History 170 - The American Peoples to 1865

This course surveys the history of Indigenous worlds, colonial projects, enslavement, and the contested transformation of lives and communities in North America through the U.S. Civil War and wars in the West. How did Indigenous people and people of African descent assert sovereignty, create new bonds, and partake in the creation of new nations in landscapes of violence and subjugation? How did settler political and economic strategies shape the land and life upon it? Topics include cross-cultural encounters, competing religious and social visions, the formation of the United States and its political system, gender, migration, the development of racial capitalism, and the Civil War.

This course is limited to sophomores only.