Zachary Schrag's Syllabus

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: Common Texts: Cohen, [[A Consumers' Republic]], 399-410; Jacobs, [[Pocketbook Politics]], 262-265; Schulman and Zelizer, [[Rightward Bound]]
: Common Texts: Cohen, [[A Consumers' Republic]], 399-410; Jacobs, [[Pocketbook Politics]], 262-265; Schulman and Zelizer, [[Rightward Bound]]
: Celeste: Kim Phillips-Fein, [[Invisible Hands]]; Darren Dochuk, [[From Bible Belt to Sun Belt]]
: Celeste: Kim Phillips-Fein, [[Invisible Hands]]; Darren Dochuk, [[From Bible Belt to Sun Belt]]
-
: Kirk:
+
: Kirk: Rick Perlstein, [[Nixonland]]; Michael Flamm, [[Law and Order]]
===Fall 2012 (20c United States) ===
===Fall 2012 (20c United States) ===

Revision as of 23:59, 15 January 2013

These instructions are specific to students in Zachary Schrag's directed readings courses. The course will meets five or six times during the semester, depending on the topics selected. Meetings run about 90 minutes to two hours.

Although the main purpose of a directed-readings course is to prepare the student for a written or oral comprehensive exam, it remains a letter-graded course in its own right, with its own requirements.

Contents

Requirements

Reading

Prior to each meeting, each doctoral student will read three books. One will be a text we all read in common, the others will be books you and I choose to meet your particular needs and interests. Each topic page on the Historiographiki lists books on the topic, and I have posted general advice on Choosing books. But please let me know your particular interests, so that I can suggest titles, approve titles you come up with, and coordinate your readings with your classmates'.

You are not expected to read every word of every book, but to read enough to understand the argument and its factual underpinnings, and to write a thorough critique.

Writing

For each book, each student will post a response to the Historiographiki. If no page exists for that book, add one by adding a link to the topic page. If a blank page exists, fill it, following the instructions on Adding a book entry. If a page already exists, improve it, by editing the current summary, and by adding your own commentary at the bottom.

See

Discussing

Professor Schrag will lead the first discussion meeting of the term; the remainder will be led by students. The student discussion leader is responsible for updating the page for the topic under discussion. To do this, she will need a good understanding not only of the books she has read, but also those read by her classmates, and the relationship of all the books together. The discussion meeting is her opportunity to make sure she understands the content of each book and the connections among them.

Schedules

Spring 2013 (20c United States)

January 31. Progressivism

Common Text: Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 1-408; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 1-92.
Celeste: Peter Hales, Silver Cities; Elisabeth Clemens, The People's Lobby
Kirk: Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream; Kimberly S. Johnson, Governing the American State: Congress and the new Federalism, 1877-1929

February 21. New Deal

Common Texts: Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 409-484; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 95-175; Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, 5-61
Celeste: Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled; Neil Maher, Nature's New Deal
Kirk: Jordan Schwartz, The New Dealers; Colin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor and Politics in America, 1920-1935

March 7. World War II Home Front

Common Texts: Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 485-508; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 179-220; Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, 62-109.
Celeste: Jasmine Alinder, Moving Images; George Roeder Jr., The Censored War
Kirk: James T. Sparrow, Warfare State: World War II Americans and Age of Big Government; George Roeder Jr., The Censored War

April 4. Suburbanization

Common Texts: Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 221-261; Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, 112-397.
Celeste: Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven; Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own
Kirk: Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier; M. Jeffrey Hardwick; Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of the American Dream

April 25. Conservatism

Common Texts: Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, 399-410; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 262-265; Schulman and Zelizer, Rightward Bound
Celeste: Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands; Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sun Belt
Kirk: Rick Perlstein, Nixonland; Michael Flamm, Law and Order

Fall 2012 (20c United States)

September 5. Progressivism

Leader: Lindsey

Common Text: Hales, Silver Cities: Photographing American Urbanization, 1839-1939
Sheri: Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars; Molina, Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939.
Lindsey: Nightingale, Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities; Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic & Cultural Expansion 1890-1945
Alexandra: Elisabeth S. Clemens, The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925; Frank Tobias Higbie, Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880-1930.

September 19. New Deal

Leader: Alex

Common Text: Schwarz, The New Dealers: Power Politics in the Age of Roosevelt
Sheri: Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare; Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956.
Lindsey: Cohen , A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America; Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era.
Alexandra: Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939; G. William Domhoff, Class and Power in the New Deal: Corporate Moderates, Southern Democrats, and the Liberal-Labor Coalition

October 3. World War II

Leader: Sheri

Common Texts: The War in American Culture and The American West Transformed

Sheri: Eating for Victory
Lindsey: The Bad City and the Good War
Alexandra: Amy Bentley. Eating For Victory: Food Rationing And The Politics of Domesticity; George Roeder, Jr., The Censored War: American Visual Experience During World War Two

October 17. Suburbanization

Leader: Lindsey

Common Text: Sorting Out the New South City

Sheri: Downtown America; Crabgrass Frontier
Lindsey: My Blue Heaven; Places of their Own
Alexandra: Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century; Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

October 31. Civil Rights

Leader: Alex

Common Text: Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom.

Sheri: Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights, Mcguire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance – a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power.
Lindsey: Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, Eskew, But for Birmingham
Alexandra: Thomas J. Sugrue. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North; Matthew Lassiter, The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism

November 14. Conservatism

Leader: Sheri

Common Texts: McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right; Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan.

Optional: Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.
Sheri: Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise
Lindsey: Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
Alexandra: Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South; Bethany Moreton. To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise

Spring 2012 (History of Technology)

Methods

Edgerton, David. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. Reprint. Oxford University Press, USA, 2011.
Hughes, Thomas P. Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture. University Of Chicago Press, 2005.
Hughes, Thomas Parke. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970. New York, NY: Viking, 1989.
Nye, David E. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. The MIT Press, 2006.
Scott James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Smith, Merritt Roe Marx, Leo. Does Technology Drive History?: The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.

War and International Relations

Alder, Ken. Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815. University Of Chicago Press, 2010.
Angevine, Robert. The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America. Stanford University Press, 2004.
Castillo, Greg. Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design. Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Clodfelter, Mark. Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917-1945. Univ of Nebraska Pr, 2011.
Conway, Erik. High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945-1999. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Franklin, H. Bruce. WAR STARS: The Superweapon and the American Imagination. Revised and Expanded. Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2008.
Monteyne, David. Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War. Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Sherry, Professor Michael S. The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon. Yale University Press, 1989.

Public Health

Anderson, Warwick. Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines. Duke University Press Books, 2006.
Brandt, Allan. The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America. 1st ed. Basic Books, 2009.
Cogdell, Christina. Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s. Reprint. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Connelly, Matthew. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. 1st ed. Belknap Press, 2008.
Cullather, Nick. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia. Harvard University Press, 2010.
Reverby, Susan. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy. 1st ed. The University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Infrastructure and Transportation

Axelrod, Jeremiah B.C. Inventing Autopia: Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2009.
Brassley, Paul, James Dickinson, Jacob Wamberg, Tadeusz Rachwal, Stuart Kidd, Christopher Bailey, Stephen Mosley, Barbara Allen, and Mark Luccarelli. Technologies of Landscape: From Reaping to Recycling. Univ of Massachusetts Pr, 2000.
Clarsen, Georgine. Eat My Dust: Early Women Motorists. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Flood, Joe. The Fires : How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City--and Determined the Future of Cities. 1st ed. New York: Riverhead Books, 2011.
Klingle, Matthew. Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle. Yale University Press, 2009.
Mauch, Christof, and Thomas Zeller. The World beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe. 1st ed. Ohio University Press, 2008.
Melosi, Martin V. The Sanitary City: Environmental Services in Urban America from Colonial Times to the Present. Abridged. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.
Norton, Peter D. Norton, Peter D. "Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street" Technology and Culture, Volume 48, Number 2, April 2007, pp.331-359 (Article).
Zeller, Thomas. Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970. Berghahn Books, 2010.

Fall 2011 (Urban History)

  • The Nineteenth Century City, 1817-1899
Common text: The Park and the People
Alan: Horse in the City and Silver Cities
Richard: Five Points and Local Attachments
  • The Progressive City, 1890-1932
Common text: Sorting Out the New South City
Alan: Gay New York and Turning the Tables and Land of Desire
Richard: Street Justice and City Games
  • The Modern City, 1920-1965
Common text: Downtown
Alan: Making a New Deal and Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars
Richard: Greenbelt, Maryland and Designing a New America
  • The Urban Crisis, 1945-1980
Common text: The Origins of the Urban Crisis
Alan: Canarsie and Between Justice and Beauty
Richard: White Flight and American Babylon
  • The Suburbs and the Sunbelt
Common text: Crabgrass Frontier
Alan: Twentieth-Century Sprawl and City Center to Regional Mall
Richard: My Blue Heaven, Places of Their Own, and Cities of Knowledge

Spring 2011

Tuesdays, 2pm

Common texts: The New Dealers and American Genesis (Alan will create entry)
Alan. Electrifying America
Scott. Consumers in the Country
Common text: The Rise of American Air Power (Scott will create entry)
Alan. Missions for Science, War without Mercy
Scott. The War in American Culture, War and Nature
Common text: A Consumer's Republic
Alan. Crabgrass Frontier, The New Suburban History
Scott. Bulldozer in the Countryside, Invisible Hands
Common text: The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (Alan)
Alan. Suburban Warriors, Civilities and Civil Rights
Scott. White Flight, Freedom Is Not Enough
Common text: The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn (Scott)
Alan. Auto Mania, To Serve God and Wal-Mart
Scott. From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Beyond Engineering

Spring 2010

Mondays

Common Text: Uncle Sam Wants You

Becky The Burning Tigris and The Day Wall Street Exploded
Gwen The Refuge of Affections and American Home Life
John The Great Influenza and Behind the Mask of Chivalry

Common Text: Designing a New America

Becky The Forgotten Man and Nature's New Deal
Gwen Building a New Deal Liberalism and Modernizing Main Street
John Freedom from Fear; The US in Depression and War and Impossible Subjects

Common Text: The War in American Culture

Becky American Jewry and the Holocaust and Embracing Defeat
Gwen Victory Girls and WWII and the American Dream
John The American People in WWII and Embracing Defeat

Common Text: The Origins of the Urban Crisis

Becky The Race Beat and Cold War Civil Rights
Gwen In Their Own Interest and Colored Property
John The Movement and The Sixties and The Politics of Rage

Common Text: Suburban Warriors

Becky Polio: An American Story and A Generation Divided
Gwen Bourgeois Utopias and Crabgrass Frontier
John Many Are The Crimes and Homeward Bound

Fall 2008

Tuesdays, 3-4:30 pm.

Bonnie: McGovern, And A Time For Hope and Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled
David: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear and Badger, The New Deal
Bonnie: Bentley, Eating for Victory and Goodwin, No Ordinary Time
David: Albrecht, World War II and the American Dream and Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955
Bonnie: Oshinsky, Polio and Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace
David: Fried, Nightmare in Red, and Bird and Sherwin American Prometheus
Bonnie: Evans, Personal Politics and Levy, Civil War On Race Street
David: Fredrickson, The Dixicrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South:1932-1968 and Theoharis and Woodard eds., Freedom North
Bonnie: Rosen, The World Split Open and Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement
David: Isserman and Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s and Califano, Jr., The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson


Bonnie: Durr, Behind the Backlash and Luker Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood
David: Perlstein, Nixonland and McGirr, Suburban Warriors:


Bonnie: Collins, Transforming America and Ehrman The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan
David: Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 and Pembeton, Exit with Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan

Fall 2007

Discussion leaders in parentheses.

  • August 27: Progressivism (Zach)
Amy: McGerr, A Fierce Discontent and Frankel and Dye, Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era
Curtis. Molina, Fit to Be Citizens? and Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World
Patricia: Irvin, Standing at Armageddon: The United States 1877-1919 and Gullett, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Developement of the California Women's Movement
  • September 10: World War I (Patricia)
Amy: Sterba, Good Americans and Keene, Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America
Curtis: Woodward, Trial by Friendship and Keith, Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight
Patricia: Zieger, America's Great War: World War I and the American Experience and Kennedy Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens: Women and Subversion During World War I
  • September 24: New Deal (Amy)
Amy: Bold, The WPA Guides and Phillips, This Land, This Nation
Curtis: Schwarz, The New Dealers and McDannell, Picturing Faith
Patricia: Fagette, Digging for Dollars and Kirby, Black America in the Roosevelt Era
  • October 8: World War II (Curtis)
Amy: Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light and Kryder, Divided Arsenal
Curtis: Brooks, Defining the Peace and Savage, Broadcasting Freedom
Patricia: Roger, Prisoners Without Trial and Larrabee, Commander in Chief
  • October 22: Suburbanization (Patricia)
Amy: Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier and Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique
Curtis: Rome Bulldozer in the Countryside and Wiese, Places of Their Own
Patricia: Findlay, Magic Lands and Karal, As Seen on TV
  • November 5: Civil Rights (Curtis)
Amy: Gayle, Window on Freedom and Evans, Personal Politics
Curtis: Lassiter and Lewis, The Moderates' Dilemma and May, The Informant
Patricia: Branch, At Canaan's Edge and Torres, Black, White and in Color
  • November 19: Backlash (Amy)
Amy: Perlstein, Before the Storm
Curtis: Mason, Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority and Rozell and Wilcox, Second Coming
Patricia: Durr, Behind the Backlash and Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties

Spring 2007

Kent: Pitied but not entitled; Designing a New America
Lisa: A New Deal for the American People; Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
Liz: Brinkley,Voices of protest; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression
Kent: War without mercy, The Rise of American Air Power
Lisa: Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War; The Best War Ever
Liz: Free to Die for Their Country; Forum For Protest
Kent: The Big Show in Bololand; Rethinking the Korean War
Lisa: The Cold War; Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1945-1966
Liz: Direct Action; A Peril and A Hope
Kent: Bourgeois Utopias; Building Suburbia
Lisa: Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the 20th Century ; Magic Lands: Western City Scapes
Liz: Crabgrass Frontier; Bulldozer in the Countryside
Kent: Presidential decisions for war; Analogies at War
Lisa: America's Longest War;The Vietnam War: A study in the Making of American Foreign Policy
Liz: Confronting the War Machine; The Brothers' Vietnam War
Kent: White Flight; Behind the Backlash
Lisa: Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s; When Sex Goes to School
Liz: The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South; God Gave us the Right
Kent: Why Americans hate welfare; In the shadow of the poorhouse
Lisa: The Eighties; Morning in America
Liz: Poverty and Power;

Fall 2006

Dave: Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940; Kennedy, Freedom From Fear
Jim: Fagette, Digging for Dollars, American Archaeology and the New Deal; Organizing the Lakota, The Political Economy of the New Deal on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations
Dave: Weinberg, A World at Arms; Nash, American West Transformed
Jim: Hastings, Overlord; Wainstock, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb
Dave: Gladdis, The Cold War; Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light
Jim: Cahn, Killing Detente; Powers, Operation Overflight


Dave: Ashmore, Civil Rights and Wrongs; Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
Jim: Newman, The Civil Rights Movement; Whalen, The Longest Debate
Dave: Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest; Schulzinger, A Time for War
Jim: Appy, Working-Class War; Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam


Dave: McGirr, Suburban Warriors:; Lienesch, Redeeming America
Jim: Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties; Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties


Dave: Troy, Morning in America; Patterson, Restless Giant
Jim: Ehrman, The Eighties; Berman, Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency

Spring 2006

Comprehensive Exams

I have posted some advice on "The Comprehensive Exam" on my personal website.

Master's students planning to take written comprehensive exams with me and doctoral students planning to include me on their committee should compile, as early as possible, a list of all scholarly books and journal articles on which they expect to be tested. These will mostly be taken from your graduate syllabi, but if you have read books on your own or for research projects and know them well, do include them.

I encourage you to schedule a practice exam with me some weeks before the actual exam.

Retrieved from "http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/schrag/wiki/index.php?title=Zachary_Schrag%27s_Syllabus"
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