HNUH218A

Credit only granted for: HNUH218A or HIST137. Dedicated to telling the stories of ordinary people in the American Revolution, to recovering the voices and experiences of all the founders of this country whose lives and contributions have been obscured by our tendency to worship a dozen or so well-to-do and well-educated men in suits as if they alone conceived and executed the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. So we'll be talking this semester about the marginalized, the downtrodden, the rank and file, the rabble - all the people who never make it onto monuments or money. The point of this is to allow us all to recognize the fundamental fact that fighting a Revolution is a collective act that requires a genuine mass movement. Declaring independence on a piece of parchment on a summer's day in Philadelphia in 1776 doesn't mean anything unless tens of thousands of people are willing to support that cause and fight to make it a reality. To revolt, then, is not an individual act - it's for crowds, for mobs, and for whole communities to do together. Declaring independence is a fundamentally cooperative act.