Courses

Far more than just an interstitial period between the liberal sixties and the conservative 1980s, the 1970s were important and transformative years for American politics and culture. The post-WWII affluent era had ended, but what would be next? This course explores historical scholarship on the turbulent and contradictory decade, which nurtured both expanded social movements demanding rights on the one hand and, on the other, a powerful conservative backlash to liberalism as well as identity politics. We look at a range of sources to focus especially on the cultural and political realms, focusing on cynicism in politics, race, class, and gender to assess what the seventies mean for American history.