The South in American History

Catalog description

The South has played a central role in American history from the first permanent English colony through the United States of today. This course will trace that role across four centuries, using video tours to interpret key places in the story. The class will explore the creation of the largest and most powerful slave society of the modern world and the attempt to create a new independent nation to sustain that society. The course will chart the ending of slavery for four million people, the social transformations that followed in Reconstruction, and the upheavals of the first New South. For the twentieth century, the class will document the world of segregation, the overthrow of that system, and the emergence of the complicated and sometimes conflicted South we know today. The course will include a broad range of historical actors as active participants in the story, incorporating economics and politics, religion and culture. Innovative digital tools will help teachers see and teach this history in new ways.