Depkat, Volker

The history of U.S. policy since 1975 is one of triumph and disaster. In 1975, Vietnam was unified on the Communist terms of the North, which put a seal on America’s failure in Southeast Asia. Fourteen years later, the U.S. stood triumphant, celebrating victory in the Cold War and its status as the last remaining superpower in the world. The unipolar moment was short lived, however, and new challenges emerged from Iraq, Afghanistan, China, Iran, and Russia. The U.S. entangled itself in bloody and impossible to win wars in the Middle East, while Europe and the U.S. developed apart in what has been called the „Atlantic Drift.“ America‘a ambivalent foreign policy record was one reason for Donald Trump to lay the axe to the liberal world order that the U.S. build after 1945. The lecture will give an in-depth overview over the course of U.S. foreign policy since 1975 focusing on its major events and processes, its actors and agendas, its geostrategic contexts, and its economic and cultural foundations.
Readings: Warren I. Cohen, The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations: Volume 4: Challenges to American Primacy, 1945 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013). Klaus Schwabe, Weltmacht und Weltordnung: Amerikanische Außenpolitik von 1898 bis zur Gegenwart: Eine Jahrhundertgeschichte (3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011. John Callaghan, Brendon O'Connor, and Mark Phythian, Ideologies of American Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2019). Peter Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers (New York : PublicAffairs, 2011). Stephan Bierling, Geschichte des Irakkriegs: Der Sturz Saddam Husseins und Amerikas Albtraum im Mittleren Osten (München: Beck, 2011).
Credit requirement: final exam (for BA, LA); final exam and book review (for MA)

Drawing on a broad range of textual, visual, and audiovisual materials, the course will give an in-depth overview over the cultural, social, and political history of the U.S. from the earliest European encounters with the ‘New World’ to contemporary interpretations of what ‘America’ might mean for different groups inside and outside of the U.S. We will cover a broad range of cultural and historical issues, including ideological interpretations of American landscapes and spaces, attitudes toward demographic developments and immigration, controversies about the U.S.-American political-economic system and foreign policy, the plurality of the American religious landscape, and multilingualism and the diversity of cultural traditions in North America to familiarize students with materials, areas of study, and theoretical approaches in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies and their significance for the study of American cultural history. The course is organized into a two-hour lecture outlining the major problems, contexts and trajectories of the individual session topics, and a one-hour seminar that will deepen the knowledge gained in the lecture and do in-depth work with selected textual, visual and audiovisual materials.

The American Revolution is not only the founding moment of the United States of America but also marks the beginning of a political modernity that anchored in natural rights liberalism, egalitarianism, constitutionalism, transparency, and the rule of law. From the late eighteenth-century on, the American Revolution has served as an inspiration to social movements and informed state- and nation-building processes in other parts of the world in many and paradoxical ways. The seminar will trace how the American Revolution functioned as a usable past justifying or delegitimating political change, the organization of resistance, and revolutionary action in Haiti and Spanish America, the German revolution of 1848, the Italian Risorgimento, the decolonization of Africa and Asia in the mid-20th century, and in other historical contexts.

On the basis of key texts and visual documents, we will discuss mutual perceptions, political interaction, social ties, and cultural exchange between Europe and the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Among the topics covered in this course are the World Wars, the Cold War and the “War on Terror”, the Americanization of Europe, the formation of consumer societies, twentieth-century Euro-American pop culture, and the current state of Eu-ropean-American relations.

On the basis of key texts and visual documents, we will discuss mutual perceptions, political interaction, social ties, and cultural exchange between Europe and the United States from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Among the topics covered in this course are Europe’s co-lonial expansion into the New World, eighteenth-century debates about progress and decline, European-American relations in the “Age of Atlantic Revolutions,” migration history, and Amer-ican capitalism and notions of modernity..

Drawing on a broad range of textual, visual, and audiovisual materials, the course will give an in-depth overview over the cultural, social, and political history of the U.S. from the earliest Eu-ropean encounters with the ‘New World’ to contemporary interpretations of what ‘America’ might mean for different groups inside and outside of the U.S. We will cover a broad range of cultural and historical issues including ideological interpretations of American landscapes and spaces, attitudes toward demographic developments and immigration, controversies about the U.S.-American political-economic system and foreign policy, the plurality of the American religious landscape, and multilingualism and the diversity of cultural traditions in North America. to familiarize students with materials, areas of study, and theoretical approaches in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies and their significance for the study of American cultural history. The course is organized into a two-hour lecture outlining the major problems, contexts and trajectories of the individual session topics, and a one-hour seminar that will deepen the knowledge gained in the lecture and do in-depth work with selected textual, visual and audio-visual materials.

On the basis of key texts and visual documents, we will discuss mutual perceptions, political interaction, social ties, and cultural exchange between Europe and the United States over the centuries. Among the topics covered in this course are Europe’s colonial expansion into the New World, eighteenth-century debates about progress and decline, European-American relations in the “Age of Atlantic Revolutions,” migration history, American capitalism and notions of modernity, the ‘ Americanization’ of Europe, and the role of the U.S. in postmodern mindsets. Requirements: presentation and final exam.

Credit for: MEAS