The Legacy of the American Revolution, a Platypus Lecture Series
Full lecture series video recording playlist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWwQg0MObQs&list=PLNc4xGUuaRwkwEdVEwLV6X8NxT49XEtx8
This summer, James Vaughn, Chris Cutrone, Reid Kotlas, Spencer Leonard and Pamela Nogales will be leading a series of virtual lectures on the legacy of the American Revolution. The red thread running through the lecture series is the persistence & legacy of the revolution. We ask: How does America remain a revolutionary society? How did each chapter of American history give a new impetus to the revolution that began in 1776? Our approach to the American Revolution and the subsequent history of the polity it founded is from the perspective of the bourgeois revolution and its crisis in the Marxist philosophy of history, and also frames the first two lectures, on colonial America and the revolutionary era itself.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/98473035098 (Webinar ID: 984 7303 5098) Lectures will be on Fridays, starting on 06/12, at 11am PST/ 1pm CST/ 2pm EDT/ 7pm BST/ 8pm CET. Full schedule appended below. All are welcome!
Lectures will be between 30 and 45 minutes. Each session will be followed by a brief q&a, but we have also set aside the last day (07/31) for a panel discussion with the lecturers, with an emphasis on the q&a engagement with participants. Each session has a list of required readings. We have kept these at an absolute minimum and have prioritized primary sources -- the living documents of the past -- over scholarly interpretations. Please see the reading list attached.
Readings will be available for download here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TXot5D1rmlOsljiwwo35a3KaJGD0U4Yw?usp=sharing. Please note that for some weeks, including the first two weeks ([1] Colonial America and the [2] American Revolution), lecturers have provided links to the readings in the reading links, rather than PDFs.
READING LIST w/ LINKS: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AQF3rIgGwOoPm0qXNot-kh8eskKAELyJnPuCOQbRJuw/edit?usp=sharing
1.) (English) Colonial America (June 12)
James Vaughn
2.) The American Revolution (June 19)
James Vaughn
3.) The Jeffersonian Revolution (June 26)
Chris Cutrone
Sh*t Platypus Says (SPS) Episode 26 on 1776 (June 29)
4.) Jacksonian Democracy (July 03)
Pamela Nogales
5.) The Civil War and failed Reconstruction (July 10)
Spencer Leonard and Pamela Nogales
6.) The Gilded Age (July 17)
Chris Cutrone
7.) The American Communists and the Legacy of the Revolution (July 24)
Reid Kotlas
8.) The fate of the American Revolution? (July 31)
A panel discussion with the lecturers, with an emphasis on the q&a engagement with participants. [transcript]
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2900710183489878/
Artwork: Glenn Ligon, Double America, 2012, neon and paint, National Gallery of Art, Washington
