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U.S. History

The U.S. History faculty at Michigan State University enjoys a national and international reputation for research, teaching, outreach, and leadership in humanities technology and computing. The U.S. History program thus continues a rich tradition established by such distinguished scholars as Darlene Clark Hine, Norman Pollack, Fred Williams, and Ralph and Katherine Brown, while expanding and innovating within the changing environment of higher education in the 21st century.

The size and scholarly activity of the U.S. faculty at Michigan State creates a unique intellectual environment. The U.S. field includes 17 tenure-stream faculty with diverse research and teaching interests. The U.S. faculty offers undergraduate and graduate programs in four broad areas: political history; social history; intellectual, cultural, and religious history; and race and ethnicity. The program has particular strength in late-19th and early-20th century social and political history; African American and Comparative Black history; Civil War & Reconstruction; Native American history; urban history; gender; Jewish and Latino/a history; intellectual and religious history; labor and rural history. Other areas covered include diplomatic, environmental, colonial, transnational, and public history.

Recent books are representative of the new and exciting contributions that the U.S. faculty are making to the field. These include:

  • Robert E. Bonner, Colors & Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South (Princeton, 2004)
  • Pero G. Dagbovie, Black History: Old School Black Historians and the Hip Hop Generation (Bedford, 2006)
  • Kirsten Fermaglich, American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (Brandeis University Press, 2006)
  • Lisa Fine, The Story of REO Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. (Temple, 2004)
  • Maureen A. Flanagan, Seeing With Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933 (Princeton, 2002)
  • Maureen A. Flanagan, America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1895-1925 (Oxford University Press, 2006)
  • Mark L. Kornbluh, Why America Stopped Voting: The Decline of Participatory Democracy and the Emergence of Modern American Politics (New York University, 2000)
  • Sayuri Shimizu, Creating a People of Plenty: The United States and Japan's Economic Alternatives, 1950-1960 (Kent State, 2001)
  • Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Massachusetts, 2001)
  • Thomas Summerhill, Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York (Illinois, 2005)
  • Thomas Summerhill and James C. Scott, eds., Transatlantic Rebels: Agrarianism in Comparative Context (Michigan State University, 2004)
  • Refugio Rochin and Dionicio Valdes, eds., Voices of a New Chicana/o History (Michigan State University, 2000)
  • Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis and Richard W. Thomas, Eds., Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Baha'is in North America, 1898-2000 (Baha'i Publishing, 2006)
Several of these books have won awards or been published in multiple editions. Forthcoming works by Daina Ramey-Berry, Pero Dagbovie, and Richard Thomas are expected to have a major impact in the historical literature.

The U.S. faculty includes the director of H-Net and Matrix, placing the department at the forefront of humanities technology. U.S. historians also play a critical role in several interdisciplinary programs at Michigan State University, including American Studies, Labor Studies, Jewish Studies, Native American Studies, and Latin American Studies. Adjunct professor Roger Rosentreter is editor of Michigan History.

U.S. historians have earned outstanding reputations as teachers in both departmental courses and integrative studies, Michigan State’s general education core curriculum. Several have been recognized for teaching excellence, most recently Thomas Summerhill and Daina Ramey Berry, the recipient of the university’s prestigious 2004-5 Teacher-Scholar Award. Likewise, the graduate program has been successful at placing recent Ph.D. students in tenure-stream positions at colleges and universities nationwide. In both undergraduate and graduate settings, MSU students benefit from an open and accessible faculty.

Faculty maintain a high profile in the profession. Positions held by U.S. historians in recent years include the president of the Organization of American Historians, the founding editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, national treasurer of the Association of Black Women Historians, and board of directors of the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Culture, in addition to other service to professional organizations.

Faculty members are actively involved in outreach and consulting activities that form a major part of Michigan State University's mission as a public university. U.S. historians have completed two major grant projects in the past two years: a secondary teacher training program in partnership with the Battle Creek School District and the Michigan Agricultural Heritage Project, a grant from the Michigan Department of Transportation to identify historically significant rural sites for preservation. Faculty regularly undertake consulting work with government and private agencies.

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Areas of Study and Affiliated Faculty

State, Society, and Politics

David Bailey, Robert Bonner, Kirsten Fermaglich, Lisa Fine, Maureen Flanagan, Mark Kornbluh, Peter Knupfer, Sayuri Shimizu, Susan Sleeper-Smith, Thomas Summerhill, Samuel Thomas

Race, Ethnicity and Migration

Daina Ramey-Berry, Pero Dagbovie, Kirsten Fermaglich, J. Javier Pescador, Susan Sleeper-Smith, Richard Thomas, Dionicio Valdes

Immigrants in line

Intellectual, Cultural, and Religious

David Bailey, Robert Bonner, Peter Knupfer, J. Javier Pescador, Samuel Thomas

Loading cranes

Labor, Industry, and Agriculture

James Anderson, Daina Ramey-Berry, Lisa Fine, Thomas Summerhill, Dionicio Valdes

Lakes ferry

The Great Lakes in National and Transnational Context

David Bailey, Lisa Fine, Maureen Flanagan, Susan Sleeper-Smith, Thomas Summerhill, Dionicio Valdes

UN Building

International Relations

John Coogan, Sayuri Shimizu

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Undergraduate Program

Undergraduate offerings in U.S. History focus on the major chronological periods in the nation's development, with particular emphasis on providing students with breadth of knowledge. Within this framework, individual professors provide a mixture of political, social, cultural, gender, race, ethnicity, labor, religious, environmental, and diplomatic history. The goal of the undergraduate program is to help students develop skills in critical thinking, research, analytical writing, and an understanding of the key forces that have shaped the nation's history.

For beginning students, and especially majors, the 201 seminar is designed to introduce them to the skills, methods, theories, and writing of history. The course entails intensive reading and writing, and includes a major research paper. Individual instructors offer unique topics that can be found on the main departmental website. 201 seminars give freshmen and sophomores the advantage of working closely with faculty early in their careers at Michigan State University.

The 202 and 203 surveys, which cover U.S. history before and after 1877, are large lecture courses with readings sections that introduce students to the major themes, events, documents, and people that have shaped the nation. They are also designed to introduce students to the study of history via primary and secondary readings.

The 300-level lecture courses provide students with the opportunity to study these themes in greater depth, and include more intensive reading and writing requirements to help students hone their skills. Among the most popular offerings at this level are HST 304, The American Civil War; HST 318, United States Constitutional History; HST 320, Michigan History; and HST 324, The History of Sports in America.

The department offers an exciting range of courses in race and ethnicity:

  • African American: HST 310 “African American History to 1876”; HST 311, “African American History since 1876”; HST 312, “African American Women”
  • Jewish: HST 317, “American Jewish History”
  • Chicano/a: HST 327, “History of Mexican Americans in the United States”
  • Native American: HST 378, “Native Americans in North American History to 1830” and HST 379 “Native Americans in North American History since 1830”
  • Environmental: HST 391 “Environmental History of North America”

Experimental courses, such as “America’s Rural Past” and “Catholics in Modern America” are taught as HST 454 at the discretion of the instructor.

For advanced students, the 480 seminars are deigned to help them develop expertise in particular areas of interest while polishing their analytical, research, and writing skills. All history majors are expected to take two 480 seminars. The courses are designed to prepare students for careers in history, secondary education, and related fields, many of which require graduate training.

In addition to history majors, many of our students are from Teacher Education, the Honors College, James Madison College, Journalism, and Criminal Justice. U.S. history courses have heavy enrollments because of the popularity of the topics and the instructors, but faculty take special care to be available to students and make their classroom experience personally rewarding.

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Graduate Program

The graduate program in U.S. History at Michigan State offers prospective students a unique opportunity to study either discreet periods, key issues and themes in the nation's history, or transnational history with a U.S. focus. The U.S. faculty has had a traditional strength in African American History, with intradepartmental connections to the Comparative Black History program and African History. Members of the faculty are also closely involved in the new African-American and African Studies program. The U.S. field is equally strong in political and social history, with special strength in the Antebellum period, the Civil War & Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era. The faculty are also currently building a program in Great Lakes history in national and international context, viewing the region as a borderland throughout its history. The department also has growing strength in race and ethnicity--including African American, Latina/o, Jewish, or Native American studies. For students interested in other aspects of U.S. history, the size of the faculty will enable them to pursue careers in urban, labor, intellectual, religious, diplomatic, rural, environmental, and diplomatic history, and there are students currently working in each of these areas. Last, U.S. History and American Studies have a close working relationship that allows graduate students from each program to work closely with faculty in the other.

Funding

Graduate students in U.S. History can receive financial support either through recruitment fellowships, completion grants, research assistantships, or teaching assistantships within the Department of History or the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities. Financial aid is based on merit and need.

Current Ph.D. students working with U.S. faculty on U.S. History and American Studies dissertations have earned prestigious external fellowships and awards as well. These include Newberry Fellowships, the Albert J. Beveridge Grant of the American Historical Association, the graduate fellowship at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, and other national and regional fellowships.

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Research

The MSU Library has an outstanding collection of both old and recent volumes in U.S. history. In particular, the library houses concentrations in African American, agriculture, American radicalism, American Studies, the Civil War and Reconstruction, foreign relations, government documents, Michigan history, Native Americans, and the West. As a member of the CIC, the library has ready access to Interlibrary Loan materials from other Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. As well, the library has partnered with the Library of Michigan in downtown Lansing to make volumes from the state library available on campus to MSU researchers.

MSU also houses important archival resources in U.S. history. MSU Library Special Collections includes the Russell B. Nye Popular Culture Collection, the American Radicalism Collection, the Ethnic Studies Collection, the Comic Book Collection, the Changing Men Collection, and the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender Collection. The University Archives contain a substantial number of collections relating to the history of the university, agriculture, and the social and political history of Michigan.

MSU is located within easy driving distance of major libraries and archives in the Midwest, providing graduate students with ample resources for dissertational research in a variety of subfields, particularly in the social, economic, and political history of the Great Lakes Region. For more information on collections follow the links below.

Michigan libraries and archives with strong U.S. and regional collections:

A sample of research libraries and archives in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin:

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Ph.D.s completed since 2000:

  • Amy Hay, “Recipe for Disaster: Chemical Wastes, Community Activists, and Public Health at Love Canal, 1945-200” (2005)
  • Theodore Moore, “Capital Cities: Planning, Politics and Environmental Protest in Lansing, Michigan, and Salt Lake City Utah, 1920-1945” (2004)
  • Michael Kassel, “Mass Culture, History and Memory, and the Image of the American Family” (2004)
  • Malcolm Magee, “”Above the Mountains of the Earth: The American Presbyterian Roots of Woodrow Wilson’s Foreign Policy” (2004)
  • Kristi Rutz-Robbins, “Colonial Commerce: Race, Class and Gender in a Local Economy, Albemarle, North Carolina, 1663-1729” (2003)
  • Rose Thevenin, “The Single Greatest Threat: A Study of the Black Panther Party, 1966-1971” (2003)
  • Kenneth Marshall, “‘Ain’t no account’: Issues of Manhood and Resistance among Eighteenth-Century Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Literature, et al.” (2003)
  • LaTrese Adkins, “‘And Who Has the Body’: The Historical Significance of African American Funerary Display” (2003)
  • Vibha Balla, “American Dreams: Gendered Migrations from India” (2002)
  • David Gabrielse, “Making Men, Institutions, and the Midwest: The Building and Writing of Indiana Colleges, 1824-1860” (2002)
  • William Hamel, “Race and Responsible Government: Woodrow Wilson and the Phillipines” (2002)
  • Carmen Harris, “A Ray of Hope for Liberation: Negroes in the South Carolina Extension Service, 1915-1970” (2002)
  • Jaqueline McLeod, “Jane Matilda Bolin: A Pioneer for Justice” (2002)
  • Julia Harmon, “Reverend Robert L. Bradby: Establishing the Kingdom of God Among Migrants, Women, and Workers, 1910-1946” (2002)
  • Daniel J. Lerner, “Visions of a Sporting City: ‘Shadowball’ and Black Chicago, 1887-1950” (2002)
  • Karen Madden, “Ready to Work: Women in Vermont and Michigan from Suffrage to Republican Party Politics” (2001)
  • Melanie Shell-Weiss, “‘The All Came from Someplace Else’: Miami, Florida’s, Immigrant Communities, 1896-1970” (2001)
  • Patricia Rogers, “Unprincipled Men Who are One Day British Subjects and the Next Citizens of the United States” (2001)
  • Jennifer Stollman, “‘Building Up a House of Isreal in a Land of Christ’: Jewish Women in the Antebellum and Civil War South” (2001)
  • Randal Jelks, “Race, Respectibility, and the Struggle for Civil Rights: A Study of the African American Community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1870-1954” (2001)
  • Jeffrey Hodges, “Dealing with Degeneracy: Michigan Eugenics in Context” (2001)
  • Jane Morris-Crowther, “‘A Challenge and a Promise: The Political Activities of Detroit Clubwomen in the 1920s” (2001)
  • Matthew Whitaker, “Western Resistance: Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale and the Transformation of the Black Freedom Struggle in the American West” (2001)
  • Amy Lagler, “‘For God’s Sake do Something’: White-Slavery Narratives and Moral Panic in Turn-of-the-Century American Cities” (2000)
  • Lloyd Knowles, “The Appeal and Course of Christian Restorationism on the Early Nineteenth-Century American Frontier: With a Focus on Sidney Rigdon, et al.” (2000)