The Economy in the American Century

3.00 credit hours

This class provides an approved SAGES capstone experience for economics majors. It uses American economic history as an arena for a culminating application of the diverse knowledge and skills students have acquired during their undergraduate careers. The twentieth century American economy was shaped by a series of transformations that make our lives profoundly different from those lived by Americans in 1900. Attempting to understand these transformations has shaped the discipline of economics. Events and processes such as mass migration, the Great Depression, the growth of women's participation in the workforce, and suburbanization generated questions that economists developed theories and bodies of empirical evidence to answer. Students will synthesize knowledge accumulated in their prior undergraduate study to tackle big questions posed by the history of the American economy during the 20th century. These questions cover the spectrum of economic life and scholarship, from finance and technology to human capital and gender. Students form teams to tackle an important question developed in consultation with the instructor. Each team will be responsible for educating the class on their research findings through researching and delivering a class-length presentation and preparing readings and exam questions. Students will produce an individual final paper related to their team's topic that expresses their own scholarly perspective and interest.

Sample Syllabus

David Clingingsmith (Spring 2016)
