American History

“History does not just study material facts and institutions alone; it’s true object of study is the human mind: it should aspire to know what this mind has believed, thought, and felt in different ages of the life of the human race.” - Fustel de Coulanges

History has the potential to be the most thrilling subject, but too often we bog it down with dates and facts, forgetting that history is about stories and people. American history is possibly the most controversial period of history for us, because it is the one we’re the most familiar with, and the one that is closest to us in time. Unfortunately, even if we do focus on stories and people when we study history, we still often fall into all the same traps that we do with other periods of history. In order to be able to properly make sense of the past, we must realize that people in history have always been people like us, and they cannot be reduced to just saints and sinners. The events of history are a fascinating tangle of reasons, made by real people.

Course Objectives:

The goal of this course is to familiarize ourselves with the events and peoples that make up the American narrative, and then to dig beneath the surface and try to understand the causation behind the events we often take for granted. Most importantly, from this we’ll build an interpretive framework which we will then use to understand history in general.

Texts:

• All primary and secondary texts are provided online and available for free