AMER0084: Confronting the Colossus: Power, Protest and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1945-present

***NOT RUNNING IN 2025/26***

Module leader: Dr Nick Witham

Outline

This course provides students with insights into the relationship between power and protest in US foreign relations by closely examining the history of domestic and international opposition to American foreign policy in the post-World War II period. Topics include: Cold War civil rights in the 1940s and 1950s; responses to the Cuban Revolution; the anti-Vietnam War movement; the antiapartheid movement; Arab American community activism in response to the War on Terror. Students have the opportunity to reflect in detail on a variety of primary materials, from radical manifestoes and essays, to diaries, songs, poems and memoirs. Through analysis of these materials, students will be encouraged to engage with the dynamic and ever-growing body of historiography on power, protest and US foreign reltions, and will have the opportunity to make their own intervention in this literature by writing a 10,000-word dissertation.

Assessment pattern

Forms of assessment vary between modules and may change from one academic year to another.  Please email the Teaching Administration Team on ia-programmes@ucl.ac.uk for further information.