Space and Place in American History

Catalog description

This course offers a survey of American history from roughly the fifteenth to twentieth centuries. Students will read and discuss studies employing the lenses of physical space and place to examine the changes in the American landscape over time. They will learn to read the built environment as an historical text, assess how changes in landscape and spatial practice reveal larger shifts in social and economic structures, and identify the multiple practices of spatial arrangement that existed among diverse groups who came to make up the United States. They will be encouraged to recognize, identify, and apply the social scientific theories of "the spatial turn" and the tools of spatial analysis to place. At the conclusion of the course, students will come to recognize the way analysis of place can reveal the values and power relations in society. They will articulate the importance of physical space in shaping social interactions and how that has changed over time, while also achieving a better understanding of the diverse characteristics of peoples, societies, and institutions in U.S. history.