RECENT AMERICA 1945 - Present
Course Description: Recent America will cover the history of the United States from 1945 to the present. This course is designed to further students’ knowledge of modern U.S. history, beginning with the post-World War II era and continuing to the present day. Students will study the political, social, and economic consequences of U.S. policy and culture during the Cold War, Civil Rights Movement, the loss of confidence in the American presidency in the-1970’s, the rise of the Reagan Conservative Movement, the Persian Gulf War, the Clinton Presidency, the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. Students will examine the role the U.S. plays in world affairs and how the political, economic, and cultural climates of the U.S. affect the increasingly global world.
World War II created a new world at home and abroad. Never again could Americans treat the worlds of domestic and foreign affairs as separate. The postwar years would be defined by the contest between democracy and communism led by the two superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union. The atomic bomb transformed the stakes of that confrontation and with it domestic policy and the limits of liberty. From 1946 through the 1980s, the Cold War cast a shadow over every facet of American life. Yet, paradoxically, it also created possibility. How was it that a nation committed to freedom and democracy could so baldly deny basic civil liberties and opportunity to African Americans? In an arms race with no holds barred, could America afford to send women home to fulfill “the feminine mystique”? The fight for racial, and, in turn gender equality, the politics of identity which they inspired, are crucial to the larger story of U. S. history in the second half of the Twentieth Century.
The unprecedented era of economic prosperity ushered in by World War II spread the fruits of the American Dream more broadly than ever before and made it possible to believe that poverty itself could be eliminated. That dream was both fueled by the Cold War and ultimately sacrificed to it. It was in the wake of World War II that America became the ultimate consumer society. That transformation meant, among other things, that the social and political convulsions of the era would be brought into homes across the nation. Through the medium of television, Americans witnessed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as he rode in a motorcade down a street in Dallas in November 1963; they witnessed mobs of whites attacking Freedom Riders in Alabama; they witnessed scenes of American carnage and devastation from halfway across the globe in Southeast Asia. Television transformed American culture and transformed as well the social movements of the era and national policy. Paradoxically, the domestic analogue to the “fall” of communism in the 1980s has been a resurgent conservatism.
The years from the end of World War II through the end of the century were marked by drama, possibility, tragedy, and, above all change. In the next fifteen weeks we will try to cover as much as we can. From assassinations to impeachment, from Korea to Southeast Asia, from civil rights to women’s rights, from the environmental movement to the consumer movement, we will explore and debate the key developments and important themes in U. S. history in the second half of the Twentieth Century. We will consider how a transformation in the American historical profession spawned by these movements itself means that the questions we ask, and the history we read is different. Most of our reading will be in primary sources -- speeches, articles, letters, photographs, court opinions, and television clips -- the actual “stuff” of history and from which history is written. Ask questions of the sources we read, of yourself and each other, participate, have fun, and be troubled. It is by engaging the past that we develop a sense of who we are today.
Course Description: Recent America will cover the history of the United States from 1945 to the present. This course is designed to further students’ knowledge of modern U.S. history, beginning with the post-World War II era and continuing to the present day. Students will study the political, social, and economic consequences of U.S. policy and culture during the Cold War, Civil Rights Movement, the loss of confidence in the American presidency in the-1970’s, the rise of the Reagan Conservative Movement, the Persian Gulf War, the Clinton Presidency, the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. Students will examine the role the U.S. plays in world affairs and how the political, economic, and cultural climates of the U.S. affect the increasingly global world.
World War II created a new world at home and abroad. Never again could Americans treat the worlds of domestic and foreign affairs as separate. The postwar years would be defined by the contest between democracy and communism led by the two superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union. The atomic bomb transformed the stakes of that confrontation and with it domestic policy and the limits of liberty. From 1946 through the 1980s, the Cold War cast a shadow over every facet of American life. Yet, paradoxically, it also created possibility. How was it that a nation committed to freedom and democracy could so baldly deny basic civil liberties and opportunity to African Americans? In an arms race with no holds barred, could America afford to send women home to fulfill “the feminine mystique”? The fight for racial, and, in turn gender equality, the politics of identity which they inspired, are crucial to the larger story of U. S. history in the second half of the Twentieth Century.
The unprecedented era of economic prosperity ushered in by World War II spread the fruits of the American Dream more broadly than ever before and made it possible to believe that poverty itself could be eliminated. That dream was both fueled by the Cold War and ultimately sacrificed to it. It was in the wake of World War II that America became the ultimate consumer society. That transformation meant, among other things, that the social and political convulsions of the era would be brought into homes across the nation. Through the medium of television, Americans witnessed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as he rode in a motorcade down a street in Dallas in November 1963; they witnessed mobs of whites attacking Freedom Riders in Alabama; they witnessed scenes of American carnage and devastation from halfway across the globe in Southeast Asia. Television transformed American culture and transformed as well the social movements of the era and national policy. Paradoxically, the domestic analogue to the “fall” of communism in the 1980s has been a resurgent conservatism.
The years from the end of World War II through the end of the century were marked by drama, possibility, tragedy, and, above all change. In the next fifteen weeks we will try to cover as much as we can. From assassinations to impeachment, from Korea to Southeast Asia, from civil rights to women’s rights, from the environmental movement to the consumer movement, we will explore and debate the key developments and important themes in U. S. history in the second half of the Twentieth Century. We will consider how a transformation in the American historical profession spawned by these movements itself means that the questions we ask, and the history we read is different. Most of our reading will be in primary sources -- speeches, articles, letters, photographs, court opinions, and television clips -- the actual “stuff” of history and from which history is written. Ask questions of the sources we read, of yourself and each other, participate, have fun, and be troubled. It is by engaging the past that we develop a sense of who we are today.