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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Between 1400 and 1750, a fierce battle for Empire was waged between and among the Spanish, French, and British nations and the peoples they sought to control, particularly Africans and Amerindians. The result of this fateful encounter would determine the political, economic, cultural, racial, and ecological character of what became the United States of America. Students will engage with this momentous event in several ways: through select readings in the theoretical and historiographical literature; by using primary sources written by the colonizers and the colonized; and by reading important secondary works. The themes we will explore include: the symbols used by the various Empires to establish rights to the land; the different patterns of settlement; the various European interactions with Africans and Amerindians; the effect that contestants for Empire had upon the land; and the response of Africans and Amerindians to European attempts at subjugation.
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3.00 Credits
Since the early 1950s, religion has been an obviously major factor in American political life, driven first by the African-American leaders of the civil rights movement and then, in more recent decades, by the concerns of the Religious Right. Especially after the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, Catholics have also been fully recognized participants in the nation's political uses of religion - as well as in debates over whether and how religion should be used politically. This class tries to show that modern political-religious connections are but new instances of what has always gone on in the American past. The shape of contests over religion and politics may have changed considerably over time, but not the fact of dense connections between the two spheres. Readings for the course include primary and secondary accounts that treat notable incidents, problems, debates, and controversies from the colonial period to the present. Lectures spotlight major issues of historical interpretation, like religion and the Constitution, religion and antebellum debates over slavery, religion and Reconstruction, Catholic versus Protestant understandings of liberty, civil rights and the New Christian Right.
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3.00 Credits
By 1900 the development of mass production made the possibility of consumption for private enjoyment available to increasing numbers of Americans. This course will explore the creation of contemporary consumer culture beginning with the advent of mass production and mass marketing in the 19th century, including the rise of advertising and the growth of department stores. We will then examine how the ideas and institutions associated with consumerism changed throughout the 20th century during times of depression, war, and into the present. Additional topics will include how consumers have used consumption to fashion individual and group identities, as well as how American have embraced or challenged consumerism over time.
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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
There may not be a term in American society as recognized, and yet as misunderstood, as "Civil Rights." Often civil rights are conflated with human rights, even through each are distinct of the other. During the semester, we will trace the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 20th century, as well as its lasting impact on American society. We will do so using as many media as possible. Fortunately, we will have the opportunity to study an important part of American history in significant detail. The time span we cover will not be that great, but the issues we investigate challenge the founding principles of American society to its core.
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3.00 Credits
When speaking of the American Revolution, many writers reach for a comment made by John Adams in 1818 that, "[T]he Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. . ." Whether this assertion is true historically or not, it still does not adequately describe what that revolution was. The American Revolution obviously had its political elements, primarily the formation of the United States. To reach its political goals, military means were necessary. Without a successful War for Independence, there would have been no revolution. To leave matters there, however, would be insufficient. A fuller understanding of the revolution would need to address how it affected the whole spectrum of American life. It would consider the revolution as a social movement that challenged the political and social hierarchies of the day. It would also ask how the revolution affected those who were not white males, especially women, slaves, and Native Americans. Without considering the possible negative implications of the revolution, any telling would be incomplete. This class will take up these challenges and attempt to make a full-orbed presentation of the events surrounding the American Revolution. It will introduce students both to elites and to those whom the popular narrative glosses over. It will attempt to count the losses, as well as the gains, which flowed from the move to independence from Britain. Finally, it will attempt to describe the many changes through this period, which resulted, not only in a new political nation, but in a new society and culture--changes that in varying degrees are still with us today and of which contemporary Americans are the inheritors.
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3.00 Credits
This class will introduce students to major events in Caribbean history and the various ways in which these histories have been represented. This course will present a picture of the Caribbean very different from that held by many North Americans. For 500 years, this region has been the site of encounters and clashes among Native Americans, Europeans, Africans, and Asians. For three centuries Europe's leading states fought each other to control these islands, which were the most valuable real estate in the Atlantic world. At the same time Dutch, English, French and Spanish colonists imported millions of enslaved men, women, and children from Africa to work on the sugar and coffee plantations that made the region so profitable for its masters. Supported by racism and colonialism, plantation slavery left its mark on the Caribbean long after emancipation and independence. We will be emphasizing recent, representative texts, monographs and essays but placing them in the context of early research.
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3.00 Credits
This course will introduce students to organizations and movements arising from and on behalf of black populations in the Diaspora, including the United States and various nations in Latin America and the Caribbean. "Movements" is defined broadly in this course to include both historical and contemporary instances of collective resistance, revolt, and rebellion as well as sustained collective activism and organizing around artistic, cultural, social, intellectual, political, and/or religious agendas aimed at bringing about black liberation, social justice, and cultural/ethnic/racial awareness and pride. Among the topics to be considered are varying expressions of black nationalism within the U.S., Rastafarianism in Jamaica, black identity groups in Brazil, and black organizational presence and community building on the internet. Readings and class discussions will encourage students to think about blackness (and identity and mobilization more generally) in global terms, searching for points of connection across international borders along with points of disconnect based on differing historical, cultural, and socio-political realities and differing local understandings of race and ethnicity.
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3.00 Credits
From the heated trenches of America's "culture wars" few thing are as polarizing as marriage and the family. At the extremes, some hearken back to less troubled days when one man and one woman made enduring commitments to each other; others imagine a narrative of progress with women throwing off the shackles of patriarchy, as both men and women forged new kinds of relationships informed by individual needs. Through intensive reading and writing students will grapple with these conflicting narratives of decline and triumph. We will explore Native-American families, polygamy, free-love communities, Cold War homemakers, the black family, and gay marriage. In all of these we will flesh out the ways in which defining "the family" has always been entangled with citizenship, national politics, and religious intolerance.
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3.00 Credits
Few periods in American history have been as controversial as the 1960s. Sometimes called the "Long Sixties," it runs conceptually from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, and was a turbulent time. Concentrating on politics and society, this course explores the major personalities and events, including Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, the New Frontier, the Great Society, the Vietnam War, the breakdown of the liberal consensus, the rebirth of the conservative movement, and national movements led by youths, women, and African Americans. Although the emphasis is on the U.S., the course also visits several major international issues. There are two goals for students: acquiring knowledge about the period, and developing analytical tools to form their own judgments about it. Toward the first goal, students will encounter a combination of readings, videos, mini-lectures, and class discussions. Toward the second, they will be exposed to four different approaches: (1) discussing primary documents and writing a paper on some of them; (2) studying three small-scale case studies; (3) examining the large-scale phenomenon of protest; and (4) reading the memoirs of a Cabinet member, hence gaining an insider's view of the life and activities in the White House.
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