ENROLL

Elizabeth McKinsey

An important preoccupation of nineteenth century America was the nature of democracy and the proper balance of individualism and the social good. An experiment in government, democracy also raised new questions about gender, class, and race. Citizenship was contested; roles in the new, expanding nation were fluid; abolition and emancipation, the movement for women's rights, industrialization all caused ferment and anxiety. The course will explore the way these issues were imagined in fiction by such writers as Cooper, Hawthorne, Maria Sedgwick, Stowe, Tourgee, Henry Adams, Twain, Gilman, and Chesnutt.

Tyran K Steward

This course will probe the domestic history of the U.S. from 1919 to 1939 and the cultural, economic, political, and social changes accompanying America’s evolution into a modern society. Themes include: developments in work, leisure, and consumption; impact of depression on the organization of the public and private sectors; persistence of traditional values such as individualism and the success ethos in shaping responses to change; and the evolving diversity of America and the American experience.

Meredith McCoy

This course introduces students to the history of settler education for Indigenous students. In the course, we will engage themes of resistance, assimilation, and educational violence though an investigation of nation-to-nation treaties, federal education legislation, court cases, student memoirs, film, fiction, and artwork. Case studies will illustrate student experiences in mission schools, boarding schools, and public schools between the 1600s and the present, asking how Native people have navigated the educational systems created for their assimilation and how schooling might function as a tool for Indigenous resurgence in the future.

Justin London

Melanie Freeze

Charisse Burden-Stelly

This course examines the history of Black radical political thought in the United States between 1919 and 1969. It also explores internationalist and diasporic linkages that shaped, and were shaped by, the U.S. context. "Black Radicalism" refers to the forms of politics and thought that have challenged, nationally and globally, economic exploitation, social inequality, political marginalization, and private and state-sanctioned anti-blackness. The political ideologies and practices we will consider include: Black nationalism, pan-Africanism, socialism and communism, and Black feminisms. The course will also pay special attention to the socio-historical and political economic contexts that give rise to different forms of Black radicalism.

Christina Farhart

How do social and political groups interact? How do we understand these interactions in relation to power? This course will introduce the basic approaches and debates in the study of prejudice, racial attitudes, and intergroup relations. We will focus on three main questions. First, how do we understand and study prejudice and racism as they relate to U.S. politics? Second, how do group identities, stereotyping, and other factors help us understand the legitimation of discrimination, group hierarchy, and social domination? Third, what are the political and social challenges associated with reducing prejudice?