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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2014/2015
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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of History, Classics and Archaeology : Postgraduate (History, Classics and Archaeology)

Postgraduate Course: The Rise of Modern U.S. Conservatism (PGHC11392)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of History, Classics and Archaeology CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)
Course typeOnline Distance Learning AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryConservatism is currently among the most fertile fields of study on twentieth-century U.S. political history. In 1994, historian Alan Brinkley observed that scholars of the United States during the twentieth century had largely failed to explain the strength of conservative politics, generally choosing to focus instead on liberals and liberalism. Since then, this literature has undergone a significant transformation, as historians have tackled many of the oversights identified by Brinkley and have pursued other research questions as well. The result is an increasingly sophisticated body of work. This course will encourage students to explore the historiography of modern American conservatism and to engage with key debates within this literature. It will help students to identify research topics for further investigation. The course will investigate the modern history of conservative ideas in the United States, the strategies of conservative politicians in pursuit of power and their actions once they won power, and the development of movements that sought to mobilise grassroots support for conservative ideas. The most intensely contested debate that the course analyses involves the reasons for the decline of liberalism and the rise of conservatism from the 1960s onwards. The course will explore methodologies and approaches taken by scholars ¿ including not only historians but also those working within other disciplines, notably that of politics ¿ to their investigations of the subject. It will also explore the nature of the material available to historians in studying different aspects of the subject.
Course description Introduction
Week 1. Perspectives on the history of modern U.S. conservatism and approaches to political history [asynchronous seminar]
Week 2. Conservatives and the New Deal [synchronous seminar]
Week 3. Anticommunism and McCarthyism [asynchronous seminar]
Week 4. Visions for conservative revitalisation: Taft and Eisenhower [synchronous seminar]
Week 5. Suburban Warriors [asynchronous seminar]
Week 6. The 1960s [synchronous seminar]
Week 7. Ideas: fusionism, the 'New Right', and the emergence of neoconservatism [asynchronous seminar]
Week 8. Nixon [synchronous seminar]
Week 9. The South [asynchronous seminar]
Week 10. Conservative triumph? Ronald Reagan and the 1980s [synchronous seminar]
Week 11. Course conclusions [asynchronous seminar]
In addition to this there will be a one-hour virtual office slot each week, via Skype.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2014/15, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  None
Course Start Semester 1
Course Start Date 15/09/2014
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 12, Online Activities 10, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 174 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One 1,000 word article/chapter review (20%), and one 3,000 word essay (80%). These pieces will be submitted via Learn and marked using TurnitIn. Online versions of the postgraduate essay feedback form will be employed on the course.
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
After completing the course, students will be able to:
- an advanced knowledge and understanding of key aspects of the study of political conservatism in the United States between the arrival of the Great Depression and the end of the Reagan years;
- demonstrate a familiarity with a selection of relevant contemporary sources;
- demonstrate a capacity to evaluate conflicting historical interpretations;
- identify and pursue research topics independently;
- exhibit an understanding for different conceptual approaches for the study of this period of U.S. history;
- analyse and contextualise primary source material;
- arrive at independent, well-argued, well-documented and properly referenced conclusions in their coursework essay;
- demonstrate their skills in group discussion, collaborative exercises (such as with wikis or group essays) and oral presentations;
- demonstrate their written skills, their analytical and theoretical skills in coursework;
- demonstrate their ability to reflect on the reading and research that they have undertaken and provide feedback for their peers.
Reading List
Up to two books will be provided to the students out of their fees.
Ebooks of some of the more important works will be purchased (if available) in addition to an extensive use of eReserved chapters from some of the following:
Patrick Allitt, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)
William C. Berman, America's Right Turn: From Nixon to Clinton, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)
Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002)
Niels Bjerre-Poulsen, Right Face: Organizing the American Conservative Movement, 1945-65 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002)
Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
Dan T. Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996)
Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007)
Donald T. Critchlow and Nancy MacLean, Debating the American Conservative Movement: 1945 to the Present (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)
Thomas Byrne Edsall with Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: Norton, 1991)
David Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)
David Farber and Jeff Roche, eds., The Conservative Sixties (New York: Peter Lang, 2003)
Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Jerome L. Himmelstein, To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)
Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996)
Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)
Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2008)
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)
Robert Mason, The Republican Party and American Politics from Hoover to Reagan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Michael W. Miles, The Odyssey of the American Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)
George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (New York: Basic, 1976)
Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001)
Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008)
Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York: Norton, 2009)
Alfred S. Regnery, Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism (New York: Threshold, 2008)
David W. Reinhard, The Republican Right since 1945 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983)
Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America: The Thankless Persuasion, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1962)
William A. Rusher, The Rise of the Right (1984; New York: National Review, 1993)
Catherine E. Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage to the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
Jonathan M. Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Gregory L. Schneider, The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)
Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008)
Clyde P. Weed, The Nemesis of Reform: The Republican Party During the New Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)
In addition the library has strong holdings of monographs related to this subject, as well as several relevant databases.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills The study of the past gives students a unique understanding of the past that will enable them to succeed in a broad range of careers. The transferable skills gained from this course include:
- understanding of complex issues and how to draw valid conclusions from the past
- ability to analyse the origins and development of current political questions
- a command of bibliographical and library- and/or IT-based online and offline research skills
- a range of skills in reading and textual analysis
- ability to question and problematize evidence; considering the relationship between evidence and interpretation
- understanding ethical dimensions of research and their relevance for human relationships today
- ability to marshal arguments lucidly, coherently and concisely, both orally and in writing
- ability to deliver a paper or a presentation in front of peer audiences
- ability to design and execute pieces of written work and to present them suitably, as evidenced by the final assessment essay of 3,000 words
KeywordsModern American Conservatism
Contacts
Course organiserDr Robert Mason
Tel: (0131 6)50 3770
Email: Robert.Mason@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: Lindsay.Scott@ed.ac.uk
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