Embedded Files
The focus of historical research changed radically during the 1960’s. Before that, historians tended to focus on significant individuals, politics, or military conflicts. In the 1960’s, historians began to ask about the lives of common people. Social historians like Alice Kessler-Harris asked: “Are the value systems [of ordinary Americans] the product of race, class, gender, religion, generation, neighborhood, ethnic background, or some combination of these and other factors?” Social history attempts to answer this complex question.
The methodology of this class is inspired by the French historian Michel Foucault. He called his books “genealogies” that involved a “history of present.” Foucault attempted to explain how the current social and political problems came into being by digging into their past.
The curriculum this semester is organized around historical study of questions from present society which require historical study and perspective to answer fully.
- Why is the conservative movement in this country so powerful? And, why did (some) white working-class voters support Donald Trump for president in 2016?
- Why have white supremacist and nativist movements grown recently in the U.S.?
- Why is abortion such a divisive issue in American politics?
- Why does the Black Lives Matter Movement matter?
Goals of the Class
• answer significant questions in today’s social and political world using historical evidence from past periods;
• identify the broad phases and changes in American culture, economics, and politics from 1900 to the present;
• contextualize major phases through comparative analysis;
• analyze and interpret historical documents and scholarship in service of making arguments about history.
Readings
Readings
Question 1: How did the conservative movement become so powerful after the 1970’s?
Question 1: How did the conservative movement become so powerful after the 1970’s?
GENDER
• “Gender and America’s Right Turn” by Marjorie Spruill in Rightward Bound, eds. Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer.
• Supplementary: Epilogue, Divided We Stand by Marjorie Spruill.
RELIGION
• “The Evangelical Resurgence in 1970’s American Protestantism” by Paul Boyer in Rightward Bound, eds. Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer.
• Supplementary: Epilogue, One Nation Under God by Kevin Kruse.
SUBURBANIZATION
• Chapter 9 in White Flight by Kevin Kruse.
• Supplementary: Epilogue in White Flight by Kevin Kruse.
LABOR
• Chapter 2 in Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank.
• Supplementary: Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore, “The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in American History,” International Labor and Working Class History, 2008, pps. 19-26.
RACE
• “How the Emerging Republican Majority Emerged” By Dov Grohsgal and Kevin Kruse.
• Supplementary: “The American Crossroads” by Ben Fountain
Optional reading
• Thomas Frank, "The Republicans and the Democrats failed blue-collar America," The Guardian, November, 2016.
• Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority” Speech, November 3, 1969.
• NY Times article on the "Hard Hat Riot" (May 9, 1970)
Sub-question: Why do (some) white working class voters support Trump?
Sub-question: Why do (some) white working class voters support Trump?
Perspectives on the problem
• Emma Green, “It Was Cultural Anxiety that Drove White Working Class Voters to Trump,” The Atlantic, May, 2017.
• Robin D.G. Kelley, “After Trump,” Boston Review, November, 2016.
• Kirk Noden, “Why do white working-class people vote against their interests? They don’t." The Nation, November, 2016.
Question #2: Why have white supremacist and nativist movements grown recently in the U.S.?
Question #2: Why have white supremacist and nativist movements grown recently in the U.S.?
• Julia Young, “Making America 1920 Again? Nativism and US Immigration, Past and Present,” Journal on Migration and Human Security (2017)
• Richard Yeselson, “The Return of the 1920’s,” The Atlantic (2015)
• Margaret Peters, “Why did Republicans become so opposed to immigration?” Washington Post (2018)
• John Higham, Strangers in the Land (2008), pages 264-70 and 286-99.
• John McClymer, Defining the KKK of the 1920’s: http://www1.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html
• Adam Serwer, “White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots,” The Atlantic, April 2019.
• Zack Beauchamp, “Why the El Paso Shooting Isn’t an Anomaly,” Vox, August, 2019.
• Stephen Kantrowitz, “White Supremacy Has Always Been Mainstream,” Boston Review, July, 2018.
Question 3: Why is abortion such a divisive issue in American politics?
Question 3: Why is abortion such a divisive issue in American politics?
Perspectives on the Problem
Howard Fineman, “Why US Politics Is Obsessed with Abortion,” Huffington Post, December, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-politics-abortion_us_565e66f1e4b072e9d1c40a72
Ruth Rosen, “Why the Relentless Assault on Abortion in the U.S.?,” In These Times, July, 2013.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/15342/why_the_relentless_assault_on_abortion_in_the_united_states
Lauren Rankin, "Feminism is in. So is misogyny." Dame Magazine, July, 2015.
https://www.damemagazine.com/2015/07/24/feminism-and-so-misogyny
The Women’s Movement
First Generation: https://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/progressiveera/introprogressive.html
Second Generation
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963), chapter 1 and 2.
Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, “Second-wave Feminism,” in A Companion to American Women’s History (2002), ed. Nancy Hewitt.
Contraception and the Sexual Revolution
Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill (2010), chapter 4 and conclusion.
Pro-life/ pro-choice
“Organizing a Clandestine Abortion Service” in Jane: Documents from Chicago’s Clandestine Abortion Services, 1968-1973, pages 13-18.
“From Danger to Dignity: The Fight for a Safe Abortion,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg4B-UmgfG8
Linda Gordon, The Moral Property of Women (2002), 302-320.
National Right to Life Committee (1968): http://www.nrlc.org/about/mission/
Jerry Falwell, Listen America (1980), http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/archive/resources/documents/ch36_02.htm
Michael McVicar, “The Rise of the Religious Right,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia, March 2016. http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-97
Katha Pollitt, Pro (2014), chapter 1.
Gary Wills, “A Country Ruled by Faith,” The New York Review of Books, November 2006.
Michelle Goldberg, Trump the Religious Right’s Trojan Horse, NY Times, January 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-the-religious-rights-trojan-horse.html?_r=0
Marcia Angell, “The Abortion Battlefield, New York Review of Books, June, 2017. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/06/22/the-abortion-battlefield/
Nick Bauman, “The Republican War on Contraception,” Mother Jones, February, 2012. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/republican-war-birth-control-contraception/
Ruth Rosen, “The War against Contraception,” 50.50, February, 2014. https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/ruth-rosen/war-against-contraception-%E2%80%9Cwomen-need-to-be-liberated-from-their-libidos
Question 4: Does the Black Lives Matter Movement matter?
Question 4: Does the Black Lives Matter Movement matter?
Perspectives on the Problem
Fredrick Harris, “The Next Civil Right Movement?,” Dissent, Summer, 2015: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/black-lives-matter-new-civil-rights-movement-fredrick-harris
Peniel Joseph, “Why Black Lives Matter Still Matters,” New Republic, April 2017: https://newrepublic.com/article/141700/black-lives-matter-still-matters-new-form-civil-rights-activism
Katie Nodjimbadem, “The Long, Painful History of Police Brutality in the US, Smithsonian.com, July, 2017: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/long-painful-history-police-brutality-in-the-us-180964098/
Mapping Police Violence Database: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
The Civil Rights Movement
Manning Marable, Race, Reform, Rebellion (1984), chapters 4 and 5.
James Foreman, The Making of a Black Revolutionary (1997), chapters 30 and 44.
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” April, 1964: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-ballot-or-the-bullet/
Black Panther Party Ten Point Plan: http://nhdblackpantherparty.weebly.com/ten-point-plan.html
The 1980’s through 2008
Manning Marable, "Jackson and the Rise of the Rainbow Coalition," New Left Review, January, 1985.
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (2010), Introduction, chapters 1 and 4.
Ava DuVernay, The 13th (2016)
Black Lives Matter
Robin Kelley, “What does Black Lives Matter want?,” Boston Review, August, 2016. http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/robin-d-g-kelley-movement-black-lives-vision
Black Lives Matter Platform: https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation (2016), pages 153-158.
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