HIST 2071 - The Origins of Modern America

This course is based around the themes of American freedom and American slavery. The course will determine how and why democratic traditions developed and related to the various oppressions of African-Americans, women, Native Americans, and wage workers. These themes will intersect with a variety of topics including: a comparison of early American colonies and their development, Native American-colonist relations, the "Terrible transformation" towards slavery, the Salem witch trials, the social world of pirates, Benjamin Franklin and the American ethos of the self-made man, and the coming of the American Revolution. Later on we will analyse how the industrial revolution changed American culture, Jacksonian democracy, and analyse antebellum slavery through the eyes of runaway slave Frederick Douglass and southern nationalist George Fitzhugh. The Civil War and its aftermath, a clear turning point in the history of American democracy, will occupy our attention in the final weeks of the semester.