Selected Topics in Twentieth-Century American History: 20th Century South

Student Learning Outcomes, Goals, Objectives:

Students successfully completing this course will be able to:

• Explain the history of the twentieth century South broadly (in terms of social, economic, political, and cultural developments).

• Analyze how historians, Southerners themselves, and others have described the history of the twentieth-century South.

Course Grading Information:

Activity/Performance Measure	Percentage/Points
Class participation	30%
Writing assignments	45%
Final exam	25%

Grading Scale

Percentage	Letter Grade
93-100	A
90-92	A-
87-89	B+
83-86	B
80-82	B-
77-79	C+
73-76	C
75 and below	F

Attendance/Participation:

Class participation is 35% of the student's final grade for this course.

Course Materials Purchased by the Students:

• Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (2007 ed.)

• Grace Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (1999)

• James N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (2005)

• Bill Malone and David Stricklin, Southern Music/American Music (rev. ed., 2003)

• Michael Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights (1993)

• Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (2024)

• Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (2nd ed., 2020)

• Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2007)

• Imani Perry, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (2023)