United States History and Cultural Identities

This course will further develop students' research, analytical and writing skills through the interpretation of primary and secondary sources in American history. Students will gain insights into the major events and social movements that have shaped the complex history, politics, society and cultural diversity of the United States. Students will study the history of British America, 1607-1776, and the United States, 1776 to the present. Students will examine the British settlement of North America, the growth of Colonial America, the War of Independence, the creation of the Republic, westward expansion, the sectional tensions over slavery, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. Students will also study the industrialisation of the US, the Progressive Era, segregation in the South, America's emergence as a great power, World War One, the Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal, World War Two and America's superpower status, US foreign policy since 1945 (including the Cold War, the Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the rise of China), the Civil Rights movement, and the political, social and economic tensions that have divided the US since the 1970s.