HIST 411 - The Making of Modern America, 1918-1945

2020-2021 Catalog Year

Credit(s): 4
Lecture: 4
Non-Lecture: 0
In this course, students will explore the major issues, transformations, contests, and conflicts of the early to mid-twentieth century. Rather than privileging one set of historical actors over others, we will do our best to try to understand how a number of women and men, from businessmen and presidents to immigrants and African Americans, affected historical change during their lives. We will pay close attention to the changing racial landscape, the crisis of capitalism, the rise of consumerism, the debate over religion and science, the contested meanings of American and Americanism, the rise of the welfare state, and the influence of World War Two on American institutions and identities. In this course, then, we will not develop one grand narrative to explain the United States between the wars. Rather, we will explore a number of competing narratives that will allow us to deal with the complexity of this era and the people who made it.

Prerequisite(s): HIST 302 (HIST 301 also recommended).
Offered: Not on a regular basis
Program Attribute: HAMR