Course Overview
This class will present a study of post World War I United States that extends through World War II -- the age of prosperity, depression, and war. The class will explore general trends in political and social history, such as immigration restriction, the New Deal, and World War II, as well as specific watershed events such as the Scopes Trial, the Dust Bowl, and the Zoot Suit riots. Students will examine these events through secondary literature and a variety of online primary sources, including newspaper articles, films, music recordings, radio programs, photographs, advertisements, and posters.
Assessment
Successful completion of the course depends, most basically, on regular attendance in class, evidence of preparation and application, active participation in class discussions based on close readings of the required texts, and completion of all exercises and assignments on time.
1. Class participation. Includes one in-class presentation on a required reading and ongoing active engagement with course concepts and discussions. - 20%
2. Research assignment. 3 pages. - 30% - Due Oct. 17
3. Book review. Students will be required to read a book on one of the topics of the course and relate it to relevant materials discussed in class. I recommend several books for review along with the readings for each class. 3 pages. - 20% - Due Nov. 9
4. Take-home final. Students will choose 2 of the 4 possible questions and write 4 pages answering each question. 8 pages total. - 30% - Due Dec. 12
Policies and Procedures
Attendance: More than two unexcused absences will affect your final grade. Make sure to let me know in advance if you cannot make it to class.
Deadlines: I will not accept late work without a very good reason (e.g. a signed note from your doctor). The only exception is if you have made a prior arrangement with me for an extended deadline.
Grading: I will grade assignments according to the Department of History grading norms, available at http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/history/Department_Grading_Norms.html. Please read these guidelines carefully. For A level work make sure to do all of the following: answer all components of the assigned question; provide an introduction and a conclusion; and include at least two examples to illustrate each point you make.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is an affront to me and to your peers. Plagiarism is submitting work that is not your own as if it were yours. This includes copying material, even a few sentences, from published or unpublished sources, from the internet, or from another student without citing the source. It also includes presenting another person's ideas or paraphrasing the work of another person without citing the source. Plagiarism also includes handing in bought papers, papers obtained from free essay websites, or having another person write your paper for you. Anyone suspected of copying other people's work without clear acknowledgement, or of any comparable act, will be reported to the Faculty of Arts and Science for plagiarism.
Syllabus: I reserve the right to make changes to the syllabus during the year if/as necessary. Please check the online syllabus before every class.
Learning disabilities: I am very supportive of students with learning disabilities. However, I cannot help you unless I know about it in advance. If you have a learning disability, please tell me as soon as possible. If you only suspect you may have a learning disability, have yourself assessed now. I cannot help students who only tell me they have a learning disability after they have done poorly in the course.
Required texts: For the first third of the class, all readings are available online. For the remainder of the course, the Course Reading Packet will be available at the campus bookstore. Each week you will also be required to examine closely several online primary sources.
Schedule
I. 1920s - The Age of Prosperity
Sept. 7 Course Introduction. Download slides.
Sept. 12 1919 and the Red Scare. Download slides.
Reading
Online essay with primary documents at http://elenarazlogova.org/hist395/freespeech/
Recommended for Review
William M Tuttle, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York: Atheneum, 1970).
Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (President's Research Committee on Social Trends. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955).
Sept. 14 Race and Immigration Restriction Download slides.
Reading
Mae M. Ngai, "The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924," Journal of American History 86 (June 1999), 67-92.
Recommended for Review
Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Ian F. Haney Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color : European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Sept. 19 The Klan Download slides.
Reading
Kathleen M. Blee, "Women in the 1920s' Ku Klux Klan Movement," Feminist Studies 17 (Spring 1991), 57-77. Read online
Primary documents at http://elenarazlogova.org/hist395/klan/klan.html
Recommended for Review
Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992).
Leonard J. Moore, Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Sept. 21 The Great Migration and African-American Culture Download slides.
Reading
David Suisman, "Co-workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Black Swan Records and the Political Economy of African American Music," Journal of American History (March 2004). Read online
Primary documents at http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/teaching/2004_03/ex2.shtml and http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/teaching/2004_03/sources.shtml
Recommended for Review
David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
Nathan Irving Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).
Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Vintage, 1991).
Sept. 26 The Rise of Big Business Download slides.
Reading
Roland Marchand, "The Corporation Nobody Knew: Bruce Barton, Alfred Sloan, and the Founding of the General Motors 'Family,'" Business History Review 65 (Winter 1991), 825-875. Read online
Recommended for Review
Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1993).
Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1977).
Sept. 28 The Mass Media and the Working Class Download slides.
Reading
Lizabeth Cohen, "Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920s," American Quarterly 41 (March 1989), 6-33. Download
"Autobiographies" of Movie Experience: Summary, High School Student, College Student
Recommended for Review
Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Nathan Godfried, WCFL: Chicago's Voice of Labor, 1926-78 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997).
Oct. 3 The Scopes Trial Download slides.
Reading
Constance Areson Clark, "Evolution for John Doe: Pictures, the Public, and the Scopes Trial Debate," Journal of American History 87 (March 2001). Read online
Recommended for Review
Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
Oct. 5 The New Woman
Reading
William Leach, "Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890-1925," Journal of American History 71 (September 1984): 319-342. Download
Recommended for Review
Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York: Grossman, 1976).
Oct. 10 Thanksgiving Day - University Closed
Oct. 12 Take-home Research Assignment - No Class
II. 1930s - The Great Depression
Oct. 17 The Crash Download slides.
Assignment
Research Assignment Due
Reading
Michael A. Bernstein, "Why the Great Depression Was Great: Toward a New Understanding of the Interwar Economic Crisis in the United States," in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 32-54. Download
Recommended for Review
Michael A. Bernstein, The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and Economic Change in America, 1929-1939 (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Anthony Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989).
Oct. 19 The Hundred Days Download slides.
Reading
Robert S. McElvaine, "Action, and Action Now': The Hundred Days and Beyond," The Great Depression: America 1929-1941 (New York: Random House, 1984), 138-169. Download
Recommended for Review
Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America 1929-1941 (New York: Random House, 1984).
James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (New York: Vintage Books, 1994).
Oct. 24 The Dust Bowl Download slides.
Reading
William Cronon, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative," Journal of American History 78 (March 1992), 1347-76. Download
Recommended for Review
James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
Oct. 26 Politics and Culture during the Great Depression Download slides.
Reading
Levine, Lawrence W. "The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences." American Historical Review 97 (December 1992): 1369-99. Download
Recommended for Review
William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1969. Reprint. New York: Harper Perennial, 1963).
Oct. 31 FDR's Critics: Huey Long and Father Coughlin Download slides.
Reading
Alan Brinkley, "The Radio Priest," in Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), 82-106. Download
Recommended for Review
Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (New York: Vintage Books, 1982).
Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
Nov. 2 The Second New Deal Download slides.
Reading
Alan Brinkley, "The Concept of New Deal Liberalism," in The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). Download
Recommended for Review
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
Nov. 7 Labor Militancy and the CIO Download slides.
Reading
Lizabeth Cohen, "Becoming a Union Rank and File," Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 291-321. Download
Recommended for Review
Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Janet C. Irons, Testing the New Deal: The General Textile Strike of 1934 in the American South (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall et al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987).
Nov. 9 The Popular Front Download slides.
Assignment
Book Review Due
Reading
Michael Denning, "'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Walt?': Disney's Radical Cartoonists," in The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Verso, 1997), 403-422. Download
Recommended for Review
Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Verso, 1997).
Barbara Melosh, Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).
Richard H. Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thoughts in the Depression Years (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
III. 1940s - Word War II
Nov. 14 Pearl Harbor Download slides.
Reading
John Morton Blum, "Prologue: The President, the People, the War," in V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York: Harvest, 1976), 3-14. Download
Recommended for Review
John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York: Harvest, 1976).
Geoffrey Perret, Days of Sadness Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939-1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
Nov. 16 American GIs Download slides.
Reading
Robert B. Westbrook, "'I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James': American Women and the Problem of Political Obligation in World War II," American Quarterly 42 (December 1990): 587-614. Download
Recommended for Review
Robert B. Westbrook, Why We Fought: Forging American Obligations in World War II (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004).
Nov. 21 The Home Front and Industrial Labor Download slides.
Reading
Mark H. Leff, "The Politics of Sacrifice on the American Home Front in World War II," Journal of American History 77 (March 1991), 1296-1318. Download
Recommended for Review
George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).
Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981).
William M. Tuttle, Daddy's Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Nov. 23 Japanese Internment Download slides.
Reading
Arthur A. Hansen, "Oral History and the Japanese American Evacuation," Journal of American History 82 (September 1995), 625-639. Download
Recommended for Review
Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
Tetsuden Kashima, Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004).
Nov. 28 Double V and African-Americans Download slides.
Reading
Robin D. G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History 80 (June 1993), 75-112. Download
Recommended for Review
Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994).
Nov. 30 The Zoot Suit Riots Download slides.
Reading
James T. Sparrow, "Fighting over the American Soldier: Moral Economy and National Citizenship in World War II," Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2002, 249-282. Download
Recommended for Review
George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Beth L. Bailey and David Farber, The First Strange Place : Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
Dec. 5 The Federal Government and the Mass Media
Reading
Lewis A. Erenberg, "Swing Goes to War: Glenn Miller and the Popular Music of World War II," in The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness During World War II, edited by Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 144-168. Download
Recommended for Review
Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Unversity of California Press, 1987).
Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda During World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
Dec. 6 The Atomic Bomb and Postwar Culture
Reading
Paul S. Boyer, Part One of By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 3-26. Download
Recommended for Review
Paul S. Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
Dec. 12 Take-home Final Due