United States History

This history course focuses on musical expressions created in the United States since 1900. We will emphasize how musical performances and the consumption of popular music can reveal notions of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality that have circulated in the twentieth and twenty-first century United States. The course will pursue a thematic approach with a loose chronological order. Topics include, but are not limited to: corridos and ethnic conflict in the Southwest Borderlands; work songs, field hollers and African American labor in the rural South; the rise of ragtime as the first form of popular music in the twentieth-century U.S.; origins of blues traditions in the Jim Crow South; the Great Migration(s); women and blues performance; multiethnic contributions to jazz; "race records" and the segregation of popular music; creation of the country and western genre; white supremacist backlash to jazz and blues; the Swing Era; música orquesta and the Mexican American Generation; conjunto traditions in rural South Texas; race, rhythm and blues, and rock `n' roll; Black and Chicano soul music; queerness, race, and disco; Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and African American performance in the creation of hip hop; "gangsta rap," gender, and violence; Asian Americans and hip hop dance; international popularity of hip hop cultures.

History of Indians in U.S. development from 1500 to the present with emphasis on relations between competing Indian groups and between Indians and whites.

This course provides a long-term historical perspective on the origins and development of American capitalism, combining three interrelated thematic fields in U.S. history: economic history, business history, and labor history.

This course explores the development of technology and concepts of nature in the United States, from the eighteenth century to the present. It interprets the historical roots of the relationship between human knowledge and the environment by examining how science and technology have shaped our understanding, use, and control of nature.

Survey of U.S. women from early Native-American/European contact through 1890. This course introduces students to a social history of diverse groups of women focusing on their legal, economic, political, sexual, and reproductive lives.

Survey of diverse groups of women throughout colonial America and United States and their influence upon tribes, race, empire, politics, labor, economies, and society, 1890 to the present.

This course will examine how sports and leisure culture reveal popular ‘notions’ or stereotypes and cultural assumptions about race, ethnicity, class, and gender in twentieth and twenty-first century America. In addition to examining how athletic competitions served as a microcosm for social conflicts and change, we will evaluate how team spirit and individual sporting triumphs overcame or ameliorated social divisions and boundaries of exclusion. This course will pursue a thematic approach following a loose chronological order including, but not limited to: Sports and popular culture, Japanese internment and World War II, segregation and integration, Cold War nationalism and race, immigration and Americanization pressures, sexuality, homophobia and HIV/AIDS. Title IX and sexism, the commodification of children, America’s ‘melting pot’ theme and national pride, and Indian mascot controversies.

This course will focus on the University of Arizona (UA) since its organization as a land-grant institution in 1885. Students will be introduced to archival materials such as vintage photographs, student newspapers, scrapbooks, yearbooks, maps, plans, oral histories, government papers, minutes and publications of campus organizations, as well as methodological frameworks for the assessment and analysis of these materials. Students will collaborate on specific projects, focusing on aspects of such topics as student life, campus during wartime, town and gown, outreach, museums, research, campus architecture, UA as a public/state institution, making use of both textual and visual source material to explore a particular question about the past. Students will create a final narrative that is digital in format, such as a website, a documentary, an app, or a podcast. At the end of the semester, students will present these stories as part of a symposium, with an audience invited from the larger community. Projects will be archived under the curatorial auspices of the Department of History.

Survey of American wars from colonial times to the present; military institutions, doctrine, application of the principles of war, campaign strategies and tactics, technology, and leadership.

Causes and effects of America's longest war in light of global U.S.-Soviet rivalry and Asian nationalism.

History of law and order in western North America in the context of the political, economic, environmental, social, and cultural history during the long nineteenth century, from the Land Ordinance of 1785 to the war between capital and labor.

Survey from the 16th century to the present, with emphasis on social, political, and economic trends in their historical context.

The major social, political, and economic changes in the 20th century American West; the commonalities and conflicts within the region.

Social, economic, cultural, and political history from Jamestown to Secession.

From the Civil War to the present.

A history of crime in America from early Virginia through the present, with emphasis on violent crime, regional differences in crime, chronological changes, and causes of the same.

This one-semester, 3-unit, U.S. History survey is designed for history and education majors who anticipate teaching U.S. history in elementary, middle and/or high schools. The course units are aligned with the Arizona Social Studies State Standards, and the U.S. history content is linked to relevant Arizona and Southwestern history.

Examines the history of changing relations between human society and the natural world in North America.

Colonization of North America from the Columbian Exchange through 1763. The motivations and experiences of European colonizers, the evolution of their institutions and cultural practices in North America, their rivalries and contestations for supremacy, and their encounters with indigenous and African peoples.

Orgins, progress, and character of the American Revolution; social, cultural, political, and economic developments; and the making of the Constitution.

Social, cultural, political, and economic history of the United States from ratification of the Constitution to the eve of Civil War.

Political, constitutional, economic, and military developments in the U.S. and the Confederacy during and after the Civil War.

Examination of economic, social and political developments in years of rapid industrialization from the end of Reconstruction through World War I.

Prosperity, Depression, and the New Deal in peace and war.

American society and the role of the United States in world affairs from Yalta Conference to the present.

Economic, social and political development of the state and region from Spanish times to present.

This course examines the manner in which Hispanics have been portrayed and depicted in American films from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. the context in which the films were produced and the forces that have shaped their production will be covered.

Examination of economic, social and political developments in years of rapid industrialization from the end of Reconstruction through World War I.

A history of various ethnic groups and their contributions to colonial America and the United States with an emphasis on community formation, identities, interethnic encounters, acculturation strategies, and legacies.

This course explores the social construction of the male gender across American history, from European colonization to the present. We examine shifting norms and ideals of manhood and masculinity in the home, in the workplace, in social settings, and in politics.

The exchange of scholarly information and/or secondary research, usually in a small group setting. Instruction often includes lectures by several different persons. Research projects may/may not be required of course registrants.

A colloquium or small lecture class; topics and time period will vary by instructor and may range from the colonial era to the present-day United States.