History/MAS 142

Banned: 9/11 Conspiracy Theories. If you believe that, read Matt Taibbi’s “Great Derangement”

    • Origins of Mayday in US and Mexico—and today?

    • Watergate–the plumbers before and after

    • Anything by Chalmers Johnson, San Diego’s author of the “Nemesis” Trilogy

    • The Students for a Democratic Society

    • 1970 Election in US

    • Any cartel (you pick)

    • Lucy Parsons

    • Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

    • John Reed and the Revolution in Mexico (what’s a revolution?)

    • Santa Anna and the disastrous Treaty

    • The Alamo

    • Narcocorridos

    • Big Bill Haywood and the Russian Revolution

    • Impact of the Russian Revolution in the US and Mexico

    • The Industrial Workers of the World

    • Benito Juarez and the Mexican State

    • Shifting levels of Power of the Roman Catholic Church (either Mexico or US or both)

    • Impact of Geography on the political economy of the US or Mexico or both

    • Huerta and Carranza

    • The Cristero Wars

    • Distribution of hacienda lands to ejidos

    • Nationalizing, then “privatizing,” oil in Mexico

    • The Great Financial Crises of 1929 and 2008–focus on US–either year or both

    • NAFTA and the US and Mexico

    • What were Osama Bin Laden’s goals?

    • What is fascism?

    • The Bracero Programs (see Gil Gonzalez’ book)

    • Gustavo Díaz-Ordaz and the General Strike in Mexico

    • Origins (1965) of the Maquiladora programs and the current state of affairs

    • The dirty wars under Gustavo Díaz-Ordaz

    • Water and Power–the US and Mexico

    • The US Invasion of Grenada

    • My Lai

    • GI Newspapers during the US wars on Vietnam

    • Zapatistas

    • “Empire as a Way of Life” by William Appleman Williams

    • Mexico City: the 1968 Olympics

    • Key events in the US: 1968

    • Black Panther Party

    • Malcolm X

    • Origins of WWI or WWII

    • Mexico: The Corpus Christi Massacre

    • Gulf War One or Two or Both

    • The Origins of the Taliban, Al Quada, AQAP, ISIS (aka Daesh)–any one or all

    • Importance of the collision of the US, NATO, the Ukraine, and Russia

    • The Afghan wars of the USSR and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    • Castro, the US, and Mexico

    • The Bay of Pigs invasion

    • Operation Wurlitzer or Mockingbird or both.

    • Kim Philby, the Cambridge Five, and the CIA

    • MK-ULtra

    • The Lawrence Mass. Textile Strike

    • Joe Hill

    • Joan Baez

    • The IWW Magnon Brothers and Mexico

    • Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

    • COINTELPRO

    • Mexico’s Agriculture: who owns and who works?

    • Mexico’s Maquis: Who owns and who works?

    • Freedom Summer USA (civil rights movement)

    • Former President Fox, a Harvard grad, says “decriminalize drugs.” What sayeth you and why?

    • The state of secularism in Mexico’s schools. What does the Constitution say? The reality?

    • The Calderon/López-Obrador election. Who won and why?

    • The Great Flint Strike Agaist GM

    • The campaign for the 43 disappeared students and the nature of their school

    • Eugene Debs

    • The Palmer Raids

    • B Traven and his Mexico novels

    • Bonus March—Vets after WWI demanding the bonus promised to them. What happened?

    • The AFL-CIO and the CIA

    • Reagan and the PATCO strike

    • The Lemon Grove incident http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/86spring/lemongrove.htm

    • Herbert Marcuse, UCSD, and Ronald Reagan

    • The 1968 SDSU student strike

    • Chicago and the Democratic Convention: 1968

    • Former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman said, “government is a Trojan Horse for the Rich.” Why would he say that. What did he mean? What sayeth you?

    • Inequality in the US and Mexico–one, the other, or both.

    • The DEA, the Justice Department, and Fast and Furious

    • The US and Saudi Arabia

    • The US and Israel

    • Chicano! PBS Documentary - Taking Back The Schools

    • The Grapes of Wrath and the Facts about John Steinbeck

    • Anything by Carey McWilliams, California’s greatest historian (“Factories in the Fields,” etc.)

    • Zoot Suit Riots

    • How does “culture” relate to social class in either the US or Mexico or both?

    • Finance capital versus industrial capital vs working people in the US and or Mexico

    • What is the role of technology as related to social class?

    • American post 911 Torture and the Spanish Inquisition

    • Opposition to WWI

    • Who was Spreckles? Rosecrans? The other founders of San Diego, really? See this book: https://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v55-1/pdf/v55-1roundtable.pdf

    • Wikileaks and Bradley Manning

    • The impact of the Chinese Revolution on the US

    • The impact of the Russian Revolution to the US