MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

HSY2360

Contemporary America: the USA and the American People, 1940-1992

Ian Mylchreest and Tony Wood

Synopsis This subject deals with both the international history and the domestic political, economic, social and cultural history of the United States and the American people from the eve of World War II to the present. The first half is a chronological survey of diplomatic and political developments, including the politics of the cold war at home and abroad, Vietnam and its impact on American society and politics, the arms race and the `military-industrial complex', the `imperial presidency' and Watergate, and post-Watergate politics and foreign relations including the ending of cold war bipolarity with the collapse of the USSR. The second half of the subject deals with two major themes in recent American social history via contrasting studies of women and blacks, then studies affluence and poverty, `culture' versus `counterculture' and `media messages'.

Assessment Document exercise (1000 words): 20% + Long essay (3000 words): 40% + Examination (2 hours): 30% + Tutorial work: 10%

Prescribed texts

• Chafe W H The unfinished journey: America since World War II 2nd edn, OUP, 1991
• Chafe W H and Sitkoff H (eds) A history of our time: Readings on postwar America 3rd edn, OUP, 1991

Recommended texts

• Gatlin R American women since 1945 Macmillan
• Goldfield D R Black, white and southern Louisiana U P
• Halberstam D The fifties Fawcett-Columbine, 1993
• Hamby A L Liberalism and its challengers: FDR to Reagan 2nd edn, OUP
• Lemann N The promised land: The great black migration and how it changed America Macmillan
• Matusow A J The unravelling of America: A history of liberalism in the 1960s Harper Torch
• Marable M J Race, reform and rebellion: The second reconstruction in black America, 1945-1990 2nd edn, Mississippi U P
• Morgan R The word of a woman: Selected prose 1968-1992 Virago
• Sklar R Movie-made America 2nd edn, Random House, 1992
• Walker M The Cold War and the making of the modern world 4th Estate, 1993
• Young M B The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 Harper-Collins