American History, Before 1900
John Singleton Copley, "Watson and the Shark," 1778. Wikicommons.
Related Programs:
Scholars in this field explore the major themes of early American and nineteenth-century U.S. history, from the first encounters between native people, Europeans, and Africans, to the impassioned battles of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. We grapple with questions of colonization and empire, slavery and abolition, capitalism and labor, family and gender, urbanization and immigration. We trace the connections between popular movements and high-level politics, and, with support from our colleagues in European, African, Asian, and Latin American history, we explore how early America and the United States took shape in relation to the rest of the world.
