In 1960 the United States was deeply engaged in the Cold War with communism and
the Soviet Union. Since then, the nation has experienced massive social, political, economic, cultural, and international change, with the growth of activist government and backlash against it, conflict between business and labor, economic stagnation and the return of a boom-and-bust economy, the contested growth of civil rights and other reform movements, the end of the Cold War and the return of ethnonationalism and great power competition. This course explores how and why the United States changed between the election of John F. Kennedy and the present, focusing on 1960-2001 and connecting domestic and international contexts and trajectories.
