United States History After 1877
HFK99AHS · 14 modules
This course offers a comprehensive survey of United States history from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the present day. Structured as a chronological journey through the major transformations of American society, the course examines how industrialization, immigration, war, economic crisis, and social movements reshaped the nation's politics, culture, and place in the world. Students will engage with primary sources, historiographical debates, and the lived experiences of diverse Americans—workers, immigrants, reformers, soldiers, and activists—to understand how the modern United States came to be.\n\nThe fourteen chapters trace a narrative arc from the rise of industrial capitalism and American empire through the Progressive reform era, the world wars, the Depression, the Cold War, and into the turbulent decades of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Each chapter treats a pivotal era or theme as a self-contained unit while building cumulative understanding of long-term patterns: the expansion and contraction of government power, struggles over race and citizenship, shifting gender roles, the growth of consumer capitalism, and America's evolving global role.\n\nThis course is valuable for students seeking to understand the historical roots of contemporary American political, economic, and social debates. By studying how past Americans confronted industrialization, war, depression, and social change, students will be better equipped to analyze current events, evaluate historical arguments, and think critically about primary and secondary sources as evidence for interpreting the past.</summary> <parameter name="target_audience">Undergraduate students with a general background in American history (typically gained in a high school U.S. history survey course); no specialized prior coursework in history is assumed. Suitable as an introductory or gateway college-level history course.
Prerequisites
No specific college-level prerequisites; a general familiarity with basic U.S. history milestones (e.g., from a secondary school survey course) is helpful but not required.
Module Outline
14 modules
Capital and Labor
Examines the rise of industrial capitalism after Reconstruction, the growth of corporations and monopolies, and the emergence of organized labor movements and violent industrial conflicts.
Geographies of Empire
Explores westward expansion, Native American dispossession, and the emergence of the United States as an overseas imperial power in the Caribbean and Pacific.
New Lives
Covers the waves of immigration, urbanization, and the transformation of daily life, family structures, and communities in industrializing America.
The Progressive Era
Analyzes reform movements addressing political corruption, corporate power, labor conditions, and social ills, and the expansion of government regulatory authority.
World War I and Its Aftermath
Studies U.S. entry into World War I, wartime mobilization and propaganda, and the turbulent postwar period including the Red Scare and labor unrest.
The New Era: America in the 1920s
Examines the consumer culture, technological innovation, and cultural conflicts of the 1920s, alongside continued economic inequality beneath the era's prosperity.
The Great Depression
Investigates the causes of the 1929 economic collapse, the human toll of mass unemployment, and the New Deal's transformation of the federal government's role.
World War II
Covers American mobilization for global war, the home front economy and society, and the war's transformative effects on race, gender, and U.S. global standing.
The Cold War
Analyzes the origins and evolution of U.S.-Soviet rivalry, containment policy, nuclear anxiety, and the domestic politics of anticommunism.
The Affluent Society
Explores postwar economic prosperity, suburbanization, consumer culture, and the persistent inequalities that prosperity obscured.
The Sixties
Examines the civil rights movement, the New Left, the Vietnam War, and the broader social and cultural upheavals of the decade.
The Unraveling: America in the 1970s
Studies the political and economic crises of the 1970s, including Watergate, stagflation, deindustrialization, and declining public trust in institutions.
The Triumph of the Right
Analyzes the rise of modern conservatism, the Reagan Revolution, and the reshaping of American economic and social policy in the 1980s and 1990s.
American Carnage: Capstone on Twenty-First Century America
An integrative capstone examining the post-9/11 era, the 2008 financial crisis, political polarization, and contemporary debates, requiring students to synthesize themes from across the course to interpret the present.