This seminar course is designed to introduce students to research in and the literature about America in the 1930s and 1940s. This was a period of depression and war, a period when the United States passed from economic catastrophe to global mastery, a period in which new economic, social and cultural forces emerged, in which the struggle for civil rights was nurtured and over which the political presence of Franklin Roosevelt towered. In one of the most actively researched periods in US history, topics include Roosevelt’s character, the nature of the New Deal, civil rights, American intervention in WWII, the experience of combat. Prerequisites HI440. Exclusions HI490*. Notes 1.0 credit, one-term research course.
