United States History to 1877

Catalog description

This course is a historical survey of the United States, from Indigenous North America to the end of Reconstruction. The course also introduces students to historical reasoning skills. This course examines the development of the United States across more than 100 years of history, from Indigenous North America through Reconstruction, with attention to the entire geographic area now included in the United States of America. The course emphasizes continuity and change in the American experience, including the ways Indigenous homelands, colonial settlements, borderlands, the Atlantic world, the North, the South, and the West shaped one another over time. Students consider how relationships with Indigenous nations, European empires, Mexico, Africa, and the broader Atlantic world influenced the political, economic, social, cultural, and geographic development of the United States. The course also examines the roles of major ethnic and social groups in shaping American history and explores how the American experience emerged from Indigenous, European, African, Mexican, Atlantic World, and other cultural traditions and transnational influences. Through historically significant texts, speeches, narratives, legal documents, public arguments, and cultural works, students analyze how ideas about democracy, freedom, citizenship, labor, race, religion, reform, expansion, conflict, and nationhood developed from early North America through Reconstruction. Formerly HIST 107 (C-ID: HIST 130) (UC, CSU, AVC)