This collection uses primary sources to explore the experiences of African American Soldiers in World War I. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This course introduces the unique characteristics of militaries and explores the roles they play in the societies they are constructed to defend, with a special focus on the relationships between the military and their civilian leaders and popular publics. Topics include a modern history of relations between US presidents and the military, coups and military governments, public trust in the military, racial integration of the military, and the military-industrial (and tech!) complex.

Asian Americans who served in the U.S. military during war in Vietnam were confronted not only by the harsh realities of war, but also with their racial and national identities. Asian American military service officers faced racism from their superiors and fellow U.S. soldiers, and were challenged by Vietnamese citizens and soldiers who saw a connection to them. This lesson explores some of the ways in which Asian Americans in the military experienced the war in Vietnam and the ways they negotiated their identities with being seen by both sides as “foreign invaders.”

2021 Social Science Standards Integrated with Ethnic Studies:
Historical Knowledge: HS.60, HS.64
Historical Thinking: HS.70
Social Science Analysis: HS.72, HS.74, HS.76, HS.77

China's rise as a great power raises important questions about how that power might be used in its relations with other states. Nowhere are such questions more salient than in the future trajectory of China's conflict behavior, including its approach to deterrence, crisis management and the use of force. To explore these important questions in China's international relations, this seminar examines the evolution of Chinese strategic thought, in primary sources as well as its reflection in the interactions among Chinese states and between China and other states.

This course centers on mechanisms of civilian control of the military. Relying on the influential texts of Lasswell, Huntington, and Finer, the first classes clarify the basic tensions between the military and civilians. A wide-ranging series of case studies follows. These cases are chosen to create a field of variation that includes states with stable civilian rule, states with stable military influence, and states exhibiting fluctuations between military and civilian control. The final three weeks of the course are devoted to the broader relationship between military and society.

Although attention will be devoted to the causes and long-term consequences of the Civil War, this class will focus primarily on the war years (1861-1865) with special emphasis on the military and technological aspects of the conflict. Four questions, long debated by historians, will receive close scrutiny:

What caused the war?
Why did the North win the war?
Could the South have won?
To what extent is the Civil War America's "defining moment"?

This course will conduct a comparative study of the grand strategies of the great powers (Britain, France, Germany and Russia) competing for mastery of Europe from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Grand strategy is the collection of political and military means and ends with which a state attempts to achieve security. We will examine strategic developments in the years preceding World Wars I and II, and how those developments played themselves out in these wars. The following questions will guide the inquiry: What is grand strategy and what are its critical aspects? What recurring factors have exerted the greatest influence on the strategies of the states selected for study? How may the quality of a grand strategy be judged? What consequences seem to follow from grand strategies of different types? A second theme of the course is methodological. We will pay close attention to how comparative historical case studies are conducted.

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes General John Abizaid for a discussion of the role of the military in the 21st century. Drawing on his experience as commander of the U.S. Central Command, he discusses the problems confronting the next President in the Middle East. He analyzes the lessons of the Iraq War and reflects on issues such as intelligence, the Geneva Conventions, and the role of military contractors. (53 minutes)

Retired U.S. Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni joins host Harry Kreisler on this edition of Conversations with History to discuss the military today and their role in a changing world filled with transnational threats and terrorism. (60 min)

Military Strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett joins Conversations host Harry Kreisler for a discussion of military strategy, the changing role of the U.S. military, and the implication of globalization for world order and military power. (56 min)

This seminar provides an overview of the field of international relations. Each week, a different approach to explaining international relations will be examined. By surveying major concepts and theories in the field, the seminar will also assist graduate students in preparing for the comprehensive examination and further study in the department's more specialized offerings in international relations.

Geographic Intelligence (GEOINT) is more than people working with computers in a secure intelligence facility. Join us for this exciting journey to learn about GEOINT's application in business, law enforcement, and defense. Advances in satellites, GPS, unmanned aerial systems, wireless communications, handheld computing, and the ability to automate laborious map analysis processes has transformed what used to be called geographic intelligence, or GEOINT, and the nature of the insights provided to managers and leaders. We have gone from mountains of hardcopy maps to amazing automated systems that provide previously unavailable understanding. GEOINT combines geographic information science and technologies with an analytic tradecraft. You will experience the value of GEOINT. We welcome you to the Revolution.

The histories of information, communication, and computing technologies have attracted attention from scholars across a variety of disciplines. This course introduces students to prominent voices in these topics across fields. Alongside readings introducing students to this broad scholarly terrain, the course offers guidance in research and writing for publication based on the reality that PhD candidates on the job market need to be published authors, and that every term paper has the potential to be a journal article. We work towards publication by reading widely-cited scholarly histories both for their content and for what they can tell us about scholarly craft.

Earl Ubell is a pioneer among science and health writers in America. After a long, distinguished career at The New York Herald Tribune from 1943 to 1966, he went on to work at both CBS and NBC News. Prominent in the emerging scientific writing community in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was a recipient of the Lasker Medical Journalism Award 1957. Milton Stanley Livingston was a leading physicist in the field of magnetic resonance accelerators. Working first with professor Ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California, Livingston was instrumental in the development of the Berkeley cyclotron. Moving to Cornell in 1938, Livingston was part of the core group who established nuclear physics as a field of study. Choosing to stay with the Cornell cyclotron rather than follow colleagues onto the Manhattan Project, Livingston was involved in the production of radioisotopes for medical purposes. At the time of this interview, Livingston was director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, a joint project of Harvard University and MIT.In this program segment Louis Lyons quizzes Earl Ubell about the lack of public knowledge and the perception of the nuclear bomb, while pressing Professor Livingston to explain exactly what nuclear fallout is, and the danger it presents.

At age twenty-seven, physicist Philip Morrison joined the Manhattan Project, the code name given to the U.S. government's covert effort at Los Alamos to develop the first nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project was also the most expensive single program ever financed by public funds. In this video segment, Morrison describes the charismatic leadership of his mentor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the urgency of their mission to manufacture a weapon 'which if we didn't make first would lead to the loss of the war." In the interview Morrison conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Dawn,' he describes the remote, inaccessible setting of the laboratory that operated in extreme secrecy. It was this physical isolation, he maintains, that allowed scientists extraordinary freedom to exchange ideas with fellow physicists. Morrison also reflects on his wartime fears. Germany had many of the greatest minds in physics and engineering, which created tremendous anxiety among Allied scientists that it would win the atomic race and the war, and Morrison recalls the elaborate schemes he devised to determine that country's atomic progress. At the time that he was helping assemble the world's first atomic bomb, Morrison believed that nuclear weapons 'could be made part of the construction of the peace.' A month after the war, he toured Hiroshima, and for several years thereafter he testified, became a public spokesman, and lobbied for international nuclear cooperation. After leaving Los Alamos, Morrison returned to academia. For the rest of his life he was a forceful voice against nuclear weapons.

This course is an introduction to the consideration of technology as the outcome of particular technical, historical, cultural, and political efforts, especially in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics include industrialization of production and consumption, development of engineering professions, the emergence of management and its role in shaping technological forms, the technological construction of gender roles, and the relationship between humans and machines.

This course explores Japan's role in world orders, past, present, and future. It focuses on Japanese conceptions of security; rearmament debates; the relationship of domestic politics to foreign policy; the impact of Japanese technological and economic transformation at home and abroad; alternative trade and security regimes; Japan's response to 9/11; and relations with Asian neighbors, Russia, and the alliance with the United States.

Students are asked to use the provided source material to answer the central historical question: Why did African Americans join the Union Army during the Civil War?

This presentation provides an overview of the important aspects of military psychology, highlighting the crucial role these professionals play in supporting the mental health and well-being of military personnel.

How do you go from being a dishwasher to a U2 pilot? Find out in this edition of My Path.