Hist. 80010- Literature Survey II– American History 5 credits, Prof. Thomas Kessner Spring 2014, T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., [email protected]; 212. 817.8437
N.B.: The assigned readings are tentative and a few may be changed. Also the page assignments have not been inserted yet. There will be an updated version of this list available later in the year.
Course description and objectives: The objective of this course is for you to read, analyze and understand key texts in American History; gain an understanding of the influence of prime forces like politics, economics, social forces, culture and technology in shaping American development; and emerge with a broad knowledge of the American historical experience 1870-present.
You will do a lot of thinking about the way American history has been conceived, structured and narrated. Some of the assigned works are classics that you may have dipped into in your undergraduate course work; others are important because they offer provocative theses or important new ways of looking at long established historical questions; yet others bring a new perspective to historical inquiry. Each of these books is on the list because in one way or another it has passed the test of significance and it is worthy of your thought.
You are advised to acquire a college level American History textbook and to consult it for an overview of the period/topic covered in the readings. Many of the assigned books are monographs and of necessity treat only a small part of the broader era with which they are concerned. The text will fill in important gaps and provide the context necessary for understanding the larger play of important historical forces.
The broad scope of readings is designed to provide you with an essential immersion in the literature of the field. You are encouraged to do as much of the Supplementary reading as you can. The more reading you do, the richer and more textured the perspective you will bring to subsequent colloquia and seminars. As you read pay attention to what interests you: a particular approach; a specific era; a method of analysis; a strategy for attacking a problem. This way at the same time that you are building your intellectual capital in the field you are thinking about how you might fashion your own research projects for your seminars and ultimately for your dissertation.
It is not likely that you can read every word of the assigned material. So focus on your goals: You are reading to understand the larger interpretive intent of the assigned histories and also for the critical details. You want to master as much important information as you can and to hone a strong critical sensibility.
Assignments: Students should come to class well prepared to discuss the assigned works. Reading, leading class discussions and participating in them are integral to this class.
Each session will have: a discussion leader who will direct the discussion of the assigned volume. The discussion should frame critical questions about the period, the book and its interpretive stance. It should close with a sample of the critical response to the book in reviews and an effort to place the book in its historiographical context. The discussion leader will hand out a synopsis of the reading and the reviews (about 1200 words) to the class after the discussion.
A second reader will offer a report on one of the Supplementary books (as well as a written précis) summarizing the volume and a selection of the reviews.
1. Orientation and Discussion
2. Reconstruction: Can the Nation be Put Back Together?
*Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (1990). *Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003). C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951). Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post Civil War North, 1865-1901 (2001).
3. Transforming Capitalism
*Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977). *Richard R. John, Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s, The Visible Hand after Twenty Years." Business History Review, 71 (Summer 1997): 151-200. Available on-line at DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3116156. *Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff, and Peter Temin. “Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Towards a New Synthesis of American Business History." American Historical Review 108 (April 2003): 404-33. This paper is available as PDF (231 K). Glenn Porter, The Rise of Big Business, 3d ed. (2004). Richard F. Bensel, The Political Economy of American Industrialization (2000). Walter Licht, Industrializing America (1995).
4. The Metropolitan Surge
*William Cronon. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1992). *Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (2003). Patricia Nelson Limerick, “Turnerians All: The Dream of a Helpful History in an Intelligible World,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Jun., 1995), pp. 697-716. Thomas Kessner, Capital City: New York City and the Men Behind America's Rise to Economic Dominance, 1860-1900 (2004).
5. The Peopling of America
*John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (1985). *George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (1995). Irving Howe, The World of Our Fathers The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made (1976). John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1865-1925 (1955). Matthew Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (2001).
6. Adjusting Capitalism, Reining In Free Enterprise
*Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (1998). *Richard Hofstadter, Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (1955). Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870- 1920 (2005). *Rosanne Currarino. “The Politics of More: The Labor Question and the Idea of Economic Liberty in Industrial America. Journal of American History, June, 2006, 17-36. John Milton Cooper Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (1985).
7. War, Peace and Prosperity
*David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (2004). *Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s. Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror (2010). Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (1989). Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier (1987). Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (2002).
8. Depression: Disillusions and Transformation
*William Leuchtenberg, FDR and the New Deal: 1932-1940 (1963). *Allan Brinkley, End of Reform New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1996). (2001). Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (1989). Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore, “The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in American History, International labor and Working Class History, 74 (Fall, 2008), 3-32. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, The American People in Depression and War (2001)
9. The New Deal Goes to War
* David M. Kennedy, The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear, Part Two (2003). William O'Neill, A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II (1998) John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (1977) Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1987).
10. From Hot to Cold War
*Melvin Leffler: A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War (1992) *John L. Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (2005). Melvin Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind (2007). Campbell Craig and Frederik Logevall, America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (2009). Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (2001).
11. Diversity and its Discontents
*Mai Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004) *Thomas Sugrue, The Urban Crisis (rev. ed. 2005). Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land (1992). Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights (2011). Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (2006)
12. Business, Workers and Consumers Reconfigured
*Judith Stein, Pivotal Decades: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (2010) Lizabeth Cohen, Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (2001) Jefferson Cowie, Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (2010)
13. Right Turn Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors (2001). Kimberly Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands (2009). Michael Schaller Right Turn: American Life in the Reagan-Bush Era, 1980-1992 (2006). Daniel Rodgers, Age of Fracture (2011).