Edward C Lorenz, Ph.D.
Recent Courses Taught
The Making of America. HST 104.
More Details:
History 104 focuses on the first 250 years of settlement of North America by persons from Europe and Africa. There are two general goals for this course. First it should provide you with an understanding of the economic, social, political, and intellectual factors affecting development of the continent. In addition, it should develop in the student critical and analytical skills useful in any study of society. The history we learn in this course should give us valuable perspective from which to view our institutions and beliefs.
The study of this period, while it reveals much continuity with the present, helps us understand a number of major changes in American life. Some of the topics covered in the course will be:
A. The African, American, and European backgrounds of settlement and the interaction of the settlers, the indigenous Americans, and the environment,
B. The comparative evolution of colonial concepts of community, economy, law, religion, and politics,
C. The origins and long-term impact of the American Revolution on efforts to balance freedom and power in the new United States,
D. The development in the United States, after 1776, of new political, economic, social, and intellectual traditions,
E. The causes and impact of conflicting views of race and slavery, and the process of defining the abolition of slavery,
F. The causes of and responses to increasing social and economic diversity after 1800, and
G. Representative historical interpretations of changes in America between Old World Settlement and Reconstruction after the Civil War.
