PRELIMINARY SYLLABUS – SUBJECT TO CHANGE US History 1914-1945 Professor David S. Foglesong 512:305 Office: Van Dyck Hall 215 Rutgers University, Fall 2014 Office hour: TBA T/Th 1:10-2:30 PM, Murray 211 [email protected]

Course Description Between the start of the First World War in Europe and the end of the Second World War in Asia, the boundaries between the and the rest of the world were blurred by migration, military intervention, transnational social and political movements, and the global circulation of ideas. During this period, perhaps more intensely than in other eras, Americans disagreed about what it meant to be American, who belonged in the nation, who was “un-American,” and what was the proper role of the United States in the world. We will concentrate on those issues in this course. Some of the specific questions we will explore are: How could Socialists and Communists present themselves as “good Americans”? How did anticommunism come to be a central element of American national identity? How did Americans define the United States in relation to Europe? Did many Americans think of the United States as an empire in an era when the U.S. military occupied a number of countries in Latin America? Why did African American intellectual and activist W.E.B. Du Bois come nearer to feeling himself “a real and full American” during the First World War? How did immigrants who had tended to cling to their homeland’s cultural traditions come to think of themselves as Americans and come to be accepted as Americans by people who had been born in the United States? How did involvement in the Communist Party alter black working people’s self-definitions and worldviews? How did business leaders promote images of an “American Way” to counter challenges from labor leaders and New Deal reformers? Why did some Japanese American young men in internment camps during the U.S. war against Japan volunteer to serve in the U.S. military while others renounced their U.S. citizenship?

Learning Goals In this course students can expect to develop or enhance their ability to: (1) express ideas clearly in writing; (2) think critically about historical issues, such as the changing and contested meaning of “Americanism”; (3) conduct biographical research.

1 Teaching Methods Our class meetings will involve extensive examination of visual materials that reflect how Americans thought and felt about the meaning of Americanism, the role of the United States in the world, and the inclusion or exclusion from the body politic of specific racial or ethnic groups. Since movies were among the most powerful influences on such questions, we will watch part or all of a number of Hollywood films and you will be asked to write essays about some of those movies. We also will watch several documentaries that include valuable visual evidence, such as newsreel footage of parades or pageants. Lectures will present many images from political cartoons, propaganda posters, and advertisements that illustrate how journalists, propagandists, and corporations sought to shape popular attitudes or government policies.

Requirements 1. Attendance at lectures. Attendance will be recorded on a sign-in sheet available before the beginning of class. Late arrivals and early departures are disruptive. Students who arrive after the beginning of class will not be allowed to sign the attendance sheet. Students who leave before the class ends will be marked absent unless they have explained before the beginning of class why they need to leave early. If you expect to miss a class, use the university’s absence reporting website https://sims.rutgers.edu/ssra/ to indicate the date and reason for your absence. Absences will be excused when they are due to illness or to death in the family. Absences will not be excused because of weather conditions if the campus is open and class is not canceled. Each student will be allowed three unexcused absences. Beyond that, each unexcused absence will result in a deduction of 2% in the final course grade. Students will be expected to comply with the Classroom Etiquette Policy (see http://history.rutgers.edu/undergrad/policy.htm). Cell phones must be switched off and meals must be eaten before the start of class. Laptops and other electronic devices may not be used for purposes unrelated to the class.

2. Active, informed participation in class discussions, based on completion of the assigned reading. This will count for 20% of your grade for the course.

3. Five short essays (approximately 1000 words or about three pages) on assigned topics (see document with detailed guidelines and topics). Students will be expected to be familiar with the History Department’s statement on plagiarism available on its web site (see

2 http://history.rutgers.edu/undergraduate.) Essays that contain plagiarism (unacknowledged use of others’ words or ideas) will not be accepted. The essays will be due at the first class meeting following the related lecture, documentary showing, or film screening. Each essay will count for 10% of your course grade. Essays may not be submitted by e-mail.

4. One biographical essay about an individual who had a significant impact in the United States between 1914 and 1945. The essay should address some of the following questions: What did the individual think were the most important defining characteristics of the United States that differentiated it from other nations? What did the individual think needed to be changed or preserved in the United States? How did the person attempt to promote change, defend against change, or recover something from the past? How successful was the person and the groups or organizations in which he/she was involved? How did the individual and/or the group in which she/he worked use symbols, images, and memories to assert his/her/their rights or ideas? Did the individual feel fully an American? Was the person accused of being “un-American”? Due: at the last class meeting. Length: 2000 to 3000 words (between seven and ten pages). The essay will count for 30% of your course grade. For suggestions of biographies to read, see the list of biographies on the course’s sakai site and see the biographies listed as supplemental reading on this syllabus. You must inform the professor of your choice of biography by e-mail no later than November 2.

Extra Credit Option You may choose to make a fifteen-minute Powerpoint presentation to the class about your biographical subject during the last two weeks of the semester. Depending on the quality of the presentation, this could add up to 10% to your grade for the course. If you wish to do this, you must meet with Professor Foglesong in his office on November 18 or November 20 to discuss your planned presentation.

3 Required Reading The following books have been ordered through the Rutgers University Bookstore: Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (second edition, 1988) Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press) Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (Oxford University Press) Langley, Lester D. The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934 (Scholarly Resources, 2002) Wall, Wendy L. Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2008) These books also have been placed on two-hour reserve at Alexander Library.

Additional required reading will be available on electronic reserve. To access these readings, go to www.libraries.rutgers.edu , click on “Find Reserves,” put “Foglesong” in the search field, then select 512:305. Schedule of Lectures and Reading Assignments

SEPTEMBER 2: INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

SEPTEMBER 4: AMERICANISMS: CONSERVATISM, LIBERALISM, AND SOCIALISM IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA [Change in designation of class days: Monday class on Thursday] Required reading: Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (1982), Introduction, Chapter 9, and Epilogue [E-reserve] Thomas Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (1992), Preface and Chapter 2: “The Age of Socialistic Inquiry” [E-reserve] Gary Gerstle, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character of American Nationalism,” Journal of American History, Vol. 86, No. 3 (December 1999), 1280-1307. [Access article in periodical online at libraries.rutgers.edu.] Supplemental reading: Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age Patrick Allitt, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities (2010)

4 SEPTEMBER 9: EMPIRE AND REVOLUTION: AMERICANS AND MEXICO IN THE WILSON ERA View part of “The Storm that Swept Mexico” (PBS documentary) Required Reading: Langley, The Banana Wars, Introduction and Chapters 7-9 John Reed, Insurgent Mexico (1914), Chapter IV: “ La Tropa on the March” [E-reserve] William Randolph Hearst, editorial, New York American, June 19, 1916 [E-reserve] Recommended Reading: Robert Rosenstone, Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (1975), esp. Chapter 10 (pages 149-169). David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (2000) John Mason Hart, Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War (2002) F. Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa (1998), esp. Chapter 14

SEPTEMBER 11: RACE AND NATION: BLACKS, , AND AMERICANISM IN THE WILSON ERA View part of “The Birth of a Nation” (1915) Required reading: [Access articles online: www.libraries.rutgers.edu , search periodical title.] Lloyd E. Ambrosius, “Woodrow Wilson and The Birth of a Nation: American Democracy and International Relations,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 18 (2007), 689-718. M. Ellis, “’Closing Ranks’ and ‘Seeking honors’: W.E.B. DuBois in World War I,” Journal of American History, Vol. 79, No. 1 (June 1992), 96-124. W. Jordan, “’The Damnable Dilemma’: African-American Accommodation and Protest During World War I,” and reply by Mark Ellis in Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 4 (March 1995), 1562-1590. Supplemental reading: Theodore Kornweibel, “Apathy and Dissent: Black America’s Negative Responses to World War I,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 80, No. 3 (Summer 1981), 322-338. Leon Litwack, “The Birth of a Nation” in Mark C. Carnes, ed., Past Imperfect: History According to Movies (1995), 136-141. Melvyn Stokes, D. W Griffith’s the Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time (2007) Stephen Weinberger, “The Birth of a Nation and the Making of the NAACP,” Journal of American Studies 45: 1 (2011), 77-93. Nina Mjakij, Loyalty in Time of Trial: The African American Experience During World War I (2011)

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SEPTEMBER 16: FROM NEUTRAL TO CRUSADER: AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR, 1914-1917 View part of “The Great War, Episode Six: Collapse” Required Reading: Kennedy, Over Here, Preface and Prologue Supplemental reading: Justus Doenecke, Nothing Less Than War: A New History of America’s Entry into World War I (2011)

SEPTEMBER 18: WAGING WAR AND REMAKING THE NATION: THE UNITED STATES IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR, 1917-1918 View part of “Woodrow Wilson” (PBS Documentary) Required Reading: David Kennedy, Over Here, Chapters 1-4 Supplemental reading: Alan Dawley, Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution (2003) Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (2010)

SEPTEMBER 23: MAKING PEACE AND REVERTING TO “NORMALCY” View part of “Woodrow Wilson” (PBS Documentary) Required Reading: Kennedy, Over Here, Chapters 5 and 6, Epilogue, and Afterword Supplemental reading: Thomas Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (2007)

SEPTEMBER 25: THE RED SCARE: IMMIGRATION, AMERICANISM AND ANTI-BOLSHEVISM Required Reading: Higham, Strangers in the Land, Chapters 8-11 Supplemental reading: John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (1985) Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (1987) David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (1988) William M. Tuttle, Jr., Race Riot: in the Red Summer of 1919 (University of Illinois Press, 1996)

6 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998) Christopher Sterba, Good Americans: Italian and Jewish Immigrants during the First World War (2003) Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded (2010)

SEPTEMBER 30: FEMINISM, AMERICANISM, AND UN-AMERICANISM: PACIFISM VS. PATRIOTISM AND NATIONALISM VS. INTERNATIONALISM IN THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT View parts of “One Woman, One Vote” (1995) Required Reading [E-Reserve]: Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (1997), Chapter 5 Kathleen Kennedy, Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens: Women and Subversion During World War I (1999), Introduction and Chapter 4 Allison Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age (2008), Chapter 1 Supplemental reading: Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1987) Ian Tyrell, Woman’s World/Woman’s Empire: The Women’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880-1930 (1991) Frances Early, A World Without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (1997) Joyce Blackwell, No Peace Without Freedom: Race and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1975 (2004) Ian Tyrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (2010)

OCTOBER 2: EMPIRE AS OCCUPATION: AMERICANS AND INTERVENTION IN LATIN AMERICA, 1920-1933 Required Reading: Langley, The Banana Wars, Chapters 10-16 and Epilogue. Supplemental reading: R. J. Maddox, William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy (1974) Robert David Johnson, The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (1995), Chapter 4: “Alternative to Imperialism” Lester Langley and Thomas Schoonover, The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepeneurs in Central America, 1880-1930 (1995) Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History (1998), Ch. 5 & 7. Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 (2001)

7 Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua Under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)

OCTOBER 7: RACE, SEX, AND THE SOUTH IN THE EYES OF THE NATION AND THE WORLD View “Scottsboro: An American Tragedy” (PBS Documentary) Required Reading: Kelley, Hammer and Hoe (start) Supplemental reading: Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (2007) Walter T. Howard, Black Communists Speak on Scottsboro: A Documentary History (2008) Meredith Roman, Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. , 1928-1937 (2012)

OCTOBER 9: RACE AND RADICALISM: AFRICAN AMERICANS, COMMUNISM, ANTICOMMUNISM, AND THE SOVIET UNION Required Reading: Kelley, Hammer and Hoe (finish) Supplemental reading: Kate Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters Between Black and Red, 1922-1963 (2002) Glenda Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919- 1950 ( )

OCTOBER 14: OUTSIDERS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION View “Modern Times” (1936) Supplemental reading: David Robinson, Chaplin: His Life and Art (1985) Charles Musser, “Work, Ideology and Chaplin’s Tramp,” Radical History Review, Issue 41 (Spring 1988), 36-66. Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (2000)

OCTOBER 16: CONSUMERISM AND AMERICANISM: BUSINESS, LABOR, AND THE NEW DEAL Required Reading: Wall, Inventing the “American Way”, Introduction and Part I: Enemies at Home and Abroad (1935-1941) [to page 100] Recommended Reading: Gary Gerstle, Working-class Americanism: The politics of labor in a textile city, 1914-1960 (1989), Chapter 5

8 Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995) Gregory Schneider, The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (2009)

OCTOBER 21: ETHNICITY, NATIVISM, AND AMERICANISM IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION View “The Black Legion” (1937) Required Reading: Peter H. Amann, “Vigilante Fascism: The Black Legion as an American Hybrid,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 25, No. 3 (July 1983), pp. 490-524. [Access journal via jstor on libraries.rutgers.edu.] Supplemental reading: Leo Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (1983)

OCTOBER 23: ISOLATIONISM, INTERVENTIONISM, AND AMERICANISM: CONTROVERSY OVER U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN ANOTHER WAR IN EUROPE, 1937-1941 View part of “Sergeant York” (1941) Required Reading: Robert Brent Toplin, History By Hollywood: The Use and Abuse of the American Past (1996), Chapter 3: “Sergeant York” [E-Reserve] Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War Against Nazi (Oxford UP 2001), Chapter 1: “The Setting: FDR, American Public Opinion, and before Pearl Harbor,” 3-46. Supplemental reading: A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (1998) Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (1999) Justus Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941 (2003) Walter Hixson, Charles A. Lindbergh: Lone Eagle (2006) James P. Duffy, Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided America (2010)

9 OCTOBER 28: THE DILEMMAS OF JAPANESE AMERICANS FROM PEARL HARBOR TO HIROSHIMA View “The Color of Honor: The Japanese-American Soldier in World War II” (Documentary, 1996) Required Reading: Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004), Chapter Five: “The World War II Internment of Japanese Americans and the Citizen Renunciation Cases,” pp. 175-201. [E-Reserve] Supplemental reading: Emily Rosenberg, A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory (2003), esp. Ch. 3 and 8 Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (1993, 2004) Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (2005) Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (2002) Scott Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (2010)

OCTOBER 30: THE WAR AGAINST JAPAN AND THE AFFIRMATION OF AMERICAN IDENTITY View “Know Your Enemy – Japan” Required Reading: Robert B. Westbrook, “In the Mirror of the Enemy: Japanese Political Culture and the Peculiarities of American Patriotism in World War II,” in John Bodnar, ed., Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 211-230. [E-Reserve] Supplemental reading: John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986) Peter Schrijvers, The GI War Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II (2002) Recommended viewing: “Guadalcanal Diary”(1943)

10 NOVEMBER 4: THE WAR AGAINST NAZI GERMANY AND THE CHALLENGE OF AMERICAN NATIONAL UNITY View “Lifeboat” (1944) Required Reading: Wall, Inventing the “American Way”, Part II: “The Politics of Unity During World War II,” pp. 103-159. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War (1987), Chapter X: “Nazis, Good Germans, and G.I.’s,” 278-316. [E-Reserve] Supplemental reading: John Whiteclay Chambers II and David Culbert, eds., World War II, Film, and History (1996) Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 2004) E-mail professor the title of the biography you have chosen to read.

NOVEMBER 6: RACE, RIOTS, AND RIGHTS: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND FREEDOM STRUGGLES IN WORLD WAR II AND THE EARLY COLD WAR View “Liberators” Required Reading: [E-Reserve] Gerstle chapter? Jason Morgan Ward,” A War for States’ Rights”: The White Supremacist Vision of Double Victory, in Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (2012), Chapter 7 Supplemental reading: Carol Anderson, “From Hope to Disillusion: African Americans, the United Nations, and the Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1947,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 1996) [access article through library’s electronic subscription to the journal]

NOVEMBER 11: RUSSIA IN AMERICAN IMAGINATIONS DURING WORLD WAR II View parts of “Comrade X” (1940) and “The North Star” (1943) Recommended Viewing: “Mission to Moscow” (1943) Required Reading: Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War (1987), Chapter VII: “Putting the Russians Through the Wringer” Supplemental reading: Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold War (2007), Ch. 1: “Love and defection”

NOVEMBER 13: RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA AND THE REDEFINITION OF AMERICANISM, 1939-1949

11 Required Reading: Wall, Inventing the “American Way”, Part III Supplemental reading: Norman D. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People’s Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941-1948 (1973) George Sirgiovanni, An Undercurrent of Suspicion: Anti-Communism in America During World War II (1990) Make appointment to meet professor on November 18 or 20.

NOVEMBER 18: No class meeting. Reading for biographical essay. Students who wish to make presentations to the class about their biographical subjects will meet Professor Foglesong in his office, Room 215, Van Dyck Hall. Bring at least an outline of your presentation to your meeting.

NOVEMBER 20: No class meeting. Read for biographical essay. Individual meetings to discuss student presentations in Foglesong office, Room 215, Van Dyck Hall.

NOVEMBER 25: No class meeting. Read for biographical essay.

NOVEMBER 27: No class meeting (Thanksgiving recess)

DECEMBER 2: Student Presentations.

DECEMBER 4: Student Presentations.

DECEMBER 9: Student Presentations. Biographical essay due.

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