Combining the best of online learning with the best of classroom discussion,
our Scholars series explores a topic, in-depth, over the course of several weeks.
Monday Scholars: America in the Gilded Age & the Progressive Era
Live on Zoom only:
Mondays from 1:00 - 2:30 PM
February 10 - May 12*
*no class on Feb. 17 or April 14
ZOOM LINK: Click here at 1 PM on Mondays beginning February 10 to zoom to this program.
Monday Scholars combines the best of online learning and engaging discussion!
Join us for the full 12-weeks or drop in to explore your favorite topics. Each week, we will watch two video lectures together and then engage in lively conversation afterwards. The conversation will be facilitated by OWL's Caroline Ugurlu.
About the course:
Welcome to one of the most colorful, tumultuous, raucous, and profoundly pivotal epochs in American history. Stretching from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to roughly 1920, this extraordinary time was not only an era of vast and sweeping change—it saw the birth of the United States as we and the world at large now know it.
Before the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, America was a developing nation, with a largely agrarian economy. Yet by 1900, within an astonishing 35 years, the U.S. had emerged as the world’s greatest industrial power.
Together we investigate the economic, political, and social upheavals that marked these years, as well as the details of daily life and the critical cultural thinking of the times. In the process, you’ll meet robber barons, industrialists, socialites, crusading reformers, inventors, conservationists, women’s suffragists, civil rights activists, and passionate progressives, who together forged a new United States. These engrossing lectures provide a stunning and illuminating portrait of a nation-changing era.
About the professor:
Dr. Edward T. O'Donnell is Associate Professor of History at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. He earned his Ph.D. in American History from Columbia University. For more than two decades, Professor O'Donnell has worked extensively with the federal U.S. Department of Education program Teaching American History. He has also provided historical commentary and insight for The History Channel, ABC, PBS, the BBC, and the Discovery Channel. He is the author and coauthor of several works dealing with a broad range of American history, including Visions of America: A History of the United States and 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about Irish American History.
Course Schedule:
• 02/10: 1865 & Reconstruction
• 02/24: The Myth of the West & Industrial Titans
• 03/03: Carnegie & Big Business
• 03/10: Immigrants & Big Cities
• 03/17: Pop Culture & New Technologies
• 03/24: 1892 Homestead Strike & Middle Class Society
• 03/31: Mrs. Vanderbilt’s Gala Ball & Populist Revolt
• 04/07: Rough Riders & The New Woman
• 04/21: Trust Busting & 1911 Triangle Fire
• 04/24: Theodore Roosevelt & Urban Reform
• 05/05: 17th Amendment & Early Civil Rights
• 05/12: WWI & an End of an Era