201 - 210 of 788 results for: HISTORY

How did the institution of American slavery come to an end? The story is more complex than most people know. This course examines the rival forces that fostered slavery's simultaneous contraction in the North and expansion in the South between 1776 and 1861. It also illuminates, in detail, the final tortuous path to abolition during the Civil War. Throughout, the course introduces a diverse collection of historical figures, including seemingly paradoxical ones, such as slaveholding southerners who professed opposition to slavery and non-slaveholding northerners who acted in ways that preserved it. Historical attitudes toward race are a central integrative theme.

What will American cities look like in the future? Will they be "smart"? Will they be sustainable? Will they be equitable? This course will explore possible answers to these questions by looking back towards the nation's urban past. The city has been a polarizing space in the U.S. imagination since the nation's inception, but in the late nineteenth century it became clear that industrialization and urbanization were undeniable parts of the nation's future. The national conversation shifted away from debating if the U.S. should urbanize to how it would urbanize. This course will introduce students to the concept of "imagineering" in urban studies, or the process of engineering imagined urban landscapes into physical reality. Drawing on a wide range of historical sources, including engineering design publications, city planning maps and memos, and urban photojournalism, students will learn about why and how the nation imagineered (and re-imagineered) urban spaces, and trace how these activities have shaped urban inequality, politics, culture, and environments in the past and present. Using contemporary media, like Weird City (2019) and Elysium (2013), short stories like N.K. Jemisin's "The City Born Great," and TedTalks on the future of urban design, this course will also explore possible futures for urban America. The creative weekly assignments will ask students to step into the proverbial shoes of different city residents, writing Op-eds as a journalist, inspection reports as a city planner, and manifestos as a local activist, to discuss urban issues across time and space from different perspectives. The final research project offers students the opportunity to use their newfound knowledge to propose a solution for a contemporary urban issue with deep historical roots.

Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz) and Martin Luther King, Jr. are both icons of the twentieth-century civil rights and black freedom movements. Often characterized as polar opposites - one advocating armed self-defense and the other non-violence against all provocation - they continue to be important religious, political, and intellectual models for how we imagine the past as well as for current issues concerning religion, race, politics and freedom struggles in the United States and globally. This course focuses on the political and spiritual lives of Martin and Malcolm. We will examine their personal biographies, speeches, writings, representations, FBI Files, and legacies as a way to better understand how the intersections of religion, race, and politics came to bare upon the freedom struggles of people of color in the US and abroad. The course also takes seriously the evolutions in both Martin and Malcolm's political approaches and intellectual development, focusing especially on the last years of their respective lives. We will also examine the critical literature that takes on the leadership styles and political philosophies of these communal leaders, as well as the very real opposition and surveillance they faced from state forces like the police and FBI. Students will gain an understanding of what social conditions, religious structures and institutions, and personal experiences led to first the emergence and then the assassinations of these two figures. We will discuss the subtleties of their political analyses, pinpointing the key differences and similarities of their philosophies, approaches, and legacies, and we will apply these debates of the mid- twentieth century to contemporary events and social movements in terms of how their legacies are articulated and what we can learn from them in struggles for justice and recognition in twenty-first century America and beyond.

This class will examine the history of U.S. foreign policy, beginning the U.S. rise to world power at the dawn of the 20th century and concluding with an examination of the foreign policies of Presidents Bush and Obama. It will ask you to weigh the arguments scholars alongside firsthand (primary source) evidence, to make your own assessments of motivations, goals, causation, and consequences. Above all, it will ask you to think historically about the last century of U.S. foreign policy, and to consider a broad range of factors: ideology, domestic politics, geopolitics, race, psychology, culture, and bureaucracy, sometimes in complementary ways. Our task is to understand the critical choices made over the past century, both in their own right and for the broader lessons that a comparative historical perspective might provide.

The course begins with readings setting forth the intellectual and experiential background of the framing, including common law and natural rights theory, republicanism, economic & political scientific ideas, and colonial and post-Independence experience. We then study large parts of the debates at the Constitutional Convention, primarily using Madison's Notes. Major topics are the principle of representation, the extent and enumeration of national powers, the construction of the executive and judicial branches, and slavery. Next come the ratification debates, including readings from antifederalist writers, The Federalist, and speeches in ratification conventions. We conclude with the addition of the Bill of Rights. Classes consist of a combination of lecture and extensive participation by students. Elements used in grading: Class participation, final exam, supplemented by short take-home essay. Cross-listed with the Law School ( LAW 7017).

(Same as LAW 7100.) This course will explore the changes to the Constitution made after the Civil War and their enforcement statutes. Materials will primarily be original source texts, supplemented by selected secondary literature. The majority of class time will be devoted to discussion, based on close reading of the materials. Students will be assigned to take the lead on class discussion on particular topics. Topics will include: (1) the constitutional status of slavery prior to the Civil War; (2) the Emancipation Proclamation; (3) the Thirteenth Amendment; (4) the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and President Johnson's constitutional veto; (4) drafting and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, with special emphasis on the citizenship clause, due process, equal protection, privileges and immunities, and congressional enforcement; (5) the Freedman's Bureau Act, Ku Klux Klan Act, Enforcement Acts, and Civil Rights Act of 1871; (6) the Fifteenth Amendment; (7) the Civil Rights Act of 1875; (8) early Supreme Court interpretations, and (9) the collapse of Reconstruction and rise of Jim Crow. Within these topics, we will discuss segregation, affirmative action, the state action doctrine, equality with respect to non-racial characteristics, ratification rules, state sovereign immunity, and the role of electoral politics in constitutional interpretation and enforcement. Note: This is NOT a course on current interpretations of the Reconstruction Amendments, but on their historical background. There are no prerequisites. First year law students and non-law students are welcome. Constitutional Law would be helpful but is not required. Grading. Grades will be based partly (20%) on class participation, and partly on either an in-class exam or a research paper on a topic approved in advance by the instructor. Students will choose between the exam and the paper. Grades for students in this section will be "Letter Only." After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer, with consent of the instructor, from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement.

(Same as HISTORY 54. 154 is 5 units; 54 is 3 units.) How Americans considered problems such as slavery, imperialism, and sectionalism. Topics include: the political legacies of revolution; biological ideas of race; the Second Great Awakening; science before Darwin; reform movements and utopianism; the rise of abolitionism and proslavery thought; phrenology and theories of human sexuality; and varieties of feminism. Sources include texts and images.

This course explores intellectual life and culture in the United States during the twentieth century, examining the work and lives of social critics, essayists, artists, scientists, journalists, novelists, and sundry other thinkers. We will look at the life of the mind as a narrative of ongoing yet contested secularization and a series of debates about the meaning and nature of truth, knowing, selfhood, and the American democratic experience. Persistent themes include modernism and anti-modernism, shifts and changes in political liberalism and conservatism, disagreements about the role of the United States in the world, and the importance of distinctions based on race, ethnicity, religion, class, and gender.

TBD.