HIST 209: Introductory Colloquium in United States History since 1865
(Fitz Brundage).
History 209B is the second semester of the two-course sequence for first-year graduate students in US history. The purpose of the class is to familiarize students with some of the important scholarship on and themes in American history since 1865. History 209B will be conducted in a seminar/discussion format with weekly discussions of shared assigned readings as well as presentations by students of relevant supplementary readings. Though designed for Americanists, the course is also appropriate for other graduate students who desire an introduction to US history. The course should provide you with some of the knowledge and skills that you will need to write your Ph.D. exams and perhaps to refine your dissertation topic.
Students can expect to read the equivalent of one book each week, to make several oral presentations to the class, to write review essays (one of which will be a "traditional" 750 word review and the other will be a 5-7 page review essay), and to write a longer essay (15-20 pages) on a historiographical topic of your choosing. The assigned reading may include Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State; Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 or Ellen DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage; David Kennedy, Over Here; Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism or Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: the Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion; Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy; Lary May, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War; Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit; John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi; James Miller, Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago or Dominick Cavallo, A Fiction of the Past: The Sities in American History; Thomas Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics or Dan Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994. Students who enroll in the course are welcome to suggest assigned readings.