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In this course, we explore America’s history before permanent European settlement through the Civil War and Reconstruction. You will study broad themes such as concepts of citizenship and the nation, the role of Native Americans, politics, economic changes, territorial shifts, gender roles, religion, race, slavery, and intellectual and cultural patterns. We will focus on the various and competing definitions given by a wide variety of people to “America,” “freedom,” “citizen,” and “revolution.” What was America, and who counted as Americans? What rights, duties, and privileges came with being Americans? What did it mean to be excluded from this identity? What revolutions changed people’s lives, and how?

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Writers writing about the Great Depression often argue that the stories and remembrances of ordinary people interweave to help us better understand the social, economic, political, and personal struggle of the 1930s in the U.S. And they remind us that these stories—vital threads in our nation’s fabric—are fraying away. Writers tackling The Great Depression mention both the forgotten and the forgetting. What happens when people and the places they inhabited are lost to passing time? What understanding—of our nation and of our own family or community—vanishes when we forget? Are our stories lost forever? Or, can the forgotten be somehow recovered, raised, recalled? And, if recovered, how do they fit into the larger context of our nation’s history? How can we make them endure?

Description

This oral history archive has been created by students in Dr. Sarah Steinbock-Pratt’s class on the Vietnam War. The course explores the long history of the Vietnam War, beginning with early Vietnamese history and colonization.

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