HST2513 - Trumpism: An American Biography

HST2513: Trumpism, An American Biography  (20 credits)

20 credits (semester 1)

Module Leader: Dr Andrew Heath (2024-25)



Module Summary


Donald Trump’s election in 2016, commentators claim, was not only unexpected, but unprecedented: a decisive break with more than two centuries of custom. Yet closer scrutiny of American history suggests a Trump presidency may be no aberration. The module will interrogate the U.S. past to better understand the present, looking at the likes of populism as a political language, whiteness as a psychological wage, masculinity as a path to high office, protectionism as an economic policy, and deindustrialization as a spur to politics. By asking historical questions about the roots of Trump’s rise, we will situate the American present in a complex and often painful past.

The module aims to use historical methods and approaches to understand the contemporary United States. We will combine political and social history to explore what some scholars have seen as the roots of Trumpism. This will require us to range widely over the span of American history, going back as far as the Revolutionary era of the late eighteenth century, but also moving forward to the late twentieth century. To ensure you have time to read around the issues we’re exploring, we will spend two weeks on the kind of themes listed in the indicative schedule below, and as we evaluate each method and approach we will use accessible case studies – introduced in lectures a week in advance – to help us think through the questions raised.

Although Trump and the movement that helped to elect him provides a focal point for the module, the unit is not about him, but rather the forces in the American past that made his rise to the presidency possible. By the end of the semester, though, you will have had time to consider whether the historical method provides the long view required to understand our contemporary world.


Assessment

The module uses the regular Level 2 option assessment, except the 2,500 word essay is replaced by a 2,500 word quality magazine article putting a contemporary issue in U.S. politics and culture into historical perspective. One week of the course is devoted to discussing and workshopping the article. Please see this page for assessment details: Level 2 assessment.


Module Aims

The module aims to place contemporary events in historical perspective: how can history help us make sense of Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency and selection as the Republican nominee in 2024? To avoid presentism and polemic, though, the module will emphasise the importance of the historical method, and will aim to engage students with critical interventions in several subfields including critical race theory, the history of political thought, and scholarship on gender and politics. To make these themes more accessible to students, seminars will be built around applied case studies, which will be introduced in lectures a week in advance of discussion. Thus while Trump – and ‘Trumpism’ – provides a common thread for the module, our inquiries will be geared towards asking whether (and if so how) aspects of the Trump phenomenon are rooted in the American past. As the unit does not have a clear chronological framing – some aspects of the course will go back to the late eighteenth century, while others will be more clearly rooted in the post-1945 era – we will spend two weeks on each major theme. Such a sustained focus is designed to ensure that students are engaging at more than a superficial level with the questions and have the requisite background knowledge to learn. The precise coverage of the module may vary each year according to events.