The American Yawp constructs a coherent and accessible narrative from all the best of recent historical scholarship. Without losing sight of politics and power, it incorporates transnational perspectives, integrates diverse voices, recovers narratives of resistance, and explores the complex process of cultural creation. It looks for America in crowded slave cabins, bustling markets, congested tenements, and marbled halls. It navigates between maternity wards, prisons, streets, bars, and boardrooms. Whitman’s America, like ours, cut across the narrow boundaries that strangle many narratives. Balancing academic rigor with popular readability, The American Yawp offers a multi-layered, democratic alternative to the American past.

This course provides an overview of the United States from pre-Columbian North American and European antecedents to colonization, Colonial America, Revolutionary America; development of U.S. government, economy, and society to 1840.
Course Outcomes:
1. Articulate an understanding of key historical events from pre-Columbian North America and European antecedents to colonization, the development of slavery, Native American history, Colonial America, Revolutionary America and the development of U.S. government, economy, and society to 1840.
2. Identify and investigate historical theses, evaluate information and its sources, and use appropriate reasoning to construct evidence-based arguments on historical issues.
3. Construct an historical argument integrating both primary documents and secondary sources.

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.