Tag Caroline Winterer

July 2, 2018
in American History, Philosophy

What Happened to Enlightenment?

July 2, 2018
in American History, Philosophy

Caroline Winterer— What happened to enlightened ideas after the long eighteenth century? As more scholars are placing ideals of enlightenment in their global contexts, we are learning that the conventional understandings of the fate of enlightenment no longer hold. Enlightenment did not end with the movement called Romanticism, its ideals

October 27, 2016
in American History, Political Science

Debunking the Myth of the American Enlightenment

October 27, 2016
in American History, Political Science

Caroline Winterer— In the dark years of World War II and the Cold War, Americans invented a national mythology that we hold dear to this day: the myth of the “American Enlightenment.” Like a bomb shelter made of ideas rather than concrete, the American Enlightenment (capital A, capital E) spun