SYLLABUS

SUMMER, 2000

Office Hours:  Monday through Friday, 1:00 to 2:00, or by appointment

This course on the American South will take as its focus one of the most critical periods of our nation's history - the Great Depression of the 1930s.  During this four-week summer course, students will examine the effects of this national economic catastrophe on the South.  However, in order to fully understand how the New Deal played out in the South and what this history means, it is necessary to go from the general to the specific.  We will begin by looking at the unique history of the South in modern America, from Reconstruction through the Twentieth Century.  We will then narrow our focus to a particularly important time period - the Thirties and investigate the deep roots of the Great Depression, the policies and politics of the New Deal, and the long term effects of the New Deal on the American political and physical landscape.

We will then narrow our view and look at the ways in which President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program mitigated the effects of the Great Depression in the South.  If the story of the South is indeed unique, then we must uncover ways in which this history differs from the national picture.  Narrowing our focus even more, we will look at Fort Pulaski National Monument here in Savannah and investigate the rich sources available to the student there and try to fine tune our understanding of the new Deal in the South and discern ways in which it differed from the northern experience.  During the 1930s, members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of the most successful as well as controversial of the New Deal programs, sent young men to restore the Fort to its present state; some of these men are still in the area and will be available for interviews.