AMST 30316 - The Louisville Bloody Monday Riot of 1855: Politics, Religion, Ethnicity and Violence in 1850's U.S.

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

American Studies

Description:

The ultimate goal of this course is to move through the historical process with students: curiosity, researching, organizing, argument, writing. This course incorporates both meanings of the phrase "history-making." First, students will investigate the events surrounding a specific riot in 1855 Louisville, Kentucky. Called "Bloody Monday" by those few who know of it at all, the riot took place on an election day when xenophobic nativists targeted businesses, dwellings, and churches of immigrant Catholics. Students will learn the details of the event as well as those groups that converged so violently. Important corollaries such as immigration, urban space, religious conflict, ethnicity, politics, and violence are also a part of the students' readings and discussions. The course will seek answers to the usual questions of history: What happened? Who was involved? Why did it happen in this particular way? The other way in which this course involves "making history" is by integrating the process by which historians investigate and understand the past. In addition to a heavy emphasis on primary documents and secondary materials relating to the riot, students will read a variety of materials on topics that relate to an anti-Catholic riot in an antebellum city. The goals of the investigation will also include crafting arguments, imagining historical events, innovative techniques to present data, and novel approaches to material. Students in this course will also participate in several activities designed to stimulate thinking about the past. The questions to which this aspect of the course may offer answers include: "How did this event compare to other violence in the nineteenth century U.S.?" and "How have past scholars treated (or ignored) this event?"

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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