HIST 3822
3 credits/Spring 2004
T/Th 11:15-12:30
Anderson 330

Professor Barbara Welke
752 Social Sciences Bldg.
Office Hours:
T 1-3 pm (or by appt.)
tel: (612) 624-7017
welke004@tc.umn.edu

 


Main | Syllabus | Schedule | Assignments | Internet Resources

 Schedule

1/20 INTRODUCTION TO COURSE AND COURSE THEMES

Recommended Readings (broad surveys covering a significant part of time frame of course):

  • William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
  • Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).
  • Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
  • Godfrey Hodgson, America In Our Time (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1976).
  • Alice Kessler Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
  • Thomas J. McCormick, America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

 

1945-1960:

THE TRUMAN & EISENHOWER YEARS

 

1/22 WWII AND THE ORIGINS OF POSTWAR AMERICA

Key Terms:

  • New Deal Liberalism
  • Keynesian economics (John Maynard Keynes)

Recommended Readings:

Alan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (1990).

Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1933-1945 (1979).

Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During World War II (1988).

Alice Yang Murray, What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 2000).

Merle E. Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement (1991).

Studs Terkel, "The Good War": An Oral History of World War II (1984).

1/27 FROM WWII TO THE COLD WAR: THE ATOMIC BOMBING OF JAPAN

Assigned Reading: None

Lecture Links:

Links Re Enola Gay Exhibit Controversies

Recommended Films:

The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and The Atomic Bomb (documentary)

Recommended Readings:

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Making of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Vintage Books, 1989)(orig. pub. by A.A. Knopf, 1946)(first serialized in the New Yorker magazine).

Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Englehardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996).

Robert James Maddox, "Why We Had to Drop the Atomic Bomb," American Heritage (May/June 1995).

"The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb" Gar Alperovitz and the H-Net Debate

Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986) and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1995).

Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (1975).

1/29 DESCENT INTO COLD WAR

Assigned Readings (Web-Links):

Lecture Links:

Key Terms:

  • Yalta System
  • Atomic Bomb
  • Cold War
  • Truman Doctrine
  • Iron Curtain
  • Marshall Plan
  • NATO
  • Berlin Blockade
  • Korean War
  • NSC-68
  • The Long Telegram

Recommended Reading:

  • John L. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972)
  • George Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950 (1967) and Memoirs, 1950-1963 (1972).
  • Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power (1992).
  • Thomas Paterson, On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold War (1992).
  • Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (1994).
  • Daniel Yergin, A Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (1977).

2/3 ANTI-COMMUNISM AT HOME: MCCARTHYISM & CIVIL LIBERTIES

Assigned Reading:

Note: For all readings on electronic reserve, the website is http://reserve.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/eres/viewcourse.pl?frame=Hist3822_WELKE

Lecture Links:

Recommended Readings:

  • Robert Griffith and Athan Theoharis, ed., The Specter: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism (1974).
  • Joel Kovel, Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America (1994).
  • Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998).
  • Stanley J. Kutler, The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War (1982).
  • David Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Josephy McCarthy (1983).
  • Thomas Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy (1982).

Recommended Films:

"Inherit the Wind," (1960, based on the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee)

Notes on Inherit the Wind

"The Salt of the Earth"

2/5 Domestic Containment: Family, Suburbia & Consumption

Assigned Reading:

  • Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (Childhood)

Lecture Links:

Key Terms:

  • The Kitchen Debate (1959)
  • G. I. Bill (1944)
  • National Defense Education Act (1958)
  • Interstate Highway Act (1957)
  • Homemaker
  • Leavittown
  • Consumer Republic
  • Domestic Containment
  • Baby Boom
  • "The Organization Man"
  • Restrictive covenants, Red-Lining and Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)
  • the Beats (Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs. . . .)

Recommended Reading:

  • Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).
  • Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995).
  • Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1999)(rev. ed.).
  • Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
  • Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (1994).
  • Jane S. Smith, Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine (1990).
  • Rickie Solinger, Wake Up, Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade (1992).
  • Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
  • Julian E. Zelizer, Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945-1975 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Influential Books from the Time:

  • John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958).
  • Allen Ginsberg, Howl (poem)(1956).
  • John Keats, The Crack in the Picture Window (1957).
  • Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957).
  • C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956).
  • Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (1957), The Status Seekers (1959), The Waste Makers (1960).
  • David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd (1950).
  • William H. Whyte, The Organization Man (1955).
  • Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955).

Films:

  • The Wild One (1953)(starring Marlon Brando).
  • Blackboard Jungle (1955)(starring Sidney Poitier).
  • Rebel Without a Cause (1955)(starring James Dean).

2/10 REFLECTIONS: AMERICA IN THE ATOMIC AGE

In Class: Atomic Cafe (Documentary Film)(1982)

Assigned Reading:

  • David Beers, Blue Sky Dream, pp. 1-35.

Key Terms:

  • Bikini (1946)
  • Strontium-90 shows up in milk (1959)
  • Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (1963)
  • Three Mile Island (1979)
  • Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)("Star Wars")
  • Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (1990)

Recommended Reading:

Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1994 rev ed.)

Recommended Novels (and the changing view from children's literature):

  • Heinz Haber, Our Friend the Atom (1956)(and film of same name produced by Walt Disney and exhibit at Disneyland's Tomorrowland sponsored by General Dynamics)
  • Nevil Shute, On The Beach (1957)
  • Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, Fail Safe (1962)
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle (1963)
  • Dr. Seuss, The Butter Battle Book (1984)

Recommended Films:

  • On The Beach (1959, based on novel by Nevil Shute, starring Gregory Peck)
  • Ladybug Ladybug (1963)
  • Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, Dir. by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter Sellers)

2/12 SPARKING THE RIGHTS REVOLUTION: THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT FROM BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION (1954) TO LITTLE ROCK (1956)

Assigned Reading:

  • Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (High School & College)

Lecture Links:

Key Terms:

  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
  • Executive Order 9981 (see above)
  • NAACP strategy for education
  • Brown I (1954); Brown II (1955)("all deliberate speed")
  • President Dwight Eisenhower
  • Little Rock (Ark.)(1957)
  • Ruby Bridges (New Orleans, 1960)(for the excerpt I read in class, see John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, pp. 247-257)

Recommended Readings:

  • Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock (1964)
  • Charlayne Hunter-Gault, In My Place (N.Y.: Vintage Books, 1993)
  • Richard Kluger, Simple Justice (N.Y.: Vintage Books, 1975)
  • J. Anthony Lucas, Common Ground (N.Y.: Knopf, 1985)
  • Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
  • Mark Tushnet, The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).

 

1960-1968:

THE KENNEDY & JOHNSON YEARS

2/17 TO THE BRINK: SUPERPOWER CONFRONTATION FROM THE BAY OF PIGS TO THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Short Paper #1 Due

Assigned Reading: None

Lecture Links:

Recommended Readings:

  • Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
    Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).

Recommended Films:

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (Documentary, 2004)(Errol Morris, dir.)(currently showing Lagoon Theatre in Uptown, Minneapolis).

2/19 REFLECTIONS: THE NEW ENTREPRENEURS AND THE "AMERICAN WAY" (HOLIDAY INN, THE GOLDEN ARCHES, AND WALMART)

Coming to a Location Near You Soon (or, how a sick dog led me to postpone this one; will reschedule later in the term!)

Assigned Readings: None

2/24 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT II: SIT-INS AND FREEDOM RIDERS TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS AND VOTING RIGHTS ACTS

Assigned Reading:

Lecture Links:

Key Names and Terms:

  • Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
  • Rosa Parks
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)
  • Sit-Ins
  • SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee)
  • Freedom Rides
  • Mississippi Freedom Summer
  • MFDP (Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party)
  • Civil Rights Act (1964)
  • Voting Rights Act (1965)
  • James Meredith
  • March Against Fear
  • Stokeley Carmichael (and SNCC)
  • Floyd McKissick (and CORE)
  • Black Power
  • Watts Riot (1965)
  • Black Nationalism
  • Malcolm X
  • Black Panthers (Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founders, 1966)
  • Kerner Commission

Recommended (Secondary) Readings:

  • Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988).
  • Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
  • Vicki Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers & Torchbearers, 1941-1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
  • Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
  • Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987, 1993).
  • J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Knopf, 1985).
  • Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
  • Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
  • Morton Sosna, In Search of the Silent South: Southern Liberals and the Race Issue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

Recommended (Primary) Readings:

  • Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968).
  • Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965).
  • Dorothy Height, Open Wide the Freedom Gates, A Memoir (New York: Public Affairs, 2003).
  • United States. Kerner Commission, Report of the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968).

2/26 FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO WOMEN'S RIGHTS

Assigned Reading:

Key Terms:

  • The Pill (1960)
  • President's Commission on the Status of Women (1960, Report 1963)
  • Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

Recommended (Secondary) Readings:

  • Jane Sherron DeHart and Donald Mathews, Sex, Gender and the Politics of the ERA (1988).
  • Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
  • Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Knopf, 1979).
  • Hugh Davis Graham, Civil Rights and the Presidency: Race and Gender in American Politics, 1960-1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
  • Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
  • Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

Recommended (Primary) Readings:

  • Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Super Woman (1970)
  • Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (1971).
  • Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (1972).
  • Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From the Women's Liberation Movement (New York: Random House, 1970).

3/2 EXPANDING THE AMERICAN DREAM: LBJ'S GREAT SOCIETY

Assigned Reading (Web-Links):

Recommended (Secondary) Readings:

  • Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (1982), The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (1990), The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (2002).
  • James Patterson, America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900-1980 (1983).

Recommended (Primary) Readings:

  • Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: MacMillan, 1962).

3/4 THE HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

NOTE: Moved to 4/6 and 4/8 when we talk about the mid-70s.

3/9 THE DOMINO EFFECT AND WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Assigned Reading:

  • David Beers, Blue Sky Dream, pp. 36-138

Lecture Links:

Recommended Reading:

  • Michael R. Belknap, The Vietnam War on Trial: The My Lai Massacre and the Court-Martial of Lieutenant Calley (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003).
  • Eric M. Bergerud, Dynamics of Defeat (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993)(superb analysis of military strategy and tactics).
  • David Halbertson, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972)(very good, very readable, still the best account of how and why JFK and advisors got the U. S. committed to war)..
  • Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Vintage Books, 1968).
  • Arnold R. Isaacs, Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
  • David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2000).
  • Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
  • Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1988).

Recommended Films:

  • The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, Dir. by Errol Morris (2003)(Winner Academy Award for Best Documentary)
  • Hearts and Minds, Dir. by Peter Davis (1975)(Winner Academy Award for Best Documentary)

I recommend watching both films.

Memoirs and novels: There are lots of them. Here are a couple you might start with -

  • Lynda Van Devanter, Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam (New York, 1993).
  • Bao Ninh, Sorrow of War (transl. London, 1993)(an underground bestseller in Vietnam).

3/11 FIGHTING THE WAR AT HOME: THE STUDENT AND ANTIWAR MOVEMENTS

Assigned Reading:

In-class: Berkeley in the Sixties (1993)(Film)(available at Learning Resource Center, Walter Library if you'd like to see the whole thing)

Recommended Reading:

  • John F. and Rosemary S. Bannan, Law, Morality, and Vietnam: The Peace Militants and the Courts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974).
  • Daniel Berrigan, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (New York: Bantam Books, 1971).
  • Michael S. Foley, Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
  • Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987).
  • Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

SPRING BREAK 3/15-3/19

3/23 1968

Assigned Readings: None

Lecture Links:

1968-1980:

THE NIXON, FORD & CARTER YEARS

 

3/25 NIXON'S FOREIGN POLICY AND THE WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Due: Short Paper #2

Assigned Reading: None

Lecture Links:

Recommended Reading:

  • Kevin B. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (1969)(on Republican strategy).

3/30 REFLECTIONS: THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, THE COUNTERCULTURE, AND THE PC REVOLUTION

Assigned Reading:

  • David Beers, Blue Sky Dream, pp. 139-160

Recommended Readings:

  • Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997).
  • Dick Hanson, The NewAlchemists: Silicon Valley and the Microelectronics Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982).
  • Paul Mackun, "Silicon Valley and Route 128: Two Faces of the American Technopolis," http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/sv&128.html
  • David Naguib Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park, The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustic, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy (New York: New York University Press, 2002).
  • Tom Wolfe, "The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce: How the Sun Rose on the Silicon Valley," Esquire Magazine (December 1983), 346-374.

4/1 WATERGATE AND AMERICAN DISILLUSIONMENT

Lecture Links:

Recommended Readings:

  • We have discussed Richard Nixon many times over the course of the term. I highly recommend a review essay of recent work on Nixon by David Greenberg, "Richard the Bleeding Hearted," in Reviews in American History 30.1 (2002): 156-167. (Note: This link will only work if you are on campus. If you are connecting to the internet from an off-campus location, you should go through the Library website. Select "Articles" from the menu and then you can access the review through any of a number of databases, including Muse or America: History and Life.)
  • David Greenberg, Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003).
  • Leonard Garment, In Search of Deep Throat: The Greatest Political Mystery of Our Time (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
  • Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1999).

4/6 THE OIL CRISIS AND GRIMMER ECONOMIC HORIZONS

Assigned Reading:

Lecture Links:

Recommended Reading:

  • J. Brooks Flippen, Nixon and the Environment (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000).
  • Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

4/8 REFLECTIONS ON THE CONSUMER ECONOMY

Assigned Reading:

  • Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed (excerpt)(electronic reserve)

In-Class: "Little Injustices" (Film)

Recommended Reading:

  • Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postward America (New York: A. A. Knopf, 2003).

4/13 THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY

Assigned Reading: None

Recommended Reading:

  • Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
  • Sara M. Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End (New York: Free Press, 2003).
  • Estelle Freedman and John D'Emilio, Intimate Matters (1988)
  • Matt S. Meier and Feliciano Ribera, Mexican American, American Mexicans: From Conquistadors to Chicanos (1972; rev. ed. 1993).
  • Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
  • Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (2000).

 

1980-1992:

THE REAGAN & BUSH YEARS

4/15 CONSERVATIVE RESURGENCE: RONALD REAGAN AND THE NEW RIGHT

Assigned Reading:

  • David Beers, Blue Sky Dream, pp. 161-273

Lecture Links:

Recommended Reading:

  • Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996).
  • Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

4/20 THE COLD WAR COMES TO AN END

Assigned Reading:

  • J. L. Gaddis, "Hanging Tough Paid Off," from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (Jan/Feb 1989)(electronic reserve).
  • Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, "Reagan and the Russians," in Atlantic Monthly (Feb. 1994)(electronic reserve).

Due: Short Paper #3

4/22 REFLECTIONS: THE NEW ENTREPRENEURS AND THE "AMERICAN WAY" (HOLIDAY INN, THE GOLDEN ARCHES, AND WALMART)

As promised, I've plugged this one back in.

Recommended Readings-- Contending Visions:

Through the Founders' Eyes -

  • Ray Kroc with Robert Anderson, Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1977).
  • Sam Walton with John Huey, Sam Walton, Made in America, My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
  • Kemmons Wilson, The Holiday Inn Story (New York: The Newcomen Society in North America, 1968).

Social Critics -

  • Mark Alfino, John S. Caputo, and Robin Wynyard, eds., McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998).
  • Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001)(esp. intro. and ch. 3 "Selling in Minnesota).
  • William Kowinski, The Malling of America: An Inside Look at the Great Consumer Paradise (New York: W. Morrow, 1985).
  • George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1993), The McDonaldization Thesis (London: Sage Publications, 1998).
  • Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (New York: Harper Collins, 2002).
  • This is Nowhere (documentary film)(High Plains Film, 2002).

Recommended Monographs:

  • Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

4/27 CULTURE WARS

Assigned Reading:

Recommended Readings:

  • Beth Bailey, Sex in the Heartland (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
  • Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995).
  • Faye D. Ginsburg, Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
  • Janice M. Irvine, Talk About Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
  • Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996).
  • Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).
  • John David Skretny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
  • Melvin Urofsky, Affirmative Action on Trial: Sex Discrimination in Johnson v. Santa Clara (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1997).
  • Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).

Social/Political Commentary:

  • Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).

4/29 GlOBALIZATION, THE 'NEW ECONOMY' AND CLINTONOMICS

Assigned Reading: None

Recommended Reading:

  • Alfred E. Eckes, Jr. and Thomas W. Zeiler, Globalization and the American Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Social/Political Commentary:

  • Thomas Frank, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (New York: Doubleday, 2000).

5/4 "9/11": BACK ON A WAR FOOTING

Assigned Reading:

  • Elaine Tyler May, "Echoes of the Cold War: The Aftermath of September 11 at Home," in Mary L. Dudziak, ed., September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? (Duke University Press, 2003), 35-54 (electronic reserve)(Note: The electronic copy is divided into two files to speed up the downloading time -- be sure to read both files!).

5/6 TAKING STOCK: A HALF CENTURY OF CHANGE

5/14 (Friday) FINAL PAPER DUE (10:30 a.m.)(752 SST)


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