HST 115 - Introduction to History: Disorderly American Cities

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR: Meets general academic requirement HU.
Katrina and 9/11 represent shocking urban disorder. Congestion, frustration, and violence currently plague American cities. Are these problems endemic to urban living? What are the sources of disruption? Is disorder necessary and sometimes desirable for positive change? What larger social, economic, political, diversity, and international issues have contributed to urban tensions? This course explores the history of U.S. urban disorder in several key periods, and may include: 1) riotous Philadelphia in the 1820s-1840s; 2) the city of the nineteenth century - Chicago - from the great fire to the riots of 1919; 3) the imagined city of Los Angeles from World War II to the urban racial violence in the 1960s and 1990s. We will end with New York City since its revitalization after the 1970s to 2001.