Course Description
Analyzes racial and gender ideologies in American expansion, 1607-1989: race-based slavery; narratives of captivity among American Indian tribes; literature of the frontier; turn-of-the-century segregation and imperial conquest; Cold War sex panic; understandings of Asia from 1941 through the Vietnam era; United States interests in the Middle East.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students are required to complete an additional, 25-
page historiographical essay on one of the specific topics we
explore or research a 25-page primary-source-based paper on an
additional topic/event related to the course themes.
Athena Title
RACE GENDER EMPIRE
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to the ideologies animating policies high and low. Through cultural texts, the narratives by which historical actors understood their actions--the course seeks to acquaint students with the ways past societies and peoples have defined the relationships among nation, state, and empire. In general students will be expected to: 1. read critically a wide range of secondary and primary sources; the latter include legal statutes, court cases, Congressional testimony, wood-cut illustrations, maps, novels, reportage, travel accounts, memoirs, music, theatrical productions, and a film. 2. polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively. 3. write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
Topical Outline
Week 1 What is an empire? Week 2 Old World Antecedents: Rome, China, Britain Week 3 Captivity Narratives Week 4 Race-based Slavery in Colonial Virginia: Legal and Religious Development Week 5 Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday Week 6 The Literature of Expansion in the Early Republic: The Davy Crockett Trickster Tales Week 7 The Spectacle of the Closing Frontier: Buffalo Bill's Wild West Week 8 Scientific Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist Week 9 American Empire: Cuba, the Philippines, and Hawaiï Week 10 Immigration Policy: Free White Persons, Chinese Exclusion, and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 Week 11 Cold War Sexual Orthodoxy Week 12 The Lavender Scare Week 13 Cold War Orientalism Week 14 Why Are We in Vietnam? Week 15 The Vietnam Syndrome and Central America policy in the 1980s Week 16 Black Radicalism, Anti-colonialism, and the Middle East Week 17 American Conservatism and the Holy Land