Course Outline for History 53
United States History from a Chicano Perspective II

Effective: Fall 2022
SLO Rev: 09/15/2021
Catalog Description:

HIS 53 - United States History from a Chicano Perspective II

3.00 Units

(See also ES 53 )
A survey course of the social, political, economic, and cultural history of the Chicana/o experience within the context of U.S. history from the Reconstruction era to the present. Students will critically analyze the struggles of Mexican Americans in the historical development of California and the United States with comparisons to other groups. The course will also include analysis and critique of structural racism, white supremacy and racial violence while also centering movements for civil rights, self-determination, and anti-racism. (May not receive credit if Ethnic Studies 53 has been completed successfully).
2205.00 - History
Letter Grade Only
Type Units Inside of Class Hours Outside of Class Hours Total Student Learning Hours
Lecture 3.00 54.00 108.00 162.00
Total 3.00 54.00 108.00 162.00
Measurable Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:
  1. Analyze and articulate concepts such as race and racism, racialization, ethnicity, equity, ethno-centrism, eurocentrism, white supremacy, self-determination, liberation, decolonization, sovereignty, imperialism, settler colonialism, and anti-racism as analyzed in any one or more of the following: Native American Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Latina and Latino American Studies.
  2. Critically analyze the intersection of race and racism as they relate to class, gender, sexuality, religion, spirituality, national origin, immigration status, ability, tribal citizenship, sovereignty, language, and/or age in Native American, African American, Asian American, and/or Latina and Latino American communities.
  3. Critically review how struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, solidarity, and liberation, as experienced and enacted by Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and/or Latina and Latino Americans are relevant to current and structural issues such as communal, national, international, and transnational politics as, for example, in immigration, reparations, settler-colonialism, multiculturalism, language policies.
  4. Explain the origins of Chicano Studies in relation to the history of the United States.
  5. assess the significance of The Mexican Revolution as it relates to Mexicans and the impact that it had on the United States, economically, politically, and socially;
  6. assess the significance of U.S. intervention in Latin America during the early stages of the twentieth-century;
  7. identify the contributions of Mexican American women to the economic, social, and political development of the United States;
  8. explain the fusion of Mexican and Anglo-American cultural patterns which contributed to the cultural development of the United States to the present;
  9. discuss the political and economic impact of early twentieth-century such as WWI, the interwar period, and WWII on the political and economic advancement of Mexican Americans;
  10. evaluate the California State Constitution and state legislation which have had a significant impact on Mexican Americans and other ethnic groups;
  11. compare the United States Constitution in the twentieth-century regarding the Civil Rights of Mexican Americans and other minority groups;
  12. discuss California legislation that has curtailed rights of immigrant groups;
  13. compare the impact of civil rights Supreme Court decisions in the twentieth-century on Mexican Americans and other marginalized groups;
  14. trace the development of Mexican American led labor movements in the Southwest during the twentieth century;
  15. describe the impact of nativism and discrimination upon various ethnic and racial groups;
  16. discuss Mexican American political participation in California state and local government;
  17. assess the relationship between federal government, state government, and local governments as it pertains to Mexican immigration in the United States.
Course Content:
  1. Analysis of Chicano Studies Perspective of U.S. History
    1. Origins of Chicano History
    2. Theoretical concepts: Internal colonialism, racialization, colorism, whiteness, black and white binary, anti-racism, Chicanismo and self determination.
  2. The Reconstruction Amendments
    1. Slaughterhouse cases and the 14th Amendment
    2. Slavery by another name: White supremacy and extra legal attempts to replicate the conditions of slavery
  3. The End of the Reconstruction and the Rise of Jim Crow
    1. Anglo American Repression and Mexicano Resistance in the Southwest
      1. Las Gorras Blancas and the struggle for self-determination
    2. Southern Horrors: Racial terror and lynching in the American South
    3. Challenging racialized violence
      1. Ida B. Wells and the anti-lynching crusade
  4. White Americans’ Winning of the West: Racialized violence and resistance
    1. Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance
    2. Lynching of Mexican and Native Americans
  5. California Political Culture and Land use: White supremacy, settler colonialism and dispossession of Indigonous lands
    1. Early California Land Policy
    2. Legal Disputes over California water
    3. Hetch Hetchy Valley
  6. California on the eve of the Mexican Revolution
    1. Challenges to the State Constitution
    2. Political formation at the local level
  7. The Mexican Revolution and its impact on North America and the World: Transnationalism 
    1. Roots of The Mexican Revolution
    2. Porfirio Diaz and U.S. interests in Mexico
    3. Ricardo Flores Magón
    4. El Norte: Mass immigration from Mexico
    5. The Russian Revolution
  8. American Imperialism – "A White Man’s Burden": Racial hierarchy and white supremacy as expansionism
    1. Racial hierarchy and white supremacy as expansionism 
      1. Cuba
      2. Philippines
      3. Haiti
  9. The American Industrial Revolution
  10. The Birth and Rise of the American Labor: Labor Rights and Civil Rights
    1. From the Knight of Labor to the American Federation of Labor
    2. Mexicans in the Labor Movement
      1. Wheatland Riot and the violent history of labor repression
      2. Struggle for civil and labor rights
  11. American Foreign Policy
    1. US military interventions in Latin America
    2. America’s Involvement in World War I
  12.  Immigration in the early twentieth-century: The "New" Immigrant and the fluidity of whiteness
    1. Impact on the East Coast
    2. Impact on the Midwest
    3. Impact in the Greater Southwest
      1. Southern European
      2. Mexican
      3. Asian
  13. Political and Moral Reform within the Califorina Constitition
    1. Progressive reformers in the golden state
    2. Women and progressives
    3. Hollywood joins the moral crusade
  14. The Great Depression and the New Deal
    1. Mexican Forced Deportation
      1. Fragile Citizenship: Mexicans as scapegoats for the Great Depression
      2. Intersectionality of race and citizenship
      3. Economic, political, and social disenfranchisement 
  15. WWII and Restructuring of National Economy
    1. Eastern versus Western Industries
      1. Manufacturing, transportation and natural resources
    2. The West
      1. The roots of the Military Industrial Complex
  16. Mexican Americans & WWII
    1. Whiteness and Masculinity as markers of Citizenship
    2. Sailor Riots: Racialized violence against Mexican American youth
    3. Rosita the Riveter: Mexican American women’s labor during the war years; intersection of race and gender
  17. America in the Cold War Years
    1. The Emergence of Mexican American Organizations
      1. American GI Forum: movement for Mexican American self-determination via political Organizing 
    2. Redlining
      1. Structural Racism & Geography doing the work of Jim Crow
    3. The Birth of the Civil Rights Movement
  18. The Vietnam War: A Divided America
    1. Anti-war movement
    2. The rise of the New Left
    3. Chicano Moratorium
  19. Imperial America and the World
    1. The Cold War and Détente
    2. American Foreign Policy and Latin America
  20. The Chicano Movement: Resistance as self determination
    1. The Student Movement: Blowouts
    2. The Farm Workers Movement: UFW
    3. The anti-war movement: The Chicano Moratorium
  21.  The Modern Civil Rights Movement: The struggle toward racial and social justice
    1. BBP for Self Defense
    2. American Indian Movement
      1. Not just Alcatraz
    3. Asian American Movement
    4. Feminist Movement 
      1. Combahee River Collective
      2. an anti-sexist and anti-racist movement towards self-determination
  22. The Moral Majority: Racism and homophobia as conservative backlash  
    1. Pressure to end Affirmative Action
    2. Prop. 13 – The Power of Local Politics
    3. Grassroots Tax Revolt
    4. Bakke Case
    5. Anti-ERA movement
      1. Phyllis Schlafly
  23. Reagan and U.S. Immigration Policy
    1. The complicated legacy of IRCA, 1986
  24. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): The Rise of Neoliberalism
    1. The social contract with America is broken 
    2. Zapatista rebellion
  25. State Sanctioned Violence at the dawn of the 21st Century
    1. California and Prop. 187
    2. Arizona SB 1070 “Show Me Your Papers” Law 
  26. Migration Contensted: Militarization of the Southern Border
    1. Operation Gatekeeper

 

 

Methods of Instruction:
  1. Lecture/Discussion
  2. Research project
  3. Textbook reading assignments
  4. Written assignments
  5. Online Assignments
  6. Distance Education
Assignments and Methods of Evaluating Student Progress:
  1. Do a research presentation with your group on the impact of the Mexican Revolution in North America and globally.
  2. Write a 10-page research paper using using Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano studies, on a topic such as the impact of the anti-war movement, or farm workers movement, or Chicana/o artistic renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s
  3. In a short in-class presentation trace the development and significance of modern U.S. immigration legislation and/or U.S. border enforcement policies as they pertain to Mexicans and the United States.
  1. Class Participation
  2. Exams/Tests
  3. Homework
  4. Papers
  5. Written assignments
  6. Online Assignments
  7. Midterm Examination
  8. Final Examination
Upon the completion of this course, the student should be able to:
  1. Analyze the causes and consequences of political, economic, and social change.
  2. Demonstrate a body of knowledge about and critical understanding of eras, their key events and ideas, and the process of change over time.
  3. Synthesize factual information and historical evidence from a variety of sources and identify the connections between them.
  4. Critically analyze the struggles and contributions of Mexican Americans in the development of California and the United States with comparisons to other major groups like European Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders.
Textbooks (Typical):
  1. Vargas, Zaragosa (2017). Crucible of Struggle: A History of Mexican Americans from the Colonial Period to the Present Era (2). Oxford University Press.
  2. Foner, Eric (2019). Give Me Liberty, Volume 2 (6). W.W. Norton.
  3. Foner, Eric (2019). Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History Volume 2 (6). W.W. Norton.
  4. Glass, Fred (2016). From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement (1). University of California.
  5. Mintz, Steven (2009). Mexican American Voices: A Documentary Reader (2). Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Films accessed via Films on demand
Abbreviated Class Schedule Description:
A survey course of the social, political, economic, and cultural history of the Chicana/o experience within the context of U.S. history from the Reconstruction era to the present. (May not receive credit if Ethnic Studies 53 has been completed successfully).
Discipline:
Chicano Studies*