COURSE DETAIL
This course explores major themes, patterns, developments, and conflicts in American history, politics, and society, from the pre-colonial era to the present day. Drawing on a range of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources, both historical and contemporary, it outlines phases, continuities, and changes in the nation’s history, identifies key ideologies and institutions, introduces theories and analytical methods that shed light on the nation’s development, and highlights how understandings of the present-day United States call for an informed, critical knowledge of its past. The course includes topics such as liberty and equality, individualism and community, nationalism and regionalism, self-reliance and welfare, business and labor, slavery and race, immigration and identity, ethnicity and gender, domestic reform and overseas expansion, and hot and cold wars. It also addresses the growth of the United States from its origins as a British colonial outpost to its contemporary status as global superpower. In addition, the course enables students to produce written work on topics within its subject areas.