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Professor: Stephen R. Ortiz

Email: sortiz@bgsu.edu

Webpage: http://personal.bgsu.edu/~sortiz

Phone: 419-372-8201

Office Hours: 131 Williams Hall, Monday 5-6pm, and by appointment

Course Description and Objectives:

This seminar explores the historical literature of the twentieth-century United States (approximately 1890-1990). It will present a broad range of topics, themes, and methodological approaches for you to consider. In doing so, there are three objectives for the course. First, it will introduce the major historiographical issues of the 20th-century US so that you all will have the tools required to situate your theses and dissertations in the appropriate secondary literature. Second, it will prepare PhD students and MA non-thesis students for exams in this subject field. Third, it will help prepare you to teach the history of the modern US. It will be quite reading intensive and require 5 medium-length papers. There will be no long final paper. (I will ask for a very short reflective paper from you, though.) Instead, week by week, you will collectively build a portfolio on the history of the 20^th-century US that will become a guide and resource for your work, your exams, and your teaching.

Required Books (in order of use): All books can be found at the BGSU bookstore.

Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in

North Carolina, 1896-1920

Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age

Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America

Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939

Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War

Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar

America

David Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in

the Federal Government

John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed

America (Revised)

Donald Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade

Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West

Michael Hunt, The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded

Global Dominance

Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century

Course Requirements:

Participation: As a graduate seminar, the course is only as good as the level of participation of the members. For this reason, participation is graded and weighted very heavily in your final grade. As a graduate student, participation is measured not just by talking, although that you must do. It is measured primarily by your critical engagement with the readings, the questions posed by fellow students and the professor, and the larger historical issues.

Supplemental readings papers (5): There are three goals for these papers. The first is to relate to your readers an informative and concise description of the book’s main arguments and interpretations, the exposition (how those arguments are constructed), the author’s methodology, and the book's historiographical significance (Approx. 4-5 pages). Second, you should write your impressions of the book’s strengths, weaknesses, and overall persuasiveness (Approx. 2 pages). Third, you need to compare the book with the primary reading and its arguments, methodology, and interpretive perspective (Approx. 2 pages). This paper should be about 8-10 pages, but no more than 12. Please include the bibliographical details for each book at the top of your papers. Reviews in American History provides a great example of ways to approach this paper. All papers are due to me in hard-copy form in class on the day the readings are assigned. The essay is then to be deposited into the Blackboard drop box for distribution to your seminar colleagues.

Supplemental Book Oral Presentation (5): Each meeting, those who have chosen to do supplemental readings will be called upon to do a 10 minute summary presentation drawn from your paper on the book and your critique of it. It will be timed ruthlessly.

One-Page Summary Papers of Common Book (9): In the weeks that you do not have a longer supplemental paper reading due, you will write a one-page, single-spaced summary of the primary book’s main arguments and interpretations, the author’s methodology, and the book's historiographical significance. On the back of this paper, you will include a list of 3-4 questions and/or issues arising from your reading of the book that you would like the seminar to discuss. So, front of page is summary; back is a list of issues and questions. Again, please include bibliographical material on top of the front page.

Final Reflections: These will vary from student to student depending on your goals for the course and what program you are in. I will discuss this with each of you well before the end of the semester. It is just a formal opportunity to reflect on the course and on the field of twentieth-century US History. It will entail no more than 2-3 pages of writing.

The grade in the course will be determined by the following percentages:

5 Supplemental papers (9% each) 45%

5 Oral Presentations (3% each) 15%

9 One-Page Summary Papers (2% each) 18%

Final Reflections 2%

Class Participation 20%

Rules, Regulations, and Critical Information:

1. You are all adults. Regular attendance is expected but not mandated. It should be pointed out, though, that missing class will negatively affect your participation grade no matter how well you do when you are there.

2. Late arrival to class is not a crime but, please do not let it become a persistent problem. If you are having trouble getting to class on time for any specific reason, just come talk to me.

3. For the sake of your professor’s delicate sanity, please turn your cell phone ringers off when you come into the classroom. I allow the use of laptops and other web-connection devices, but if you are found to be checking facebook or other non-course related activities, the privilege will be revoked.

4. We will be discussing many contentious issues throughout the semester. While different opinions are expected—indeed encouraged—please show courtesy and respect to your fellow students at all times.

5. While not encouraged, late papers will be accepted with penalties. It is better to turn in a late paper than to plagiarize in order to get a paper in on time. Why? Because…

6. Academic misconduct of any sort—cheating, plagiarism, etc.—will be punished by a failing grade in the course. In writing papers, be certain to give proper credit whenever you use words, phrases, ideas, arguments, and conclusions drawn from someone else’s work. Failure to give credit by quoting and/or footnoting is PLAGIARISM and is unacceptable. Please review the University’s Code of Student Conduct at http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/sa/studentdiscipline/page13640.html. If you have any questions about what constitutes academic misconduct, please come speak with me. Do not jeopardize your standing at BGSU by failing to abide by these rules.

7. Students requiring classroom accommodations must follow the University’s

Office of Disability Services procedures for accommodations found at http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/sa/disability/index.html. Please do so as soon as possible so accommodations can be made early in the semester and you do not get behind in your studies.

8. Please do not hesitate to contact me during the semester if you have any individual concerns or issues that need to be discussed. It is always better to contact me sooner rather than later with any potential problems.

Instructor Responsibilities

i) Select and present course content

ii) Identify themes to be emphasized

iii) Facilitate discussions

iv) Evaluate students’ historical understanding, critical analysis, and strength of writing

v) Communicate these evaluations to students in a timely manner

vi) Assist students in improving their skills and in building their portfolios

Student Responsibilities

i) Complete required readings and assignments

ii) Attend class regularly

iii) Participate in class discussions

iv) Communicate with instructor (using office hours, e-mail, blackboard message board, by telephone during office hours, or by any other way you can think of.)

v) Notify instructor if you are having any difficulties that are having a negative impact on your performance in the course (illness, etc.)

vi) Complete assignments on time

vii) Notify instructor of any disabilities in a timely manner

What a Typical Monday Night Will Look Like:

6:00-6:05: announcements

6:05-7:25: discussion of primary book

7:25-7:35: short break

7:35-8:35: oral presentations of supplemental books (6x10 minutes)

8:35-9:00: Q&A with oral presenters and final thoughts on topic(s) and books

COURSE CALENDAR AND READINGS

Week #1, Aug 24

Course Introduction(s) and Sign-up for Supplemental books

Week #2, August 31: Gender and Politics (or Progressivism, part 1)

Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow

Suggested: Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” JAH 84 (Sept 1997): 620-647.

Supplemental books:

Maureen Flanagan, Seeing with their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City

_____Brown________________

Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism

_____St. Julien_________

Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935

_____________________

Kathyrn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of

Women’s Political Culture

_____________________

Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics

____Faykosh____________

Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare

____Browning________________

Louise M. Newman, White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States

____Rawlins__________

Week #3, September 7

LABOR DAY, NO CLASS

Week #4, September 14: Progressivism and Rise of the State

Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings

Suggested: Daniel T. Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” RAH 10 (1982): 113-132

Supplemental books:

Robert Wiebe: The Search for Order, 1877-1920

_Skock____________________

Robert D. Johnson, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of

Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon.

__St. Julien___________________

Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive

Movement in America

___Huffer__________________

Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917

__McLochlin___________________

Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism

____Rawlins__________________

Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National

Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920

_______ Smith_________________

Morton Keller, Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in

America, 1900-1933

_Crandall____________________

Week #5, September 21: Immigration and Ethnicity

Ngai, Impossible Subjects

Suggested: Russell A. Kazal, “Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal

of a Concept in American Ethnic History, The American Historical Review (April, 1995), 437-471.(JSTOR) and Donna R. Gabaccia,  “Is Everywhere Nowhere? Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of United States History,” The Journal of American History (December, 1999). Historiographical essay, “Migrations and Destinations: Reflections on the Histories of U.S. Immigrant Women,” by Donna Gabaccia and Vicki Ruiz in BB and a forum on teaching immigration and ethnic history in the Journal of American Ethnic History: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jaeh/28.2/index.html

Supplemental books:

Erika Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Act, 1882-1943

_Dietz____________________

John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America

_____________________

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and

the Alchemy of Race

__Chesnut___________________

MF Jacobson, Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish,

and Jewish Immigrants in the United States

_Skock____________________

George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity

in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945

_____________________

Charles Mongomery, The Spanish Redemption: Heritage, Power, and Loss on New

Mexico’s Upper Rio Grande

__mcLochlin___________________

Kimberly L. Phillips, AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-

Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45

__Brown___________________

Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930

__Bennett____________________

Week #6, September 28: The Twenties and the New Deal Era

Cohen, Making a New Deal

Suggested: James R. Barrett, “Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and

the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880-1930,” JAH 79 (Dec. 1992): 996-1020 and Richard Oestreicher, “Urban Working-Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Politics, 1870–1940,” Journal of American History (1988). Also Micheal Parrish, The Anxious Decades.

Supplemental books:

Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era

_____________________

Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long. Father Coughlin and the Great Depression

_St. Julien____________________

Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s

_Dietz____________________

Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal

_Brown____________________

Sarah T. Phillips, This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America,

and the New Deal

__Rawlins___________________

Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s

_Bennett____________________

Cheryl Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?” Black Harlem in the Great Depression

_Turnage____________________

Week #7, October 5: New Deal and Modern Liberalism (And WWII)

Brinkley, The End of Reform

Suggested: Theda Skocpol (with Edwin Amenta), “Redefining the New Deal: World War

II and the Development of Social Provision in the United States,” from Social Policy in the United States and Cheryl Greenberg, "Twentieth Century Liberalisms: Transformations of an Ideology," in Sitkoff, ed., Perspectives on Modern America

Supplemental books:

William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940

__Crandall___________________

Anthony J. Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940

_Bennett____________________

Alan Lawson, A Commonwealth of Hope: The New Deal Response to Crisis

_Smith____________________

Suzanne Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy

_Chesnut____________________

Colin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935

_Faykosh____________________

Jennifer Klein, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of

America's Public-Private Welfare State

_Dietz____________________

Jason Scott Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of

Public Works, 1933-1956

__Browning___________________

Week #8, October 12: FALL BREAK, NO CLASS

Week #9, October 19: Consumerism and Suburbanization (And WWII)

Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic

Suggested: David Steigerwald, "All Hail the Republic of Choice: Consumer History as

Contemporary Thought," Journal of American History 93 (Sept. 2006): 385-403 and Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue, “Introduction,” in The New Suburban History

Supplemental books:

Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor

and Liberalism, 1945-1960

_Crandall____________________

Charles F. McGovern, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890-1945

_Chesnut____________________

Daniel Horowitz, Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939-1979

___Turnage__________________

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

__Skock___________________

Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States

__St. Julien___________________

Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization

in the Twentieth Century

__Rawlins___________________

Week #10, Oct. 26: Sexual Identity (and Cold War Culture and Civil Rights Activism)

Johnson, The Lavender Scare

Suggested: Margot Canaday, "Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social

Citizenship under the1944 G.I. Bill," http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/90.3/canaday.html

Supplemental books:

George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay

Male World, 1890-1940

__Turnage___________________

Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in

Twentieth-Century America

__Brown___________________

Alan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in

World War Two

__Chesnut___________________

Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States

_Evans____________________

Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History

of a Lesbian Community

__Swartz___________________

John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics. Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual

Minority in the United States. 1940-1970

___Faykosh__________________

Week #11, Nov. 2: Civil Rights Movement (and Oral History)

Dittmer, Local People

Suggested: Steven F. Lawson, “Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the

Civil Rights Movement,” The American Historical Review (April, 1991). (JSTOR) and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History, 91.4 (At History Cooperative)

Supplemental books:

Mary Dudziak, Cold War, Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy

__Rawlins___________________

Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the

Mississippi Freedom Struggle

__McLochlin___________________

Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement:

A Radical Democratic Vision

__Turnage___________________

John D. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution

___Swartz__________________

Zaragoza Vargas, Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in

Twentieth-Century America

___Browning__________________

Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of

National Policy. 1960-1972

__Smith___________________

Week #12, November 9: Urban History, Deindustrialization,

and Non-Southern Race Relations

Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis

Supplemental books:

Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia

_____________________

Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland

___Evans__________________

Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar

New York City

__Browning___________________

Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for

Civil Rights in the North

__St. Julien___________________

James N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migration of Black and White

Southerners Transformed America

___Huffer__________________

Judith Stein, Running Steel, Running America : Race, Economic Policy, and

the Decline of Liberalism

_____________________

Week #13, November 16: Women’s Movement and Gender Relations

Rosen, The World Split Open

Suggested: Linda Gordon, “U.S. Women's History,” in Foner (ed.), The New

American History and Joanne Meyerowitz, “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946- 1958,” The Journal of American History (March, 1993),1455-1482

Supplemental books:

Nancy Maclean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace

___Smith__________________

Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and

Social Rights in Modern America

______Brown_______________

Sara M. Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil

Rights Movement and the New Left

_Greene____________________

Alice Echols, Daring To Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America. 1967-1975

___Turnage__________________

Beth Bailey, Sex in the Heartland

___Swartz__________________

Joanne Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America

__Bennett___________________

Week #14, November 23: Modern Conservatism

Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism

Suggested: Schulman and Zelizer, eds., Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in

the 1970s

Supplemental books:

Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

____Evans_________________

Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South

_Crandall____________________

Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

__Huffer___________________

Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the

Conservative Counterrevolution

____Greene_________________

Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New

Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics

____Chesnut_________________

Bruce Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture,

Society, and Politics

__McLochlin___________________

Donald T Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History

___Faykosh__________________

Week #15, Nov. 30: Environmental History and the History of Environmentalism

Worster, Rivers of Empire

Suggested: Ted Steinberg, “Down to Earth: Nature, Agency, and Power in History,”

AHR (June 2002): 798-820; William Cronon, “Modes of Prophecy and Production: Placing Nature in History,” JAH 76 (March 1990): 1087-1106, 1122-31; Alfred Crosby, “The Past and Present of Environmental History,” American Historical Review vol. 100, 4 (Oct. 1995): 1177-1189.and Richard White, “American Environmental History: The Development of a New Historical Field,” Pacific Historical Review 54 (1985):297-335.

Supplemental books:

Neil M. Maher, Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the

Roots of the American Environmental Movement

__Skock___________________

Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise

of American Environmentalism

__Dietz___________________

Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in

Gary, Indiana, 1945-80

___McLochlin__________________

David Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air

Quality in America, 1881—1951

___Swartz__________________

Tom McCarthy, Auto Mania: Cars, Consumers, and the Environment

___Evans__________________

Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from

World War I to Silent Spring

___Greene__________________

Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United

States, 1955-1985

____Bennett_________________

Week #16, December 7 : The United States in/and the World

Hunt, The American Ascendancy

Suggested: Robert McMahon, "The Republic as Empire: American Foreign Policy in the

"American Century," in Sitkoff, ed., Perspectives on Modern America

Supplemental books:

Michael Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s

___Evans__________________

Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through

Twentieth-Century Europe

____Huffer_________________

Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman

Administration, and the Cold War

____greene_________________

Tony Smith, America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for

Democracy in the Twentieth Century

__Skock___________________

Olivier Zunz, Why the American Century?

____Crandall_________________

Frank Ninkovich, The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1900

____Smith_________________

Week 17, December 14: Citizenship

Gerstle, American Crucible

Supplemental books:

Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America

__Browning___________________

Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America

_Dietz____________________

Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of

Citizenship

__Swartz___________________

Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic

Citizenship in 20th-Century America

______Huffner_______________

Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management

in American Civic Life

___Greene__________________

Gretchen Ritter, The Constitution As Social Design: Gender And Civic Membership in

the American Constitutional Order

___Faykosh__________________