“I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was twenty before I discovered that the past is neither quiet nor mute.” – Eduardo Galeano

Remember those U.S. history courses you had to take in high school and your freshman year of college, the objective of which was to see how well you could memorize names, dates, and places? I do! This course promises not to be one of those bad memories. Instead, we will explore the history of modern America beginning with the post-Civil War decade and then on to the nation’s rise as an industrial-military power; travel through the early 1900s and then examine the Great Depression, the two world wars, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and so much more. Our focus will be on context and on the ways in which people interpreted, participated in, and responded to the events they were experiencing. In our age of misinformation, disinformation, and history rewrites or erasures, it’s vital that we know the history of our country. Without historical understanding, a society shares no common memory of how and why it developed the way it did, thereby restricting informed choices for the future. History is powerful. Who writes it, who interprets it, who re-narrates it, and what political use they make of it is the essence of power.

Wednesdays | 5 weeks, October 21 - November 18 | 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
In person and simulcast