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Professor: Mark Kornbluh

Relates Courses

History 202

African american family in front of a cabinBetween the mid 1400s and 1865, people from three areas of the globe (the Americas, Britain and Europe, and West Africa) encountered each other in the Americas. [more]

History 203

men in front of an employment agency during the depressionOaxaca U.S. History since 1876

This course surveys United States history from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Our focus will be economic and social development, political conflict, and the cultural responses of Americans to the enormous changes over the past 120 years.

This course surveys United States history from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Our focus will be economic and social development, political conflict, and the cultural responses of Americans to the enormous changes over the past 120 years. You will be presented with a variety of different sources and mediums. Some, such as the textbook, will frame this period as a completed story. In the course of your work you will be evaluating how accurate that conception is or if America is, as one historian has called it, an “Unfinished Journey.” You will be expected to complete the required reading and then critically evaluated and interrogate those sources. This course is not about rote repetition or memorization. There are no multiple-choice exams to test specific facts. The assignments are designed rather to test your understanding of the larger picture and foster engagement of the materials.

Each week you will be expected to complete two to four topics. Each topic represents an important issue or event in modern American history. There will be an array of required text readings, document readings and often videos to view. There are also additional resources –supplemental readings- to help add context to the topic. Each week you will also have an assignment due. You will also have three midterms spaced out through the semester. These will challenge you to compile the knowledge you have been building and your evaluation of the sources to formulate and essay (two for the final) that frames the period in the larger picture.