Week 12

During the last three class periods, we covered the Vietnam Era, the Nixon years and their aftermath.  Here are the relevant questions addressed in lectures; I am assuming that students were able to devote some effort to reading about the period from 1965 to the present, but for the purposes of the final test, you should be able to discuss the following issues:

1. What were the goals of the United States in Vietnam from 1954-1975?  What major factors made an American victory an impossibility?
2. Why did the Nixon administration pursue a policy of detente during the late 1960s and early 1970s?  In what respects did these efforts find success?  What objections did critics raise about detente?
3. What major factors led to the Watergate break-in, and how did Watergate bring an end to the Nixon administration?
4. What were the major arguments raised by the so-called “New Right” during the 1970s?  Why did conservatives believe the US had strayed from its “mission?”

Week 11: Civil Rights and Liberal Reform, 1954-1968

During the next two class periods, we’ll examine the civil rights movement and try to understand its relationship to the political liberalism of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as well as to other reform movements of the early 1960s (including those focused on women’s rights, the environment, etc.)  The Digital History chapter “America in Ferment” offers a solid overview of the material, thought its coverage extends a bit farther (at least in terms of time frame) than we probably will in class; other textbooks will usually address these issues in either a single chapter or parts of several chapters, so adjust your readings accordingly.

Our major questions will include:

1. What significant events and circumstances launched the civil rights struggles of the 1950s?  In what ways were these early confrontations successful?  In what ways were they not?
2. What role did civil disobedience and grassroots activism play in the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s?  How did the Kennedy and Johnson administrations respond to these renewed demands for political equality from African Americans?
3. What factors helped to produce a new movement for women’s rights?  In what ways did women’s experiences in the workplace and the home provide a spur for new demands for equality?  For other women, how did participation in the civil rights and student movements push them toward a more defined feminist position?
4. What were the most important goals of Kennedy’s “New Frontier” and Johnson’s “Great Society?”

Week 10: The Cold War, 1945-1965

This week’s material will cover the international and domestic history of the Cold War from the end of World War II through the escalation of the American war in Vietnam.  We will survey the major issues that drove the United States and Soviet Union into competition with one another; the strategy adopted by the Truman administration and subsequent presidencies to “contain” the power of the USSR; the most important Cold War successes and failures; and the implications of the Cold War for political and economic life in the US. The Digital History sections on “Postwar America” are OK but aren’t especially good on economic growth during the 1950s.  If you’re relying on Digital History, you are encouraged to find other readings as a supplement; all of the texts on reserve at the library have chapters that cover the social and cultural world of the 1950s.

Major question will include:

1. How did the Cold War originate?  What were the chief sources of conflict between the two superpowers?
2. What was “containment,” and how did the Truman administration implement this new policy prior to the Korean War?
3. Why did the US intervene in Korea, and what were the results of that war?
4. How did the struggle with the Soviet Union prompt the United States to act in regions of the world outside Europe (i.e., Latin America, the Middle East, Asia)?
5. What was the “Red Scare” during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and what were its effects on American political life?
6. To what extent did Americans enjoy a “culture of abundance” after the second World War?  What were the most important symbols of affluence during these years?