SCHC 421 H02 31263

HistoryCiv, GHS

Notes:

** GHS, U.S. History**SCHC 421 - H02 will explore the major interpretations of American history as developed by historians and other scholars over the decades to explain the uniqueness of the American experience and define formative influences on the American national character. Since efforts began as early as the 1890s with Frederick Jackson Turner’s long popular “frontier thesis,” in which Turner argued that the presence of a vast western frontier defined he American character during the 1800s. During the 1950s and 1960s, the decades in which the United States emerged from World War II as the world’s leading economic and military power, the scholarly effort to define the American national character and the nature of American “exceptionalism” triggered a small explosion of such interpretations, and since 1970s, efforts to challenge and contradict the optimistic assessments of the immediate post-war decades have produced more troubling interpretations of the major themes in American history. This course will examine these interpretations, the criticism they have received from other scholars, and the necessity of revising and reformulating interpretations over time.