Courses in American Studies

This course will explore the social, economic, and cultural lives of three cities, each of which at its zenith seemed to contemporaries to represent definitive aspects of “American" development. We will begin with Boston—the country’s first “big" city and the nominal capital of Puritan New England—in the colonial and early national periods. From there we will move to Chicago, the transportation and commercial hub of the emerging national economy in the nineteenth century. Finally we will turn to Los Angeles, “The City of Dreams" and the center of the popular entertainment industry in the twentieth century. In each case, drawing on a variety of sources, we will examine the city’s origins, the factors that promoted its growth, and the distinctive society it engendered. Then we will consider some of the city’s cultural expressions—expressions that seem to characterize not only changing the nature of urban life, but the particular meanings each city gave to the nation’s experience at the time. What made these cities seem simultaneously, as they did, so alluring and so threatening to the fabric of national community and identity?

Format: seminar. Requirements: two short papers and a longer essay analyzing selected primary texts; there will be no hour test or final exam.

Enrollment limit: 20 (expected: 15). Preference given to History majors.

Group F

Hour: 1:10-3:50 W