Latest Module Specifications
Current Academic Year 2025 - 2026
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Description America from Civil War to Super Power, 1830-1972 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Learning Outcomes 1. Demonstrate an understanding of the main phases and trends in the political, economic and social history of the United States 2. Discriminate between minor and major causative factors and consequences in analysing historical phenomena 3. Assess critically, and confidently to evaluate the merits of contrasting historical interpretations and perspectives, 4. Pursue independent, self-directed inquiry at an advanced level 5. Engage critically with historical data (both primary and secondary) and, demonstrate, through their use, the capacity to present a prepare an essay at an advanced level in American History | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml |
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Indicative Content and Learning Activities
Indicative Content This course provides students with an opportunity both to contextualise and to examine closely how, having experienced the crisis of Civil War, 1860-65, the United States overcame this challenge to its very survival, to embark in the later nineteenth century on a phase of physical, economic and demographic growth that had transformed it into the world’s largest economy by the beginning of the twentieth century. By combining a focus on key domestic developments, and its gradual embrace of an active foreign policy, the course traces the assumption by the United States of the leadership of the democratic world and of great power status in the second half of the twentieth century. Grounded on the key historical concept of change over time, this courses traces the evolution of a modern nation, and examines the themes and issues crucial to an understanding both of the history and present day role in the world of the United States; these include manifest destiny; states’ rights; slavery; civil war; comparative economic development; reconstruction; race relations; expansion; violence; immigration; protest; progressivism; the emergence of a modern consumerist society; the principles and practice of modern foreign policy; economic growth and economic crisis; the emergence of a superpower; the Cold War and Civil rights. The course is located in a broad national and international historiography. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Indicative Reading List Books: None Articles: None | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other Resources
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