HIST152 U.S. History: Modern America
Department of Social & Behavioral Science: History
- I. Course Number and Title
- HIST152 U.S. History: Modern America
- II. Number of Credits
- 3 credits
- III. Number of Instructional Minutes
- 2250
- IV. Prerequisites
- None
- Corequisites
- None
- V. Other Pertinent Information
-
This course meets the General Education requirement for Arts/Humanities. This course meets the General Education requirement for Diversity. This course meets the General Education requirement for Critical Thinking.
- VI. Catalog Course Description
- Students explore America's transformation into an industrial and global power since the Reconstruction era. Topics critically examined include: immigration, modernization, struggles for race, class, gender, and sexual equality, nationalism, world war, and broad social, economic, and cultural change.
- VII. Required Course Content and Direction
-
-
Course Learning Goals
Students will:
- demonstrate an understanding of the history of the United States, and the relationships and conflicts between diverse Americans, from the Reconstruction era to the beginning of the twenty-first century;
- critically analyze and evaluate competing points of view and voices in modern American history [Critical Thinking];
- identify events, politics, social systems, economic arrangements, and ideologies that set the framework for modern race relations in the U.S. [Diversity];
- examine the Reconstruction Era's broad effects in setting the framework American politics, economics, and social systems in the 20th century;
- identify the major intellectual, technological, and cultural developments of the Progressive Era and World War I [Arts/Humanities];
- demonstrate an understanding of intellectual and cultural history of the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression [Arts/Humanities]; and
- demonstrate an understanding of the WW II homefront and warfront; and demonstrate an understanding of the cold war and post-cold war periods.
-
Planned Sequence of Topics and/or Learning Activities
- Reconstruction: the framework for modern U.S. race relations
- Becoming a modern society: Western conquest and Eastern industrialization
- Imperial America: competing foreign policy visions
- Progressivism: a reform response to modernization
- World War I: the U.S. becomes a world power
- The Twenties: a culture in conflict (Harlem Renaissance, the Lost Generation, Christian fundamentalism)
- The Great Depression: New Deal and the creative cultural response
- World War II, on the homefront and warfront
- Postwar domestic social change
- Cold War foreign policy
- The Vietnam War and 1960s social dissent
- Postwar liberalism and social reform (Civil Rights, 2nd Wave Feminism, Chicano Rights, Gay Rights, Environmentalism and other social movements)
- The re-emergence of the conservative tradition
- America in the global age
- Competing visions of the U.S. in the post-cold war world
-
Assessment Methods for Course Learning Goals
Course learning goals are assessed with exams, essays, written assignments, multi-media projects, and/or participation in classroom/online discussions. -
Reference, Resource, or Learning Materials to be used by Student:
See course syllabus.
-
Review/Approval Date - 5/04; Core Objectives/Goals added 5/04; Revised 5/2012; New Core 8/2015