This course will consider a number of important and interesting developments in U.S. history since midcentury. Special attention will be devoted to exploring the dynamic relationship between politics and culture during this period: between the formal operations of government, on the one hand, and broader social changes, on the other. For instance, we will consider the Cold War as a critically important episode in domestic social life as well as a series of international geopolitical events involving diplomatic and military action by nation states. By the same token, we will think about how cultural developments like television and the growth of consumption shaped the political process and altered expectations of formal governmental institutions.
Major topics to be covered
include the Cold War at home and abroad; the case of U.S. foreign policy in
Latin America; postwar liberalism; the national security state; civil rights movements; political and
cultural dissent associated with the 1960s; the Vietnam War; Nixon and
Watergate; gay liberation; the emergence of the New Right and the Reagan
Revolution; culture wars and identity crises; globalization.
