Fleegler webpage

Fall 2008
University of Mississippi
Professor Robert Fleegler
E-mail: Fleegler@olemiss.edu
Office hours: to be announced

The period from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the First World War witnessed significant upheavals in the United States. The nation evolved from a predominantly rural country to one where a majority of Americans lived in urban centers. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe flooded these new cities, precipitating a nativist reaction as well as a debate concerning the very nature of American identity. As agriculture endured a series of crises, manufacturing emerged as the leading sector of the economy. Finally, America’s new industrial might transformed the US from a bit player in international politics into one of the leading economic and military powers in the world.
In this course, we will focus on these large-scale structural changes while concentrating of how these shifts effected the South and the lives of ordinary Americans. We will pay particularly close attention to issues of race, class, and gender. After a brief moment of legal equality during Reconstruction, African Americans in the South were subjugated under the harsh strictures of Jim Crow. While some workers benefited from the tremendous economic growth of the time, many Americans, particularly the recently arrived immigrants, struggled to cope with the new industrial order. Feminists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought for the right to vote while most women remained confined to the domestic sphere.
Readings will include both first-hand accounts from the time as well as secondary sources.

Required Reading
Thomas Bell, Out of this Furnace
Course Packet- pick up at front office

Course Assignments
The major assignments of the course will be a midterm, one paper (5 pgs., typed and double-spaced) and a final exam. I expect the paper to be turned on time and you will lose a letter grade for every week the paper is late unless you provide a reasonable explanation. Each week we will discuss the class materials for a period of time. Students will be expected to attend class regularly and have done the reading and actively participate in discussion.

Course Objectives
• Learn to think analytically about history—it’s about why things happened—not simply memorizing what happened

Course Evaluation:
Midterm- 25%
Paper - 30%
Final-30%
Participation in Discussion- 15%

Week 2(Week of September 1 ) –-The Rise of Jim Crow
Readings: Remembering Jim Crow, xxiii-xxxv, 1-43

Week 3(Week of September 8)—Industrialism and Labor in the North
Readings: Thomas Bell, Out of this Furnace, 3-117

Week 4(Week of September 15)—The New South
Readings: Major Problems in the American South, 70-128

Week 5 (Week of September 22)—Populism
Readings: Major Problems in the American South, 129-159

Week 7 (Week of October 6)—Immigration and Urbanization
Reading: Bell, Out of this Furnace, 119-208

Week 8 (Week of October 13)—Progressivism
Readings: David Von Drehle, Triangle, 1-5, 139-218

Week 9 (Week of October 20)—The Development of the West and Native Americans
Readings: Conservation in the Progressive Era, 3-41

Week 10 (Week of October 27)—Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson
Readings: John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest, 1-62

Week 11- (Week of November 3)—First-Wave Feminism
Readings: Buhle, A Concise History of Women’s Suffrage, 1-45 and other selections

Week 12 (Week of November 10)—Coming of World War I
Readings: David Kennedy, Over Here, 144-230

History 306: The United States since 1945

Fall 2008
University of Mississippi
Professor Robert Fleegler
e-mail- Fleegler@olemiss.edu
office hours: to be announced

This course will survey major social, economic, and political trends in U.S. History from 1945 through the 1980s. This period witnessed dramatic shifts in the lives of ordinary Americans. In the 1950s, strong economic growth propelled millions of workers into a growing middle class while Communism and the Cold War emerged to produce new anxieties. By the 1960s, the activism of the African-American civil rights movement set in motion forces that would end Jim Crow while Vietnam created divisions within the country not seen since the Civil War. In the 1970s, Watergate undermined the faith of citizens in their own government while a faltering economy and the nation’s impotence abroad made many Americans believe that the nation’s best days were behind it. These are but a few of the many events that shaped America during this time. The class will focus primarily on three major trends: the changing roles of racial, gender, and ethnic groups, the decline of faith in government and other major institutions, as well as the fall of liberalism and the rise of political conservatism. Attention will also be paid to foreign policy. The readings will largely be composed of primary sources; that is, first-hand accounts of the period by participants. Visual sources will also be an important part of the course. Emphasis will be placed on the ability to analyze and interpret these sources as well as understanding the basic narrative of the period.

Required reading:
James Patterson, America since 1941
Samuel Freedman, The Inheritance
Course Packet- Available at front desk at Southaven and Tupelo

Course Assignments
The major assignments of the course will be one short paper (5-6 pgs., typed and double-spaced) and two exams. I expect the paper to be turned in on time and you will lose a letter grade for every week the paper is late unless you provide a reasonable explanation. Each week we will discuss the class materials for a period of time. Students will be expected to attend class regularly and have done the reading and actively participate in discussion.

Course Objectives
• Learn to think analytically about history—it’s about why things happened—not simply memorizing what happened

• Improve basic writing skills

• Learn to comprehend the basic narrative of the period

Course Evaluation:
Midterm- 25%
Paper- 30%
Final-30%
Participation in Discussion- 15%

Class Schedule

Week One (Week of August 25)— The Legacy of the Great Depression and World War II

Week Two-(Week of September 1)— NO CLASS

Week Three (Week of September 8)— The Cold War and McCarthyism
Readings: Haynes Johnson, The Age of Anxiety, 193-281
Patterson, America in the Twentieth Century, 33-70

Week Four (Week of September 15)—The Culture of the 1950s
Readings: Thomas Hine, Populuxe, 3-36, 167-178
David Halberstam, The Fifties, 456-479
Patterson, 73-95, 98-107

Week Five (Week of September 22)— The Kennedys and the New Frontier
Readings: Patterson, Grand Expectations, 458-523

Week Six (Week of September 29)—From the Sit-Ins to Selma, Civil Rights, 1960-65
Readings: John Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 81-117, 291-347

Week Seven (Week of October 6)-- Midterm, no reading

Week Eight (Week of October 13)—Black Power and White Backlash
Readings: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 271-293
Eyes on the Prize, 248-261, 282-286,
Samuel Freedman, The Inheritance, 198-230
Patterson, 147-154

Week Nine (Week of October 20)— Vietnam
Readings: Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War, 1-58
Douglas Brinkley, “A Tour of Duty”

Week Ten (Week of October 27)—The Antiwar Movement, Richard Nixon, and the Rise of the Silent Majority
Readings: Freedman, The Inheritance, 266-332
Patterson, 159-201

Week Eleven (Week of November 3)— The 1970s and American Malaise
Readings: Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up, 158-185
David Frum, How We Got Here, 37-53
Bruce Schulman, The Seventies, 121-143
Jimmy Carter, “The Crisis of Confidence” Speech
Patterson, 201-220

Week Twelve (Week of November 10)—Women and Second-Wave Feminism in Postwar America
Readings: Schulman, The Seventies, 159-189
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (excerpt)
Time, “Women of the Year”

Week Thirteen (Week of November 17)— Ronald Reagan and the 1980s
Paper Due

Week Fourteen (Week of December 1)— Final Exam