U.S. History Since 1945

Catalog description

This class examines U.S. history from WWII to present, with emphasis on political, social, and cultural change. Focuses on the meanings and boundaries of American citizenship, as well as the role of the U.S. in the world. Topics include the Cold War and McCarthyism; the GI Bill and the building of a suburban middle class; consumer culture and its critics; The Civil Rights Movement; Great Society liberalism; The Vietnam War, the New Left and the New Right, and the counterculture; feminism, the Religious Right, and changes in gender roles, sexuality and family life; deindustrialization and economic restructuring; globalism and immigration policy; the War on Drugs and the growth of a penal state; the end of the Cold War and the New World Order; and the War on Terror.