A Fresh Look at the New Deal Era and its Impact

Description

We invite you to join us to look at the US between 1933 and 1950.  The standard narratives, which we have all read, view the events of the period through a national lens, as if the country was isolated from all other countries. What these narratives overlook is that the US was one of many players in a global economy; what happened in the US affected in the rest of the world, and what happened outside the US affected the Roosevelt administration.   

For the people who lived at the time, there was no pre-ordained outcome, and the entire period is permeated with uncertainty and fear about the future. Studying this period of American history presents us with themes that will thread throughout the SDG: (1) the immense societal changes wrought by the crises in the period; (2) how the United States’ “original sin” continued to shape governance in both the New Deal and WWII legislation; (3) the exchanges between the US and other countries in crafting the New Deal; (4) the change in the US international standing, as by the late 1930s as it became the shining example of preserving and reconciling democracy and capitalism; (5) how the New Deal built the scaffolding for the new world order that emerged from WWII.

By 1950, the US had authored a new world order that created a stable and prosperous world (in the west). In the process, Americans had changed radically since 1933, especially with regard of their relationship to the state and with regard to the country’s role in the new world.  

Join us as we explore familiar territory with fresh eyes.  

Weekly Topics

  1. Overview of the period

  2. The US in the world – part 1

  3. The first hundred days

  4. The US in the world – part 2

  5. A different America: The South

  6. The Second New Deal

  7. A different look at the Second New Deal

  8. Isolation

  9. Inching to war

  10. The US at War: Overview

  11. US Production at War

  12. The Home Front

  13. Post War

  14. Legacy

Bibliography

Core Books: 

  • Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time by Ira Katznelson, 2013.  

  • The New Deal: A Global History by Kirin Klaus Patel, 2016.

  • Freedom from Fear: The Americans in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David M. Kennedy, 1998.