700153A: American Political History from 1865 onward (5 ECTS)
(Lecture Course taught in English by Ari Helo. Registration now open in Weboodi).
March 14 - April 19: Tu 16-18 and Wed 14-16
ACCEPTABLE SUBSTITUTION FOR THE FOLLOWING HISTORY COURSE:
700325A Valinnaiset historian lähialat, 5op. Courses in Related Fields of History
LECTURES
1. INTRODUCTION: THE CONCEPT OF THE AMERICAN FOUNDING
- Equal rights, republicanism and constitutionalism in the American political tradition
2. THE MAJOR CONSEQUENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR
- 1877 Compromise and the disappearance of Ku Klux Klan; ”Separate but Equal” Decision; Major lines of African-American history until Martin Luther King Jr. 1963
3. THE CONQUEST OF THE WEST AND THE FRONTIER THESIS
- Native Americans; The Wild West in reality, in contemporary and later popular culture, and in the academic Frontier theory.
4. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
- How the Other Half Lives?; Muckrackers; Populists; Progressives
5. THE SECOND MANIFEST DESTINY: IMPERIALISM AND WW I
- The Second Manifest Destiny; Theodore Roosevelt; "The Constitution follows the flag but doesn’t quite catch up with it”; Woodrow Wilson; ”Johnny got his Gun”; Americans in Europe; The First Red Scare 1919
6. THE GREAT DEPRESSION
- Scopes Trial 1925; Stock Market Crash 1929; FDR’s New Deal and the 1930s.
7. WW II AND THE IRON CURTAIN OF THE 1950s
- Fighting Hitler and Japan; McCarthyism; Foreign Policy developments from the Monroe Doctrine to Kennan and the Domino Theory; the Cold War Era.
8. THE TUMULTOUS 1960s.
- Kennedys; "Violence is as American as a Cherry Pie“; Civil Rights Movement and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.
9. FROM VIETNAM AND WATERGATE TO RONALD REAGAN
- The Vietnam Wars; Nixon; Carter and the Helsinki Process; Ronald Reagan
10. CLINTON’S GLOBALIZATION POLICY AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM
- Fukuyma’s The End of History and Free market globalization; From Albright’s ”Rogue States” to Bush’s ”Axis of Evil”
11. CULTURE WARS, OBAMA, AND TRUMP
Religious fundamentalism since 1910; the 1990s Culture Wars and the present ones.
12. THE EXAM (2 essays to be written)
OBLIGATORY READING PACKAGE (TO BE ANNOUNCED LATER, approx. 150 pp.)
Last updated: 11.1.2017