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Making America Modern, 1877-1920!
Brown University! !
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Department of History! !
Mon., Wed., Fri., 1-1:50pm!
Sayles Hall 012! !
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Course Description:!
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Professor: Lukas Rieppel!
Office Hours: Wed., 2-4pm!
Sharpe House, Room 305!
[email protected]!
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This course surveys a crucial period in American history between the end of
Reconstruction and the beginning of World War I. During this time, the United States
transitioned from a relatively fragmented, traditional, and largely agricultural society into
one that was remarkably diverse, increasingly urban, and highly industrialized. In
surveying this important transitional period, we will pay particular attention to farreaching changes in the nation’s business and economic life, its social movements, as
well as its cultural developments, all with an eye to understanding how the United
States became one of the world’s most commanding economic, political, and cultural
powers.!
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Assessment:!
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In-class Midterm Exam: 20%!
Term Paper (8-10 pp): 30%!
Participation: 15%!
Final Exam: 35%!
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Term Papers:!
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A printout of your paper is due on the last day of class. You may write about any topic
that touches on the themes of this course. Be creative! I will distribute a set of potential
paper topics, but you may also write about something else that interests you. Either
way, you will be asked to submit a 1-page paper proposal with a preliminary
bibliography on October 16th. I will provide feedback on your choice of topics and may
recommend some additional sources for you to consult. The final draft of your term
paper should be 8-10 pages in length, and it will be due at the start of lecture during the
last day of class.!
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Readings:!
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Required readings will be made available to you in pdf format online. On the syllabus, I
also provide a list of some additional, recommended readings that you may which to
consult. Doing so is not a requirement and will not post these on the course website—
they are primarily intended to help give you a starting place to begin doing additional
research for your term papers. In addition, you are required to purchase the following
textbook online or at the university bookstore: !
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Leon Fink (ed.), Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, 2nd ed.,
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).!
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Deadlines:!
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In-class Midterm Evaluation: Oct. 9th!
Term Paper Proposal: Oct. 16th!
Term Paper: Dec. 4th!
Final Examination: Dec. 14th (at 2pm)!
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A Note On Plagiarism: !
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Plagiarism and cheating are serious offenses. Anyone suspected of such infractions will
be referred to the Dean’s Office.!
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Course Schedule!
Week 1!
Sept. 4th: Introduction, Modernizing America!
Sept. 6th: Ragged Dick & the Idea of Upward Mobility!
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Required Readings:!
1. Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick, or Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks
(Philadelphia: John C. Wiston [1st ed., Boston: A.K. Loring, 1868]): 9-26, 65-82,
249-262.!
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Recommended Readings:!
1. Various Authors, “Introducing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” in Fink, Major
Problems: 1-17.!
2. T. Jackson Lears, “Crisis and Regeneration,” in Rebirth of a Nation (NY: Harper
Collins, 2009): 167-222.!
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Week 2!
Sept. 9th: The Second Industrial Revolution!
Sept. 11th: Chicago and the Growth of Big Cities!
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Required Readings:!
1. Walter Licht, “Introduction” and “An Industrial Heartland,” in Industrializing
America: The Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995): xiii-1,
102-133.!
2. William Cronon, “Dreaming the Metropolis” and “Annihilating Space: Meat” in
Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (NY: WW Norton, 1991): 23-55,
207-263.!
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Recommended Readings:!
1. Various Authors, “The Rise of the Industrial City: New Places, New Peoples” in
Fink, Major Problems: 116-157.!
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Week 3!
Sept. 16th: A Managerial Revolution in American Business!
Sept. 18th: Organizing the Working Class!
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Required Readings:!
1. Alfred Chandler, “The Beginnings of ‘Big Business’ in American Industry,” in The
Business History Review, Vol. 33, No. 1 (1959): 1-31.!
2. Various Authors, “The Price of Progress: Capitalism and Its Discontents,” in Fink,
Major Problems: 17-25, 34-45.!
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Recommended Readings:!
1. David Montgomery, “Workers Control of Machine Production in the 19th Century“
in Workers’ Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and
Labor Struggles (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980): 9-31 !
2. Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American
Business (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1993): 81-122, 287-315.!
3. Glenn Porter, “The Appearance and Spread of Big Business,” in The Rise of Big
Business, 1860-1920 (NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005): 31-93.!
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Week 4!
Sept. 23rd: The Haymarket Affair!
Sept. 25th: Pullman Town!
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Required Readings: !
1. Carl Smith, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2007): 101-147, 177-232.!
2. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Boston: Ticknor and Co., 1888):
7-25, 36-53, 64-103, 116-170.!
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Week 5!
Sept. 30th: Populist Revolt!
Oct. 2nd: PT Barnum & The Emergence of Popular Culture!
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Required Readings:!
1. Various Authors, “The 1890s: Economic Depression and Political Crisis” in Fink,
Major Problems: 188-224.!
2. P.T. Barnum, The Life of P.T. Barnum, including his Golden Rules for MoneyMaking (Buffalo: The Courier Co., 1888): 55-70, 253-278.!
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Recommended Readings:!
3. Charles Postel, “Modern Times” in The Populist Vision (Oxford: Oxford UP,
2009).!
1. Richard Hofstadter, “The Folklore of Populism,” in The Age of Reform: From
Bryan to F.D.R. (NY: Vintage Books, 1955): 60-94.!
2. Robert C. McMath, “Farmers, Laborers, and Politics” and “Creating a Political
Culture,” in American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898 (NY: Hill and Wang,
1993): 108-180.!
3. James Cook, “The Feejee Mermaid and the Market Revolution” in The Arts of
Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
UP, 2001): 73-118.!
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Week 6!
Oct. 7th: Vaudeville & The Cinema of Attractions!
Oct. 9th: Midterm Examination!
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Readings:!
1. Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the
Avant-Garde,” Wide Angle, Vol. 8, nos. 3 & 4, 1986.!
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Recommended Readings:!
1. David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard UP, 1999).!
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*** In-Class Midterm Evaluation Oct. 9th ***!
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Week 7!
Oct. 16th: Highbrow Culture and Bourgeois Social Distinction!
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Readings: !
1. Lawrence Levine, “The Sacralization of Culture,” in Highbrow/Lowbrow: The
Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP,
1990): 83-169.!
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Recommended Readings:!
1. Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, “A Public Menagerie and Two Private
Museums” in The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca: Cornell
UP, 1998): 340-372.!
2. Sven Beckert, “Bourgeois Institution Builders: New York in the Nineteenth
Century,” in The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth
Century by Sven Beckert and Julia Rosenbaum, eds. (NY: Palgrave MacMillan,
2010): 103-119.!
3. Sven Beckert, “The Culture of Capital,” The Monied Metropolis: New York City
and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2003): 237-273.!
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*** One-Page Term Paper Proposal Due in Class, Oct. 16th ***!
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Week 8!
Oct. 21st: Jim Crow!
Oct. 23rd: Westward Expansion!
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Required Readings:!
1. Various Authors, “Behind the Bravura of the Wild West,” Major Problems: 46-85,
412-444.!
2. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1903): 1-163.!
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Recommended Readings:!
1. Richard White, “The Economic Structure of the West,” in It’s Your Misfortune and
None of My Own (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991): 270-298.!
2. Richard Slotkin, “The White City and the Wild West: Buffalo Bill and the Mythic
Space of American History,” in Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in
Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998):
63-88.!
3. Richard White, “Introduction,” in Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the
Making of Modern America (NY: W.W. Norton, 2012): xxi-1.!
4. Various Authors, “Race and Power Under Jim Crow” in Fink, Major Problems:
295-323.!
5. Various Authors, “Trials of the New South” in Fink, Major Problems: 86-114.!
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Week 9!
Oct. 28th: Nature Conservation!
Oct. 30th: The Eugenics Movement!
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Required Readings:!
1. Various Authors, “Nature without Nurture,” in Fink, Major Problems: 412-444.!
1. Madison Grant, “The Passing of the Great Race,” Geographical Review, vol. 2,
no. 5 (1916): 354-60.!
2. Madison Grant, “Wild Life Protection,” Zoological Society Bulletin, vol. 14, no. 1
(1916): 1320.!
3. Francis Galton, “Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims,” The American
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1904: 1-25.!
4. Charles Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (NY: Henry Holt and Co.,
1911): 1-5, 80-86.!
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Recommended Readings: !
1. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Vigor of Life,” in Theodore Roosevelt: The Rough
Riders and An Autobiography (NY: The Library of America, 2004): 280-308.!
2. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th ed., (New Haven: Yale
UP, 2001): 96-161.!
3. William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking
the Human Place in Nature (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995): 69-90.!
4. Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human
Heredity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985): 41-113.!
5. Diane Paul, “Eugenics and the Left,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 45,
No. 4, 1984: 567-590.!
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Week 10!
Nov. 4th: Race Science and “The Immigrant Question”!
Nov. 6th: American Empire!
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Required Readings:!
1. Various Authors, “The Language of Empire,” in Fink, Major Problems: 263-294.!
2. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Big Stick and the Square Deal,” in Theodore
Roosevelt: The Rough Riders and An Autobiography (NY: The Library of America,
2004): 683-718.!
3. Theodore Roosevelt, State of the Union Address, 1904 (Available in two parts
online: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1310 and
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1307).!
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Week 11!
Nov. 11th: Suffrage and “The Women’s Issue”!
Nov. 13th: Organizing the Nation’s Economy!
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Required Readings:!
1. Nancy F. Cott, “Across the Great Divide: Women in Politics Before and After
1920,” in Women, Politics, and Change (N.Y., Russell Sage Foundation, 1990):
153-177.!
2. Jonathan Levy, “The Trust Question” in Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World
of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2012):
264-308.!
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Recommended Readings:!
1. Martin Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916:
The Market, the Law, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988).!
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Week 12!
Nov. 18th: Scientific Management!
Nov. 20th: Pragmatism, A Homegrown Philosophy!
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Required Readings:!
1. Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (NY: Harper
and Brothers, 1911): 5-29!
2. John Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed,” School Journal, vol. 54 (January 1897), pp.
77-80.!
3. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001):
235-285.!
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Recommended Readings:!
1. Various Authors, “Professionalism and the Uses of New Knowledge” in Fink,
Major Problems: 225-262.!
2. Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (NY: Hill and Wang, 1966):
111-164.!
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***Note: There will be no discussion section on Friday, Nov. 22nd***!
Week 13!
Nov. 25th: Progressive Reform!
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Required Readings: !
1. Jane Addams, Twenty years at Hull-House (NY: Macmillan, 1910): 89-129,
154-198, 310-342.!
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Recommended Readings: !
1. Various Authors, “Progressivism: Roots of the Reform Vision” in Fink, Major
Problems: 355-386.!
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Week 14!
Dec. 2nd: Consumer Culture!
Dec. 4th: The Great War!
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Required Readings:!
1. Various Authors, “America and the Great War” and “Consumer Culture and the
Commercialization of Leisure” in Fink, Major Problems.!
2. William Leach, “Introduction” and “The Dawn of Commercial Empire,” in Land of
Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (NY: Vintage
Books, 1994).!
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*** Term Papers Are Due in Class, Dec. 4th ***