HISTORY 476/576 III
FALL 2000
THE UNITED STATES IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY: AMERICA SINCE 1950

Tuesday, Thursday: 9:30 - 10:50 in 360 Condon Hall
Professor Ellen Herman
office: 321 Grayson Hall
phone number: 346-3118
e-mail: eherman@darkwing.uoregon.edu
office hours: Tuesday, 1-2; Thursday, 2:30-3:30

This class will explore whether and how the second half of the 20^th century is coming into view as history by considering a number of important, interesting, and interrelated developments in American society since 1950, many of which remain controversial. Special attention will be devoted to exploring the dynamic relationship between politics and culture during this period: between the formal operations and policies of government, on the one hand, and broader cultural changes, on the other. For instance, we will consider the Cold War as a critically important episode in domestic social life as well as a series of international geopolitical events involving diplomatic and military action by nation states. By the same token, we will think about how cultural developments like television, the sexual revolution, and the growth of consumption shaped the public sphere and altered how Americans thought about the meaning of political participation, the worth of democratic capitalism, and the direction of their daily lives and personal experiences.

Major topics to be surveyed include the Cold War at home and abroad; postwar liberalism and antiliberalism; the civil rights movement and the enduring problem of difference and diversity in a democracy; political and cultural protest associated with the 1960s; the Vietnam War; Nixon and Watergate; feminism and gay liberation; the origins and emergence of the New Right and the Reagan Revolution; culture wars and identity crises; globalization and the end of the American century.

Format: This course will combine lectures and discussions with occasional films (or parts of films) shown in class. Students are expected to come to class with the required reading already done and ready to talk! Active participation is crucial to the success of the course.

Writing Requirements: There will be one 3-page Internet assignment, one 8-page review essay, and a final, take-home exam. The exam will be handed out on the final day of class, Thursday, November 30. It will be due on Tuesday, December 5.

1. The Internet assignment requires you to locate and document a good web site relevant to one or more of the topics covered in the class. Due: October 17.

2. The review essay requires you to write both descriptively and analytically about either The Feminine Mystique or The Origins of the Urban Crisis. Due: November 14.

3. The final exam will include short and long essay questions that integrate the course material as a whole. There may be some brief identifications as well.

Please notice that most of the written work is due toward the end of the term. Plan your time accordingly.

Academic Honesty: If this course is to be a worthwhile educational experience, your work must be original. Plagiarism and other forms of cheating are very serious infractions and will not be permitted. Students who are uncertain about exactly how to cite published, electronic, or other sources should feel free to consult with the instructor.

Lateness Policy: No late assignments will be accepted and no makeup exams will be given. Students who miss deadlines will be given an F for that assignment.

Accommodations: If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing accommodations in this course, please arrange to see me soon and request that Disability Services send a letter verifying your disability.

Grading:

attendance and participation: 15%

Internet assignment: 15%

review essay: 35%

final exam: 35%

Required Reading:

Course Packet, noted below as CP.

William Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff, eds., A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America, 5^th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). [noted below as HOT]

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1963).

Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried (New York: Broadway Books, 1999).

Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle (New York: Bantam, 1983).

Note: Required reading does not mean required buying. You can find all of the above on reserve in Knight Library as well as at the UO Bookstore.

Week 1: Now That It's Over: The Cold War Era in Historical Perspective

Tuesday, September 26: Introduction

Thursday, September 28: The 20^th Century as History and the Cold War as History

• Ellen Herman, "Cold War," in A Companion to American Thought, eds. Richard Wightman Fox and James T. Kloppenberg (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995), 132-134. [CP]
• America Divided, Introduction, chap. 3

Week 2: Global Cold War

Tuesday, October 3: What can we learn by treating the Cold War as history?

• Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?," The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989):3-18. [CP]
• Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Verso, 1991), 9-33. [CP]
• Cynthia Enloe, "The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War," The Progressive 57 (September 1993):24. [CP]
• George C. Herring, "Facing a New World Order" [HOT]

Thursday, October 5: Containment and the National Security State: International Communist Conspiracy vs. The Free World

• George F. Kennan, "The Necessity for Containment" [HOT]
• Henry A. Wallace, "Are We Only Paying Lip Service to Peace?" [HOT]
• "The Truman Doctrine" [HOT]
• "NSC-68: A Report to the National Security Council" [HOT]

Week 3: Cold War at Home

Tuesday, October 10: McCarthyism as Politics

• Joseph R. McCarthy, "The Internal Communist Menace" [HOT]
• Ellen Schrecker, "The Age of 'McCarthyism'" [HOT]
• "Atomic Spies or Cold War Martyrs? The Rosenberg Case" in Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1994), 138-149. [CP]

Thursday, October 12: McCarthyism as Culture

• John D'Emilio, "The Homosexual Menace: The Politics of Sexuality in Cold War America," in Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University (New York: Routledge, 1992), 57-73. [CP]
• Elaine Tyler May, "Cold War-Warm Hearth: Politics and the Family in Postwar America," in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 153-181. [CP]
• "HUAC Investigates Hollywood" [HOT]
• "Homosexuals in Government," Congressional Record 96 (March-April 1950) http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/gays-in-govt.html [CP]

Week 4: Nuclear Culture, Nuclear Families, Nuclear Consciousness

Tuesday, October 17: The Culture of the Bomb

• Paul Boyer and Eric Idsvoog, "Nuclear Menage in the Mass Culture of the Late Cold War Era and Beyond," in Paul Boyer, Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America's Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1998), 199-225. [CP]
• film: "Atomic Café"
• due: 3-page Internet assignment

Thursday, October 19: Sex, Marriage, and the Baby Boom

• The Feminine Mystique, 1963), chaps. 1-3, 8, 13-14, epilogue.

Week 5: Consumption, Conformity, and Cultural Revolution

Tuesday, October 24: Liberal Consensus?

• Godfrey Hodgson, "The Ideology of the Liberal Consensus" [HOT]
• Lance Morrow, "How Good a President Was John F. Kennedy?" [HOT]
• America Divided, chaps. 6, 10.

Thursday, October 26: Counter-Cultures and Other Americas

• SDS, "The Port Huron Statement" [HOT]
• Allen J. Matusow, "Rise and Fall of a Counterculture" [HOT]
• America Divided, chap. 8, 13.
• film: "Before Stonewall"

Week 6: Liberalism in Crisis, Part I: Rights

Tuesday, October 31: Race in Black and White

• Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" [HOT]
• Malcolm X, "Message to the Grass Roots" [HOT]
• Bayard Rustin, "From Protest to Politics" [HOT]
• The Origins of the Urban Crisis, introduction, 4-6.

Thursday, November 2: Resistance

• The Origins of the Urban Crisis, chaps. 7-9, conclusion.

Week 7: Liberalism in Crisis, Part II: Vietnam

Tuesday, November 7: The War

• The Things They Carried: "On the Rainy River," "Speaking of Courage," "Notes," "The Things They Carried," "The Lives of the Dead"
• John Garry Clifford, "Vietnam in Historical Perspective" [HOT]
• Richard Hammer, "One Morning in the War" [HOT]
• America Divided, chap. 4, pp. 129-133, 268-271.

Thursday, November 9: The Anti-War Movement

• William Jefferson Clinton, "Draft Letter" [HOT]
• Karin Ashley et al, "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows" [HOT]
• America Divided, chap. 9.

Week 8: From Identity Crisis to Identity Politics

Tuesday, November 14: Nixon, Watergate, and the Secrecy Society

• Jonathan Schell, "Watergate" [HOT]
• Jimmy Carter, "America's Crisis of Confidence" [HOT]
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 202-227. [CP]
• America Divided, chap. 14.
• begin Rubyfruit Jungle
• due: review essay

Thursday, November 16: Postwar Social Movements and the Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Kinship

• finish Rubyfruit Jungle
• Sara Evans, "Women's Consciousness and the Southern Black Movement" [HOT]
• bell hooks, "Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory" [HOT]
• Estelle Freedman and John D'Emilio, "The Emergence of Gay Liberation" [HOT]
• Rebecca Klatch, "Women Against Feminism" [HOT]
• Roe v. Wade [HOT]

Week 9: Reagan, Culture Wars, and the End of the American Century

Tuesday, November 21: The End of the New Deal Order and the Dawn of the New World Order

• Peter Schrag, "The Forgotten American" [HOT]
• Ronald W. Reagan, "The Second American Revolution" [HOT]\
• Kevin P. Phillips, "Reagan's America: A Capital Offense" [HOT]
• Charles Murray, "Losing Ground: Discredited Liberalism" [HOT]
• William Julius Wilson, "The Urban Underclass in Advanced Industrial Society" [HOT]
• Robert Reich, "As the World Turns" [HOT]
• America Divided, chaps. 11, 12.

Thursday, November 23: Thanksgiving Holiday!

Week 10: Coming to Terms with the Legacy of the Long 1960s

Tuesday, November 28: Freedom and Equality at Odds: Universities and Meritocracy in a Post-Civil Rights era

• America Divided, conclusion.
• Barry Bearak, "Questions of Race Run Deep for Foes of Preferences" [HOT]
• film: "Secrets of the SAT"

Thursday, November 30: The Recent Elections in Historical Perspective

• Final take-home exam to be handed out in class. Due on Tuesday, December 5.