The Right to Land in the Land of Rights
"What perhaps more than anything else distinguished the Revolution and Founding from European experience was the American transformation of the idea of a social contract from theory to practice. By focusing on the role of the social contract this seminar can shed new light on the old question, 'Was the American Revolution a revolution?' The enormous importance of the idea of a social contract in America after the revolutionary era can be tracked by studying, among other developments, the land reform movement or the uses of the Declaration of Independence, down to Martin Luther King's famous 'I Have A Dream' speech of 1963." Will use primary sources to examine the effects of the American Revolution and the U.S. concept of a social contract, including the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, the English Declaration of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.