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About the Course	Core Readings	The Schedule	Essay Reviews	Web Resources
HELP (General)	Using Lotus Databases	Go to Lotus Databases	Contact Mark Kraynak	Griffith's Homepage

Core Readings:

• Paul Boyer, Promises to Keep (2nd edition, 1999)
• Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order (1989)
• John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking the Cold War (1997)
• Robert Griffith (ed.),  Major Problems in American History since 1945 (1992)
• Michael J. Hogan (ed.), America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (1995)
• Gary B. Nash et al., History on Trial (1997)
• Various articles, essays and book chapters (see below)

See suggestions for additional readings at the end of both Boyer, Promises to Keep, and Griffith, Major Problems, as well as works discussed in the various assigned readings.   For recent studies on each of the topics under discussion, click on Recent Studies (below).

Click for Class Meeting:

Jan 24	Jan 31	Feb 7	Feb 14	Feb 21	Feb 28	March 6
March 20	March 27	April 3	April 10	April 17	April 24	May 1

Monday, January 24:  Introduction to the Class
 

Monday,  January 31:  The Origins of the Cold War

Core   Readings:

Gaddis, We Now Know, chapters 1-5.

Hogan, America in the World, chapters 1-6, 8.

Griffith, Major Problems, chapters 1-3.

Recent Studies on the Cold War

Possible Essay Reviews:

Postrevisionism and the Cold War -- John Gaddis and his critics

The American Century Revisited -- based on two recent  Diplomatic History issues.

Explaining American Foreign Relations --based on Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson's Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations (1991).]

Monday, February 7: The Cold War and the Third World

Core Readings:

Gaddis, We Now Know, chapters 6, 7 & 9.

Hogan, America in the World, chapters 15,16,17.

Griffith, Major Problems, chapter 6.

Recent Studies on the Cold War       and Recent Studies on the U.S. and Cuba

Possible Essay Reviews:

The United State and the Chinese Revolution

The Korean War and The Cold War In Asia

The United States and Latin America (or the Middle East, or Africa)

America's Obsession with Cuba

Monday,  February 14: Forging Postwar America

Core Readings:

• Griffith, Major Problems, pp. 20-30, chapters 4 and 5.
• Fraser and Gerstle (eds.), New Deal Order, chapters 3, 4, 5, 6.

 
• Griffith, "Two Decades of Scholarship on the Politics of Anti-Communism," in The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (2nd edition, 1987), ix-xxix.
• Ellen Shrecker,  "Interpreting McCarthyism: A Bibliographic Essay," in The Age of McCarthyism (1994), 255-263.
• Griffith, "Forging America's Postwar Order," in Lacey (ed.), The Truman Presidency (1989).
All three articles are available on Electronic Reserve.

Recent Studies on The 1950s and the Cold War at Home

Possible Essay Reviews:

McCarthy Revisionism

Cold War Culture

The Political Economy of the Postwar Era (business, labor, etc.)

Core Readings:

• Griffith, Major Problems, chapter 5 (repeat).
• Warren I. Susman, "Toward a History of the Culture of Abundance," Culture as History (1984), xix-xxx.
• Clifford E. Clark, "Ranch-House Suburbia: Ideals and Realities," in Larry May (ed.), Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War (1989), 171-191.
• Robert Griffith, "The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942-1960," Business History Review (Autumn, 1983), 388-412.
• Robert B. Westbrook, "Politics as Consumption: Managing the Modern American Election," in Richard Wrightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears (eds.), The Culture of Consumption (1983), 145-173.
All four articles are available on Electronic Reserve.

Recent Literature

Possible Essay Reviews:

Advertising and the Organization of Consumption
Selling the American Dream

Monday, February 28:  The Struggle for African-American Equality

Core Readings:

• Griffith, Major Problems, chapter 8
• Steven F. Lawson, "Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement," American Historical Review (April, 1991), pp. 456-471.  Available on JSTOR.
• Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996), pp. 259-271.  Available on Electronic Reserve.
• Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Read: Race, Wealth and Social Policy in America (1999), pp. 111-132.  Available on Electronic Reserve.

Recent Studies on Civil Rights and the Struggle for Equality

Possible Essay Reviews:

• Civil Rights as a People's Movement
• Up Against the City: The Struggle for Equality in Urban America
• The Rise and Fall(?) of Affirmative Action

Core Readings:

• Griffith, Major Problems, chapter 7.
• Robert Collins, "Growth Liberalism in the Sixties," in David Farber, The Sixties: From Memory to History (1994), pp. 11-44. Available on Electronic Reserve.
• Ira Katznelson, "Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?", in Fraser and Gerstle, Rise and Decline of the New Deal Order, chapter 7.

Recent Studies on the Great Society and American Liberalism

Possible Essay Reviews:

• American Liberalism
• Lyndon Johnson
• The Great Society (or any set of programs)

Monday, March 20: Presentation of First Round of Essay Reviews.  You essay reviews must be posted to the Lotus Notes Discussion Group before spring break if possible, but no later than Wednesday, March 15.  Members of the class will be asked to prepare and post comments on each of the essays before class meets on Monday, March 20.
 

Monday, March 27:  The United States and Vietnam

Core Readings:

• Hogan, America and the World, chapter 13.
• Griffith, Major Problems, chapter nine.
• Michael Rogin, "Healing the Vietnam Wound," American Quarterly 51:3 (1999), 702-708.  Available via the Library's Project Muse Database.

 
• H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE REVIEW
 
On February 1, a group of U.S. diplomatic historians began a roundtable discussion of a recently published book on Lyndon Johnson's decision to escalate the Vietnam War: Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 1999). I have posted the core of this discussion on our Lotus Notes class database.  If you want to follow the discussion that followed, which included a number of additional historians (including David Kaiser, whose new book on Kennedy, Johnson and Vietnam has just appeared), you may do so by clicking on   HDiplo Roundtable on Logevall and scrolling down to Loyd Gardner's introduction to the Forum.  (It takes a long time to load, so be patient.)

In the essay you post for Monday's discussion, focus on what the debate over Logevall's book reveals about the current state of the historical literature on the Vietnam War.

Recent Studies on the U.S. and Vietnam

Possible Essay Reviews:

• How We Got In: America, the Cold War and Vietnam
• The Contested Meaning(s) of the War: Vietnam Revisionism
• The Vietnam War in History and Memory

Core Readings:

• Griffith, Major Problems, chapters 10, 12
• Rick Perlstein, "Who Owns the Sixties," Lingua Franca (May/June, 1996)  Available on Electronic Reserve.
• David Farber, "The 60's: Myth and Reality," The Chronicle of Higher Education (December 7, 1994).  Available via the Library's Periodical Abstracts Database.
• Van Gosse, "Consensus and Contradiction in Textbook Treatments of the Sixties," The Journal of American History (September, 1995),  available via the JSTOR and Periodical Abstracts Databases.

Recent Studies on the 1960s
Recent Studies on Watergate

Possible Essay Reviews:

• Generations: The Emerging New History of the Sixties
• Contested Terrain: The History of the 1960s/The Politics of the 1980s
• Watergate: The Beginning of Politics by Other Means?
• Nixon's The One: An Essay Review on....

Final Examination: Select Topics You Will Write Questions On

Core Readings

• Griffith, Major Problems, chapter 11
• Joanne Meyerwotiz, "Beyond the Feminine Mystique," Journal of American History (March, 1993), available via JSTOR.
• Lori E. Rotskoff, "Rethinking the Origins of 1960s Feminism," Reviews in American History (March,2000), available via Project Muse.  For an introduction to the book under review, see Daniel Horowitz, "Rethinking Betty Friedan," American Quarterly (1996), also available via Project Muse.
• Heidi Hartmann, "Changes in Women's Economic and Family Roles in Post-World War II United States," in Lourdes Beneria and Catharine R. Stimpson (eds.), Women, Households, and the Economy (1987), pp. 33-36,41-49,54-59. Available on Electronic Reserve.

Recent Studies on Gender and Sexuality in Postwar America

Possible Essay Reviews:

• Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique Revisited
• Backlash: The Opposition to Changes in Women's Lives
• The Emergence of Gay Communities/Politics

 

Core Readings:

• Nash et al., History on Trial
Possible Essay Reviews:
• Culture Wars: (multiculturalism, immigration, religion, the schools, "family values," etc.)
• Practicing History in Public
• Is there a National Narrative (and if so, what is it?)

Friday, April 21:  Final Exam: Post Questions You Have Written to Lotus Discussion Database

Monday, April 24: From the Postwar Order to the New Economy

Final Exam: We will discuss and select questions each of you will answer.

Core Readings:

Griffith, Major Problems, chapter 14

Yergin & Stanislaw, "The Delayed Revolution," from The Commanding Heights (1998), on Electronic Reserve.

Robert D. Atkinson and Randoph H. Court, "The New Economy Index,"  The Progressive Policy Institute. (See especially, Section I, What's New About the New Economy" and "Nine Myths of the New Economy.")

John E. Schwarz, "The Hidden Side of the New Economy," The Atlantic Monthly (October, 1998), Internet Version.

J. Bradford De Long, "What 'New' Economy," Wilson Quarterly (Autumn, 1998), accessible online via the Library's Periodical Abstracts Database.

Kevin Stiroh, "Is There a New Economy," Challenge (July/August, 1999), accessible online via the Library's Periodical Abstracts Database.

Recent Readings on Politics and Political Economy since 1980

Possible Essay Reviews:

• The Great U-Turn: Forging the Post "Postwar" Economy
• The Last Hurrah: The Changing Political Process

Core Readings:

Griffith, Major Problems, chapter 15.

Benjamin R. Barber, "Jihad vs. McWorld," The Atlantic Monthly (March, 1992), 53-63.  Available via the Library's Periodical Abstracts Database.

Andrew J Bacevich, "Policing Utopia: The military imperatives of globalization," The National Interest (Summer 1999).  Available via the Periodical Abstracts Database.

Alan Tonelson, "Globalization - The Great Non-Debate," Current History (November, 1997). Available via the Periodical Abstracts Database.

Frederick Buell, "Nationalist Postnationalism: Globalist Discourse in Contemporary American Culture," American Quarterly (1998), 548-591. Available via Project Muse Database.

Recent Studies on the New Global Order

Possible Essay Topics:

The Empire Strikes Back: Foreign Policy in the Reagan Era
Who Won the Cold War
The Contested Meaning[s] of Globalization

Final Exam.  Monday, May 8:  Post Answers to Exam Questions to Lotus Discussion Database
 

Final Exam.  Wednesday, May 10: Post Comments on Questions to Lotus Discussion Database