HIS4318 – Teddy Roosevelt to Trump: History of US Presidential Elections since 1912

Course content

In 1912, the United States was an ascendant industrial power with a large agricultural base, modest in military reach; voting was limited to white men, and society was cleft along hierarchical lines of race and ethnicity. In 2016, it is the world’s sole military superpower, global in its reach, with a society primarily composed of metropolitan centers and an economy led by a tertiary sector and an industrial base beset by tough international challenges; the right to vote is less restricted but not always widely exercised, and society is most rigidly divided by wealth, culture a product of mass-mediated ethnic intermixing. How have the bases and methods of political organization and competition changed—or not changed—amid these transformations?

This is a course in US political history that focuses on key presidential campaigns and elections, starting with 1912 and taking matters up to the present day. You will read detailed accounts of key campaigns and elections. These accounts will inform you of the bases of partisan identity and competition during several important eras in the twentieth-century United States. We will depart from the campaign events defined narrowly to explore the policies and issues that shaped and propelled political debate in the United States during the past century. From the political-media colossus of Teddy Roosevelt to that of Donald Trump, we will mark the distance traveled by US politics.

Learning outcome

A student who successfully completes this course should be able to:

  • explain how different partisan coalitions competed for power democratically in US elections between 1912 and the present.
  • discuss how election outcomes both empowered and limited policy and political results from 1912 to the present.
  • outline the changing directions and content of political competition at the highest levels in the US from 1912 to the present.

Admission to the course

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.

The course is available to students admitted to Historie (master).

Overlapping courses

Teaching

This course will combine lectures with seminars. Please read the material assigned for the relevant week before that week’s class meetings, so that you will be in a position to answer questions about the reading and discuss it at that time.

Master degree students in HIS4318 will attend meetings of HIS2318, and additional meetings of the master degree candidates with the instructor will be scheduled.