HI 362 - The New South

This course explores the history of the American South from the end of Reconstruction to the twenty-first century. It examines a variety of topics, including the rise of segregation and the civil rights movement; industrialization and modernization; the South’s conflicted relationship with the federal government and its political influence on the rest of the nation; the South’s place in the world; and southern literature and the arts (including rock and roll music, which is one of the South’s gifts to the rest of the world). Finally, from the rest of the country’s perspective, the South used to be a problem to be solved. That changed in the late twentieth century, and this course asks if that happened because the South became more like the rest of the country or the country became more like the South.

Four credits.