Recommended Library books and journals.

This module is taught for ten weeks and comprises Lectures and fortnightly seminars (160 learning hours in total, 24 hours class contact and 136 hours of independent learning). The lectures are paired to relate to a single major question, which is then explored in the appropriate seminar. You are, therefore, expected to attend all lectures and seminars and, as preparation for each, to have completed the preparatory reading from the primary source extracts included in the Module handbook and from the bibliography. You will be expected to offer your contribution to answering the specific seminar questions. Your meetings with the tutor will be used to deepen your engagement with, and understanding of the demands of the module.

Academic General learning Outcomes:
(1) An understanding of the inferential and interpretative nature of the discipline of history.
(2) An enhanced level of intellectual self-reflexivity.
(3) An awareness of the constructionist character of historical knowledge.
(4) The use of primary sources.
(5) Analyse the major concepts regularly employed by historians - race, class, gender, nationalism and imperialism.
(6) Understand the ways such concepts have been deployed by historians.
(7) Comment upon the nature of historical debate.

Module-Specific Learning Outcomes:
(1) Assess the complex nature of the Social Reform Movement.
(2) Understand the nature of the various social and political conflicts, e.g. capital and labour, or ethnocultural issues.
(3) Identify and critically evaluate the key historiographical debates within central elements of the syllabus,
e.g. the New Woman or Welfare Liberalism, or America's Rise to World Power.
(4) Account for the nature of the intellectual crisis that beset America at the close of the Nineteenth Century.

Transferable Skills:
(1) Think conceptually.
(2) Take increasing responsibility for your own learning.
(3) Deploy educational technologies with substantial facility.
(4) Be able to communicate effectively in the written form by producing a substantial length prose essay.
(5) Manage and synthesise large amounts of information.

The aim in this Level 2, 20 credit module is to provide insights into the major themes of American race, class and gender in the years around the turn of the nineteenth century. The aim of this Level 2, 20 credit module is to provide insights into several of the major themes of the American historical experience, most notably those of race, class and gender during the Age of Reform and Progressive Era, 1890-1919. The Programme addresses America in 1890: Industrialisation and the Emergence of a Bourgeois Culture and The Culture of Opposition: Populism, Socialism, Class and Radical Liberalism; a case study of Henry D. Lloyd; Immigration and American Identity; The Frontier Myth in American History; Social Reconstruction and Political Reform; Roosevelt and Wilson: The Politics of Interventionism; the Crisis of Gender; Race and Cultural Revival; America's rise to world power. As a 20 credit student a regular personal tutorial meeting with the module tutor will be required in addition to the usual formal contact in order to extend the depth and range of your engagement with the syllabus. This regular tutorial consultation will provide the opportunity for in-depth guidance on reading, preparation for the course-work assessment and assistance in preparation for the seminars.

A COURSEWORK -ESSAY length 3500 WORDS weighted at 100%.

1 essay of 3500 words which will examine your understanding of key aspects of American historical development between 1890 and 1920.

Mary Beth Norton et. al., A People and a Nation, Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 2000
John Milton Cooper, Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920, New York & London, Norton, 1990.
Alun Munslow in America's Century: Perspectives on US History since 1900, ed. by I.W. Morgan and N. Wynn, London and New York, Holmes & Meier, 1993, Chapter 1, entitled "The Progressive Era, 1900-1919".
Mary Beth Norton & Ruth M. Alexander, Major Problems in American Women's History, Lexington, D.C. Heath, 1996.
Alun Munslow, Discourse and Culture: The Creation of America, 1870-1920, New York and London, Routledge 1992.
Leon Fink, Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, Lexington, D.C. Heath, 1993.