HIS 104 CC: U.S. NATIVES AND NEWCOMERS

CC: U.S. Natives and Newcomers: An introduction to the History of the United States - This course recasts the traditional survey of United States history through the thematic frame of "natives and newcomers."  Narrowly constructed, the concept of "native and newcomers" evokes two familiar topics in US history courses: the encounters between the diverse indigenous peoples of North America with Euro-American settler colonialists and the often hostile relationships between voluntary and involuntary immigrants, including African slaves, and the "nativist" Americans who are empowered to define their status.  Less expectedly, the course will use this framework to reframe other critical episodes and issues in the American past, including the American Revolution and early national period; abolitionism and social reform; slavery and emancipation the Civil War and Reconstruction; first, second and third wave feminist movements; industrialization and the labor movement; the Progressive era; the Great Depression and New Deal; Japanese internment in the second world war;  the red and lavender scares of the 1950s; the multi-faceted Freedom movements of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s; the Reagan Revolution; and the role of the American military abroad, among others.  In sum, the concept of seeing the American past through "natives and newcomers" will redefine American history as a struggle for power in its traditional sense - a battle for control over land, freedom, wealth, citizenship, and political power - and also in its cultural connotation - a battle for control over the meaning and production of American identity.