America Unbound: New Approaches to U.S. International and Diplomatic History

Catalog description

Traditionally understood as a field studying the activities of ambassadors, diplomatic history has recently begun to examine the role of marginalized agents in the making of international relations. This methodological shift entails reimagining the place of the United States in a globalizing world. In line with these developments, this course reconsiders the broader international stakes of what we tend to regard as “internal” developments in U.S. history (for instance, the American Revolution, the Civil War, the New Deal, or the civil rights movement). Reconceiving international relations in this integrated way emphasizes how crucial interactions with Native American, European, Latin American, African, and Asian nations were to negotiating such matters as the nature of political authority, the role of race and gender in structuring sociopolitical life, or the relationship between citizenship rights and state violence over the course of U.S. history.