HIST 5124: U.S. History since 1877
CRN 17173, Tuesday, 2:00-4:50 p.m.
Spring 2008
Instructor: Dr. Mark V. Barrow, Jr.
Office: 432 Major Williams; E-mail: barrow@vt.edu
Office Hours: T, Th, 11:00-12:00 noon, and by appt.
Phone: 231-4099 (o); 552-5876 (h)
URL: http://www.history.vt.edu/Barrow/hist5124/
Listserv: HIST5124_17173@listserv.vt.edu
Course Objective:
This course explores major themes, critical issues, and core literature in United States history from 1877 to the present. Through readings, discussions, and writing assignments, students will develop the skills needed to evaluate the work of fellow historians while honing their own writing, discussion, and research skills. At the same time, the course provides a useful foundation for those who will teach a U.S. history survey course to secondary students or undergraduates.
This course is reading intensive. Each week we will not only read a book (usually a monograph) but also one or two scholarly articles or book chapters that provide a theoretical, historiographical, and/or methodological framework for the assigned book. In making decisions about which readings to include from the large body of literature in the field, I have tried a strike a balance between a small number of studies that are now generally regarded as classics (e.g., Kathy Peiss's Cheap Amusements) and a much larger number of books introducing recent trends in the field (e.g., the growing interest in cultural history and transnational history). I have also sought to achieve a broad chronological coverage and to pick books that are generally considered good reads.
Required Readings:
The following required books are available from the University Bookstore, Volume Two Bookstore, and the Tech Bookstore. They are also available at the reserve desk (for two-day checkout) and through various online booksellers (e.g., amazon.com, bookfinder.com, bn.com), which often offer discounts or have less expensive used copies available. In addition to the books listed below, I will post the "framework" articles online or pass them out in class.
Course Requirements:
1. Class participation. This is a
reading- and discussion-based course, so obviously full participation is
critical to its success. Everyone
is expected to attend each scheduled class meeting, to carefully and critically
read all assigned material (including the questions posted by discussion
anchors) before coming to class, and to actively participate in our
deliberations.
2. Short Weekly Analytical
Papers (SWAPs). To sharpen writing skills, help focus ideas, and facilitate
discussion, each week each participant will turn in a short (ca. 1 p., double
spaced) analytical paper centered on the reading for that week. Weekly analytical papers may assess the
strengths and weaknesses of the assigned reading, respond to its major
arguments, evaluate its thesis or use of evidence, critically examine its
theoretical and/or methodological frameworks, relate it to other readings for
the course (assigned or recommended), or (preferably) some combination of these
approaches. Simple summaries will
not suffice; these weekly papers must come to terms with the significance of
the reading. Regardless of the
particular strategy adopted for doing this, papers should also be concise, well
written, carefully proofread, and demonstrate a thorough command of the
assigned reading. SWAPs will not
receive an individual letter grade (I use a less-formal check/check+/ check-
evaluation system), but they will count toward the participation component of
your final grade. We may also
occasionally do peer evaluations of SWAPs.
3. Discussion Anchors. On most weeks
one or two volunteers (depending on the final size of the class) will be
responsible for leading class discussion.
Discussion anchors are expected to be especially familiar with the
reading for the week, to compose a brief set of questions to help guide our
discussions, to provide a brief introduction to the discussion (no more than
ca. 5 minutes), and to locate a minimum of four published book reviews of the
reading assignment that they will incorporate into the discussion. Discussion anchors must post a set of
broad discussion questions (which should be jointly constructed when there are
two anchors) on the class listserv no later than twenty-four hours before class
(you will have to use your Virginia Tech e-mail account to submit items to the
class listserv). During class they
will not only lead discussion, but also be available to answer questions, share
resources, and summarize major arguments of the reading.
4. Short Critical Book Reviews. Each student
will write three critical reviews (3-4 pp., double-spaced, ca. 750-1000 words
each) of a given week's book. The
due dates for these reviews are listed on the course schedule, below. On days when critical reviews are due,
no one needs to write a weekly analytical paper, but discussion anchors should
still submit a list of discussion questions to the class listserv. Late papers will be penalized by having
points deducted from them. We'll
talk more about what these reviews should look like later in class.
5. Essay Review. The final
writing assignment is a longer (ca. 6-8 pp., double-spaced) critical essay
review of a recent book on modern American history, chosen in consultation with
the instructor. The review should
not only assess the strengths and weaknesses of the book in question, but it
should also properly "place" it in the historiography. In preparation for the essay review
(and so we can all learn more about recent scholarship in the field), on the
last day of class each student will make a short presentation on their book. The final assignment is due on
Thursday, May 1, by 5:00 p.m.
Grades:
The final grade for the course
will be based on the following formula:
• Participation (including weekly analytical papers)
40%
• Discussion Anchors
10%
• Critical reviews (3 @ 10 % each)
30%
• Final Essay Review
20%
Honor System:
Students are expected to follow
the Virginia Tech Graduate Honor Code for all assignments. While I don't mind if you collaborate
with others or look at published material related to the assigned readings
(in fact, I strongly encourage both of these things), ultimately the ideas
you express in your writing and presentations should be your own or be properly
attributed. Otherwise we would
all be forced to live in world of deceit and distrust that most of us would
prefer not to inhabit.
A Final Word:
The above discussion sounds more
formal than I would like, but I think it's important to make the ground rules
clear at the outset. What I want
to say now is that I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to read,
ponder, and discuss with you some important scholarship from a field in which
I am passionately interested. I
also want you to know that I am here to help you learn. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, concerns,
difficulties related to this course, or even if you just want to chat about
the issues it raises. I know
that approaching a professor can be intimidating for some, but I want to assure
you that I enjoy meeting with students and I do everything I possible to make
myself accessible to them.
SCHEDULE:
GETTING ORIENTED
Week 1: January 15
Introduction
Week 2: January 22
Historiography
Framework:
none
Major Reading:
Peter Charles Hoffer, Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, FraudÑAmerican History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).
Other Reading:
Ron Robin, Scandals and Scoundrels: Seven Cases That Shook the Academy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
Ian Tyrell, Historians in Public: The Practice of American History, 1890-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
Ellen Fitzpatrick, History's Memory: Writing AmericaÕs Past, 1880-1980 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Englehardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Henry Holt, 1996).
Eric Foner, Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002).
Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1997).
AN INDUSTRIALIZING
NATION
Week 3: January 29
Industrialization and Labor
Framework:
David Brody, "Workers and Work in America: The New Labor History," in James B. Gardner and George Rollie Adams, eds., Ordinary People and Everyday Life: Perspectives on the New Social History (Nashville, Tenn.: American Association for State and Local History, 1983), 139-155.
Major Reading:
James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America (New York: Pantheon, 2006).
Other Reading:
Paul Averich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992).
Sharon Smith, Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006).
David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983).
Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American Working-Class History (New York: Vintage, 1977).
Melvin Dubofsky, Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865-1920 (Wheeling, Ill.: Harland Davis, 1996).
Week 4: February 5
Progressive Reform
Framework:
Thomas Bender, "Introduction: Historians, Nation, and the Plentitude of Narratives," in Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 2-21. [University of California Press website, http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9525.html/]
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, "An Overview of the Progressive Era," and "Historians Ask, ÔWho Were the Progressives?," in Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, ed., Who Were the Progressives? (New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2002), 3-24.
Major Reading:
Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), specific pages TBA.
Other Reading:
Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).
Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: Free Press, 1963).
Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1983).
Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988).
Royn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955).
Week 5: February 12
Gender and Culture
Critical Book Review #1 Due
Framework:
T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90, no. 3 (June 1985): 567-593. [JSTOR]
Linda Kerber, "Gender," in Anthony Mohlo and Gordon S. Wood, eds., Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 41-58.
Major Reading:
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986).
Other Reading:
Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984).
Nan Endstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998).
Lauren Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Culture Turn-Of-The-Century Chicago (New York: Rutgers University Press, 1998).
Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon, 1998).
David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993).
Week 6: February 19
Race in the New South
Framework:
Peter Kolchin, "Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America," Journal of American History 89, no. 1 (2002): 154-173. [Project Muse]
Major Reading:
Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (New York: Pantheon, 1998).
Other Reading:
David Roediger, Working toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Become White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005).
David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1998).
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (New York: Routledge, 1998).
Jennifer Rittenhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow: The Racial Socialization of Black and White Southern Children, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995).
Ian Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: NYU Press, 1996).
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966).
Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
MODERN AMERICA
Week 7: February 26
Science, Sexuality, and the State
Framework:
Frank Dikštter, "Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the
History of Eugenics," American Historical Review 103, no. 2 (April 1998): 467-478. [JSTOR]
Major Reading:
Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
Other Reading:
Joanna Schoen, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Abortion, and Sterilization in Public Health and Welfare (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
Wendy Kline, Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
Mark Largent, Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States (Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007).
Edward J. Larson, Science, Race, and Sex: Eugenics in the Deep South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
Christine Rosen, Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985).
Week 8: March 4
Spring Break
Week 9: March 11
Science, Religion, and the Law
Framework:
Robert A. Ferguson, "Chapter One: Where Courtrooms and Communities Meet," in The Trial in American Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/243252.html]
Paula S. Fass, "Making and Remaking an Event: The Leopold and Loeb Case in American Culture,Ó Journal of American History 80 (December 1993): 919Ð951. [JSTOR]
Major Reading:
Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1998).
Other Reading:
Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, expanded ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
Peter J. Bowler, Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007).
Edward J. Larson, Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Michael Lienesch, In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995).
Stanley Coben, Rebellion against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
David Joseph Goldberg, Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
Week 10: March 18
Race and the Politics of Resistance
Framework:
Robin D. G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History 80 (June 1993): 75-112. [JSTOR]
Major Reading:
Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).
Other Reading:
James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
James N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Robin D. G. Kelley, Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994).
Kimberly L. Phillips, AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-1945 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
Victoria W. Wolcott, Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
James S. Hirsch, Riot and Remembrance: America's Worst Race Riot and Its Legacy (Boston: Mariner Books, 2003).
William M. Tuttle, Race Riot: Chicago and the Red Summer of 1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996).
Week 11: March 25
The New Deal
Critical Book Review #2 Due
Framework:
Bernstein, Barton J. "The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform," in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York: Pantheon, 1968), 63-88.
William Leuchtenberg, "The Achievements of the New Deal," in Howard Sitkoff, ed., Fifty Years Later: The New Deal Evaluated (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 211-31.
Major Reading:
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).
Other Reading:
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).
David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
William E. Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).
Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Joseph Scharz, The New Dealers: Power Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).
POSTWAR FERMENT
Week 12: April 1
The Cold War at Home
Framework:
Kimmo Ahonen, "Anticommunism in the 1950s: Post-Cold War Interpretations," in Ausma Cimdina and Jonathan Osmond, eds., Power and Culture: Hegemony, Interaction, and Dissent (Pisa: PLUS-Pisa University Press, 2006), 117-131. [http://www.cliohres.net/books/2/08_Ahonen.pdf]
Major Reading:
Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998).
Other Reading:
David Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005).
Richard Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Tom Wicker, Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy (New York: Harcourt, 2006).
Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970).
John Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005).
Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001).
Week 13: April 8
The Post-War Consumer Culture
Framework:
Susan Strasser, "Making Consumption Conspicuous: Transgressive Topics Go Mainstream," Technology and Culture 43 (October 2002): 755-770. [Project Muse]
Major Reading:
Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).
Other Reading:
Daniel Horowitz, The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939-1979 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004).
Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
Daniel Thomas Cook, The Commodification of Childhood: The Children's Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).
Charles F. McGovern, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
Susan Strasser, et al., eds., Getting and Spending: American and European Consumer Society in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Week 14: April 15
The Long Sixties
Framework:
Rick Perlstein, "Who Owns the Sixties?: The Opening of a Scholarly Generation Gap," Lingua Franca (May/June 1996). [http://linguafranca.mirror.theinto.org/9605/sixties.html]
Alan Petigny, "Resisting the Complacency Narrative: Sixties Social Unrest and Its Relation to the 1950s," Reviews in American History 34, no. 2 (2006): 238-43. [Project Muse]
Major Reading:
Mark H. Lytle, America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other Reading:
Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987).
Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: Civil War of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
James Miller, "Democracy in the Streets": From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1987).
Kenneth Heinemann, Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities (New York: NYU Press, 1992).
David Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958-c.1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
David Chalmers, And the Crooked Made Straight: The Struggle for Social Change in the 1960s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1991).
William Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
Week 15: April 22
The New Conservatism
Critical Book Review #3
Framework:
Alan Brinkley, "The Problem of American Conservatism" and comments, American Historical Review 99, no. 2 (April 1994): 409-52. [JSTOR]
Major Reading:
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Other Reading:
Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Matthew B. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Gil Troy, Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001).
Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1995).
Jonathan Schoewald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Week 14: April 29
Presentation on Recent Book in Modern American History
Due
May 1, by 5:00 p.m.
Final Essay Review Due