Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (2004), 286-302 (
course reader). Stephen Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Responses
to ...
Prof. Moshik Temkin Taubman 452 Office hours: Tuesday 3-4
[email protected]
Faculty Assistant: Gina Abbadessa Taubman 485
[email protected]
DPI 714: The United States and the World: Politics, Policy, and the Uses of History Spring 2014 T/Th, 10:10-11:30, BL-1
Course Description: This course provides a historical framework for understanding the influence of the United States on the wider world and the impact of global events and trends and policymaking in the United States. It also focuses on the ways in which policymakers, activists, and citizens can, do, and should (or should not) make use of history in their professional and public lives. Our first goal is to examine the diverse connections between American and international policy history. Our second goal is to permit you to become more self-aware, reflective, and skilled at using and thinking about history in variety of public and policy settings. Adopting a loosely chronological structure, and making use of sources both written and visual, we will grapple with issues that have provoked much debate among historians and policymakers: What are the sources, dynamics, and long-term implications of the American rise to global power? How have American mass production and culture conquered the global market? More broadly, what have been the roles of the United States in the wider world? What place has the wider world had in shaping American domestic policies? What responsibility (for better or for worse) does the United States bear for the way the world looks today? And how can this history help us in understanding, and formulating, public policy in the future?
Requirements:
This course consists of a combination of lectures and discussion. Class preparation and participation are crucial to an effective and rewarding course. Students are expected to attend all class meetings, arrive on time, and be ready to discuss the week’s reading assignments. Whenever possible, students should bring the readings with them to class. Each week, students will submit a brief one-page response to the assigned readings, either Tuesday’s or Thursday’s. These should be posted to the class web page (in the discussion section) as well as emailed to Prof. Temkin’s faculty assistant as Word attachments before either Tuesday or Thursday at 9 a.m. These reading responses will not be graded, but will be used in assessing overall effort and participation and will also help drive class discussion; I will return them to you with feedback. Each student will be allowed (but not obligated) to take two weeks off from this weekly assignment. Attendance, preparation, engagement, and weekly responses will determine 40 percent of the final grade. The rest of the final grade will be determined by four assignments, two of which will be written and two of which will be done in-class. The first written assignment is a 3-4-page memo, due February 13. (See below for topic and schedule). It will account for 10 percent of the final grade. The second written assignment is a 10-12-page final paper. In consultation with me, you will choose a specific topic that is related to the readings and discussions. Integrating your own work on the topic with the issues and materials that the course touches on, your goal in this assignment is to synthesize a good chunk of historical knowledge with your own conception of policy formation. This essay is due Thursday May 8, one week after the end of classes. I will be available for consultation and feedback throughout the process. We will discuss this assignment further in class. This assignment will account for 40 percent of the final grade. Note: All papers should conform to the following technicalities: single-sided, numbered, 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced. Please use one space only after each sentence. Leave a one-inch margin on the left side of the page. Turn off automatic hyphenation and do not justify text; ragged right margins are preferable throughout. Use minimal formatting. Do not forget to include your name and a title for the paper, no matter how brief. The final paper should conform to the stylistic guidelines of the Chicago Manual of Style, available online for free via the Harvard libraries website, at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/home.html The two in-class assignments will be group debates over two of the syllabus topics, to be held in class (described in the syllabus below). Together, these two group assignments will account for 10 percent of the final grade.
Academic Integrity and Classroom Policies: All written work for this course must be appropriately referenced and cited. Students seeking guidance should see the Original Work Code in the HKS Student Handbook. If you have any question as to whether or not you have used citation correctly, please speak with me before turning in your written assignment. In order to avoid distractions and encourage vigorous discussion, the consumption of foodstuffs and the use of laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other addictive electronic devices in class is highly discouraged.
Course Readings: Most readings can be found in the course web page (you may need to log in using your HUID and PIN), at the COOP, or using the HKS library reserves. The following books should be purchased: * Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, Princeton University Press 2000 * Moshik Temkin, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial. Yale University Press, paperback ed., 2011
Course Outline: I. Introduction
January 28: Where in the World is America? Reading: Charles Bright and Michael Geyer, “Where in the World is America? The History of the United States in the Global Age”, in Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, 2002), 63-92. NOTE: This reading is optional. It provides background on the ways historians see the question of America’s relation to the wider world. It is not directly related to policy.
January 30: What Do Historians Do? Readings: John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History, pp. 35-109 Paul Pierson, “The Study of Policy Development”, Journal of Policy History
II. “American Empire”: Beginnings
February 4: Spanish-American-War(s) Readings: Ernest R. May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power, pp. 67-82; 133-159; 220-239; 243-270 Susan A. Brewer, Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq, pp. 14-45 Walter LeFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, pp. 129-155
February 6: Cuba-US Relations, A Case Study Reading: Louis A. Perez, Jr., Cuba and the United States, pp. 82-281 Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, Condoleezza Rice, Chair, Report to the President, Washington, July 2006. (O)
Written Assignment: due February 13. You have been hired as special advisor to a highranking official in the US government (or another government of your choosing). Your boss has learned that you took a course at Harvard on history and policy. He/she asks you to read the July 2006 report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, which expressed the policy approach of the preceding US government. You are then asked to write a memo indicating whether or not knowledge of the history of Cuba and its relation to the US might influence any reshaping of that approach. If so, what aspects of that history might matter, and how would they matter? If not, explain why the history is not
relevant to the approaching departure of Fidel Castro from the Cuban leadership. (If you are working for a non-US government, you should indicate what stance your government might want to take toward Cuba, what your government should anticipate in terms of USCuban interaction and conflict, and what advice your government might want to give to the US). Your memo should be no longer than 4 pages.
III. World War I, AKA The Great War February 11: The War and the American People Readings: John Dewey, “The Social Possibilities of War”, 1918 (online) http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=2331 David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society, chapter 1 (ebook) http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn3:hul.ebookbatch.ACLS_batch:MIU01000000000000003898710
February 13: The War, the U.S. and the World Readings: Kennedy, Over Here, Epilogue (e-book) http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn3:hul.ebookbatch.ACLS_batch:MIU01000000000000003898710 Erez Manela, “Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of East-West Harmony and the Revolt against Empire in 1919”, American Historical Review, Dec. 2006, Vol. 111 Issue 5, 1327-1351 http://ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db =aph&AN=23472882&site=ehost-live&scope=site
IV. The 1920s: Spreading the American Dream (I) February 18: The Financial Dream Reading:
Emily S. Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930, 97-186
February 20: The Technological Dream Reading: Robert Wohl, The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, pp. 9-46 Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, 367-391 (ebook)
V. Spreading the American Dream (II): The Dark Side
February 25: The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: How Transatlantic Politics Work Reading: Moshik Temkin, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial, 9-57
February 27: The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair (Class Debate) Reading: Temkin, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair, 58-140
VI. The 1930s: Depression, New Deal, War
March 4: Depression, New Deal, War Readings: John Maynard Keynes, “An Open Letter to President Roosevelt” (1933, online) http://newdeal.feri.org/misc/keynes2.htm Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, pp. 409-446 Mary Nolan, The Transatlantic Century: Europe and America, 1890-2010, pp. 104-153
March 6: Movie Screening, All The King’s Men (Details TBA)
VII. World War II March 11: WWII, the U.S., and the World Reading: John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, 3-73 (e-book) http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn3:hul.ebookbatch.ACLS_batch:MIU01000000000000003898736
March 13: WWII and U.S. Domestic Policies Reading: Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The United States, 1941-1945, pp. 1-72, and 99-153
VIII. The Idea of the “American Century”
March 25: An American Century? Readings: Olivier Zunz, Why the American Century? Pp. 159-182 Alan Brinkley, “The Idea of the American Century” (online) http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublicLecturesAndEvents/pdf/20060207Brinkley.pdf Henry Luce, “The American Century” (online – course website) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/doi/10.1111/14677709.00161/pdf
March 27: A Pax Americana? BBC Report, “How Bretton Woods Reshaped the World”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7725157.stm
Elizabeth Borgwardt, A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights, pp. 114-141
IX. The Cold War April 1: A Global War? Reading: Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, pp. 8-38, and 110-157 Gary J. Bass, “Nixon and Kissinger’s Forgotten Shame”, The New York Times, Sep. 29, 2013
April 3: America and Vietnam, A Case Study Readings: Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War, Readings TBA George C. Herring, “America in Vietnam: The Unending War”, Foreign Affairs 1991/2
X. The Cold War and Global Racial Policies April 8: Racism and Postwar Readings: Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, introduction, Chs. 1-3 (textbook) Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena, 45-84
April 10: Civil Rights in International Perspective Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, Chs. 3-6, conclusion (textbook) Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line, 85-134
XI. Beyond the Cold War April 15: Movie Screening Lumumba, dir. Raoul Peck (2002)
April 17: “Alien Threat” and the Case of McCarthy Readings: Ellen Schrecker, “McCarthyism: Political Repression and the Fear of Communism”, Social Research, Winter 2004, 71:4, 1041-1086 (available online) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_4_71/ai_n13807487 Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, pp. 3-65 http://s3.amazonaws.com/files.posterous.com/ohwhatablow/XnZFL9MVEFGDlNmO2A 2VixMdkaLu5MhCq6WA5OBJKMoZXC2lgH7Y1ResSQbt/2009.pdf?AWSAccessKeyI d=AKIAJFZAE65UYRT34AOQ&Expires=1325689084&Signature=TjEpH3bhGSmVT dn6aM6SlPwxM3Q%3D
XII. Anti-Americanism: Essential or Circumstantial? April 22: Between Terrorism and Nativism Readings: Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, introduction and chapter 1 Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, Atlantic Monthly 1982 (online) http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199009/muslim-rage
April 24: The Case of Al-Qaeda: Class Debate
Readings: Osama bin Laden, “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of The Two Holy Places,” August 1996.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html Readings in “Anti-Americanism” folder on class website (Judt, Gienow-Hecht, Grandin, Cole, Cohen & Tucker)
XIII. The Meaning of American Power April 29: Responses to Foreign Crises: The Case of Rwanda Reading: Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2002), 329390 (course reader)
May 1: The Future of the American Empire: Concluding Discussion Reading: David P. Calleo, Follies of Power: America’s Unipolar Fantasy, pp. 3-13, 22-31, 67-79 Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (2004), pp. 286-302 Stephen Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Responses to U.S. Primacy, pp. 29108
May 8: Final Papers Due
