Admission requirements
This course is part of the MA North American Studies, but students from other MA programs are welcome if there are places available. Please enquire with the education coordinator (stuco-ma-nastudies@hum.leidenuniv.nl) for the options.
Description
This course examines the history of US empire and colonialism from the late 19th to late 20th centuries. Over the course of the semester, students will investigate key themes and topics relating to how the United States has expressed is power abroad, and how that power has been resisted and/or reshaped by populations under its dominion. The course will place particular emphasis on the United States’ colonial possessions, including the Philippines, Guam, American Samoa, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii, but will also consider “empire” in a broader framework, to include asymmetrical power relationships that the United States pursued in Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. Various weeks will explore themes such as: colonial commodities, the circulation of labor, and the politics of resource extraction; colonial state violence in war, militarism, policing, and basing; the circulation of knowledge, people, and culture between colonial outposts and the “homefront;” ideologies of race and the practice racial exclusion and migration regimes; as well as gender and sexuality in the midst of colonial encounters. Through class discussion and written assignments, students will gain skills in critical thinking, research, and academic writing.
Course objectives
Familiarize students with major issues, concepts, and debates in the history of US power in the world, using on “empire” both as a subject of study and an analytical framework;
Introduce students to the variety of analytical frameworks and methodologies in the study of US empire, and its dominion in colonial possessions, in particular;
Develop students’ capacity to analyze secondary literature in US history/ US foreign relations/ US colonialism from the late 19th to the 21st centuries;
Expand students’ understanding of the connections between US power abroad and American politics and culture at “home”;
Prompt students to identify continuities and ruptures in the contours and scale of US power over the last 150 years;
Develop students’ skills to conduct independent research, particularly in published academic sources, and situate their own interests within a broader academic debate;
Develop students’ oral communication skills and discussion-leading capacity;
Develop students’ skills in critical thinking, analysis, and writing in academic English
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
- Seminar
Assessment method
Assessment
Oral presentation (15%)
Participation in class discussion (15%)
Book reviews (20%)
Historiographical essay (50%)
Weighing
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher.
Resit
If the essay (50%) receives an insufficient grade, it may be rewritten.
Inspection and feedback
There is no exam component for this course.
Reading list
Please note: required readings are subject to change. Required readings will be communicated on Brightspace at the start of the semester.
Uta Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (2000)
Andrew Friedman, Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of US Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia (2013)
Camilla Fojas, Islands of Empire: Pop Culture and US Power (2014)
David Vine, Island of Shame: the Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia (2009)
Megan Black, The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power (2022)
Holger Droessler, Coconut Colonialism: Workers and the Globalization of Samoa (2022)
Daniel Bender and Jana Lipman, eds., Making the Empire Work: Labor and US Imperialism (2015)
April Merleaux, Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness (2015)
Alvita Akiboh, Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire (2023)
Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America’s Empire: the United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (2009)
Paul Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, and the US and the Philippines (2006)
Victor Roman Mendoza, Metroimperial Intimacies: Fantasy, Racial-Sexual Governance, the the Philippines in US Imperialism, 1899-1913 (2015)
Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Global South (2010)
Jodi A. Byrd, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism
Mark Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: the Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950 (2002)
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Registration À la carte education, Contract teaching and Exchange
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of À la carte education (without taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal
Remarks
Not applicable