AMS 495-01 - Senior Seminar: J. B. Grinnell-the Man, Myths and the Magnificent!

4 credits (Spring)

Who is this cultural icon of Iowa, Josiah Bushnell Grinnell? Historians tell us he was a U. S Congressman, an ordained Congregational minister, founder of Grinnell, Iowa and benefactor of Grinnell College. But what were the social, political and economic undercurrents of his symbolic life: New England upbringing, seminary and legal training, ministry, Westward expansion politics, slavery, abolitionism, Freedman’s Bureau, railroads, cattle industry politics, and the Republican Party? Or who were the prominent individuals in his milieu: Horace Greely who implored him to ” Go West”, Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, Lovell Rousseau, Louise May Alcott, and others. This course will examine his life, works, imagination, and legacy through speeches, documents, memoir, journalism , local and state archives, material culture and address the complexities of his loyalty to the causes of equality, social gospel, economic development and social justice in the 19th century.

Prerequisite: AMS 225.
Instructor: Scott