HIST 104 America Encounters the Nineteenth-Century World
Witmer
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
Over the course of the nineteenth century, the United States began its transition from a marginal player to a major actor on the world stage. This seminar examines the wide range of encounters between Americans and foreign peoples that shaped the nature of this transition. We will study the experiences of explorers, scientists, soldiers, artists, missionaries, and merchants, asking how their journeys and reports influenced domestic ideas about foreign peoples, colonialism, the new scientific theories of race, and what it meant to be an American. We will also look at the efforts of the world's peoples to shape the terms of their engagement with the United States, and explore the results of increasing immigration from Europe. The seminar will allow students to study and write about the development of competing conceptions of America's national identity and role in the world, ideas that grew more consequential as the United States rose to world power.
