Admission requirements
Prerequisite: 100-level course in the Human Interactions major. This course gives entry to 300-level courses in Human Interactions.
Description
Americans are accustomed to telling their country’s story as though it were utterly unique, autonomous, and self-determining—in a word, “exceptional.” But the history of the United States cannot be separated from the history of the rest of the world. The nation’s origins, after all, lie in the European expansion into the Western Hemisphere, and in the growth of an increasingly interdependent global economy. Initially an alliance of weak, widely scattered republics, the United States gradually congealed into nationhood, and in the nineteenth century it expanded, united, and developed an increasingly distinctive culture—made all the more distinctive by the nation’s unusual economic and social placement in a globalizing world. By the early twentieth century, the United States had emerged as a world power, with colonies and dependencies in the Pacific and Caribbean, and with political and economic interests across the globe. Since then, this influence has only grown stronger—before reaching what some might regard as its twilight, here in the present day.
This course offers a selective tour through the history of the United States in global perspective. Viewing American history through a transnational lens, we will examine not only the place of the United States in world affairs, but also the many aspects of “domestic” American culture that were “made” by the world abroad—through flows of people, ideas, commodities, and capital. Course topics will range widely, moving from European colonization and the transatlantic slave trade, to global commerce and industrial development, to diplomacy and warfare, to immigration and social movements, to developments in cultural and intellectual life.
Course objectives
While it would be difficult to provide a comprehensive overview of U.S. history in just eight weeks, this course will provide a solid basis for understanding the emergence of the United States as a world power. It will also offer advanced training in both historical and historiographical argumentation. Students will gain experience in interpreting historical documents and in critiquing the works of scholars, culminating in a final research essay that combines both primary- and secondary-source analysis.
Timetable
Please see the LUC website: www.lucthehague.nl
Mode of instruction
This course will proceed primarily as a seminar, meeting for two 2-hour sessions per week. Each class will center on the discussion of an assigned reading, with introductory remarks by the professor and brief student presentations of supplementary texts. In addition to contributing informal web responses to a blackboard site before class, students will write two formal essays.
Assessment method
- Familiarity with central themes in US history;critical reading and thinking; analytical framing: assessed through active participation in weekly discussions, based on prior reading of literature, including web postings (20% of final grade):Weekly
- Synthetic analysis and oral communication; asking the ‘right’ questions: assessed through brief but formal 10-15 minute presentation (20% of final grade):Once per block; each student selects a session
- Formal written historical and historiographical analysis; cogent argumentation in relatively few pages: assessed through short essay (1200-1500 words; 20% of final grade):Week 4
- In-depth historical synthesis and analysis: assessed in Final essay (2500-3000 words; 40% of final grade):Week 8
Blackboard
a link to the blackboard page may be entered here
Reading list
Most of the material we will be reading will be available through online databases, though it is possible that one or two books will be available for purchase at the student bookstore or online.
Registration
This course is only open for LUC The Hague students.
Contact information
Dr. Ann Marie Wilson
a.m.wilson@luc.leidenuniv.nl
Weekly Overview
Week 1: Introductions and Founding Moments
Week 2: Slavery and the Global Economy
Week 3: Manifest Destiny
Week 4: Migration of People and Capital
Week 5: Imperial Visions
Week 6: World Wars
Week 7: Americanization of the World?
Week 8: Reading Week
Preparation for first session
None.