The Rural and the Urban in Modern America - Detailseite

Why and how did cities emerge in the United States? Where not, and why? How did Americans understand the rural and the urban? This course offers an introduction to the rural and the urban in American history. We will examine the contested meanings of the city and the country, tracing how these distinctions have been continually drawn and redrawn over time. We will also explore how Americans interacted with their environments and how this re-shaped their identities.

This course offers a broad overview of the development and meaning of rural and urban life in America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will first look at theoretical foundations in social history, urban history, geography, and other disciplines. Second, students will develop case studies based on empirical analyses. Possible topics include the industrial city, the modern metropolis, urban and rural infrastructure (sanitation, transport, public housing), transregional and urban/rural migration, suburbanization.

Chudacoff, Howard P., and Peter C. Baldwin, eds., Major Problems in American Urban and Suburban History. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 2005.

Goldfield, David, ed., Encyclopedia of American Urban History, 2 Vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007.

Stock, Catherine M., and Robert D. Johnston, eds., The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State: Political Histories of Rural America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

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