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November 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Half a century on, our visually saturated culture remains besotted with images of the youthful president and his strikingly photogenic family. But the passage of time has also yielded new perspectives on Kennedy's presidency and on his era. November 22, 1963 may well come to be remembered not only as the day when the life of a promising young leader was violently cut short, but also as the pivot between two distinct eras in American history. Ironically, though Kennedy was the first World War II veteran to reach the White House, his death heralded the end of the long postwar season of national pride, optimism, confidence, and widely shared prosperity¿and may have opened the road to the great catastrophe that was the Vietnam War. His passing also helped to pry open the portals to historic changes in the lives of millions of African Americans, as witnessed by Lyndon Johnson's artful invocation of the fallen president to bring about passage of the epic civil rights legislation of the late 1960s. nnThis course will examine the postwar domestic and international settings in which Kennedy rose to and exercised power. It will probe our continuing fascination with his character and with his family; his role as a Cold Warrior, especially in the tense confrontation known as the Cuban Missile Crisis; and his relation to the African American struggle to bury Jim Crow. We will conclude with an assessment of the longer-term historical consequence of his brief moment in the arenas of celebrity and power. Guest speakers will include noted Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek; Johnson biographer Bruce Schulman; Taylor Branch, acclaimed biographer of Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Stanford's own Jennifer Burns, historian of modern America.

In 1905 Jane Stanford died of strychnine poisoning. Who may have killed her remains unknown. For this seminar, you will become collaborative historians and journalists to research the case and create investigative audio podcast much like WBEZ Serial. Building on research by a previous freshman seminary, you will together you will examine suspects, circumstances, and the often odd actions of central figures and then build an audio story out of interviews, archival materials, and sound recordings. In your (application?) explain your interest, and any experience with, podcasting.

This course examines major transformations in American law brought about by the momentous social and political movements of the mid- to late 20th Century: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and its expansion after World War II; the "Rights Revolution" of 1954-75 that granted new rights to equality and protection from arbitrary treatment to blacks, women, aliens, criminal defendants and others; and finally the fierce political reaction to liberal policies in which the modern conservative movements arose and came to power.

The 2016 Presidential Election season has been anything but ordinary. So much in the Democratic and Republican primaries consistently defied conventional wisdom and upended the predictions of experts. This course will attempt, with the help of distinguished guests, to make sense of an election that defies all historical precedent and to take stock of the health of American democracy.nClass is jointly offered for Continuing Studies students and Stanford students. As a 1 unit, online course for Stanford students, enrollment is unlimited. Registration for the course offers online access to a livestream of each class session, participation in online discussions, access to course website and materials, and admission to a lottery for attending each class in person.

Preference to freshmen. We will examine the struggles of African American women to define their own lives and improve the social, economic, political and cultural conditions of black communities. Topics will include women¿s enslavement and freedom, kinship and family relations, institution and community building, violence, labor and leisure, changing gender roles, consumer and beauty culture, social activism, and the politics of sexuality.

Preference to sophomores. African American women have been placed on the periphery of many historical documents. This course will encourage students to think critically about historical sources and to use creative and rigorous historical methods to recover African American women¿s experiences. Drawing largely on primary sources such as letters, personal journals, literature and film, this course explores the everyday lives of African American women in 19th- and 20th-century America. We will begin in our present moment with a discussion of Michelle Obama and then we will look back on the lives and times of a wide range of African American women including: Charlotte Forten Grimké, a 19th-century reformer and teacher; Nella Larsen, a Harlem Renaissance novelist; Josephine Baker, the expatriate entertainer and singer; and Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker, two luminaries of civil rights activism. We will examine the struggles of African American women to define their own lives and improve the social, economic, political and cultural conditions of black communities. Topics will include women¿s enslavement and freedom, kinship and family relations, institution and community building, violence, labor and leisure, changing gender roles, consumer and beauty culture, social activism, and the politics of sexuality.

Few events in American history match the significance of the Civil War, a conflict that freed 4 million people held in bondage and left 750,000 men dead. This course will explore the war from a range of perspectives, including those of Union and Confederate soldiers, African Americans, women, and Native Americans. Based on the documents these different groups left behind, as well as the histories they inspired, we will seek to understand how the Civil War was experienced and commemorated. Priority given to history majors and minors.

This discussion class will explore a series of social movements in modern America through the songs produced to support efforts to achieve labor unions, civil rights and racial justice, peace, and women's rights. For each class we will read short historical texts to provide contexts for the movements and then concentrate on the role of music within them. We will listening to and discuss several core songs for each topic. Biographical and autobiographical readings on a key set of musicians (including Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds, and Bernice Johnson Reagon) will provide personal accounts of the relationship of songs to social movement . The music we include in class will range from ballads to anthems, from oral traditions to the work of singer-songwriters.

Are we living in a new Gilded Age? To answer this question, we go back to the original Gilded Age, as well as its successor, the Progressive Era. How did urban Americans around the turn of the twentieth century deal with stark inequalities of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And what can we learn from their struggles for our own time? Students use primary and secondary sources in digital and print formats. Possible field trip to San Francisco.