BA English Literature and American Studies

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Between the 1870s and 2020, the US changed dramatically as a nation, while also contributing to the transformation of the international arena. Over the 150 years surveyed by this module, the US became the world’s dominant economy, a nation with considerable military and diplomatic power, and a leading cultural and intellectual force. In myriad ways, America was now in the world, and the world was in America. But this period was also marked by growing uncertainty and division— about where US power should be concentrated, who should wield it and where, and what the country’s relationship to other nations and global events should be. And these debates, about the wider world, and America's entanglements within it, profoundly shaped US politics and society. What role did the US play in the creation of globalization? How exceptional—or unique, and disconnected from the ordinary forces of history—was the US during this century-and-a-half? These were decades characterized by major economic convulsions, new ideas about government and politics, persistent questions about race, rights, and citizenship, and ever-changing outlooks on the relationship between the US and the wider world. The module offers students a broad overview of the political, economic, social and, to a lesser degree, cultural and intellectual history of the US from the late nineteenth to the early decades of the twenty-first century. Students will encounter this material through primary and secondary sources, and the module intends to develop skills for interpreting and synthesizing such varied sources. 

• To offer students, in broad outline, the major themes that shaped the US between the 1870s and 2020s;
• To encourage students to consider the value of American literature, art, music, film and other forms of culture for studying the history of this period;
• To acquaint students with a variety of secondary and primary sources appropriate for the study of this topic;
• To introduce students to some of the most important historiographical debates in this field.

On completion of the course successful students should be able to demonstrate:

• An understanding of the main developments and themes in American history from 1877-1988;


• An appreciation of the ways in which those developments and themes were expressed in, and shaped by, American cultural productions;


• A capacity to find and use a variety of primary and secondary source materials relating to American history during this period;


• Familiarity with some of the important historiographical debates relating to this topic.

Indicative Schedule:

1. Conflict and Contest in the Late Nineteenth Century
2. Rising Racial Consciousness: Jim Crow and Immigration
3. ‘The Citizen or the Dollar’: Agrarian Revolt and the New American Economy
4. The Birth of American Empire
5. Progressivism: Ideas, Reformers and Legislation
6. A World Safe for Democracy? Wilson and WW1
7. The End of Lincoln’s Republic? America before and after the Crash
8. ‘Relief, Recovery, and Reform’: The New Deal
9. Isolation to Hiroshima: Pearl Harbor and WW2
10. ‘The Arsenal of Democracy’: War, Industry, & Race Relations
11. ‘For the Soul of Mankind’: The Early Cold War
12. ‘Grasping the Outlines of New Epochs’: Consumption and Critique at Mid-Century
13. “The Longest Decade of the Twentieth Century”? The Lives and Legacies of the Sixties
14. Vietnam and American Foreign Policy in the 60s
15. America in a Global Age, 1970s-90s
16. Feminism, the Family, and the Culture Wars, 1970s-2010s
17. The Reagan Revolution?
18. Tear Down this Wall’: The Second Cold War
19. Bush, Clinton, and the End of History  
20. A New Gilded Age? Wealth and Power in Contemporary America  
21. The Forever Wars? US Foreign Policy in the 21st Century
 

* Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History (latest edition, 2014)--Purchase
* Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 (New York: 2009).
* John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (2000)—ebook
* Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000 (London: Penguin, 2001)