Università Roma Tre

This course intends to offer students an insight on American history and culture both in international and transnational perspective. The role played by the United States in international affairs in the 20th century is such that scholars have come to label the intervening period between the Spanish-American War and the end of the Cold War, the American Century. Actually, the U.S. still plays a major role in international relations while its position and interaction with the rest of the world was already prominent in the 19th century. Moreover, U.S. history, like the history of other countries, was forged by the country’s interaction with other parts of the world and by the inevitable transnational connections with other nations. The course therefore offers an interpretation of American history in a transnational perspective while familiarizing the students with some of the major historians of the past century and with the more recent historiography, methodology and critical analyses of American history.

PART I – Introduction, methodologies and major issues.

Weeks 1-2
Introduction and description of the course: methodological issues and new approaches to U.S. History. From exceptionalism to transnational history. The foundations of American democracy: the Constitution and its current value. Universal values and their domestic implementation.

Weeks 3-4
The United States and the world: isolationism and internationalism in historical perspective. From the War of Independence to the War on Iraq.
(In the third week the class will visit the Department Library and will familiarize with paper and electronic reference material)


PART II
The United States’ rise to world power

Week 5
The American century: from the Spanish-American War to 9/11. World War I, the United States’ rise to global power. Rooseveltian or Wilsonian century?

Week 6
The progressive legacy: Reform and the role of the State in the age of empires and totalitarian states.
(In the sixth week the class will visit the Library of the Center of American Studies and will familiarize with paper and electronic reference material)

Week 7
Booms, busts and reforms. From WWI to the Cold War: American domestic policy and economic transformation.

Weeks 8
Democracy, liberalism and the world. American civil rights and human rights in the world.


PART III
A short American Century?

Weeks 9-10
From the struggle on civil rights to the students’ revolts and Vietnam. The crisis of the American model. The 1960s and 1970s.


Week 11
The end of the Cold War: what role for the United States? Reagan, the implosion of the Soviet Union and the new relations with Europe and Asia.

Week 12
Toward the 21st century and beyond. 9/11, new challenges, renewed wars and the new interpretations of American history and global role. Preparing for the 2016 presidential elections.

REQUIRED READINGS:
Joshua Freeman, American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home, 1945-2000 (New York: Penguin, 2013).

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage, 1955) (or any later edition).

The Constitution of the United States of America. http://archives.gov/exhibits/charters/ constitution.html

For the in class discussion and presentations, students can choose one among the following six essays:

Thomas Bender, “The Boundaries and Constituencies of History,” American Literary History, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 2006), pp. 267-282 + “Global History and Bounded Subjects: A Response to Thomas Bender” by Peter Fritzsche, American Literary History, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 2006), pp. 283-287

David Ekblad , “Meeting the Challenge from Totalitarianism: The Tennessee Valley Authority as a Global Model for Liberal Development, 1933–1945,” International History Review, 32 (March 2010), pp. 47–67.

David A. Hollinger, “How Wide the Circle of the "We"? American Intellectuals and the Problem of the Ethnos since World War II,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 317-337.

Hilde E. Restad, “Old Paradigms in History Die Hard in Political Science: US Foreign Policy and American Exceptionalism,” American Political Thought, Vol. 1, No. 1 (May 2012), pp. 53-76.

Ian Tyrrell, “Reflections on the transnational turn in United States history: theory and practice.” Journal of Global History (2009) 4, pp. 453–474.

Thomas W. Zeiler, “The Diplomatic History Bandwagon: A State of the Field,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Mar., 2009), pp. 1053-1073.