Red Scares
HIST-LIT 90DV
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
The specter that haunted Europe when the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 continues to shape American political discourse to this day. This course reveals how charges of fealty to radical "foreign" ideologies have operated as rhetorical and political strategies for much of U.S. history. The so-called First Red Scare, precipitated by World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, followed on fears and persecution of anarchists, socialists, and other labor radicals in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. In the Second Red Scare after World War II, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Senator Joseph McCarthy, the FBI, and others conducted widespread investigations of suspected communists and purged "subversives" from all levels of government, the entertainment industry, public and private schools, colleges and universities. Beginning with mid 19th-century fears that revolutionary uprisings could spread from Europe to the United States, "Red Scares" explores anxieties about subversion and perversion in American politics and culture. Readings will include texts by Karl Marx, Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, Sacco and Vanzetti, John Dos Passos, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Lillian Hellman, as well as films such as On the Waterfront, My Son John, Salt of the Earth, and The Manchurian Candidate.
Class Notes
Interested students should petition to enroll on my.harvard. In your petition, say a few words about your interest in the course (including concentrations you are considering if you are undeclared), any requirement the course may satisfy, and whether you have taken any other History & Literature seminars. Please contact the instructor if you have any questions.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
