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American History
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What is American History?

American History is one of the most widely studied subjects across academic disciplines, appearing in courses ranging from survey-level undergraduate history classes to advanced seminars in political science, sociology, and cultural studies. The field examines how the United States developed as a nation — its conflicts, institutions, social movements, and transformations over time. What makes it academically compelling is the tension between competing narratives about power, identity, and belonging, as events like the Civil War, Japanese American internment during World War II, and landmark legal decisions such as Roe v. Wade reveal deep contradictions within American society. Figures like John Brown and frameworks like Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis further illustrate how individuals and ideas have shaped national identity in contested ways.

Student papers on this topic take a wide variety of approaches. Some focus on specific turning points or conflicts, such as the causes of the Civil War or the political consequences of the French and Indian War. Others adopt case-study formats, examining events like the Tulsa Lynching of 1921 or Japanese American internment through ethnographic or social lenses. Critical and comparative analyses also appear frequently, including film critiques, book reviews, and essays applying sociological theories to historical patterns of discrimination and federal power expansion.

A strong essay in this area begins with a focused, arguable thesis rather than a broad claim about an entire era. Evidence drawn from primary sources, court records, or well-documented historical events carries the most weight. The most common pitfall to avoid is treating American history as a single unified story — the strongest essays acknowledge complexity, contradiction, and the experiences of groups whose perspectives have often been marginalized.

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Research Paper Doctorate

Thomas Paine's Common Sense and American independence

The political situation in the colonies of America were more than ready to receive the pamphlet entitled Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Paine's writing provided a nation confused about their future and issues surrounding…

Essay Doctorate

The United States economy and global power in the new millennium

The world is in constant change. The civilization that we experience today would have been hardly envisaged by the people living in the beginnings of the 20th century. This is largely due to economic, political, social,…

Essay Undergraduate

The Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You" and Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On"

The arrangement by the Skyliners is very effective and fairly typical of 1950s music, in that there is an strong orchestra opening -- dramatically powering the listener into the mood of the song -- for a few seconds.

Paper Undergraduate

Historical patterns of discrimination in American immigration policy

The United States is a land of immigrants. The first waves of immigrants killed or encroached on the land of the indigenous people. Some American immigrants were forcibly moved as slaves from Africa.

Paper Doctorate

Equality and hierarchy in American history from the colonial period to the civil rights era

One theme that could unify the wide variety of readings in this course would be the paradox of Equality versus Hierarchy in American history and society, which is closely related to Inclusion and Exclusion. Black observers, activists and critics of American society like Martin Luther King, Langston Hughes, Cornell West and James Baldwin understood these themes particularly well. From the colonial period to the present, this country has always had a racial caste system, which all of its founders understood perfectly well. John Winthrop may have envisioned a Puritan Commonwealth that would be a model for the world, but this society also had slavery, genocidal wars against Native Americans, as well as harsh treatment for white religious dissenters and the lower classes in general.

Paper Doctorate

Marxist criminology and the Kimani Gray shooting response

This essay considers the recent killing of Kimani Gray by NYPD officers from different criminological perspectives. Specifically, it considers the relative merits of social disorganization and Marxist theory in predicting and preventing the kind of crime that occurred as a result of Gray's killing. Ultimately, while social disorganization theory can help explain Gray's higher risk for criminality, Marxist theory is necessary to account for the public response to the killing.

Essay Doctorate

Music, dance, and narrative in enslaved African American liberation

From slavery times, far more records about black spirituals have survived than for secular music, and the most common religious themes always involved freedom, an escape from bondage and Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. Black slaves may have had the evangelical Protestant religion of their masters imposed on them for purposes on control, but they also appropriated it and made this religion their own—and the black church was one of the very few institutions that they did control before recent times. In essence, black theology was always a version of liberation theology, compared to emphasis that white evangelicals placed on individual sin and personal salvation, and this is reflected in black religious music. Africans brought the banjo with them to America, along with other percussion and string instruments, and also quickly learned to play European guitars and violins, while the banjo became very common among lower-class whites.

Research Paper Doctorate

Diplomacy's role in modern foreign policy: liberal idealism versus state power

¶ … Congress of Vienna, amidst the height of the turbulent end to the Napoleonic era, Metternich was informed of the death of the Russian ambassador and exclaimed, "Ah, is that true?

Paper Doctorate

The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee's role in the Civil Rights Movement

The impact of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee lies in their efforts to make an impact without violence. They also worked from the ground up, demonstrating the power of grassroots movements. Their efforts paved the way for a new wave of protests that would eventually affect change across the country.

Paper Undergraduate

Evolution of constitutional law from Hammurabi's Code to the Mayflower Compact

The series of essays provided here concern the evolution of civil law throughout human history with a focus on the path toward constitutional law. Here, the account offers individual essays on the Code of Hammurabi, the Mayflower Compact, the legal deviations of the Puritans and Pilgrims, the ideological implications leading to the Revolutionary War and the implications of the war itself.

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