Cullman Center Institute for Teachers: Left and Right in American History with Kim Phillips-Fein, July 16-20

Kim Phillips-Fein, Instructor 

This is a week-long seminar taking place from July 16th to July 20th. 

Recent events in American politics have revealed a political landscape far more fractured and polarized than many had previously believed it to be. But in truth, contemporary political divides have their roots deep in the past. This course will look at grass-roots social movements in American history of both the left and the right, with an eye toward the way that they shaped American politics in the past and the legacies that they still have today. We will talk about American socialism in the early twentieth century; the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s; the Communist Party and American fascism during the 1930s; the civil rights movement and massive resistance in the 1950s and 1960s; and the New Left and the New Right of the 1960s and 1970s. Participants can try their hands at writing short op-ed style pieces that link the history we read with contemporary events.

Kim Phillips-Fein is the author of Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal. She has written for The Nation, Dissent, The Atlantic and The New York Times, and currently teaches history at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Phillips-Fein completed Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics during her Cullman Center Fellowship in 2014-15.

The deadline to apply for this seminar has passed.