HIST 304 U.S. Economic Life: Working People
What was the role of working people in the development of economic life in the U.S.? Who were the artisans and small entrepreneurs in the cities and the towns of rural America? How did slaves, sharecroppers and farmworkers contribute to the settlement of the continent? Students study what workers did, who they were, including women and people of color, how they contributed economically to society, and how work changed over time.
Prerequisites
4 Undergraduate credits
Effective August 1, 1998 to present
Meets graduation requirements for
Learning outcomes
General
- An ability to write interpretative historical essays incorporating historical interpretations from secondary sources and documentary evidence from the assigned readings, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
- To read and consider representative historical scholarship on periods and subjects in U.S. labor history, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
- To understand how race, class, and gender influenced choices in and responses to the changing U.S. workplace, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
Minnesota Transfer Curriculum
Goal 5: History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences
- Employ the methods and data that historians and social and behavioral scientists use to investigate the human condition.
- Examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods and cultures.
- Use and critique alternative explanatory systems or theories.
- Develop and communicate alternative explanations or solutions for contemporary social issues.
Goal 7: Human Diversity
- Understand the development of and the changing meanings of group identities in the United States' history and culture.
- Demonstrate an awareness of the individual and institutional dynamics of unequal power relations between groups in contemporary society.
- Analyze their own attitudes, behaviors, concepts and beliefs regarding diversity, racism, and bigotry.
- Describe and discuss the experience and contributions (political, social, economic, etc.) of the many groups that shape American society and culture, in particular those groups that have suffered discrimination and exclusion.
- Demonstrate communication skills necessary for living and working effectively in a society with great population diversity.