History
Undergraduate Seminar
Th 2:10-4PM
This course examines the transformation of rural and urban landscapes in the U.S. in the critical era of industrial consolidation, 1880-1940. We investigate the creation of an infrastructure for agriculture that transformed natural environments; the changing vernacular architecture of domestic and industrial workplaces; the development of central downtowns as sites of office buildings, department stores, and civic centers; the spatial instantiation of the Jim Crow segregationist regime in the North as well as the South; the relation between real estate and finance that fueled the Great Depression; and the development of New Deal policies that underwrote public works—including highways-- and public housing, while also subsidizing home ownership, agribusiness, and segregation (the historical context for debates over the “Green New Deal.”
Link to Vergil
Note: only courses offered during the two previous semesters have active Vergil links.
