History 444E

Hello History 444:

Your final papers (with your grades for the course attached) are now available to be picked up in the Centre for American Studies office (SSC 1003), which is open every weekday from 9:30 am - 1:30 pm. Sorry for the long delay. Comments on them are brief - nothing like the feedback on the rough drafts - but if you would like to talk more about my feedback, email me and we can set up a time to meet.

If you have left London already you can of course get your final mark from the registrar - but if you would like me to mail you your paper, send me your postal address.

I hope your exams and other courses have gone well. Thanks for all your work and interest over the course of the year. Have a great summer and good luck with whatever comes next!

Our last class will be less structured than our regular classes (and we will probably not use the full two hours). Readings and comments are both optional, but it is still a regular class and I do expect you to attend. You will of course be handing in your final papers; you will also have the opportunity to fill out the course evaluation forms; and then we will spend some time discussing what lies ahead for the United States, in particular the 2008 presidential election. [Read more →]

NOUS SOMMES TOUS AMÉRICAINS
–front page headline, Le Monde (Paris), September 12, 2001

In our second-to-last class, we will be talking about the United States’ place in the world in the twenty-first century, with particular reference to the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the subsequent war on terror, and the ongoing war in Iraq. Our readings all come from the PDF below.
[Read more →]

Please note I have made one addition to the primary sources I posted yesterday for next week’s class: this speech by Barack Obama (link is to New York Times transcript and video of the speech) in Philadelphia yesterday, addressing concerns about the remarks of his pastor Jeremiah Wright and the topic of race in America more generally. Please read as much of the speech or watch as much of the video (it is 38 minutes long) as you can; excerpts do not really do it justice. Normally I wouldn’t add extra reading (or viewing) in mid-week, and I imagine this looks suspiciously like an endorsement, but for a presidential candidate to make a speech about race in America this elegant and informed on the very day I’m posting our readings about race in America seems like a coincidence and opportunity for discussion too big to ignore.

Please add your comments to yesterday’s post with all the readings rather than here. Thanks. Have a great week!

People, I just want to say, you know, can’t we all get along?
–Rodney King, on the third day of the Los Angeles riots, 1992

Way back in September, we had a class on the topic of race and ethnicity in the turn of the century United States. Next week we will return to this topic at the turn of the 21st century. Your readings will be the Epilogue of Gerstle’s American Crucible, the Epilogue of Rosenberg’s Divided Lives, and the following short PDFs.

[Read more →]

We’re facing twenty-five years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that?
–Wired magazine, 1997

Next week we will be trying to put into historical context the politics, economics, and prosperity of the 1990s–in particular the internet boom, the New Economy, and market-driven globalization. Please read Chapter 11 and the Epilogue of Kazin’s Populist Persuasion, plus the following sources.

[Read more →]

Nuclear weapons are irrational devices. There is no security to be found in nuclear weapons. It’s a fool’s game. … Deterrence was a formula for disaster. We escaped disaster by the grace of God.
–General George Lee Butler, commander, U.S. Strategic Air Command

On March 10, we will be discussing the end of the Cold War. Please read Chapter 8 and the brief conclusion of Ninkovich’s Wilsonian Century, along with the following two PDFs. [Read more →]

Government growing beyond our consent has become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom.
–Ronald Reagan

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.
–Ronald Reagan

When we return from Conference Week on March 3, we will be talking about the New Right and its political victories in the 1970s and 80s. Our readings are Chapter 10 of Kazin’s Populist Persuasion, Chapter 7 of Rosenberg’s Divided Lives, and the following PDF.
[Read more →]

One of the first things we discover … is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time.
–Carol Hanisch, 1969

Next week we will discuss the feminist movement in the 1960s and 70s, and the rise more generally of what are variously called personal, identity, or cultural politics. The reading for next week is Chapter 6 of Rosenberg’s Divided Lives and the following primary sources, but I would also like to return to the second half of Chapter 8 in Gerstle’s American Crucible, which we read a few weeks ago but didn’t spend much time on, so I’d like you to look over pp. 327-345 of Gerstle again as well.

[Read more →]

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
–W.B. Yeats

On February 4, we will discuss some political and cultural aftershocks of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, focusing on the breakdown of the liberal consensus that dominated American politics from the days of Franklin Roosevelt to the days of Lyndon Johnson, and the emergence, by the early 1970s, of a New Left and a New Right. Our readings are Chapters 8 and 9 of Kazin’s Populist Persuasion, and the following short readings.
[Read more →]