HIS 3396F: Atomic America

Films and television tend to depict the 1950s as “happy days”: a decade of widespread affluence and stability, close-knit families, and a new teen culture which embraced drive-in restaurants, poodle skirts, and sock hops. Other portrayals, however, present the 1950s as a period shaped by anxiety and marked by conformity and hypocrisy. While many Americans enjoyed the benefits of a strong and affluent post-war society, they also struggled to learn to live in the shadow of the newly-developed atomic bomb. It was a decade of new homes and appliances, but also of backyard bomb shelters, blacklists, and worries about Communist expansion. Meanwhile, Americans such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., challenged the racial status quo and inspired a movement for civil rights.  American women began to question their role in the nuclear family and in society as a whole. Anti-heroes such as James Dean, Jack Kerouac, and Lenny Bruce who resisted conventional norms of society became seen as role models by American youth.

In this course, we will examine some key aspects of political, social, and cultural life in the United States during the 1950s, looking primarily at the state of California as a microcosm of the nation. In California of the 1950s we see striking examples of the best and the worst trends and developments of the decade.  Rapid urban growth, sprawling suburbia, the freeway system and the car culture, Disneyland, Hollywood, booming aerospace and defence industries, the expansion of education systems, in-migration from the other states—all of these suggested the idea of America as the land of the future, the land of possibility. At the same time, however, in 1950s California we see evidence of more negative developments, including the destruction of the environment, the ending of urban street car systems, the intensification of urban ghettos, and the excesses of the anti-Communist fervour. (see course syllabus for further information)

Required Texts
Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Daniel Horowitz, editor, American Social Classes in the 1950s (1st edition) (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press)

Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents (1st edition) (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press)

Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (2nd edition) (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press)

Occasional online documents and articles (to be assigned).

The books listed above will be available for purchase at the UWO bookstore. In addition, three copies of Starr’s book will be placed on one-day loan at Weldon Library. Keep in mind that this is mandatory reading for the course, as are the other three texts.

Assignments and marks distribution:
Biographical book review (5-6 pages in length) (10%) and short presentation (based on book read) (5%): 15%

Primary document analysis (5-6 pages in length) (10%)and short presentation (based on primary document analysis) (5%):  15%

Research essay (13-15 pages in length; on a topic of the student’s choosing, in consultation with the instructor): 25%

Final exam (covering all lectures, readings, and class discussions; to be held during the December final exam period): 25%

Class participation: 20%