Professor Pittenger has published books on the impact of the Darwinian revolution on American socialist thought and political practice, and on undercover investigations of American poverty and labor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is currently researching connections between Unitarian theology and social activism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He intends to push this research forward across the twentieth century to the early 1960s.
keywords
History of American radicalism, evolutionary social thought, ideas about poverty and class, liberal religious thought and social activism
HIST 1025 - American History since 1865
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Spring 2019 / Fall 2019
Explores political, social and cultural changes in American life since Reconstruction. Focuses on shifting social and political relations as the U.S. changed from a nation of farmers and small-town dwellers to an urban, industrial society; the changing meaning of American identity in a society divided by ethnicity, race and class; and the emergence of the U.S. as a world power.
HIST 3415 - Seminar in Recent American History
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Fall 2019
Capstone seminars are designed for advanced history majors to pull together the skills they have honed in previous courses. This seminar focuses on recent American history, and will include readings and discussions in a small seminar setting. In relation to the course topic, students will develop an individual research project and write a substantial and original paper based on primary sources. Recommended restriction: History GPA of 2.0 or higher.
HIST 4346 - Twentieth-Century American Thought and Culture
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Spring 2019
Examines the emergence of intellectual traditions and cultural trends in their social and political contexts from the beginning of the modern era through the onset of the postmodern. Addresses developing arguments about democracy, science, race, gender, faith, American identity, radicalism and conservatism, modernist thinking and artistic expression, and the role of intellectuals in society.
HIST 4366 - Culture Wars: Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Modern U.S.
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Fall 2018 / Spring 2020
Examines how U.S. public moralists, intellectuals, and artists from the end of the nineteenth century to World War II both celebrated and attacked the rise of two characteristic features of modernity: mass culture (amusement parks, popular music, radio, movies), and modernist literary and artistic expression. Addresses how Americans both constructed and violated the line between "popular" and "high" culture. Recommended prerequisite: HIST 1025.
HIST 6326 - Readings in United States Intellectual History
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2018 / Spring 2020
Examines the history of ideas and the social history of intellectuals in American society during the 19th and 20th centuries. Stresses social and political dimensions and the changing cultural and institutional contexts of intellectual discourse.
