Hawaii Pacific University
HIST 2402 American History Since 1865 Section ____
Semester and year, meeting times
Instructor: Name, contact information and other relevant information about the instructor.
Course description: The Civil War and its aftermath, industrialization, external expansion, two world
wars, and domestic affairs from 1865 to the present.
Course prerequisite: Any Communication Skills A Course
General Education Requirement: This course is classified under the World Cultures Theme and meets
the requirement for a course in World Cultures B: Engaging with Difference.
General Education Student Learning Outcomes and the Five Themes: HPU’s general education
curriculum is focused around five themes. This course emphasizes the World Cultures Theme and
provides students with opportunities to achieve the following related general education student
learning outcomes.

Investigate the roles that race, ethnicity, class, power, belief systems, and gender play in
past and present cultural systems. The history of America is a history of immigration,
voluntary or involuntary. It is thus impossible to examine the history of America without
talking about ethnicity or “race.” Moreover, it is impossible to study history without
understanding the belief system that underpinned each world culture. In addition, the
study of American history since 1865 is the study of the expansion of democracy, meaning
that this course will naturally encompass such topics as women’s, Native American,
African-American, and Chicano rights, for example.

Students will analyze cultural forces that have influenced customs and choices in
contemporary lifestyles and world views. Assigned readings in the textbook cover such
formative cultural forces as racism and anti-racism (segregation and civil rights
movements), class formation and struggle (industrial revolution and trade unionism),
imperialism (Spanish-American War), violence (World Wars and Vietnam), and humanism
(reform movements of the Progressive Era and 1960’s). Students are required to dissect
the character, causes and effect of these forces and encouraged to understand the
interaction between the past and the present.

Students will develop the ability to use other people’s experiences as a way to reflect
critically on their own ways of understanding the world. The study of history relies on
empathizing with the experience of others. Even secondary sources that students read
are founded on the ability to take the experiences of others as a lens through which to
understand the past. Moreover, historians are taught not to accept primary sources
uncritically, despite their seeming nearness to the events examined. History then is not
merely the recitation of what others have said in the past and about the past, but the
critical, analytic interpretation of those statements.

Students will develop informed perspectives on the historical development of
cultures that focus upon the interrelationship among institutions, values, and
ideas. History, as an academic subject, focuses on how institutions, values and
ideas in the past interacted. History encourages students to go beyond monocausal answers to complex problems and teaches them to engage in an analysis of
the multifaceted and byzantine nature of superficially uncomplicated historical
phenomena.
The course also addresses the Global Systems Theme by providing students with opportunities to
achieve the following related general education student learning outcome:

Students will recognize some of the roles that international organizations and
transnational ideas and movements play in world societies. The nineteenth and twentieth
century United States was not a culture that existed in isolation. It was firmly imbedded in
global systems of trade, identity, imperialism, democratization, warfare, anti-communism,
and reform. Thus this course encourages students to challenge their isolationist ideas
regarding U.S. development and to test notions of American exceptionalism.
Note: Purple text shows places where specific course information must be filled in. Red text contains
explanatory notes to the instructor which should be deleted before using the syllabus. Blue
explanations above should be rephrased by the individual instructor to reflect the specific approach in
that section of the course. Course specific outcomes below are an example and may also be rephrased
or modified by the instructor.
Course-Specific Student Learning Outcomes for HIST 2402 American History Since 1865
Students will:
1. gain a broad, basic factual grasp of the course of United States history in order to better understand
contemporary U.S. events and the global context in which the U.S. is situated.
2. develop an understanding of the interconnectedness of political, social, economic, religious and
cultural phenomena within the United States and how these American systems may be part of wider
global systems.
3. develop the ability to think critically about the past and historical issues and to communicate those
ideas verbally and in writing.
4. develop skills in gathering and analyzing evidence and in reaching informed conclusions based upon
such evidence.
For the rest of these required syllabus items see the details in the faculty handbook. Delete this note
once the syllabus is complete. For online courses there are some additional requirements given at this
link.
Texts List textbooks with ISBN’s and include this language as well
All textbook information (pricing, ISBN #, and e-books) for this course can be found on the HPU
Bookstore website: hpu.edu/bookstore.
If you have any questions regarding textbooks, please contact the HPU Bookstore at:
Phone:
808-544-9347
Or e-mail:
jyokota@hpu.edu
mmiyahira@hpu.edu
Assignments and mode of evaluation
Summary of important dates and deadlines (if the schedule is a separate document and due dates are
not given with the description of the assignments).
Class rules and policies (including regarding attendance, late work and academic dishonesty)
Schedule of events (may be attached separately)