History 5375
America Since 1945: The Modern Era
Dr. Gillian Frank, frank@rowan.edu
Rowan University, Spring 2011
Tuesday / Thursday 10:50 am – 12:05 pm
Office hours: Tuesday / Thursday 12:15 – 1:30 pm or by appointment
Required Texts: Most of the course readings will be available for download from the course
website on blackboard. Students must print these readings and bring them to class.
Students should obtain copies of:
1. Glenn C. Altschuler, All Shook up: How Rock 'n Roll Changed America, (New York:
Oxford, 2003).
2. Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 2008).
Attendance: Students are expected to attend all of their classes and scheduled course events and
are responsible for any work missed. Failure to attend three classes (without an excused absence)
can lead to dismissal from the course with a failing grade. Class starts promptly and students
who are late will be penalized. A student who accumulates three late penalties will be given one
absence. Students who are more than ten minutes late will immediately be counted as absent.
Participation: Class will be conducted as an ongoing discussion between all involved. Careful
and complete preparation and lively and informed participation are essential to your success in
this class. Students are therefore required to come to class having done the reading.
Students who are not comfortable talking in class are expected to participate in other ways. If
you are uncomfortable talking in class or otherwise concerned about your participation, please
consult with me early in the course and we will find alternate means for you to participate.
Discussion Questions: As part of your grade you will be required to prepare two comprehensive
and substantive questions for discussion sections every other week and post these on our website
18 hours before class. These questions must be carefully edited, thought provoking, and relevant
to the readings for that day. Questions such as “do you agree with…?” and “How do you feel
about…?” are completely inappropriate for this task. These must be conceptual discussion
questions, not questions of summation. In preparing these questions, you will be responsible for
the course material and have the opportunity to help set the terms of class discussion. Your
discussion questions must also be posted on our website at least 18 hours before class begins.
This timing is to insure that your peers are able to critically engage your questions. You must
bring your discussion questions with you to class as well. Please see the handout on our
course website to find out what discussion group you are in and when you are expected to
post questions.
Presentations:
As part of your overall course grade, you are required to lead two seminars. Leading seminar
means that you have the opportunity to help set the terms of class discussion. When you lead
seminar you will be responsible for only 1 of the articles assigned for that class. Please see the
handout on our course website for the presentation schedule. See the instructions on our
course website for instructions on how to lead the seminar.
Things you must do:
1. Prepare a 6 minute presentation on *one* of the secondary sources
2. Prepare a 1 page handout
The 6 Minute Presentation:
• During your six minute presentation you must:
• Summarize the main topics and main argument(s) of the article / chapter. Topics are
defined in terms of location, time period, identities discussed, issues covered.
• Identify and analyze 1 key passage of the text.
• Briefly compare the article / chapter to the other article for that day and suggest 1 - 2
important ways they relate to each other.
• Explain how the article relates to readings or issues from previous classes.
For further instructions, please consult the handout on our course website.
Grading:
Feb. 25, Essay 1 (5 pages):
March 25, Essay 2 (7 pages):
May 1, Final Project:
Discussion Questions:
15%
20%
30%
15%
Presentations:
20%
Plagiarism: Please consult your Student Handbook for Rowan’s policies on academic honesty.
Students that plagiarize written work will fail the assignment and the course. Any incident of
plagiarism also will be reported to the Dean’s Office and the Provost.
Week 1:
Tuesday, January 18: Introducing Ourselves and the Postwar US
•
•
Introductions
Analyzing primary sources
Thursday, January 20:
No class!
Week 2:
Tuesday January 25: Red Scares and the Liberal Consensus
•
•
•
Godfrey Hodgson, "The Ideology of the Liberal Consensus." A History of Our Time:
Readings on Postwar America, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Mary Dudziak, “Telling Stories About Race and Democracy,” Cold War Civil Rights:
Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press,
2000).
Primary Sources: Whittaker Chambers, “A Witness,” in Conservatism in America since
1930: A Reader (NYU Press, 2003).
Senator Joseph McCarthy explains the communist threat:
http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=858
http://www.h-net.org/~hst203/documents/mccarthy.html
Thursday, January 27: Postwar Affluence and Containment
•
•
•
Elaine Tyler May, "Containment at Home: Cold War, Warm Hearth." Homeward Bound:
American Families in the Cold War Era, 20th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
Shelley Nickles, "More Is Better: Mass Consumption, Gender, and Class Identity in
Postwar America," American Quarterly 54 (Dec. 2002): 581-622.
Primary Sources: “In The Suburbs” http://www.archive.org/details/IntheSub1957
Adlai Stevenson "A Purpose for Modern Woman," http://www.hnet.org/~hst203/documents/stevenson.html
Week 3:
Tuesday, February 1: Lavender Scares
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•
•
John D’Emilio, “The Homosexual Menace: The Politics of Sexuality in Cold War
America” in Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics and the University. New
York: Routledge, 1992. 57-78.
Stacy Braukman, “‘Nothing Else Matters but Sex’ Cold War Narratives of Deviance and
the Search For Lesbian Teachers in Florida, 1959-1963” Feminist Studies 27 No. 3 (Fall
2001)
Movie: “Boys Beware” (1961) http://www.archive.org/details/boys_beware
Thursday, February 3: Race and Youth Culture in the 1940s
•
•
•
Thomas Sugrue, “‘Detroit's Time Bomb’: Race and Housing in the 1940s,” The Origins
of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1996).
Glenn C Altschuler, Chapter 1, All Shook up: How Rock 'n Roll Changed America,
(Oxford, 2003).
Primary Sources:
“Detroit Has Race Riot,” March 16, 1942, Life Magazine, 40-42.
http://books.google.com/books?id=gE4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA40&dq=detroit&pg=PA4
0#v=onepage&q=detroit&f=false
“Race War in Detroit,” Life Magazine, July 5, 1943, 93-100.
http://books.google.com/books?id=SFAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA93&dq
Week 4:
Tuesday, February 8: Delinquents and Danger
•
•
James Burkhart Gilbert, “Introduction” and “A Problem of Behavior,” A Cycle of
Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986).
Glenn C Altschuler, Chapter 2, All Shook up: How Rock 'n Roll Changed America,
(Oxford, 2003).
Allen Ginsberg, “America,” and “Howl”
“Rock n’ Roll,” Life Magazine, April 1955, 166-168.
http://books.google.com/books?id=4lUEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA166#v=onepag
e&q&f=false
Thursday, February 10: Dating, Courtship and Romance
•
•
•
Glenn C Altschuler, Chapter 3, All Shook up: How Rock 'n Roll Changed America,
(Oxford, 2003).
Beth Bailey, “The Etiquette of Masculinity and Femininity,” From Front Porch to Back
Seat. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988): 97-118.
Primary Source Movies:
“Dating Dos and Don’ts” (1949) http://www.archive.org/details/DatingDo1949
“How Much Affection” (1958) http://www.archive.org/details/HowMuchA1958
Week 5:
Tuesday, February 15: Race, Respectability and Civil Rights
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•
•
Brown v. Board of Education (1952-55); Mississippi Voter Registration Form, 1955; Opinion
of the Court in Brown v. Board of Education, May 17, 1954; Ruling on Relief, May 31, 1955
/ Earl Warren Brown V. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998.
Ruth Feldstein, “‘I Wanted the Whole World to See’: Race, Gender, and Constructions of
Motherhood in the Death of Emmett Till” Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar
America, 1945-1960. Ed. Joanne Meyerowitz. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1994.
263-303
Charles M Payne, “‘The Whole United States Is Southern!’: Brown v. Board and the
Mystification of Race,” Journal of American History 91, no. 1 (June 2004): 83-91.
Thursday, February 17: Racial Politics / Sexual Politics
•
•
John Kirk, “‘Massive Resistance And Minimum Compliance’: The Origins Of The 1957
Little Rock School Crisis And The Failure Of School Desegregation In The South,” in
Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005)
Phoebe Godfrey, “Bayonets, Brainwashing, and Bathrooms: The Discourse of Race,
Gender, and Sexuality in the Desegregation of Little Rock's Central High,” The Arkansas
Historical Quarterly Vol. 62, No. 1 (Spring, 2003).
Week 6:
Tuesday, February 22: Civil Rights and Religion
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•
•
Adam Fairclough, “The Preachers and the People: The Origins and Early Years of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955-1959,” The Journal of Southern History
52, no. 3 (1986): 403-440.
Jane Dailey, “Sex, Segregation, and the Sacred after Brown,” The Journal of American
History 91, no. 1 (June 1, 2004): 119-144.
Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” http://www.hnet.org/~hst203/documents/letter.html
Thursday, February 24: The Feminine Mystique and Beyond
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•
•
Flora Davis, Chapter 3, Moving the Mountain: The Women's Movement in America Since
1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
Daniel Horowitz, “Rethinking Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique: Labor Union
Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America,” American Quarterly 48, no. 1 (March
1, 1996): 1-42.
Primary Source: Betty Friedan, “The Problem With No Name,” The Feminine Mystique
http://www.h-net.org/~hst203/documents/friedan1.html
Week 7:
Tuesday, March 1: Homophile Respectability and Resistance
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•
•
David K. Johnson, “"Homosexual Citizens": Washington's Gay Community Confronts
the Civil Service,” Washington History 6, no. 2 (Fall): 44-63.
Martin Meeker, “Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine
Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s” Journal of the History of
Sexuality Vol. 10, No. 1, (January 2001): 78-116.
Primary Source: Frank Kameny, “Does Research into Homosexuality Matter?” (1965)
Thursday, March 3: Vietnam and the War at Home
•
Mary Sheila McMahon, “The American State and the Vietnam War: A Genealogy of
Power,” The Sixties: From Memory to History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1994).
• David Farber, “The Silent Majority and Talk about Revolution,” The Sixties: From
Memory to History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
• Primary Sources: Benjamin Spock et. al. “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority”:
http://www.h-net.org/~hst203/documents/resist.html
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., "Declaration of Independence from the War in
Vietnam" (April 1967) http://www.h-net.org/~hst203/documents/king.html
Richard Rogin, “Why the Construction Workers Holler, 'U.S.A., all the way!'” New York
Times, June 28, 1970, 179.
Week 8:
Tuesday, March 8: Black Power
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•
Thomas Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, Chapter 9 and 10
Primary Sources: Black Panthers, “What We Want/What We Believe” (1966); “Rules of
the Black Panther Party” (1966); “Ten Point Program” (1966)
Thursday, March 10: Women’s Liberation!
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•
Ruth Rosen, “Leaving the Left,” The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's
Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000).
Primary Sources: “SNCC Position Paper: Women in the Movement,” (1964); Mary King
and Casey Hayden, “Sex and Caste A Kind of Memo” (1965); Carol Hanisch, “The
Personal is Political” (1969); Ti-Grace Atkinson, “Radical Feminism,” (1970)
Kathie Sarachild, “A Program for Feminist Consciousness Raising” (1970)
Week 9: Spring Break!
Tuesday, March 15: No Class!
Thursday, March 17: No Class!
Week 10:
Tuesday, March 22: Gay Liberation!
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•
•
•
John D’Emilio, “Civil Rights and Direct Action: The New East Coast Militancy, 19611965,” Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in
the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
John D’Emilio, “Stonewall: Myth and Meaning,” in The World Turned: Essays on Gay
History, Politics, and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002): 146 – 53.
Lucian K Truscott “Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square” (1969)
Listen: “Remembering Stonewall” http://lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificalgbt/pz0146.m3u
Thursday, March 24: Countercultures
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•
•
•
David Farber, “The Intoxicated State/Illegal National: Drugs in the Sixties
Counterculture,” Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s
(New York: Routledge, 2002).
Peter Braunstein, “Forever Young: Insurgent Youth and the Sixties Culture of
Rejuvenation,” Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s
(New York: Routledge, 2002).
Listening: Jefferson Airplane, Beatles
Primary Sources: “The Digger Papers,” “Yippie Manifesto,” Abbie Hoffman,
“Revolution for the Hell of It!” Revolution for the Hell of It (Da Capo Press, 2005).
Week 11:
Tuesday, March 29: Grassroots Conservatism
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•
Lisa McGirr, “The Conservative Worldview at the Grass Roots” and “The Birth of
Populist Conservatism,” Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right,
Politics and society in twentieth-century America (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University
Press, 2001).
William Rusher, “An Emerging Conservative Majority,” Conservatism in America since
1930: a reader (NYU Press, 2003).
Ronald Reagan, “Address on Behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater” (1964) http://www.hnet.org/~hst203/documents/ron.html
Thursday, March 31: Right Wing Women
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Marjorie J. Spruill, “Gender and America’s Right Turn,” Rightward Bound: Making
America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008).
•
•
Beth Bailey, “She ‘can bring home the bacon’: negotiating gender in the 1970s,” America
in the Seventies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).
Primary Sources: Phyllis Schlafly, “ Making the Personal Political: The thoughts of one
who loves life as a woman ..." Women's America: Refocusing the Past, 6th ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Week 12:
Tuesday, April 5: Family Values
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•
•
Matthew D. Lassiter, “Inventing Family Values,” Rightward Bound: Making America
Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008).
Paul Boyer, “The Evangelical Resurgence in 1970s American Protestantism,” Rightward
Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press, 2008).
Primary Sources: Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980).
Thursday, April 7: Conservative Youth
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•
•
Bethany E. Moreton, “Make Payroll, Not War: Business Culture as Youth Culture,”
Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 2008).
Gregory L. Schneider, “Up against the Wall: YAF and the New Left, 1968-1970,”
Cadres For Conservatism: Young Americans For Freedom And The Rise Of The
Contemporary Right (NYU Press, 1999).
Primary Source: The Sharon Statement
Week 13
Tuesday April 12: Racial Retrenchment
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•
•
Matthew Lassiter, “The Suburbanization of Southern Politics,” The Silent Majority:
Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South, (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press,
2006).
Ronald P Formisano, “The Antibusers: Children of the 1960s,” Boston Against Busing:
Race, Class, and Ethnicity in The1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1991).
Selected anti-busing letters from the National Archives.
Thursday April 14: Culture Wars: Music and Cultural Politics
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•
Gillian Frank, “Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco,”
Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 2 (2007): 276–306.
Bradford Martin, “Cultural Politics and the Singer/Songwriters of the 1970s,” Rightward
Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press, 2008).
•
Listening to selected tracks from: Village People, Andrew True Connection, Kiss
Week 14:
Tuesday, April 19: No Class. Passover.
Thursday, April 21: No Class. Passover.
Week 15:
Tuesday, April 26: AIDS, Culture and Politics in the 1980s
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Jennifer Brier, “Affection is Our Best Protection,” and “What Should the Federal
Government Do to Deal with the Problem of AIDS?” Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political
Responses to the AIDS Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
Thursday, April 28: Review