Reforming America: Social and Political Change, 1890-1950

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the American state was a creaking, antiquated apparatus struggling to manage the social and economic changes that had occurred in the previous fifty years. From the turn of the century through World War II, the country underwent a profound program of political change—earning this period the name “the age of reform.” In this class we examine the relationship between social and economic upheaval (industrialization, urbanization, immigration, depression, war) and political movements and activism (agrarian populism, the Ku Klux Klan, the early civil and women’s rights movements, organized labor) in order to explain how government in America was transformed for new conditions.

HIST 17810 | CCCT 17810