Some Possible Themes for US HIST 2

American Diversity

The diversity of the American people and the relationships among different groups. The roles of race, class, ethnicity, and gender in the history of the United States.

American Identity

Views of the American national character and ideas about American exceptionalism. Recognizing regional differences within the context of what it means to be an American.

Culture

Diverse individual and collective expressions through literature, art, philosophy, music, theater, and film throughout U.S. history. Popular culture and the dimensions of cultural conflict within American society.

Demographic Changes

Changes in birth, marriage, and death rates; life expectancy and family patterns; population size and density. The economic, social, and political effects of immigration, internal migration, and migration networks.

Economic Transformations

Changes in trade, commerce, and technology across time. The effects of capitalist development, labor and unions, and consumerism.

Environment

Ideas about the consumption and conservation of natural resources. The impact of population growth, industrialization, pollution, and urban and suburban expansion.

Globalization

Engagement with the rest of the world from the fifteenth century to the present: colonialism, mercantilism, global hegemony, development of markets, imperialism, and cultural exchange.

Politics and Citizenship

Colonial and revolutionary legacies, American political traditions, growth of democracy, and the

development of the modern state. Defining citizenship; struggles for civil rights.

Reform

Diverse movements focusing on a broad range of issues, including antislavery, education, labor, temperance, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, war, public health, and government.

Religion

The variety of religious beliefs and practices in America from prehistory to the twenty-first century; influence of religion on politics, economics, and society.

Slavery and Its Legacies in North America

Systems of slave labor and other forms of unfree labor (e.g., indentured servitude, contract labor) in Native American societies, the Atlantic World, and the American South and West. The economics of slavery and its racial dimensions. Patterns of resistance and the long-term economic, political, and social effects of slavery.

War and Diplomacy

Armed conflict from the precolonial period to the twenty-first century; impact of war on American foreign policy and on politics, economy, and society.

Some Possible Eras for US HIST 2

Reconstruction

• Presidential and Radical Reconstruction
• Southern state governments: aspirations, achievements, failures
• Role of African Americans in politics, education, and the economy
• Compromise of 1877
• Impact of Reconstruction
   

The Origins of the New South

• Reconfiguration of southern agriculture: sharecropping and crop lien system
• Expansion of manufacturing and industrialization
• The politics of segregation: Jim Crow and disfranchisement

Development of the West in the Late Nineteenth Century

• Expansion and development of western railroads
• Competitors for the West: miners, ranchers, homesteaders, and American Indians
• Government policy toward American Indians
• Gender, race, and ethnicity in the far West
• Environmental impacts of western settlement

Industrial America in the Late Nineteenth Century

• Corporate consolidation of industry
• Effects of technological development on the worker and workplace
• Labor and unions
• National politics and influence of corporate power
• Migration and immigration: the changing face of the nation
• Proponents and opponents of the new order, e.g., Social Darwinism and Social Gospel

Urban Society in the Late Nineteenth Century

• Urbanization and the lure of the city
• City problems and machine politics
• Intellectual and cultural movements and popular entertainment

Populism and Progressivism

• Agrarian discontent and political issues of the late nineteenth century
• Origins of Progressive reform: municipal, state, and national
• Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson as Progressive presidents
• Women’s roles: family, workplace, education, politics, and reform
• Black America: urban migration and civil rights initiatives

The Emergence of America As a World Power

• American imperialism: political and economic expansion
• War in Europe and American neutrality
• The First World War at home and abroad
• Treaty of Versailles
• Society and economy in the postwar years

The New Era: 1920s

• The business of America and the consumer economy
• Republican politics: Harding, Coolidge, Hoover
• The Culture of Modernism: science, the arts, and entertainment
• Responses to Modernism: religious fundamentalism, nativism, and Prohibition
• The ongoing struggle for equality: African Americans and women
   

The Great Depression and the New Deal

• Causes of the Great Depression
• The Hoover administration’s response
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
• Labor and union recognition
• The New Deal coalition and its critics from the Right and the Left
• Surviving hard times: American society during the Great Depression

The Second World War

• The rise of fascism and militarism in Japan, Italy, and Germany
• Prelude to war: policy of neutrality
• The attack on Pearl Harbor and United States declaration of war
• Fighting a multifront war
• Diplomacy, war aims, and wartime conferences
• The United States as a global power in the Atomic Age

The Home Front During the War

• Wartime mobilization of the economy
• Urban migration and demographic changes
• Women, work, and family during the war
• Civil liberties and civil rights during wartime
• War and regional development
• Expansion of government power

The United States and the Early Cold War

• Origins of the Cold War
• Truman and containment
• The Cold War in Asia: China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan
• Diplomatic strategies and policies of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations
• The Red Scare and McCarthyism
• Impact of the Cold War on American society

The 1950s

• Emergence of the modern civil rights movement
• The affluent society and “the other America”
• Consensus and conformity: suburbia and middle-class America
• Social critics, nonconformists, and cultural rebels
• Impact of changes in science, technology, and medicine

The Turbulent 1960s

• From the New Frontier to the Great Society
• Expanding movements for civil rights
• Cold War confrontations: Asia, Latin America, and Europe
• Beginning of Détente
• The antiwar movement and the counterculture

Politics and Economics at the End of the Twentieth Century

• The election of 1968 and the “Silent Majority”
• Nixon’s challenges: Vietnam, China, Watergate
• Changes in the American economy: the energy crisis, deindustrialization, and the service economy
• The New Right and the Reagan revolution
• End of the Cold War

Society and Culture at the End of the Twentieth Century

• Demographic changes: surge of immigration after 1965, Sunbelt migration, and the graying of America
• Revolutions in biotechnology, mass communication, and computers
• Politics in a multicultural society

The United States in the Post–Cold War World

• Globalization and the American economy
• Unilateralism vs. multilateralism in foreign policy
• Domestic and foreign terrorism
• Environmental issues in a global context

Some Possible EVENTS:
(US HIST 2)

1870s - 1900

• Reconstruction amendments (1865-1870)
• Formation of the Ku Klux Klan (1866)
• Purchase of Alaska (1867)
• The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson (1868)
• Construction of the Transcontinential Railroad (1869)
• Rise of the robber barons (1870-1880s)
• Final solution for the American Indian (1871-1879)
• Boss Tweed's ring (1871-1872)
• Great Chicago Fire (1871)
• Creation of Yellowstone National Park (1872)
• Trial of Susan B. Anthony and the rights of women (1873)
• Red River War and Sioux Wars (1875-1877)
• Alexander Graham Bell and the invention of the telephone (1876)
• Great Railroad Strike (1877) 
• Spanish-America War (1898)

1900 - 1920

• Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902)
• Boxer Rebellion (1900)
• Panama Canal
• Assassination of President McKinley (1901)
• Wright Brothers Flight at Kitty Hawk (1903)
• Muckraking
• Conservation Movement during the Progessive Era
• Establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909)
• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911)
• The Presidential Election of 1912
• Women's Suffrage
• Progressive Reforms Enacted
• Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican Crisis (1913-1917)
• The Armory Show (1913)
• Sinking of the Lusitania (1915)
• The United States and World War I (1917-1918)
• Paris Peace Conference (1919)
   

1920 - 1930
 

• The Red Scare (1919-1920)
• Sacco-Vanzetti Trial (1921)
• Prohibition
• Ford Model T
• Revival of the Ku Klux Klan
• First Radio Broadcasts
• Silent Movies
• Harlem Renaissance
• Scopes Trial (1925)
• Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.'s Transatlantic Flight (1927)
• Opposition to Immigration in the 1920s
• Jazz Age Culture
• Stock Market Crash of 1929

1930 - 1940

• The Great Depression
• The Bonus Army (1932)
• The Presidential Election of 1932
• Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) (1933)
• Tennessee Valley Administration (TVA) (1933)
• Growth of Organized Labor during the 1930s
• The Dust Bowl
• Establishment of Social Security (1935)
• Good Neighbor Policy
• Pre-Pearl Harbor Debate between Isolationists and Interventionists

1940 - 1950

• Pearl Harbor (1941)
• Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II (1942-1944)
• The Manhattan Project (1942-1945)
• Women and World War II
• Minorities and World War II
• Invasion of Normandy (D-Day) (1944)
• Yalta Conference (1945)
• Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)
• United Nations Established (1945)
• War Crime Trials (1946-1948)
• Cold War Begins
• Jackie Robinson Integrates Major League Baseball (1947)
• Marshall Plan (1947)
• NATO Established (1949)

1950 - 1960

• Alger Hiss Trials (1949-1950)
• Trial of the Rosenbergs (1950-1951)
• McCarthyism (1950-1954)
• Korean War (1950-1953)
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954)
• Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956)
• Elvis Presley and Rock 'n' Roll Music
• Polio Vaccine Discovered
• Little Rock School Crisis (1957)
• Sputnik (1957)
• Golden Age of Television
• U-2 Plane Shot Down (1959)

1960 - 1970

• Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961)
• Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
• John F. Kennedy Assassinated (1963)
• Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement
• The 1960s Counterculture
• Black Power Movement
• Vietnam War
• Student Radicalism during the 1960s
• Great Society Programs (1965-1968)
• National Organization for Women (NOW) Founded (1966)
• American Indian Movement (AIM) Founded (1968)
• Tet Offensive (1968)
• My Lai Massacre (1968)
• Apollo 11 and the Moon Landing (1969)

1970 - 1980

• Earth Day Observed (1970)
• Environment Protective Agency (EPA) Created (1970)
• Kent State Killings (1970)
• Watergate Scandal (1972-1974)
• Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements (SALT I and II) (1972, 1979)
• President Nixon Visits China (1972)
• Equal Rights Amendment (1972)
• Roe v Wade (1973)
• Panama Canal Treaties (1978)
• Camp David Accords (1978)
• Iran Seizes American Hostages (1979)

1980 - 

• First Woman Appointed to the Supreme Court (1981)
• Invasion of Grenada (1983)
• Iran-Contra Affair (1985-1987)
• Invasion of Panama (1989)
• The Breakup of the Soviet Union
• Persian Gulf War (1991)
• Clarence Thomas Appointed to the Supreme Court (1991)
• North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (1993)