Übung/Proseminar
The Benevolent Empire: Religion and Reform in Nineteenth-Century America
Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA)
University of Heidelberg
Summer semester 2015
Thursday 11:15-12:45
HCA (Hauptstr. 120), Stucco
Instructor: Heike Jablonski, M.A.
Email: heike.jablonski@yahoo.com (or jablonski@stud.uni-heidelberg.de)
Office phone: 06221-54-3399
Office hours: Tuesday 17-18 and by appointment
Office: Karlstr. 2 (Church History building), room 208
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Course description
In the nineteenth century, fuelled by the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening,
Americans set out to tackle various societal ills: the relegated role of women, alcohol abuse,
conditions in prisons, the breaking of Sunday laws, wars, the lack of public schools, and,
most importantly, the enslavement of African Americans. These mostly Protestant, well-todo citizens created a multitude of reform organizations to further the causes of women’s
rights, temperance, prison, asylum, and education reform, Sabbath keeping, world peace,
and abolition, as well as Christian missions to both Native Americans and indigenous peoples
in Africa and Asia in a movement that came to be collectively known as the Benevolent Empire. Their goal was to turn the United States into a morally sound Christian nation, and
some reformers even hoped their efforts would usher in the Millennium and the second
coming of Christ. Organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society, the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the American Bible Society, the American
Sunday School Union, or the American Tract Society were part of a multifaceted, interdenominational religious network designed to reform the United States.
In this class we will explore how the Benevolent Empire shaped antebellum American
culture, how it came to an end, and which parts of its legacy remain today. We will learn
how voluntarism, pluralism, and lay participation – three key aspects of American Christianity – rose with it. Combining the study of American religious and cultural history, we will examine both a variety of primary sources (speeches, poems, sermons, tracts, manifestos, letters, excerpts from autobiographies, images, short stories, and a novel) and secondary texts.
Learning objectives
By the end of the semester, you should be able to:
1. know about basic aspects of nineteenth-century American history, culture, literature,
and religion;
2. identify and describe the various types of American reform movements of the nineteenth century;
3. discuss the transformation of those movements over time;
4. explain the connections and tensions among different activists, ideologies, and movements;
5. discuss the legacy of nineteenth-century reform movements for the contemporary United States.
Book to buy
Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter. Edited by M. Giulia Fabi. New
York: Penguin, 2004. Penguin Classics edition strongly preferred; other editions accepted.
The book is available online (http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/161/clotel-or-the-presidentsdaughter/, http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/brown/menu.html, or http://www.gutenberg.
org/ebooks/2046). Please bring a print-out in that case!
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Moodle course
Please join the Moodle course, where all readings (except for Clotel) will be made available.
The password will be distributed in class.
https://elearning2.uni-heidelberg.de/course/view.php?id=7955 or “Kurse -> Sommersemester 2015 -> Fächer der Philosophischen Fak. -> American Studies”
Course Requirements
For most students this will be a pass/fail course (Übung). In that case you will not have to
write a research paper. The proportions of the final grade (in brackets) are only relevant for
those students who take it as a Proseminar and need a graded Schein.
Attendance (10%):
Attendance is mandatory for all students. You will have to do make-up work for each session
you miss. Furthermore, in case of absence, you are responsible for keeping up with all assignments, readings, and in-class work. Missing more than two sessions without providing a
written notice of excuse (e.g. doctor’s note) will put you at risk of failing the course.
Weekly response questions (10%):
Every week after our meeting you are required to upload a discussion question for the next
week to Moodle. Simply go to the “Weekly response question” section underneath each
week’s readings and enter your question. (Should this not work for any reason, email me.)
Please do so by 5 pm of the next Wednesday, the day before class, with at least one question or comment prompted by that day’s readings that you would like to discuss in class.
These questions can be of any sort: questions of comprehension, of significance, of interpretation, etc. This assignment is designed to ensure both that you engage the material outside
of class and that we are able best to utilize our time in class discussing the most pressing and
interesting issues.
Poster presentation (30%):
Every student is required to present a poster on a topic of their choice in one of the designated sessions in the second half of the semester. Details to follow. Please sign up on the
sheet distributed in class.
Research paper (50%):
For those wanting to receive credit as a Proseminar, a 10-to-15-page research paper (Hausarbeit) is due on August 31st, 2015. You will need to talk to me during my office hour to discuss a suitable topic. A style sheet will be made available.
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Course policies
Readings & participation:
All reading assignments are to be completed by the beginning of the class period scheduled
for discussion of these assignments (see course schedule). Students are expected to bring
physical, paper copies of the assigned reading to class. I encourage you to cultivate an active
and engaged reading style, using underlining, marginalia, notes, etc.
Classroom discussion will usually involve close readings, and I will ask you to support
your comments with appropriate evidence from the text. Participation includes both expressing your own thoughts and questions and listening carefully to those of others. If you
have concerns about speaking up in conference, please come see me so that we can discuss
ways to make participating in the discussion easier and more enjoyable for you.
Electronic devices:
Please refrain from surfing the internet or using email, Facebook, etc. You may use a laptop
for note-taking, although I encourage the use of paper notepads. You may not use any other
electronic devices, such as smartphones, MP3 players, etc. during class.
Late assignments:
For every 24 hours an assignment is late, I will lower it by two grades. Thus, a paper that
would have received a 1.0 but was turned in a day late would receive a 1.7. The same paper
turned in up to 48 hours after it was due would receive a 2.3.
Plagiarism:
The Oxford English Dictionary defines plagiarism as “the action or practice of taking someone else’s work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one’s own.” In order to avoid plagiarism, all
written work turned in for this class must include proper citations (in either MLA or Chicago
style). Plagiarism will result in automatically failing the course.
Course schedule (subject to change)
Week
1
2
Date
Topic & Readings
April 16 General introduction: Nineteenth-century American history and culture;
organizational matters
April 23 Religious background: The Second Great Awakening etc.
Stephen Olin, “The Gospel the Basis for Charity” (1848)
Mintz, Steven. Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers. The American Moment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1995. chs. 2 + 3, pp. 16-60
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3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
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April 30 Abolition
William Lloyd Garrison, Address to the American Colonization Society
(1829)
Manifesto of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833)
George Barrell Cheever, The Guilt of Slavery, pp. 326-36 (1860)
Mintz ch. 5, pp. 119-42
May 7
Abolition
William Wells Brown, Clotel, pp. 3-4, 43-128 (preface, chapters I-XVI)
May 14 Ascension Day – NO CLASS
May 21 Abolition
Clotel, pp. 129-209 (chapters XVII-XXIX)
May 28 Foreign missions
Edward Warren Capen, The Haystack Prayer Meeting (1906)
Mintz ch. 3, pp. 60-65
Sabbath keeping
First Annual Report of the General Union for Promoting the Observance
of the Christian Sabbath (1829)
Mintz ch. 3, pp. 70-71
June 4
Corpus Christi – NO CLASS
June 11 Poster presentations #1
June 18 Prisons and asylums
Review of On the Penitentiary System in the United States (1836)
Dorothea L. Dix, Memorial to the Massachusetts Legislature (1843)
Mintz ch. 4, pp. 79-106
Education
Horace Mann, Twelfth Annual Report of Horace Mann as Secretary of
Massachusetts State Board of Education (1848)
Mintz ch. 4, pp. 106-16
June 25 Temperance
Abraham Lincoln, Temperance Speech (1842)
“The Poor Man’s House Repaired”
Austin Dickinson, “Bible Argument for Temperance”
Mintz ch. 3, pp. 72-76
July 2
Women’s rights
Pastoral Letter of the General Association of Massachusetts to the
Congregational Churches under Their Care + reply (1837)
Seneca Falls Declaration (1848)
Lucretia Mott, Discourse on Woman (1850)
Mintz ch. 5, pp. 142-46
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July 9
14
15
July 16
July 23
Peace
poetry by John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell (1845)
excerpts from The Book of Peace (1845)
Radicalization of reformers; splits over moral suasion vs. coercion
Mintz ch. 5, pp. 117-19
Poster presentations #2
Resistance to reformers
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “New England Reformers” (1844)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Earth’s Holocaust” (1844)
Wrap-up: Legacies of antebellum reform movements (contemporary antislavery organizations, prison reform movements, feminism, etc.); were
they successful?
Copyright 2015, The Author
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