B1944 - America and the World

Learning outcomes

This course is an overview of the international history of the United States from 1898 until the election of Donald Trump. At the end of the course students will be able to: • describe the different historical phases of US international relations; • detect the multiple political and economic factors that have affected the political and social projection of the US in the world; • analyze the transitional moments and the turning points in the US foreign policy; • understand the link between domestic and foreign policy.

Course contents

The language of instruction for the course is English. The course is organized in lectures and aims to introduce students to the acquisition of the historical and conceptual tools underlying the international history of the United States in its economic, intellectual and political relation with Europe and the World. The main aim of the course is to gain for students a general knowledge of US history, from the birth of the Republic to Trump's America, and to deepen the historical process of construction and transformation of the nation State, in its relation with the issues of race, class and sex: from the revolution to the democratization and the imperial expansion of the mid-nineteenth century and the civil war (first module), from the progressive era and the welfare state of the New Deal to the national security State and neoliberal and neoconservative turning point of the 1980s and 1990s and the international politics from Bush Jr. and Obama to Trump (second module). At the end of the course, students must: know the institutions and the political system of the United States; know how to identify the main political, intellectual and economic continuity and ruptures in US history; know how to present and argue events, themes and concepts of the political and intellectual history of the United States.

The schedule of lectures will be presented at the beginning of the course and made available on the platform virtuale.unibo.it

Readings/Bibliography

Attending Students:

The mid-term written test and the final written exam will focus on the lectures and the book: E. Foner, The Story of American Freedom, New York, 1998.

Non-attending students:

E. Foner, The Story of American Freedom, New York, 1998.

And two books from the following:

• D. Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, Cambridge, 2007.
• E. Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, New York, 2019.
• Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right, New York, 1996.
• Matteo Battistini, Middle Class: An Intellectual History through Social Sciences. An American Fetish from its Origins to Globalization, Chicago, 2023.
• Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars,Chicago, 2015.
• Michael Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present, Ithaca, 2011.

Teaching methods

Lectures

Assessment methods

Only the students who will attend lectures regularly (at least 80%) will be able to take the mid-term written test at the end of first module and the final written exam as attending students. The mid-term test and the final exam are valid for 1/2 of the final grade.

Students with learning disorders and\or temporary or permanent disabilities: please, contact the office responsible (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students ) as soon as possible so that they can propose acceptable adjustments. The request for adaptation must be submitted in advance (15 days before the exam date) to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of the adjustments, taking into account the teaching objectives.

Teaching tools

Power Point, Essays, Books.

Office hours

See the website of Matteo Battistini