Postgraduate Course: The Sixties in the United States (PGHC11274)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course analyses key developments in the United States during the 1960s, especially focusing on the changing nature of political liberalism. As well as analysing the goals and achievements of liberal politicians during this decade, the course examines a series of liberal and radical challenges to 'consensus liberalism'. |
| Course description |
The course aims to encourage students to explore the historiography of the 1960s in the United States and to engage with key debates within this literature. It seeks to help students to identify research topics for further investigation within an MSc dissertation or PhD thesis. In examining major aspects of the 1960s in the United States, the course intends to concentrate on the nature of American political liberalism during this period. It aims to analyse the goals and achievements of liberalism politicians, together with a series of liberal and radical challenges to consensus liberalism. In seeking to understand the change that the United States experienced during this period and its consequences, the course's coverage sometimes includes developments that both precede and follow the decade itself. The topics discussed in the course will include: the concept of 'consensus liberalism' and the decline of the liberal consensus; John F. Kennedy and the New Frontier; Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society; the civil rights movement; Black Power; student movements and the New Left; the counterculture; second-wave feminism; the emergence of the Vietnam-era antiwar movement.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate in coursework a detailed and critical command of the body of knowledge concerning the history of the United States during the 1960s
- Demonstrate in coursework an ability to analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship concerning the course's subject matter, relevant primary source materials, and conceptual discussions about political history
- Demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form, by way of coursework, by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course
- Demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form, by way of coursework, by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course
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Reading List
John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961-1974 (New York: Norton, 1991)
David Burner, Making Peace with the 60s (1996; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)
Dominick Cavallo, A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History (New York: Palgrave, 1999)
David M. Chalmers, And the Crooked Places Made Straight: The Struggle for Social Change in the 1960s, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)
David R. Farber, The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994)
Klaus P. Fischer, America in White, Black, and Gray: The Stormy 1960s (New York: Continuum, 2006)
Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976)
Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Mark H. Lytle, America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)
Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c. 1958 - c. 1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper & Row, 1984)
William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960's (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | 60s United States |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Robert Mason
Tel: (0131 6)50 3770
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: |
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