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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
This lecture course will survey major developments in American thought from the first English contacts with North America to the mid-19th century. Emphasis will fall on ideas about religion, society, politics, and natural science and on the institutions and social contexts of intellectual life, with an eye towards understanding the roots of our own ways of thinking. Especially in the first weeks of the course, European backgrounds will also receive attention. Students will write a midterm and a final exam, as well as a 10-page research paper.
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3.00 Credits
Sport, a major part of American entertainment and culture today, has roots that extend back to the colonial period. This course will provide an introduction to the development of American sport, from the horse racing and games of chance in the colonial period through to the rise of contemporary sport as a highly commercialized entertainment spectacle. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, we will explore the ways that American sport has influenced and been influenced by economics, politics, popular culture, and society, including issues of race, gender and class. Given Notre Dame's tradition in athletics, we will explore the University's involvement in this historical process.
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3.00 Credits
How do we explain sweeping moral changes in society? Why did so many people support legal slavery for so long, and what motivated others to turn against it? What is the relationship between social change and moral theory? The purpose of this class is to examine the moral frameworks that Americans have used to understand -- and to change -- their society. We will focus on hotly debated issues in American history, looking at the way that Americans thought about issues such as slavery, animal cruelty, sex, family roles, labor, economics, war and citizenship, and civil rights. We will look at both sides of debates to understand the values and beliefs that shaped traditions of social change and resistance to that change.
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3.00 Credits
This course examines the social, political, and cultural history of the United States from the ratification of the Constitution to the beginnings of the political crisis over expansion and slavery. It covers the democratization of politics and the problems of national independence in the wake of the Revolution; territorial expansion; economic change; the development of regional, class, religious, racial, ethnic, and gendered subcultures; slavery and resistance to slavery; and the new political and reform movements that responded to the era's deep and lasting changes.
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3.00 Credits
The 19th century witnessed a transformation in the understanding of the origins of criminal behavior in the United States. For many, a religious emphasis on humankind as sinful gave way to a belief in its inherent goodness. But if humans were naturally good, how could their evil actions be explained? Drawing on studies done here and abroad, American doctors, preachers, and lawyers debated whether environment, heredity, or free will determined the actions of the criminal. By the early 20th century, lawyers and doctors had largely succeeded in medicalizing criminality. Psychiatrists treated criminals as patients; judges invoked hereditary eugenics in sentencing criminals. Science, not sin, had apparently become the preferred mode of explanation for the origins of crime. But was this a better explanation than what had come before? Discussion will be the primary form of instruction.
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3.00 Credits
Arguably the study of the American Civil War is a suitable training ground for novice historians, for traditionally a historian must learn to examine events and issues from varying perspectives. Indeed, in this course, emphasis lies not only on the events of the period, but also on the interpretation of those events by different interest groups. Students are expected not only to learn the facts of the era, but also to think about the consequences of events on different sections and different peoples. This course divides the period into three sections: the coming of the Civil War, the War, and Reconstruction. A test follows the end of each section; half of the final exam will be on the Reconstruction section and the rest will be comprehensive. In addition to the tests, students will write a short paper and a short book review.
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3.00 Credits
The purpose of this course is to study the political, diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural development of the United States from 1945 through the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Although the military and diplomatic history of World War II will be considered by way of background, the principal topics of investigation will be the Fair Deal program of President Truman, the Cold War, the Korean Conflict, the Eisenhower presidency, the New Frontier, Vietnam, President Johnson's Great Society, the civil rights movement, the Nixon years, the social and intellectual climate of this post-war era, and the presidencies of Gerald Ford through George H.W. Bush. There will be a required reading list of approximately six books, two smaller writing assignments, and three examinations.
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3.00 Credits
This course is an introductory survey of Mexican-American history in the United States. Primarily focused on events after the Texas Revolution, and annexation of the American Southwest we will consider the problems the Spanish and Mexican settlers faced in their new homeland, as well as the mass migration of Anglo-Americans into the region following the annexation. Throughout the course, we will explore the changing nature of Mexican-American U.S. citizenship. Other themes and topics examined will include immigration, the growth of agriculture in Texas and California, internal migration, urbanization, discrimination, segregation, language and cultural maintenance, and the development of a U.S. based Mexican-American politics and culture. Although primarily focused on the American Southwest and California, this course also highlights the long history of Mexican American life and work in the Great Lakes and midwestern United States. We will conclude with the recent history of Mexican and Latin-American migration to the United States after 1965, and the changing nature of Mexican American identity and citizenship within this context.
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3.00 Credits
Few American regions have generated as many cultural narratives, myths, and icons as the trans-Mississippi West. This course takes both the reality and the romance of the West seriously, asking students to examine how the American conquest of the West inspired storytelling traditions that distorted and shaped the region's history. To get at this interaction, we will read novels, histories, and first-hand accounts as well as view several Hollywood westerns. The class is reading- and discussion-intensive. Students will write several short papers as well as a longer final essay.
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3.00 Credits
How do we explain sweeping moral changes in society? Why did so many people support legal slavery for so long, and what motivated others to turn against it? What is the relationship between social change and moral theory? The purpose of this class is to examine the moral frameworks that Americans have used to understand--and to change--their society. We will focus on hotly debated issues in American history, looking at the way that Americans thought about issues such as slavery, animal cruelty, sex, family roles, labor, economics, war and citizenship, and civil rights. We will look at both sides of debates to understand the values and beliefs that shaped traditions of social change and resistance to that change.
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