Throughout the last hundred years in America there have been many important events and movements that have left their mark on the nation. From the Great Depression to Black Lives Matter, from the movement for women’s suffrage to the fight for LGBTQ rights, from the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement. This course will give students the opportunity to explore the impact these events and movements had on America but also to delve deeper and examine the people behind them. We will look at key figures in these events and examine their contribution to them by exploring their speeches and writings, assessing their contribution to the movement and the role they played in driving change in America. Students will be introduced to figures such as Carrie Chapman Catt, Ida B. Wells, Harry Hopkins, Joseph McCarthy, Harry Hay, Stokely Carmichael, Shirley Chisholm, Dolores Huerta, Marsha P. Johnson, Patrisse Cullors all of whom have contributed to changing America in the twentieth and twenty-first century. To understand their contribution, we will critically examine a selection of their speeches and writings and assess the impact they had on their movement and on the nation.

The course does not presuppose an in-depth knowledge of American history or politics.