I’m obviously disappointed about the early cancellation of the “Roots of American Anarchism” course, but I’ve also already done much of the work to make the course possible. I had already started breaking the graduate-level course down into undergrad/continuing education-sized bites.
What I am currently trying to make happen is a 12-week course covering European philosophical roots, Fourier, some early Proudhon, the 1826 Mutualist, John Gray, Paul Brown, Thomas Skidmore and a lot of Josiah Warren.
This would be an expansion of the early phases of the announced course and, if successful, would probably be followed by a similar course covering the colonial land banks, more Proudhon, Saint-Simon and Leroux, Orestes Brownson, The Spirit of the Age, and lots of William B. Greene. If we haven’t given up by then, the remaining two “quarters” would cover, first, The Boston Investigator, Calvin Blanchard, Lewis Masquerier, Eliphalet Kimball, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, Henry Edger and Stephen Pearl Andrews, and, last, the era of The Index, The Word, and The Radical Review. By that point, we might be ready to tackle Liberty and related material, perhaps in a year-long course. There seems to be some consensus that around $100 per “quarter” might be a fair price.
