UISC 156D - Trials that Shaped America

3 credit(s) High Impact Practice: Diversity
This course examines landmark court cases that changed society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Combining socio-cultural history with close readings of court documents and trial accounts, the course will shed light on the most powerful controversies that influenced, and continue to influence, contemporary life in the United States. Integrating approaches from cultural history and political science, the course will focus on controversies that exemplify the major social, political and cultural cleavages of their times. We will select approximately ten cases, roughly one per decade, for detailed study. A key goal of the course is to show how these different subject areas are threaded into the fabric of American social life. Another goal is to show how each of these subject areas - civil rights, culture, and politics-connect to each other in complicated ways. In so doing, we hope that the connection of these subject areas across court cases will give the course continuity as it moves through the twentieth century. As such we believe that Trials that Shaped America serves the interests of University Interdisciplinary Studies in “challenging students to explore real world topics from multiple perspectives.”

Click here for Fall 2024 course scheduling information.

Click here for Spring 2025 course scheduling information.