The United States Since Watergate

Catalog description

This course will examine the main trends of the last three decades of the 20th century and their interconnections. Among these are: The Watergate crisis and increasing cynicism about government and politics; economic decline and stagflation in the seventies; the rise of the new conservativism and the transformation of the Republican and Democratic Parties, the course of the Cold War and its ending; the return to free-market capitalism at home (Reagan Revolution) and abroad (globalization), accompanied by the upsurge in immigration; growing economic inequality and rates of imprisonment; the aftermath of the sexual revolution and the restructuring of gender and family relations; the rise of multiculturalism,and the ensuing culture wars.