In light of the upcoming 2024 election, for which the stakes could not feel higher and the divisions deeper, this four-class course aims to give historical context to some of the central issues driving American political and public debates today. Foreign wars, economic challenges, gun violence, judiciary decisions with enormous consequences, and social divisions that have energized book bans, revisions of our nation’s past, post-pandemic mistrust of government and science, and vehement partisan politics are both current and past flashpoints in American society.

In “The Second Coming,“ published in in the aftermath of the First World War, Irish poet William Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world … The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”

Seemingly prophetic of today’s chaos, when many Americans feel that things are falling apart and the center is not holding, this course argues that being knowledgeable about the past helps us to make sense of our present and wiser choices for our future. Or, as Maya Angelou implores, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

In our classes, we will revisit the time when then candidate Ronald Reagan was viewed as “fringe” by the Republican Party, when book bans in a West Virginia county resulted in physical attacks and bombings, when the assassination of a president brought about the first major gun legislation since the 1930s, and when a brief encounter between an ambitious filmmaker and a discredited scientist led to the first vast misinformation campaign about the Covid vaccine. Using these and other historical examples, we will examine their throughlines to the present to better understand and counter today’s cultural and political divisions.

Four-Week Course Schedule | Wednesdays
October 9th | 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
October 16th | 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
October 23rd | 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
October 30th | 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
 

This class will be held in-person at WIH and simulcast via Zoom

This course has been edited since it's original published date. If you have questions, please call the office at 713-529-7123.