American History from Colonization through Reconstruction

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course explores the major forces that shaped social and cultural life in the United States from the earliest period of settlement (ca. 1600), through the Civil War and Reconstruction. It views American history not as a tale of uninterrupted progress, but as a story of hard-fought battles that some won and others lost. Freedom, equality, and democracy for some groups coexisted with oppression, inequality, and exclusion for others. The course therefore focuses on two main questions. First, how did different groups define what concepts like 'freedom,' 'equality,' and 'democracy' meant, and how did they determine to whom these concepts should apply? Second, how was this process of definition shaped by encounters with Indians, Africans, and European immigrants; imperial conflict and revolution; varieties of religious expression; constitutional development; democratization; westward expansion; and sectional divisions that led to the Civil War? The goal is not simply to provide an overview of major conflicts and changes in early America, but to develop students' ability to critically interpret their meanings and implications, and to help them arrive at their own informed conclusions. This course is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.