3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The title of our textbook for this course (From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776) suggests the main theme of this course. The political entity named the United States of America has undergone dramatic and transformative changes over the duration of its 236 years of independence, and these changes are reflected in the shifts and changes in its foreign policy. History is the study of change over time. In such study, mastery of essential empirical data is profoundly important. So, in our course the focus will be upon the record of facts, so far as we can determine them, by study of the textbook and from attention to the course lectures. While generally pursuing the chronological unfolding of events, as recounted perhaps too fully by our textbook, we will also from time to time focus on particular events (e.g., the negotiations between the United States and Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor) and on particular interpretations. A major example of the latter will be the provocative book of interpretation, Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence. We will probably divide the class into four teams, each one of which will concentrate on one of Mead’s categories of analysis and commentary. Each team will test its assigned thesis (from Mead) by applying it to the knowledge acquired from our textbook and the course lectures. Team reports and class discussions will dominate the last weeks of the semester’s work.