This course examines how U.S. cultures are constructed, reinforced, and changed--particularly in reference to place and material culture. Qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis drawn from several disciplines will help students develop skills in cultural interpretation. Case studies may focus on a neighborhood, a city, or a region. Topics will vary from semester to semester.

This course will survey the history of California and the United States West from the mid-19th century to the dawn of the 21st century. It will situate this state and regional history within the relevant currents of global history, which have profoundly shaped and been shaped by California and the United States West. We will pay particular heed to those elements of California and western U.S. history that are typically associated with the state’s and region’s distinctiveness as a shifting region on the national map, potent and protean symbol in the national (and, often, international) imagination, and catalyst of world historical developments from the Gold Rush and the global guano trade it sparked in the mid-19th century, to the rise of Hollywood in the early 20th century, to the development and deployment of atomic weapons in the mid-20th century, to the emergence of Silicon Valley technological innovation and New Gilded Age income polarization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

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Requirements class fulfills