U.S. Politics, Culture, and Society, 1790-1860

3 Units

This is a survey of U.S. history during the years between the Revolutionary era and the Civil War, exploring the transformation of American politics, religion, and culture, as well as the emergence of distinctive regional economies and social systems in the South, the Midwest, and the Northeast. It focuses especially on the emergence of social institutions, patterns, and conflicts that still characterize the United States during the early twenty-first century. Lectures, readings, class discussions, and assigned papers will explore race slavery in the South; abolitionism; the social, economic, and political struggles of free African Americans in the North; the religious revivalism of the Second Great Awakening and its social impact; the changing social and economic status of women; the emergence of the women's rights movement; and the development of the modern working class in the context of the rise of industrial capitalism in the northeastern U.S. Counts as a CAS Global & Cultural Diversity course. Counts as a Human Diversity & Commonality course.