21H.102
American History since 1865
Examines the social, cultural, political, and economic history of the United States, from the Civil War to the present. Uses secondary analysis and primary documents, such as court cases, personal accounts, photographs, and films, to examine some of the key issues in the shaping of modern America, including industrialization and urbanization, immigration, the rise of a mass consumer society, the emergence of the US as a global power, and the development of civil rights activism and other major social movements.
Spring 2018
Topics
- Introductions
- Reconstruction, Race, and Reunion
- Analyzing Primary Sources: Reconstruction
- Screening: Independent Lens: Birth of a Movement - The Battle Against American’s First Blockbuster . Directed by Bestor Cram and Susan Gray. Color, 60 mins. 2017.
- Conflict and Conquest in The Frontier West
- Capital, Labor, and the Standardization of Work
- Turning Points: 1893 and 1894
- Becoming a World Power
- Progressive Reform
- Culture and Conflict in the 1920s
- The Great Depression and the New Deal
- The Second World War
- The United States and the Creation of Three Worlds
- Cold War Culture and the Quest for Security
- Space, Place, and Race in Postwar America
- The Long Civil Rights Movement
- The International Black Freedom Struggle
- Vietnam and the New Left
- Power, Protest, and the Politics of Identity
- Visit to MIT Archives and Special Collections
- The Silent Majority and the Crises of the 1970s
- Research Paper Workshop
- Conservatives in Power and the Long Life of “Law and Order”
- The Rediscovery of the Market and the Rise of a Digital Age
- Growing Up in the Twenty-First Century
- Closing Thoughts
Readings
- [P] = Polenberg, Richard D., ed. The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933–1945: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2000. ISBN: 9780312133108.
- LEC #: 1 · TOPICS: Introductions · READINGS: No readings assigned
- [F] Chapter 1: The World the War Made.
- [F] Chapter 4: Ambiguities of Free Labor.
- [F] Chapter 5: The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction, pp. 92-103.
- [F] Chapter 6: The Making of Radical Reconstruction.
- [F] Chapter 9: The Challenge of Enforcement.
- Krauthamer, Barbara, and Chad Williams, eds. “Captain Charles Soule, Northern Army Officer, Lectures Ex-Slaves on the Responsibilities of Freedom,1865.” Chapter 10.3 in Major Problems in African American History . 2nd edition. Cengage Learning, 2017. ISBN: 9781305639942.
- ———. “Harriet Hernandes, a South Carolina Woman, Testifies Against the Ku Klux Klan, 1871.” Chapter 10.6 in Major Problems in African American History . 2nd edition. Cengage Learning, 2017. ISBN: 9781305639942.
- [T] Chapter 2: Mechanization Takes Command.
- [T] Chapter 3: Capital and Labor.
- Marx, Karl. “The Limits of the Working Day.” Chapter 10.1 in Capital, Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy . Translated by Ben Fowkes. Penguin Classics, 1992. ISBN: 9780140445688.
- Hughes, Thomas P. “The System Must be First.” Chapter 5 in American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970 . University of Chicago Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780226359274.
- [T] Chapter 7: White City.
- Gordon, Linda. “Birth Control and Social Revolution.” In Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality . Edited by Kathy Peiss. Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ISBN: 9780395903841.
- McGerr, Michael. “Class, Gender, and Race at Home: The Birthplace of American Progressivism.” In Major Problems in American History, Volume II: Since 1865 . 3rd edition. Edited by Elizabeth Cobbs-Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. Cengage Learning, 2011. ISBN: 9781111343163.
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “A Feminist Challenge to the Privatized Home.” In Modern American Women: A Documentary History. Dorsey Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780534110192.
- “Social Worker Jane Addams Advocates Civic Housekeeping, 1906.” In Major Problems in American History, Volume II: Since 1865 . 3rd edition. Edited by Elizabeth Cobbs-Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. Cengage Learning, 2011. ISBN: 9781111343163.
- Susman, Warren I. “Culture and Civilization in the Nineteen-Twenties.” Chapter 7 in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century . Smithsonian Books, 2003. ISBN: 9781588340511.
- Students will be assigned ONE of the following articles:
- [P] Chapter 1: FDR as President, pp. 39–44.
- [P] Chapter 2: The New Deal, pp. 68–89.
- [P] Chapter 4: Documenting the Depression: The Photographs of Dorothea Lange, pp. 108–13.
- [P] Chapter 5: Right…and Left…Face, pp. 114–119.
- [P] Chapter 6: Race, Ethnicity, and Reform, pp. 142–56.
- Dower, Jon W. “Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures: WWII in Asia.” Chapter 7 in The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness during World War II . Edited by Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch. University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780226215129.
- May, Elaine Tyler. “Explosive Issues: Sex, Women, and the Bomb.” Chapter 8 in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War . Edited by Lary May. University of Chicago Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780226511764.
- Spigel, Lynn. “Outer Space and Inner Cities: African Americans Respond to NASA.” In Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs . Duke University Press Books, 2001. ISBN: 9780822326960.
- ———. “War on Many Fronts.” Chapter 5 in The Vietnam War: A Concise International History . Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780199753932.
- Sinclair, John. “Rock and Roll is a Weapon of Cultural Revolution.” In Guitar Army: Rock & Revolution with The MC5 & the White Panther Party . Process, 2007. ISBN: 9781934170007.
- Whittman, Carl. “Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto (1970).” Chapter 11.137 in The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition . Edited by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Campbell McMillian. New Press, 2003. ISBN: 9781565846821.
- Third World Gay Liberation. “What We Want, What We Believe (1971).” Chapter 11.139 in The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition. Edited by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Campbell McMillian. New Press, 2003. ISBN: 9781565846821.
- Farber, David, ed. “The Silent Majority and Talk of Revolution.” Chapter 10 in The Sixties: From Memory to History . University of North Carolina Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780807844625.
- Schrag, Peter. “The Forgotten American.” In A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America . 8th edition. Edited by William H. Chafe, Harvard Sitkoff, and Beth Bailey. Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780199763641.
- LEC #: 22 · TOPICS: Research Paper Workshop · READINGS: No readings assigned. Work on the final paper.
- Cumings, Bruce. “Silicon Valley: A New World at the Edge of the Sea.” Chapter 16 in Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power. Yale University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780300168006.
- LEC #: 26 · TOPICS: Closing Thoughts · READINGS: No readings assigned. Prepare mini-presentations on final papers.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: None U (Spring) Not offered regularly; consult department 3-0-9 units. HASS-H; CI-H
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2018
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.