History and Economics   

This course is the next installment in our romp through world history as we delve into the Reformation, Renaissance and exploration of the world. It begins with the lands and cultures of world empires: China, Japan, Mughals of India, the Ottomans, and the monarchies of Europe. Europeans need trade routes for God, gold and glory. All of this is against the background of religious upheaval in Europe that will open the door to new learning. The culmination is a global interaction that leads to a new ordering of world thought and power.

Unlike natural selection, artificial selection is a process where humans determine which individuals will reproduce. Farm animals and crops provide many examples. So, why not breed people? That was the idea of Eugenics. The term was coined in England by Charles Darwin’s first cousin, and was widely popular in the US in the early 20th Century.

It led directly to severe restrictions on immigration, thousands forced sterilizations, and many of the Jim Crow Laws. The Nazis collaborated with American Eugenicists to craft the Nuremberg laws, which led to the holocaust.

Today, we face critical questions that echo these issues. Who can access the information in our DNA? What is the impact of immigration on our society? How can we ethically use genetic screening? Examining the history of Eugenics can help us to address these very sensitive topics by understanding the mistakes we made in the past.

No required readings. Below are recommended readings:

Edwin Black, War Against the Weak, James G. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model, Isabel Wilkerson, Caste (Chapter 8, The Nazis and the Acceleration of Caste), Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science, Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity (Chapter IV, Down Syndrome), Adam Rutherford, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics 

No Class 4/16/2025

Between 1783 and 1789, the U.S. faced the challenge of transforming a loose confederation of states into a unified federal republic. This course examines that critical transition. We’ll use Joseph J. Ellis's book, The Quartet, as our text. The book explores the political ideologies, strategies, and personal dynamics that shaped the actions of four leaders who were among the most influential in reshaping our government—George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Largely through their efforts, the nation overcame deep political and regional divisions to create a new model of governance and a constitution.

This course will analyze the multiple crises that threatened the new country and how the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation could not resolve these problems. How should the various states work to overcome economic instability, state rivalries, and fears of tyranny? How did a diverse group of political leaders navigate intense regional divisions, skepticism about centralized power, and concerns about individual rights to orchestrate what Ellis called “the second American revolution”?

Required: Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783 - 1789, Penguin Random House

Women have made many contributions to our state of Colorado. We will get to know some of them in this course. Some are famous, such as Aunt Clara Brown and Augusta Tabor. But do you know Owl Woman, the Cheyenne wife of William Bent? She was an interpreter and mediator between her people and white traders and soldiers. We will learn the stories of these women and others, from pioneer settlers to health providers, educators, writers, and scientists. We will also talk about how Colorado voters were the first to give voting rights to its female citizens.

History may appear logical and even inevitable: Things happened because they had to. But when you go back and examine the turning points of the past, you realize how alternatives, possibilities, and misfortunes played an enormous hand in making the world we know today.

Politicians, writers, explorers, and ordinary people all make choices that shape history. But examining the moments that define our history raises an important question: What if things had gone differently? This course demonstrates that history does not exist in a void.

To illustrate: In February 1933, President-elect Franklin Roosevelt was at Miami's Bay Front Park. He had just concluded a speech when Guiseppe Zangara fired five shots. Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was killed and four others wounded but Roosevelt was unharmed. How would history have evolved if the assassin was successful in killing FDR? This is just one What Ifs we will explore.

This course is based on a Great Courses video series.

This course will examine the New York Times’ “1619 Project”, the book that resulted from the original magazine article, and the historiographical criticism that both preceded and followed its release. Specifically, we will read and investigate 8 chapters of the book: Democracy, Citizenship, Self-defense, Punishment, Inheritance, Medicine, Healthcare and Traffic. Each class will address one of these chapters in the first hour. The other hour of each class will address the various critiques delivered from historians, from both the left and the right, economists and journalists. In addition to these critiques, and the NYT’s and “1619 Project” author’s response thereto, the course will use the discourse about the “Project” to explicate the question of how historical knowledge is discovered, narrated, refined and corrected. Finally our discussions will address the issue of K-12 history standards, textbooks promulgated by state Boards of Education and past and current debates about these standards.

“The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril” as Winston Churchill summed up the longest battle in the Second World War. The battle started within hours of the declaration of war and ended hours after the cease fire order was issued. For many, the battle is thought of only in terms of the U-boat menace. However, this leaves out whole aspects of the battle that raged above, on, and below the Atlantic. We will take a look at the conflict year by year and see how each side made moves and counter-moves to win control of the sea including: • Battle of Norway and the Surface Fleet. • The Raiders. • “The Happy Time”. • The Undeclared War. • The Radio War. • Closing the Air Gap. • Fortress without a Roof. • Death of the Surface Fleet. Articles will be emailed to class members for inclusion in the class discussion.

“The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril” as Winston Churchill summed up the longest battle in the Second World War. The battle started within hours of the declaration of war and ended hours after the cease fire order was issued. For many, the battle is thought of only in terms of the U-boat menace. However, this leaves out whole aspects of the battle that raged above, on, and below the Atlantic. We will take a look at the conflict year by year and see how each side made moves and counter-moves to win control of the sea including: • Battle of Norway and the Surface Fleet. • The Raiders. • “The Happy Time”. • The Undeclared War. • The Radio War. • Closing the Air Gap. • Fortress without a Roof. • Death of the Surface Fleet. Articles will be emailed to class members for inclusion in the class discussion.

This class will examine the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as viewed from the Japanese perspective, and contrasted with the changing American perspective regarding Asia and the growing influence of America on the world stage. This is a factual saga of both Asian and Western peoples caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox. This story reminds us that there are no simple lessons in history, that it is human nature that repeats itself, not history.

We will look into the highest reaches of American and Japanese leadership and politics, examining the misunderstandings, the prejudices of each nation, and how these lead to grave errors in the conduct of the diplomatic actions, and eventually to the errors in the conduct of the war.

The Enlightenment – bracketed by the Renaissance and the French Revolution – generated a prolific inquiry into science, religion, governance and economics that led to an explosion of new ideas and the emergence of new world views.

The Enlightenment’s unbridled speculation about nature and life was an undertaking unparalleled in history, introducing social and political experiments we are still working out today. Three experiments stand out: 1) liberal democratic republicanism (and its counterpoint, bureaucratic totalitarianism); 2) the conviction that irrefutable Natural Laws govern the universe, not the whim of God; and 3) a belief that daily commerce can be managed by mechanistic tools, an idea that enabled the Industrial Age. The class will explore the ingenuity that grew from the Renaissance and led to our modern world. We will meet in person and a short article on each week’s topic will be provided the week before.

Theodore Roosevelt lived during the latter half of the 19th century, when technology and industry were changing many aspects of life in the United States. He was a strong believer in American excellence leading these changes.

Roosevelt was a hugely energetic man, with great intelligence and accomplishment. He was the youngest man to ever become a US President. He wrote 38 books in his lifetime and jointly authored more. He won the Nobel Peace Prize and was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

This class will cover challenges that Roosevelt faced and how he overcame them. He was a sickly, asthmatic child of aristocratic background, yet became a strong athletic man who could relate to the common man. This class will especially bring out the larger than life personality of Roosevelt, that made him the center of national discussion.

This class will trace the history of women’s work from the colonial period to the present. We will cover topics such as the household as a place of production, women’s roles in the labor movement, barriers to certain kinds of work and professions, the exploitation of women in the workforce, and the cultural conflict between ideals of women in the home and in the workplace.

Required: Either "Out to Work:20th Anniversary" edition, Alice Kessler-Harris, or "Women Have Always Worked", Alice Kessler Harris