20th Century US in World

Spring 2013

20th-Century United States in the World

Listed in: History, as HIST-259

Faculty

Colleen P. Woods (Section 01)

Description

[US^c] This course considers the multifaceted ways that the United States (understood as a nation, an idea, a diverse group of people with conflicting interests) has had an economic, cultural, military, and political effect on a range of people and places. This course seeks to place the U.S. in the field of Global History, emphasizing the spatial, cultural and economic distributions of power between global metropoles, such as Western Europe and the U.S., and peripheries, the geographically diverse terrains of colonies or client states. We will also consider how the geographies of "center" and "periphery" shifted over time. Thinking historically about the interaction between the U.S. and global peripheries, this course will investigate how the distribution of global power and resources developed over time. Finally, this course will pay particular attention to the U.S. role in the global historical shifts of the twentieth century including colonization and decolonization, sovereignty and state formation, the rise of global governance structures, the Cold War, globalization, terrorism, and “the Rise of China.”  Two class meetings per week.

Spring semester. Visiting Professor Woods.

Offerings