The 1930s in America

Catalog description

This research seminar on the Great Depression and New Deal will use primary and secondary sources to focus on key events and different historical interpretations of the United States during this decade. The economic crisis defined the decade and propelled political, economic, social, and cultural changes. This era has immense relevance to today's political debates: the federal government's role in regulating the free market, the weakness of the labor movement, unemployment and the persistence of poverty, the increasing wealth gap, the increasing racial edge in these issues. All have their origins in the policies first forged during the New Deal.