John T. McGreevy
University of Notre Dame, Fall 2008
Office Hours by appointment #631-6642
100 O’Shaughnessy
All class sessions are in 207 O’Shag, Fridays, 2-4 pm
The colloquium is an intensive survey of historical writing on American history from the late nineteenth century forward. My interests obviously shape the syllabus, and this means that certain vital topics—such as economic history, foreign relations, environmental history and demographics—are underplayed. Still, the reading should introduce you to many of the most important discussions now shaping the historiography.
This course presumes no prior knowledge but a solid general sense of U.S. history is obviously necessary. Consult a good textbook occasionally—I like America: Past and
Present by Divine et al. and The Great Republic , Bailyn et al—if you find yourself fuzzy on the details. Also, a terrific resource for any student of American history is A
Companion to American Thought , Richard Wightman Fox and James Kloppenberg, eds.
The library has a copy in the reference area, but you should buy it.
I. Requirements:
A.
Students will be expected to attend each session, prepare for the week’s reading and participate in class discussion. All absences must be excused.
B.
Each week, one or two student(s) will begin that week's discussion by preparing a 15 minute presentation (no longer—try it out first) that assesses why the book/article is (or is not) important; vital issues in the literature on that topic and methodological questions presented by the reading. The student beginning the discussion will also look at the supplementary readings and (briefly) integrate those works into his/her presentation. The final result should be a roughly 7-10 page essay, but you will be graded primarily on your oral presentation.
C. Two eight page historiographical essays will also be due over the course of the term.
These essays will use at least two and perhaps more of the readings to address particular themes or issues that strike you as important. The essays are of the sort that one might find in Reviews in American History or the New York Review of Books . (Look at each journal if you are unsure.) Due dates are not negotiable, beyond family illness or a serious matter of that sort.

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Books are available at the bookstore and on reserve at Hesburgh Library. Most articles are available for download (or in a few instances we will make copies). Please bring reading materials to class.
II. Course Schedule:
August 29: Global History
Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 178-1914 , (London, 2003); Sven
Beckert, “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton
Production in the Age of the American Civil War,” American Historical Review 109 (Dec
2004), 1405-1438; Raymond Grew, “Expanding Worlds of World History,” Journal of
Modern History 78 (2006) 878-898; Frederick Cooper, “What is the Concept of
Globalization Good For? An African Historian’s Perspective,” African Affairs 100
(2001), 189-213
September 5: Reform
Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1998); Daniel T. Rodgers, ‘Exceptionalism,” in Imagined
Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past , Anthony S. Mohlo and Gordon S.
Wood, eds. (Princeton, 1998), 21-40; Thomas Haskell, “Taking Exception to
Exceptionalism,” Reviews in American History 28 (March 2000), 151-166
Supplementary Reading:
Linda Gordon
Theda Skocpol
Robert Wiebe, The Search For Order , (New York, 1967)
James Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in
European and American Thought, 1870-1920 , (New York, 1986)
Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in
America, 1870-1920 , (New York, 2003)
September 12: Modern Thinking
Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York, 2001);
“Roundtable: Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club and the Problem of Pragmatism,”
Intellectual History Newsletter 24 (2002), 84-119

Supplementary Reading:
Wilfred McClay, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America , (Chapel Hill,
1994)
John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History , (New York, 2003)
Robert Westbrook, John Dewey (biography)
September 19: No Class
September 26: Workers and Race (Guest hosts: Gail Bederman and Marc Rodriguez)
Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton
Culture , (Berkeley, 1997); Eric Arneson, “Whiteness and the Historians’ Imagination,”
International Labor and Working class History 60 (Fall 2001), 3-92; Robin Kelly, “‘We are Not What We Seem’: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow
South,” Journal of American History 80 (June 1993), 75-112
Supplementary Reading:
Nancy McLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry , (New York, 1994)
George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican-American , (New York, 1993)
Bruce Nelson, Divided We Stand , (New York, 2001)
Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color and Power in Chicago
1890-1945 , (New York, 2003)
October 3: America Assessed
Sarah Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public
(Cambridge, 2006); Daryl Michael Scott, Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the
Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880-1996 , (Chapel Hill, 1997), introduction, 93-
136
John Carson, The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750-1940 , (Princeton, 2007)
Thomas Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science: the American Social
Science Association and the Nineteenth Century Crisis of Authority , (Urbana, 1977)
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Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science , (Cambridge, 1991)
October 10: Workers and Consumers
Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 ,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990). Also see symposium on Cohen in Labor
History 32 (Fall 1991), 573-585; Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass
Consumption in Postwar America , (New York, 2003), Prologue, 166-410
Supplementary Reading:
Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism , (1995)
Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism , (1989)
Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America ,
(Princeton, 2006)
Essay #1 Due
October 17: Belief
Robert Anthony Orsi, The Madonna of 115 th Street: Faith and Community in Italian
Harlem (New Haven, 1985); Jon Butler, “Jack in the Box Faith: The Religion Problem in
Modern American History,” Journal of American History 90 (March 2004), 1357-1378.
David Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow
(Chapel Hill, 2003), Introduction, 87-130
Supplementary Reading:
Richard Fox, Reinhold Neibuhr , (Cambridge [1985]1996)
George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 1870-1920 , (New York, 1980)
Robert A. Orsi, Thank You, St. Jude , (New Haven, 1996)
October 24: No Class—Fall Break

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October 31: New Deal Liberalism
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Depression and War , (New
York: Vintage, 1994); Barton Bernstein, “The New Deal: The Conservative
Achievements of Liberal Reform,” in Twentieth Century America: Recent
Interpretations , Barton J. Bernstein and Allen J. Matusow, eds. (New York: HBJ, 1972),
242-264; David M. Kennedy, “What the New Deal Did” from Kennedy, Freedom from
Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945 , (New York, 2000), 363-
380
Supplementary Reading:
Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest , (1982)
William E. Leuchtenberg, Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal , (1963)
Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Farm Belt , (1991)
November 7: The Cold War and the New International History
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History , (New York, 2005) Tony Judt, “A
Story to be Told,” New York Review of Books 53 (March 23, 2006). Available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18793; Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global
Revolution and the Rise of Détente , (Cambridge, 2003), introduction, 164-260
Supplementary Reading:
John Lewis Gaddis, Origins of the Cold War , (1972)
Melvin Leffler, A Preponderance of Power , (1991)
Wilson Miscamble, C.S.C., George Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy,
1947-1950 , (1988)
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy , (1959)
November 14: Race, City and Suburb
Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Detroit, 1940-1960 , (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996). Jacqueline Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights
Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91 (March
2005): 1233-1263; Matthew Lassiter, “’Socioeconomic Integration’ in the Suburbs:
From Reactionary Populism to Class Fairness in Metropolitan Charlotte,” in Kevin M.

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Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue, eds. The New Suburban History , (Chicago, 2006), 120-143;
Robert O. Self, “Prelude to the Tax Revolt: The Politics of the ‘Tax Dollar’ in Postwar
California,” in Kruse and Sugrue, 144-160
Supplementary Reading:
Mike Davis, City of Quartz , (1992)
Gerald Gamm, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews left Boston and the Catholics Stayed ,
(1999).
Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto , (1983)
John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the
Twentieth Century Urban North , (1996)
November 21: Liberalism Challenged
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: Grass-Roots Conservatives in the 1960s , (Princeton,
2001); Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative
Counterrevolution , (Princeton, 2006), 1-17, 205-278.
Supplementary Reading:
Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American
Consensus , (New York, 2001).
Matthew Lassiter, Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South: The Silent Majority ,
(Princeton, 2006),
Douglass C. Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the
New Left in America , (NY, 1998)
November 28: No Class—Thanksgiving
December 5 : Citizens and Americans (evening session at 1010 N. Notre Dame Avenue)
David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism , (New York: Basic,
1995); Gary Gerstle, “Liberty, Coercion and the Making of Americans,” Journal of
American History 84 (September 1997), 524-558; Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects:
Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America , (Princeton, 2004), 2-14, 227-270;
Daniel Rodgers, “Vanishing Acts: Power and Society in American Social Thought in the
1980s,” (handout)

Supplementary Reading:
Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century , (2002).
Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation,
Indivisible , (1999).
Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country , (1998)
Essay #2 Due
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