This course will survey the history of California and the American 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 American West - 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.

This course will survey the history of California and the American West from the mid-19th century to the dawn of the 21st century. Where appropriate, 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 American West. We will pay particular heed to those elements of Californian and western 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. Among the claims to California’s and/or the West’s regional distinctiveness this course will explore are: a cultural history propagated in film and literature in which the region occupies center stage in the drama of America's development as a democratic society; an ethnoracial history that consists of a complex, multiracial (as opposed to biracial) pattern of race relations; an environmental history shaped by a scarcity of water amidst an abundance of extractive resources; an urban history characterized by the nation’s highest concentration of urbanization and an approach to metropolitan development that shaped that of the rest of the nation; and a political history shaped by an especially pervasive federal government presence in the region’s development along with being a national bellwether for both liberal action and conservative and neoliberal reaction.

Credit Restrictions

Students will receive no credit for HISTORY 128AC after completing HISTORY 127AC.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills