HUB Capacities

This course will address the following HUB areas:

Historical Consciousness

Students will read a variety of scholarly books and articles on topics such as the Vietnam war, the antiwar movement, the Civil Rights Act, presidential politics, and second-wave feminism. Students will work to complicate the understanding provided by prior scholars through the discovery and analysis of primary sources (news articles, advertisements, songs, and the like). Students will use both secondary and primary sources to construct historical narratives about the social trends and political ideologies of 1960s America.
Students will gather primary sources into collections of 10-30, vetting their provenance, organizing them into meaningful bodies of evidence, noting trends and exceptions, and interpreting their significance in relation to the historical context.
In considering the cultural impact of the 1960s, students will weigh present-day accounts of the decade not only against the evidence of primary sources, but against accounts formulated during and immediately after that era, both in mainstream news accounts and within activist groups.

Students will explore the multiple mindsets of 1960s America, from the liberal consensus of the mainstream to Goldwater conservatives, Black Power radicals, campus antiwar protesters, and the feminist sisterhood. They will consider how these ideologies inform the politics of the present day—including students’ own beliefs and ideals.
Students will read and respond to the ideas of commentators and activists in connection with pressing social and political issues like Black Lives Matter, sexual harassment, transgender rights, and what free speech means in the context of a college campus. Students will engage with these communities through internet activism, attending meetings and writing editorial responses. Students will also meet with BU faculty and alumni who attended college in the 1960s and early 70s, instantiating the multi-generational community that is BU.

Students will assemble bodies of evidence (collections of 10-30 primary sources), using them as basis for inductive generalizations about what groups of people (both in the past and in the present) fear, hate, admire, and aspire to achieve.
Students will assess the conclusions of prior scholars using evidence they gather.
Students will discuss and critique arguments made by social critics and activists from the 1960s and the present day, noting emotional appeals, the use of evidence (if any), and the validity of historical analogies.
Through class discussion and in their written work, students will question their own beliefs and assumptions.
In connection with the vital issue of free speech, students will think critically about the limits of civic discourse and critical thinking: are there words and ideas that cannot be entertained?