This course is about recent history education controversies in the United States, most notably the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” the Trump Administration’s “1776 Report,” and the current moral panic over Critical Race Theory. Using these issues as a starting point, this course will place them in the context of a longer history of conservative backlash to advances in historical scholarship, arguing that current controversies are nothing new but rather part of a larger cultural and political pattern. In addition to exploring the “history wars” of the 1990s, this course will also look at problematic aspects of secondary school history textbooks and discuss possible solutions to this latest—but certainly not the last—battle over American history education.
- Lehrende/r: Nicholas Johnson