This fall, I’ll be teaching a course I’ve been building for a while: Hope and Hatred – Populism in America from the Colonies to Trump. The title reflects the contradictions at the heart of the subject. Populism has been a language of empowerment and solidarity, but also one of exclusion and resentment. It’s a political tradition that refuses to stay in one ideological lane, and I want my students to wrestle with that complexity.
The course moves from early colonial uprisings like Bacon’s Rebellion through the People’s Party of the 1890s, the conservative populism of the late twentieth century, and into the current moment. Along the way, we’ll dig into speeches, manifestos, campaign materials, and cultural texts. This is less about memorizing timelines and more about learning to hear the cadences and structures of populist rhetoric—what it promises, who it speaks for, and who it leaves out.
In designing assignments, I’ve deliberately left space for creativity. Students can write traditional essays, produce campaign ads, or record audio essays. The point is to give them room to explore how historical arguments can be built and communicated in different forms. My rubrics emphasize evidence, critical thinking, and clarity, but they also leave room for experimentation. I want students to take risks, and to see that good history isn’t just about the “right answer,” but about well-reasoned and well-supported interpretations.
Participation is central to the class—not just showing up, but engaging fully in discussion, both in person and online. Even a bold argument that turns out to be wrong is worth more than silent agreement, because wrestling with ideas is the point.
This approach is closely tied to my dissertation work, which examines the political culture of the last settler generation in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. I’m interested in how people understood themselves as part of something larger, how they navigated economic change, and how they used populist rhetoric to frame their place in the world. In class, I want students to bring that same analytical lens to today’s populist movements—whether they see parallels or profound differences.
Ultimately, my goal is for students to leave with a more nuanced sense of what “populism” means. It’s a word thrown around a lot in our political discourse, but it’s not static. By looking at it across time, I hope they’ll see how its meanings shift, and how understanding those shifts can help us make sense of the politics we’re living through right now. I’m going to try to blog more about this class as the semester progresses. i am hoping we can engage critically with our current populist moment and America’s populist past without sane-washing AND without demonizing.
Feel free to check out a current working draft of the syllabus for the course here: HIST – Hope and Hatred – Populism in American History
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