I was quite disappointed that I had to take this course again. I already took a 20th century US history course at Cabrillo College, using the same textbook. But that was not accepted at UCSB and I couldn’t even just take an exam in it, BECAUSE I already studied it. This didn’t make sense but my inquiries to change or explain the rule to me failed. Thus this sour feeling didn’t leave me during the course. This has nothing to do with the quality of the course, which was high. The professor’s specialty is culture, particularly music, so we had lots of it. Before each class, of which we had three each week, she was playing 3-4 relevant songs. In the lectures besides expounding the whys and hows of history (not as much the whats, we had to get them from the readings) she paid special attention the development of popular music. For this extra we it was worthwhile to attend. We also had small group sections once a week that was helpful in terms of the work I had to do: midterm, paper, final… We also had to watch four movies, which was not a hardship for me who likes movies.Books read for course:
- William M. Tuttle, Jr.: Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919
- Bruce J. Schulman: Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism
- Richard Polenberg: The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1945