Spring 2012 Building 120, room 224 Hours: Tuesday 9:00 11:00, or by apptmt. Building 240, room U.S. Urban History Since 1920

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1 Urban Studies 161 Michael Kahan, Ph.D. Spring 2012 Building 120, room 224 Hours: Tuesday 9:00 11:00, or by apptmt. MW 12:35 2:05 Building 240, room U.S. Urban History Since 1920 This course examines the history of American cities, beginning in In that year, for the first time, the U.S. census indicated that a majority of Americans lived in cities. The years around 1920 were a turning point in U.S. cities for other reasons. U.S. involvement in World War I ( ) brought an end in many respects to the Progressive movement, which had brought ambitious social reforms to American cities for some 20 years. The nationalist sentiment inspired by the war helped create a wave of nativism that would cut off almost all immigration to the United States within ten years. And wartime labor shortages in northern cities encouraged some 400,000 African Americans from the rural South to migrate North, a Great Migration that permanently transformed the culture and demography of US cities. Other innovations of the 1920s in cities included the increasing use of the automobile, and the rise of new manifestations of popular culture such as radio, talking motion pictures, and jazz. This course will begin at this watershed moment, and trace the development of American cities through the present. Throughout the course we will focus on the interactions of economic, political, and social factors. In other words, we will look at how markets, the state, and ordinary people have shaped American cities. The course is national in scope, but emphasis is placed on the history of cities in the West, particularly in California. The course does not have pre-requisites, and is open to students in all years and majors. No particular prior knowledge is assumed, although a basic knowledge of twentiethcentury US history (such as through History 150C) would be helpful. FORMAT AND EXPECTATIONS: Class meetings will combine lecture and discussion. The lectures will enable the instructor to convey relevant background and context for the course readings, to relate information not available in the readings, and to model styles of research and argumentation. Discussions will allow students to actively engage with both readings and lectures, to question or defend the arguments presented, and to share the results of research undertaken in connection with class assignments. While the balance of discussion and lecture will vary from class to class, it is IMPERATIVE that you come to class having done the reading assigned for that day and that you are prepared to discuss it. The instructor reserves the right to administer quizzes and other in-class writing exercises, which will count toward the class participation component of your grade.

2 2 ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING: Grades will be calculated as follows: 1)Three short ( word) essays: 10 percent each (30 percent total). These essays, on the readings for three class sessions of your choice (distributed throughout the quarter according to the guidelines listed below), are due BY 10 AM on the day for which that reading was assigned. They may deal with any aspect of the day s reading, provided that they incorporate at least one assigned reading for that day AND that day s supplementary reading. You may find a theme with which to compare or contrast two readings, for example, or you may relate the readings for the day to material we have covered previously in the class or to something you have read or observed outside of our class. I will post weekly reading questions on Courseworks that may help you identify possible paper topics. However you decide to approach it, your essay should make an argument, which should be stated succinctly in a thesis statement early in the essay. This thesis should not merely echo the reading; it may include a brief summary of an author s argument, but must go beyond that to state your own view about how an author s point is new, old, convincing, unconvincing, similar to or different from the view of another source, etc. Your thesis should be supported with evidence from the readings, in the form of direct or indirect quotations. You should provide citations when you refer to an author s work, preferably in footnote format. Your essay should be clearly organized and correctly and gracefully written. Please submit all work electronically as Microsoft Word documents. For guidance on footnote format, see especially the section on Chicago / Turabian style. On a day that you submit a short essay, you will be called on to report briefly to the class on the supplementary reading and how it relates to the other reading(s) for that day. We will sign up at the second class for dates so that we do not have (too much) doubling up. The FIRST must be submitted by April 18. The SECOND must be submitted after April 18, and no later than May 9. The THIRD must be submitted after May 9, and no later than May 30. 2) Final Project: A history of a neighborhood in San Francisco. This project will be based on research in primary and secondary sources. A detailed assignment sheet, to be distributed early in the quarter, will provide guidance. Please note that some parts of the project will be carried out in collaboration with a partner. Both partners will typically receive a single grade for those aspects of the work; the instructor and students will work together to ensure that both partners contribute equally.

3 3 Part I. Individual 5-page essay. Due Monday, April 30: 15 percent of your final grade. Part II. Collaborative presentation. Monday June 4 or Wednesday, June 6, in class. 10 percent of your final grade. Part III. Collaborative essay, including bibliography. Due June 11, 10 am. 30 percent of your final grade. 3) Class participation and participation in online forum: 15 percent. Students are expected to be in class on time (attendance will be taken) and prepared to participate. Participation in class discussion and performance on in-class writing assignments are among the methods the instructor may use to assess participation. Students are also expected to participate in the Coursework Forum at least once a week. By 10 am on either Monday or Wednesday, you must post a paragraph-length comment or question about the reading for that day. The topic of your paragraph may come from the posted reading questions, from a paragraph posted by another student, or from your own interest or curiosity. You may either start a new thread or add your comment or question to an established thread. Note that you do NOT need to submit to the forum in a week when you are writing a short essay (assignment 1), and no forum submissions are due the week of June 4. Also, you may choose one week during the quarter when you turn in no paragraph and no short essay; please notify the instructor when you are taking your week off. COMMUNICATIONS: This course is registered in Coursework ( In Coursework you can see the syllabus, announcements, copies of assignments, and all readings other than the required book. The instructor will also use to communicate with students; please check your mail regularly. HONOR CODE: Students are expected to adhere as a matter of course to Stanford s honor code, which explicitly prohibits plagiarism. According to the Office of Judicial Affairs (OJA) website, For purposes of the Stanford University Honor Code, plagiarism is defined as the use, without giving reasonable and appropriate credit to or acknowledging the author or source, of another person s original work, whether such work is made up of code, formulas, ideas, language, research, strategies, writing or other form(s). For further information on what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, please consult the OJA website at: STUDENTS WITH DOCUMENTED DISABILITIES: Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with

4 4 required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Students should contact the OAE as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk; phone: ; web site READINGS: The required book for the course is Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). It is available for purchase at the Stanford Book Store, in the Urban Studies section. It has also been placed on reserve in Green Library. Additional readings for the course are available on the Materials section of the Coursework site. COURSE OUTLINE: Monday April 2: Course introduction, review of syllabus. Wednesday April 4: City of Neighborhoods: Urban Space in the 1920s and 1930s. Burgess, Ernest. The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project. In The City, edited by Robert E. Park et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Cohen, Lizabeth. Living and Working in Chicago in Chapter 1 in Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, New York: Cambridge University Press, SUPP: Lewinnek, Elaine. Mapping Chicago, Imagining Metropolises: Reconsidering the Zonal Model of Urban Growth. Journal of Urban History 36: 2 (2010): Monday April 9: Urban Culture and Politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Wenger, Beth S. From Neighborhood to New Deal. Chapter 5 in New York Jews and the Great Depression. New Haven: Yale University Press, Arredondo, Gabriela. The Mexican Problem. Chapter 3 in Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Chew, Rose. Manifestations of Modern Influences on Second Generation Chinese ; and Yung, Judy. Sue Ko Lee and the 1938 National Dollar Stores Strike. In Judy Yung, Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, SUPP: Hirsch, Arnold. E Pluribus Duo? Thoughts on Whiteness and Chicago s New Immigration as a Transient Third Tier. Journal of American Ethnic History (2004): 7-44.

5 5 Wednesday April 11: Cities in Wartime. Alvarez, Luis. Zoot Violence in Los Angeles. Chapter 5 in The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance During World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, Lotchin, Roger W. Chapter 5, The Universal Double V: War and Ethnocultural Accommodation. In The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003: , SUPP: Charolotte Brooks, The War on Grant Avenue: Business Competition and Ethnic Rivalry in San Francisco s Chinatown, Journal of Urban History 37:3 (2011): Monday April 16: Demographic Transformation: Northward Migrations. Drake, St. Clair and Horace R. Cayton. Chapter 8, The Black Ghetto, and chapter 14, Bronzeville. In Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. New York: Harper and Row, 1945; rev. ed., 1962: , Lewis, Oscar. Selections from The New York Sample. Chapter 4 in A Study of Slum Culture: Backgrounds for La Vida. New York: Random House, SUPP: Pacyga, Dominc. Responding to the Second Ghetto: Chicago s Joe Smith and Sin Corner. Journal of Urban History 37:1 (2011): Wednesday April 18: Demographic Transformation: Suburbanization. FINAL DATE for submission of FIRST short essay assignment. Self, Robert. Introduction, and Chapter 3, Tax Dollar. In American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, SUPP: Gans, Herbert J. Chapter 8, Social Life: Suburban Homogeneity and Conformity. In The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967: Monday April 23: Spatial Transformation: Highways, Downtowns, and Urban Renewal. Isenberg, Alison. Chapter 5, The Demolition of Our Outworn Past : Suburban Shoppers and the Logic of Urban Renewal. In Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004: , Martin Anderson, Fiasco of Urban Renewal. Harvard Business Review 43:1 (January 1965): SUPP: Highsmith, Andrew R. Demolition Means Progress: Urban Renewal, Local Politics, and State-Sanctioned Ghetto Formation in Flint, Michigan. Journal of Urban History 35:3 (March 2009):

6 6 Wednesday April 25: Economic Transformation: Deindustrialization. Sugrue, Thomas. Chapter 5, The Damning Mark of False Prosperities : The Deindustrialization of Detroit, and Chapter 6, Forget about Your Inalienable Right to Work : Responses to Industrial Decline and Discrimination. In The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), , SUPP: O Hara, Paul. The Very Model of Modern Urban Decay : Outsiders Narratives of Industry and Urban Decline in Gary, Indiana. Journal of Urban History 37:2 (2011): Monday April 30: Political Transformation I: The African American Freedom Struggle. DUE DATE for part I of final project. Self, American Babylon, chapter 5, Opportunity Politics. Kelley, Robin D. G. Chapter 9, The Black Poor and the Politics of Opposition in a New South City, In Michael B. Katz, ed., The Underclass Debate: Views from History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993: SUPP: Sugrue, Thomas. Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, the Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the Urban North, Journal of American History 91:1 (June 2004): Wednesday May 2: Political Transformation II: The Great Society and Urban Politics. Self, American Babylon. Chapter 6, Black Power, and 7, White Noose. SUPP: United States. Kerner Commission, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), Summary of Report, excerpts. Monday May 7: Political Transformation III: Urban and Suburban Social Movements and the New Urban Politics. Class trip to Special Collections in Green Library. Self, American Babylon. Chapter 8, Babylon, and Conclusion. Rodríguez, Joseph A. Ethnicity and the Horizontal City: Mexican Americans and the Chicano Movement in San Jose, California. Journal of Urban History 21:5 (July 1995): SUPP: Gioielli, Robert. Get the Lead Out: Environmental Politics in 1970s St. Louis. Journal of Urban History 36:4 (2010):

7 7 Wednesday May 9: Government Retrenchment and New Inequalities. FINAL DATE for submission of SECOND short essay assignment. Kozol, Jonathan. Ordinary People and A Captive State. In Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988: 1-21, Wilson, William Julius. Social Change and Social Dislocations in the Inner City. Chapter 2 in The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987, SUPP: Thompson, Heather Ann. Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History. Journal of American History 97:3 (2010): Monday May 14: Sunbelt Growth. Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Six Pillars: Economic Power. Chapter 1 in Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment. New York: Random House, Needham, Andrew. Sunbelt Imperialism: Boosters, Navajos, and Energy Development in the Metropolitan Southwest. Chapter 9 in Michelle Nickerson and Darren Dochuk, eds. Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, SUPP: Hollander, Justin. Unfamiliar Patterns in the Sun: What Postal Workers Already Know, and Endless Growth in the Desert? The Fall of Phoenix. In Sunburnt Cities: The Great Recession, Depopulation, and Urban Planning in the America Sunbelt. London: Routledge, Wednesday May 16: New Suburbia: Sprawl and the Multi-Centered Metropolis. Duany, Andres, et al. Chapter 7, The Victims of Sprawl. In Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. New York: North Point Press, 2000: , 272. Bruegmann, Robert. Chapter 10, The Third Anti-Sprawl Campaign: Since the 1970s. In Sprawl: A Compact History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005: , SUPP: Robert Fishman, Beyond Suburbia: The Rise of the Technoburb, in Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987), pp , Monday May 21: The Global City: New Immigration, New Economy. Knox, Paul. Globalization and Urban Economic Change. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 551, Globalization and the Changing U.S. City (May, 1997): Waldinger, Roger, and Jennifer Lee. Chapter 2, New Immigrants in Urban America. In Waldinger, ed., Strangers at the Gates: New Immigrants in Urban America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001:

8 8 SUPP: Odem, Mary E. Unsettled in the Suburbs: Latino Immigration and Ethnic Diversity in Metro Atlanta. In Audrey Singer, et al., eds., Twenty-First Century Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America. Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008, Wednesday May 23: An Urban Revival(?) Robinson, Tony. Gentrification and Grassroots Resistance in San Francisco s Tenderloin. Urban Affairs Review 30:4 (March 1995) Freeman, Lance. Chapter 3, There Goes the Hood. In There Goes the Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006: SUPP: Hyra, Derek S. What s Globalization Got to Do with It? Chapter 3 in The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008: Monday May 28: Memorial Day; No Class. Wednesday May 30: Urban Disaster and the Future of Cities. FINAL DATE for submission of THIRD short essay assignment. Eisinger, Peter. The American City in the Age of Terror: A Preliminary Assessment of the Effects of September 11. Urban Affairs Review 40:1. September 2004: Cashin, Sheryll. Chapter 2, Katrina: The American Dilemma Redux. In After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina, ed. David Dante Troutt. New York: The New Press, 2006: Kotlowitz, Alex. All Boarded Up. New York Times Magazine, March SUPP: Kelman, Ari. Even Paranoids Have Enemies: Rumors of Levee Sabotage in New Orleans s Lower 9 th Ward. Journal of Urban History 35:5 (July 2009): Monday June 4: Final Presentations Wednesday June 6: Final Presentations Monday June 11: Final Papers due, 10 am. Syllabus copyright 2012 Michael Kahan. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and use under "fair use" in education is granted, provided proper credit is given. Citation: Michael Kahan. Syllabus. U.S. Urban History Since University of Pennsylvania, Spring H-Urban Teaching Center, H-Net. August URL:

The Urban Crisis: American Cities Since World War II University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Spring 2003

The Urban Crisis: American Cities Since World War II University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Spring 2003 History 153 / Urban Studies 104 Class: Towne 313, T & Th 3-4:30 Instructor: Michael Kahan E-mail: mkahan@sas.upenn.edu Office: College Hall 308F Office Hours: Th 10-12, or by appt. Work tel: 215-746-0201