Course Description

This course will examine selected topics and themes in America during the period approximately 1870 to 1910.  The course is not meant as a comprehensive survey, and students are expected to have a working familiarity with the events and personalities of the period when they begin the course.  For those of you without that background, a thorough reading of a good American history survey text should be sufficient.

Topics to be discussed this term will probably include life and labour, Empire America, the rise of corporate America, immigration and population, race and ethnicity, and leisure and popular culture.  The course will be designed around both lectures and class discussions.  The discussion component will be based on assigned weekly readings,  from both the text and the internet, and it is imperative that students come to class prepared to contribute to those discussions.