The City in American History

Catalog description

American cities reflect America’s complex culture. Studying cities can reveal the ideals of generations of intellectuals, planners, reformers, and immigrants who viewed the city as a center of their utopian dreams. Studying urban life, however, also reveals how racial prejudice, concentrations of wealth, and political corruption have shaped the American city. This course will explore these contradictions through an examination of the growth and development of urban centers in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Major American cities will also be compared to cities in Europe and Latin America. USH