Reimagining the Seventies: Historiography, Historical Method, and 1970s America
Winter Quarter 2026
Instructor: Julie Osborn
E-mail: josborn2@uw.edu
Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00-12:20, CLK 316
Course website:
The 1970s is sometimes considered twentieth century America’s most forgettable decade, a footnote between the tumultuous 1960s and the Reagan revolution of the 1980s. When it is remembered, it is often as an anomaly, an era identified by its distinctive popular culture and aesthetic choices but not worthy of academic inquiry. In this class we will join a small group of historians who have attempted to take the decade seriously, as it was indeed a period marked by sharp and lasting political shifts, economic restructuring, meaningful conversations about “morality,” religion and sex/gender and a vigorous backlash to many new cultural ideas.
In this course we will operate with a dual purpose. In addition to looking at the historical events of the decade and why they mattered, we will approach those events by carefully considering historical methods and historiographical approaches more broadly. Each week we will consider a set of events through particular historiographical frames, we will attempt to disentangle the threads, and to reassemble them, building to an individual research project that applies one of the historical methods to some aspect of American history in the 1970s.
The goal of this 388 is to use the 1970s as our shared temporal home base but to bring in each student’s individual interests in terms of methodology and historical subfield. Students are expected to read widely in assigned course readings, to immerse themselves in the research materials relevant to individual projects and manage and execute all stages of a research project, including the formulation of a sound historical argument. Students are also expected to participate actively in discussions and group work during class time. The goal of this 388 is to deepen your understanding of what it means to practice history, think historically, generate cogent historical questions, and produce sophisticated historical writing that engages primary and secondary sources on a novel topic.
This class meets the requirements for a “W” course, meaning that you will engage in “in-depth exploration and investigation of aspects of specific course topics. These assignments will give you the opportunity to develop your own ideas and interpretations concerning what you are learning in class, to put texts and ideas in conversation with one another, to create space for you to reflect on your learning, and to think critically about how historical knowledge is created. In fact, much of your university education will occur in the research, reading and writing assignments required by your courses.” Fulfillment of the credit requires satisfactory completion of the final research paper.
Required Reading
Bruce Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics (New York: Da Capo Press), 2001.
Recommended Reading
Beth Bailey and David Farber, Editors, America in the Seventies (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas), 2004.
Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer, Editors, Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 2008.
Articles and primary source texts shared in PDF form on Canvas.
Assignments
- 20% Class participation: prepared, respectful, thoughtful participation in every class discussion that demonstrates a grasp of assigned material. Each student will choose one assigned reading over the course of the quarter (article or chapter length) and be prepared to lead in-class discussion. This is not a presentation but coming to class prepared with questions and lines of inquiry about how the reading fits into the course themes.
- 10% Due END OF Week 2: secondary source description and analysis (500-1000 words submitted on Canvas).
- 10% Due END OF WEEK 3: Students must have final instructor approval on topic and scope of research by the end of week three – email or verbal approval. Submit a tentative outline (format of your choice) and an annotated bibliography of at least three primary or secondary sources.
- 10% Due END OF WEEK 5: Paper Prospectus, In Class Peer Review Exercise Week 5.
- 20% Prepare and deliver a 10-15 minute in-class presentation on your research project Weeks 9-10.
- 30% Submit a final research paper (minimum 10 pages) due Wednesday of final exam week.
WEEK ONE
Tues January 6:
Introduction, Class Requirements, Research Paper Information
Thurs January 8:
Library Presentation by History Librarian Aubrey Williams
Meet Open Scholarship Commons, 1st Floor Suzzallo
https://lib.uw.edu/openscholarship/
Prepare: questions for a research librarian relevant to your prospective project!
WEEK TWO
Tues January 13:
Historical Overview of the Decade
Read: Barbara Keys et al, “The Post-Traumatic Decade: New Histories of the 1970s,”
Stephen Tuck, “Reconsidering the 1970s – The 1960s to a Disco Beat?”
Schulman, The Seventies, Preface and Introduction
Thurs January 15:
Vietnam and the American Psyche
Read: Catton, “Refighting Vietnam in the History Books: The Historiography of the War”
Chester Pach, “And That’s the Way It Was: The Vietnam War on the Network Nightly News”
Christian Appy, American Reckoning, Introduction
Submit: Primary source description and analysis to Canvas (500-750 words) due 5p Friday.
WEEK THREE
Tues January 20:
The Vietnam War Comes to an End
Watch: Winter Soldier, clips (in class)
Read: Robert O. Self, All in the Family, Chapter 2 “Last Man to Die: Vietnam and the Citizen Soldier”
Prepare: Student introductions including potential research paper topics to share with the class
Thurs January 22:
Race, Class, and Norman Lear’s America
Watch: “All in the Family” pilot, clips (in class), The Jeffersons (in class)
Read: Jefferson Cowie, "’Vigorously Left, Right, and Center’: The Crosscurrents of Working-Class America in the 1970s” in America in the 70s
Simon Hall, “Protest Movements in the 1970s: The Long 1960s”
WEEK FOUR
Tues January 27:
Nixon’s Presidency – Watergate and Its Fallout: 1973 - America’s Nervous Breakdown
Watch: An American Family, Clips (1973)
Read: Schulman, Chapter 1 “Down to the Nut-Cutting: The Nixon Presidency and American Public Life"
Submit: Tentative paper outline, annotations of at least three sources you will use in your paper.
Thurs January 29:
Race and The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement - The Busing Crisis
Read: Schulman, Chapter 2 “E Pluribus Plures: From Racial Integration to ‘Diversity’”
Elizabeth McRae, “The New National Face of Segregation: Boston Women Against Busing”
WEEK FIVE
Tues February 3:
Women and Reproductive Rights in the early 1970s
Read: Schulman, Chapter 7, “Battles of the Sexes: Women, Men, and the Family”
Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime Intro and Epilogue
Self, All in the Family, Chapter 5, “Bodies on Trial: The Politics of Reproduction”
Thurs February 5:
In-Class Peer Review Exercise of Paper Prospectus
Submit: Paper Prospectus in class
WEEK SIX
Tues February 10:
Conservative Women Respond: The ERA and Women’s Labor
Watch: Mrs. America, clips, 9 to 5 (in class)
Self, All in the Family, Chapter 4 “The Working Mother Has No Wife: The Dilemmas of Market and Motherhood”
Beth Bailey, “She ‘Can Bring Home the Bacon’: Negotiating Gender in the 1970s” in America in the 70s
Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are, Chapter 10 “The ERA as Catfight”
Thurs February 12:
Carter’s Many Crises
Read: Schulman, Chapter 5 “Jimmy Carter and the Crisis of Confidence”
Meg Jacobs, “The Conservative Struggle and the Energy Crisis” in Rightward Bound
WEEK SEVEN
Tues February 17:
Violence in the 1970s – Radicalism, Global Skyjackings, Urban Crime, Cult Violence, and Serial Killers
Read: Teishan Latner, “Take Me to Havana! Airline Hijacking, U.S.-Cuba Relations, and Political Protest in Late Sixties’ America,”
Excerpt from Bryan Burrough Days of Rage TBD
Thurs February 20:
70s Cinema
Watch: Network (in class)
Read: New York Times, “Chayefsky’s ‘Network’ Bites Hard As a Film Satire of TV Industry”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1976/11/15/issue.html
BBC, “The ‘Outrageous’ Forty Year Old Film that Predicted the Future”
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161125-network-at-40-the-film-that-predicted-the-future
WEEK EIGHT
Tues February 24:
Malaise Culture: Disco and the ‘Me Decade’
Read: Schulman, Chapter 6 “’This Ain’t No Foolin’ Around’: Rebellion and Authority in Seventies Popular Culture”
Bradford Martin, “Cultural Politics and the Singer/Songwriters of the 1970s” in Rightward Bound
Thurs February 26:
“Family Values” and the Reagan Revolution (Conclusion)
Read: “Inventing Family Values,” Matthew Lassiter in Schulman and Zelizer, in Rightward Bound
Interview with Jimmy Carter, G. Barry Golson, ed., The Playboy Interview
Schulman, Chapter 4 “The Rise of the Sunbelt and the ‘Reddening’ of America”
Schulman, Chapter 8 “’The Minutemen are Turning in Their Graves’ The New Right and the Tax Revolt”
Schulman, Chapter 9 “The Reagan Culmination” and Conclusion
WEEK NINE
Tues March 3
Writer’s Workshop/ Catch Up / Presentations (dependent on class size)
Thurs March 5:
Student presentations
WEEK TEN
Tues March 10:
Student presentations
Thurs March 12:
Student presentations
FINALS WEEK – PAPERS DUE BY WEDNESDAY MARCH 18