The Democrats, Jefferson to Biden
This course proceeds from the assumption that the history of a political party still matters to the course of the United States of America in the 2020s. As such, we will investigate the key lives, events, and movements that have shaped the Democratic Party, from its founding in the 1790s through the present day. At the same time, given the Democratic Party’s troubled legacy on questions of race, gender, sexuality, and class, the usefulness of the party as a vehicle for societal change must be questioned. The course will attend to these concerns by studying the party’s most important leaders, conventions, elections, and movements. Together we will learn how a history of a political party—and especially of who is included and who is excluded—reveals the contours of American democracy itself.
Core Requirement Met: United States Diversity
American History According to Hollywood
This class investigates the way movies have shaped Americans’ understanding of their history. Surveying major developments across the twentieth century and into our own, we will examine films as imaginative primary sources that reveal the attitudes and anxieties of past eras (e.g. concerns about race and ethnicity, global power, gender and sexuality). The last third of the class will turn to a more intensive focus on the way movies have functioned as secondary sources, offering powerful (if partial) interpretations of earlier eras. Here students will focus on a select number of topics or events (e.g. the immigrant experience, WWII, “the West”) and trace the changing historical interpretations the films present. Ultimately, we will evaluate how “cinematic history” compares to “written history” and by what interpretive or evidentiary standards or criteria we should evaluate it.
Core Requirement Met: United States Diversity
Disneyland and Los Angeles
In the summer of 1955, amidst the orange groves of Southern California and next to a brand-new freeway, Disneyland Park appeared. Broadcast across the country through a hit television program that premiered the previous year, the new theme park became an instant national media sensation, drawing on a long and varied tradition of American popular amusements. But, it was also an institution with deep roots in the specific culture and history of greater Los Angeles itself. In this course, we will trace the complex dialogue between the iconic amusement park and its urban environment in Southern California over the last half of the 20th century, carefully analyzing urban and social history, film, and literature to discover what Disneyland can teach us about the history, built environment, and culture of the strange, sprawling megalopolis that surrounds it.
Core Requirement Met: United States Diversity