Professor Scott Sandage teaches the Roots of Rock and Roll course (79-345)
Summer 2023 Course Offerings
79-249/S 20th Century U.S. History
9 units MTWRF 2:00pm-3:20pm A. Tabor In-Person Expectation
This survey course covers the history of the United States from Reconstruction to today through by focusing on migration, race and ethnicity, and citizenship or national belonging. Chronologically organized, the course centers key themes and issues of social, economic, and political importance in both past and present. We will also explore how historical events and their documentation change in meaning and importance over time, and what forces and influences shape these realities. Overall, we will consider the causes, processes, and experiences shaping the arrival of different immigrant groups to the United States at different historical moments. More specifically, we will follow migrations of different groups of people, like African Americans, north and westward; European immigrants into coastal port cities and beyond; Mexican bracero workers into agricultural industries; Chinese laborers work experiences in diverse economic settings; and more. We will apply critical lenses toward movements like Americanization and try to understand different groups of citizens' divergent experiences with national belonging. We will also interrogate the logics, values, and symbols that shaped ideas regarding ethnic, racial, class, and gender difference, particularly as they were used to characterize difference regarding citizenship.
79-207 Asian American History through the Novel
9 units Monday/Wednesday, 9:30am-10:50am
This course examines the interwoven histories of migration, language, and identity formation and re-formation in Asian American experience. How have migrant and diasporic identities been represented in fictional (or quasi-fictional) terms? How have factors such as race, religion, class, gender, and sexuality shaped everyday Asian American life? And how can literary sources enrich our understanding of such historical experiences? Course readings consist primarily of novels, representing a variety of Asian ethnicities and experiences, by authors including Gaiutra Bahadur, Carlos Bulosan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, Chang-Rae Lee, and John Okada. These works are supplemented by selected historical documents and short lectures to shed additional light onto the sociohistorical contexts and issues under study.
79-291/S Innovation and Entertainment: A Business History of American Popular Culture
MTWRF 11:00am-12:20pm M. Hauser Remote
This course will examine one topic in popular culture and entertainment per week, from newspapers to streaming services. The course will consider these industries through the lens of business history, documenting innovation and the development of entertainment as commodities. While we will trace many changes over the years, we will primarily focus on the birth of new industries. Guiding questions will be: How did the country's economy, society, and politics structure the development of popular culture? How did performers and entrepreneurs develop industries around new innovations in popular culture? And how did popular culture shape the country's economy, society, and politics?
Body Politics: Women and Health in America
Body Politics: Women and Health in America 9 units MTWRF 9:30am-10:50am L. Tetrault Remote
[Note: Students who have taken 66-121, First Year Seminar: Body Politics:
Women and Health in America, may not enroll.] This course takes a topical,
intersectional approach to the history of U.S. women's health in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. It is less about governmental politics, although we do some of
that. Rather, it sees bodies as cultural texts through which power is built and
contested. The course covers topics such as the history of anatomy, menstruation,
reproductive rights, body image, mental health, sexuality, violence, childbirth, and
menopause. We explore how science and American culture both have constructed
these issues over time (some of it is super whacky!), while also examining
women's organizing around them. This course is open to all students.
79-388/U Sports in American Culture
Summer Two
MTWRF 5:00pm-6:20pm B. Koerber. Remote
[Note: students who have taken course number 79-388, with former titles, Race, Gender, and the Politics of Sports in America since 1900 or 79-388, History of Sports in the United States, may not enroll.] In this course, we will survey the history of sport in the United States from the late nineteenth-century into the twenty-first century. While we will discuss star athletes, famous games, and popular teams, we will focus more so on evaluating the significance of sport in American history. Specifically, we will analyze sports through four themes: westernization/globalization; the emergence and development of Capitalism; industrialization and technological change; and democratization. By doing so, we will examine the changing power relationship between the athletes, owners, and consumers (fans). We will pay particular attention to athletes' changing role in American society and the public's growing expectation that these men and women speak or act on social and political issues. By semester's end, students will look beyond box scores and critically assess how sports has reflected larger trends in our society as well as its continued influence on American life.