411 - 420 of 788 results for: HISTORY

The history of turbulent relations, military conflict, and cultural clashes between the U.S. and China, and the implications for the domestic lives of these increasingly interconnected countries. Diplomatic, political, social, cultural, and military themes from early contact to the recent past.

In the decades leading up to the American Civil War, the United States underwent profound transformations. Diverse developments - including the expansion of slavery and the increasing power of the cotton kingdom, the rise of the Second Great Awakening and mass politics, the growth of capitalism and its attendant panics, the construction of a series of reform movements, and deep uncertainties and anxieties about the proper role of women and people of color in the still new nation - made the lived experience of the period incredibly tumultuous. In this advanced undergraduate/graduate colloquium, students will explore the social, cultural, religious, political, economic, labor, and gender history and historiography of antebellum America, with a particular focus on how these developments were experienced by ordinary people.

Who should reside within the United States? How should new arrivals be incorporated into American society and the body politic? Who should be excluded and why? These questions have been debated by American politicians and the public since the nation's founding. This course examines how Americans thought and fought about selecting which immigrants should join the nation and how United States immigration and citizenship policy developed from the colonial period through the present. We will consider how migration patterns, immigrant incorporation, and state and federal regulations were shaped as the United States' relationship with the broader world shifted, social norms changed, industrial capitalism developed, and government power expanded.

This course engages scholarship on the history of crime and punishment in America from the colonial period to the recent past. Readings consist of some theory, a handful of primary sources, and mostly secondary readings on such topics as: knowledge production about crime, discipline, and punishment; the history of prisons; carceral labor; penal reform; the relationship of institutionalized punishment to state-building and empire; the role of the illicit economy and incarceration in the making of racial capitalism; prisoners social movements; and the origins of mass incarceration.

What was it like to live in the United States during the Civil War? This course uses the lenses of racial/ethnic identity, gender, class, and geography (among others) to explore the breadth of human experience during this singular moment in American history. It illuminates the varied ways in which Americans, in the Union states and the Confederate states, struggled to move forward and to find meaning in the face of unprecedented division and destruction.

This seminar focuses on the interrelationships between social constructions of race and social interpretations of religion in America. How have assumptions about race shaped religious worldviews? How have religious beliefs shaped racial attitudes? How have ideas about religion and race contributed to notions of what it means to be "American"? We will look at primary and secondary sources and at the historical development of ideas and practices over time.

An introductory course that explores LGBT/Queer social, cultural, and political history in the United States. By analyzing primary documents that range from personal accounts (private letters, autobiography, early LGBT magazines, and oral history interviews) to popular culture (postcards, art, political posters, lesbian pulp fiction, and film) to medical, military, and legal papers, students will understand how the categories of gender and sexuality have changed over the past 150 years. This class investigates the relationship among queer, straight and transgender identities. Seminar discussions will question how the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality influenced the construction of these categories.

War has fundamentally shaped the ways that Americans think about themselves, their fellow Americans, and the meanings of national citizenship. Whatever the extent of American participation, war has transformed how Americans think about other nations, the environment, technology, and the meaning of death and dying. War has also posed challenges of representation, both for those who fought as well as those who did not. Wars and revolutions abroad have likewise played a part in molding American identity. This course examines how Americans have observed, experienced, and thought about modern war and revolution in history, literature, and popular culture. Course themes will include mobilization, protest and dissent, building empire, gender and masculinity, race and xenophobia, the economics of war, coercion and propaganda, war and the environment, and the changing meanings of death and sacrifice. The course begins with the American Civil War, and takes students through the rise of American empire, the world wars, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cold War, Vietnam, and closes with the War on Terror. Students will be introduced to a variety of primary and secondary sources and historical methods directed at probing the paradox of how conflict creates social cohesion, and will be guided by a basic ethical question: how do we live together?

What is conservatism in America? Where did it come from, and where might it be going? Looking at conservatism as a political, social, and intellectual movement, we will consider these questions by reading primary and secondary sources and archival material. Suitable for students of any or no particular political persuasion. No prerequisites or background required, although the reading will be considerable.