Are you concerned with the dignity of everyday people, skeptical or outright hostile to state power, troubled by hierarchy, compelled to purge corrupting influences, attracted to disciplined bodily habits, worried that society is ever more unethical, committed to influence minds and hearts, and convinced that “everything happens for a reason”? If so, you may be a “New Puritan.” You are warmly invited to take this program and find out.

Students in The New Puritans are considering the history and culture of social change efforts in North America from the Puritans forward. Puritanism has changed since the 17 ^th century, but its basic “structures of feeling,” to borrow a phrase from Raymond Williams, are still with us and are the subject of our studies.

Winter quarter’s work will have two main threads.  The first is our collection of common texts, which provide historical, literary, and theoretical frameworks for grasping a new politics of injustice which emerged in the 19 ^th century and has shaped social change ever since.  We will read works by Susan Howe, Alexis deTocqueville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. DuBois, Joan Kelly, Frederick Jackson Turner, William James, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Rebecca Harding Davis, Edith Wharton, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.  

The second thread of The New Puritans is a major research project.  The project will take the form of an analytic/critical/creative paper, which each student will develop with support from the program community.  Projects will stem from topics of student interest related to reform movements, social movements, and/or social justice in the United States. Topics could include food justice, racial justice, immigrant rights, religion, trans-national activism, anti-poverty work, feminism, LGBTQ rights, climate change, environmentalism, education, and virtually any other topic of interest. Evergreen’s history, culture, and current social change efforts will be one of our sources for these projects. New students who already have works-in-progress are encouraged to join us.  This program is an excellent choice for students who have studied political economy, social movements, and social justice, and who are interested in understanding the roots and character of Anglo-American social change efforts.