The Role of Race in the Modern Metropolis
Course Description
In recent decades, the term "urban" has become something more than a word to describe densely populated regions; it has become synonymous with "non-white." For historians, it begs the question: what role does race play in the shaping of the modern American city? How have demographic shifts in the twentieth century, due to in-migration, immigration, upward mobility, deindustrialization, white flight, and gentrification transformed urban economies and housing patterns? To what extent has race-mixing (and the threat of race-mixing) affected the workplace, the classroom, the market, the dancehall, and the home? What is the relationship between the development of racial subcultures and urban politics? How does the process of urbanization inform our understanding of the development of a national identity?
To begin to answer these and other questions, we will sift through historical monographs and works of synthesis while also examining selections from primary sources, including memoirs, novels, and government reports. We will also discuss methodology; from week to week, as we consider historical narratives about Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C., we will explore the various ways in which scholars have constructed the past.
Though this is a reading seminar, this course will also prepare you for the challenge of crafting your History 101 senior thesis. As a sort of practice run, you will compose a project prospectus (2-3 pages) along with an annotated bibliography, as well as a short primary source-based paper (9-11 pages), which you'll complete by the end of the semester. You're encouraged to use these writing assignments as a launching pad for your 101 thesis project, particularly if your intended topic will center on twentieth-century urban history or the history of race relations in post-Civil War America.
Class time: Wednesday, 4 - 6 pm
Class location: 201 Wheeler
Required texts:
• Course Reader available for purchase at Copy Central, 2560 Bancroft Way
• Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown (ISBN: 978-0520226296)
• James B. Bennett, Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans (ISBN: 978-0691121482)
• Gregory Mixon, The Atlanta Riot: Race, Class, and Violence in a New South City (ISBN: 978-0813030753)
• Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940 (ISBN: 978-1568361246)
• James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (ISBN: 978-0226309958)
• Richard Wright, Native Son (ISBN: 978-0060929800)
• Luis Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance During World War II (ISBN: 978-0520261549)
• Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go (ISBN: 978-1560254454)
• Joshua Zeitz, White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Post-War Politics (ISBN: 9780807857984)
• Thomas Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (ISBN: 978-0691121864)
• Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (ISBN: 978-0226583013)
Recommended texts:
• Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing History (ISBN: 978-0312403577)
• Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Vol. 2, Third Edition (ISBN: 978-0393935431)
