This course is an advanced overview and exploration of the state of the field of the “U.S. and/in the World”/aka American Diplomatic History. The focus is both on the history and on the historiography of the field, with an emphasis on recent work, and with an eye to preparing students to understand, research, and write on specific areas within this dynamic field. We will track two central through-line themes across the history and historiography in this class: the role of ideology and the role of religion in shaping U.S. foreign policy and relations to and with the world broadly. In so doing, however, readings, discussions, and assignments will not be limited to those themes. Another key set of concepts will revolve around understandings and practices of empire in debates over the U.S.’s place on the continent, in the hemisphere, and around the world. The course will investigate the increasingly heterogeneous and global methodologies deployed by scholars in the field, including a focus on law, environment, gender and sexuality, science and culture, immigration and citizenship, war and peace, human rights, slavery and capitalism, policy formation and strategy, transnationalism, and more. Download the PDF flyer here.

Students with a wide variety of interests, such as gender, race, politics, philosophy, economics, religious studies, popular culture, the environment, history of science, literature, film, intellectual and cultural history, American studies, comparative studies, peace studies, military history, and, of course, international and diplomatic history as well as political science are encouraged to enroll and to be actively engaged in shaping the assignments toward their interests and needs.