Cancel culture, history wars, BLM, #MeToo, CRT, LGBTQ+, masks, guns, abortion, immigration, globalization, family values, religious rights, identity politics, Occupy Wall Street, Red v. Blue, MAGA, “Yes, we can!” Why is the United States so divided presently, and how did we get here? A torrent of recent scholarship—bearing titles such as Fault Lines, Age of Fracture, Why We’re Polarized, American Discontent, Divided We Stand—has sought to explain America’s fracturing across the past half-century, which thunders today. In broad strokes, America’s mounting divisions and discontents—particularly concerning varied inequalities, social dislocations, and “culture wars”—have emerged from outsize public actors and seismic shifts in social, cultural, economic, political, demographic, geographic, and technological/media dynamics to produce an unprecedented, structural “Great Alignment” divided along opposing, partisan, evenly matched political poles—with each faction feeling their America is existentially threatened. This honors seminar will examine the origins of these fault lines in the “long 1960s” and track their rupturing across the decades into epic domestic battles over, and dueling dreams about, the meaning and identity—the soul—of America. Along with mastering America’s domestic history from 1945-2020, we will focus on vivid, thematic case studies grounded in leading scholarship and key primary sources, especially multimedia. Students will lead daily discussions, analyze complex debates, decode culture, unpack ideologies, write scholarly journalism, reflect critically on their own views, and lean openly into our nation’s “unfinished work” of democracy and how “We the people” can help bridge America’s divides.
Prerequisite: U.S. History (completed or concurrent); Open to grade 12
