America Becomes Modern: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Catalog description

America Becomes Modern offers an upper-level survey of major themes in American history between 1877 and 1917. The course will have a lecture/discussion format; student participation is highly valued and encouraged. The last two decades of the 19th century and the first two of the twentieth marked an abrupt shift in the life experiences of the American people. Daily life changed radically from 1877-1920, as the agrarian republic gave way to an urbanizing consumer society. Debates about progress characterized the period, as new technologies, new peoples, new forms of politics and culture, and new patterns of living transformed the United States. This course will explore the political, economic, diplomatic and cultural history of the Gilded age and Progressive eras, focusing on the ways American tried to make sense of, to order, to moralize and to shape rapid change. (HIST-HNA)