread reaction, especially from scholars and activists who focus more on the continuing deprivations faced by poor and working-class blacks than on the rise of black elites.  By placing Johnson's essay within the context of the deep and unprecedented inequalities that currently characterize American society, this essay will explore why so many people believe that it is too soon to make the leap into a so-called post-racial era.

As evident in the national uproar that ensued after unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin was gunned down by George Zimmerman, a white man who had appointed himself as a neighborhood watchman, the problem of racial profiling continues to dog the American criminal justice system.  By examining the facts that have been revealed thus far in this controversial case, this essay will explore the persistence of racial profiling in American society. 

• Matt A. Barreto, et al, "The Tea Party in the Age of Obama: Conservatism or Out-Group Anxiety?," Political Power and Social Theory, 2011.

• Miles Mogulescu, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Its Past, Present and Future," Huffington Post, January 12, 2011.

• Lawrence Davidson, "Islamophobia as a Form of Paranoid Politics," Logos, 2011.

• Jessie Walker, "The Paranoid Style Is American Politics," Reason Magazine, April 24, 2008.

• Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics Revisited," The Public Interest, Fall, 1985.

Sample Thesis Statement:

During the early twentieth century, a movement sprang up to prevent the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in public schools across the United States.  Although the cause was never formally defeated in the courts, the movement died down for decades as Americans' faith in science grew in response to transformative developments ranging from the polio vaccine to the landing of men on the moon.  Then, as the nation moved sharply to the right with the election of Ronald Reagan, and conservative Christians became a dominant voice in the Republican Party, the anti-evolution movement was reborn.  By tracing the history of anti-evolution forces in American politics from the Reagan era to the emergence of the Tea Party Movement, this essay will explore how opposition to Darwin's theory became a standard feature of conservative politics.