Historicizing american

The second semester will be organized around methodological and theoretical issues related to research in the social sciences. A selection of readings to be determined collectively (at the conclusion of the first semester) will be used to offer examples of how scholars develop theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches for exploring a range of social, political, and cultural issues in the contemporary United States. Students will examine the relevance of such works to their own research projects, which they will present to the class in a workshop setting.

Beth Bailey, Sex in the Heartland (Harvard University Press, 1999).
Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton University Press,
2009).
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (Routledge, 2005).
William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” Journal of American History, Volume 78, Issue 4,
(March 1992): 1347-1376.
Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New Press, 2012).
Kelly Lytle Hernandez, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965
(University of North Carolina Press, 2017).
Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States (Basic Books, 2020).
Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (University of
Minnesota Press, 2011).
Alice O’Conner, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History
(Princeton University Press, 2001).
Robin Kelley, “'We Are Not What We Seem': Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in Jim Crow South,” Journal of
American History 80, no. 1 (June 1993): 75-112.
Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (Norton, 2009).
Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Harvard University Press, 2011).
George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (Oxford
University Press, 1993).