Core 102

The Idea of Democracy

Roger Williams University

Section 01 LLC TTH 09:30AM 10:50AM GHH 108

Section 18 ELI TTH  12:30PM   1:50PM  GHH 108

Spring Semester, 2015

Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D.

Office: GHH 215

Hours: M 2:00-3:20  Th - Th: 11:00-12:00 

Or By Appointment

Phone:  ext 3230

E-mail:  mswanson@rwu.edu

For Tuesday, March 17

For Thursday, March 19                                  

Susan B. Anthony Arrested for Illegal Voting, 1873.  Click on the image to read all about it.

Welcome Back!  I hope you had a great spring break.  St. Patrick's Day is Today--and everyone becomes Irish whether or not he/she wants to.  The Chicago River will be died bright green.  Many places, Newport Rhode Island, for example, moved the parade to last Saturday--the weather retaliated.  In the year 2007-2008, This song was quite popular. 

As I promised there'd be no required reading for this day.  The rest of this semester we'll  watch a series of struggles to make democratic institutions more incusive, both in the United States and in other countries in the world.  Today we'll watch a video from the Public Broadcasting Series, "The People's Century,"  Entitled Half the People.  It is the story of movements to bring political and economic rights to women during the 20th century.  We'll go back and look at a few important steps along the way over the next few weeks.  We will then turn our attention to the movement to abolish slavery, and the results of the Civil Rights Campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and others.

Download and Read, Markup, (sticky notes for reflections) and and Place in Your Dropbox

• Three Letters Between John and Abigail Adams  (1776)
  

• From, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
  

  Chap. IX.  Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society

Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, second President of the United States, could be called the first of a long line of women who fought for equal rights.  In an age where many men and women married according to social station, John and Abigail were also in love, as the tone of the letters between the two will demontrate.  Abigail didn't get her way at the meeting writing the Declaration of Independence, but I think she often got her way at home. 

Mary Wollstonecraft, whose daughter, Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley would go on to write Frankstein, was one of Europe's first Feminists.  She didn't play soft with her ideas, either.  Not many of her era agreed with her.  Her personal life was not always happy.  Read the short biography of her provided by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) by clicking here.   In many ways, she was a true equalitarian.  She not only wrote A vindication of the Right of Women, but two years earlier she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men.