"Freedom" has long been a defining ideal of U.S. life, passionately desired and intensely contested. This course investigates freedom in its cultural and social aspects. How did the ideals of freedom become so intimately associated with "America," and specifically with the United States of America? How have various dispossessed peoples--slaves, immigrants, women, racial and ethnic minorities, colonized populations--looked to the ideals and practices of U.S. freedom to sustain their hopes and inform their actions?