HIS 112 American History from Civil War to Global Power

Fall/Spring

This course provides a survey of American Civilization from Reconstruction after the American Civil War to the present. Among the topics to be examined will be: post Civil War Reconstruction of the nation and the long struggle to define the nature of freedom for the formerly enslaved and their descendants, westward expansion and industrialization in the late nineteenth century, American imperialism and mass immigration, Progressive reform, the first and second World Wars and their impact at home, the evolving efforts of women, immigrants, and people of color to secure political, economic, and social equality, the Great Depression and the New Deal policy response, the Cold War, the policy outputs of the Great Society and the social conflicts of America in the 1960s and 1970s, America’s emergence as the globe’s dominant economic and military power over the final decades of the twentieth century, and the late twentieth and early twenty-first century’s economic and social development and political conflicts. These topics will be presented with an emphasis on the complex evolution of America’s diverse multiethnic, multiracial population.

3 credit hours