Cities and Suburbs in Postwar America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will survey historical scholarship on the development of American cities and suburbs from World War II to the present. Making use of primary and secondary sources, and print and visual media, we will seek to understand what defines American cities and suburbs, how the idea and ideals of cities and suburbs have changed over time, and what forces have shaped the places in which we live today. We will explore how a metropolitan approach to modern American history sheds light on major events, movements, and transformations of the twentieth century along thematic lines of race, class, and education; politics and protest; modernity and religion; gender and sexuality; ethnicity, immigration, globalization, and citizenship; urban crisis, renewal, and gentrification; and urban sprawl and environmentalism. Course objectives include learning to analyze and interpret primary sources, including written texts, film, photographs, and the built environment; to read secondary sources critically and effectively; to identify significant people, places, and events in twentieth-century American urban, social, and political history; to recognize major changes and continuities in postwar urban history; and to place contemporary issues and debates in historical and cultural context.