Spring 2007

HIS 392 • Political Economy: Readings in US History

Course Description

This course will survey questions of political economy in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The readings range widely in different subfields of U.S. scholarship, including social history, cultural history, political history, legal history, environmental history, and economic/business history. The overall purpose is to examine questions of power in American society. Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions about the course.

Texts

Here is a sampling of readings. Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul -- on corporations' public relations activities. Edward Balleisen, Navigating Failure -- on the problem of bankruptcy in 19th c. America William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis -- an environmental history which examines the way capitalism remade the West. Barbara Welke, Recasting American Liberty -- a legal history of the role of railroads in terms of accidents, shock, and race relations. Thomas Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis -- a case study of Detroit's decline and its race relations. This book won the Bancroft Prize, the highest honor in American history. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic -- a study of the social and political role of consumers in shaping the republic in the years since WWII.

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