McCarthyism

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• the key historical forces that produced McCarthyism
• the historiographical controversies surrounding McCarthyism

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• identify the key characteristics of McCarthyism
• describe and assess the various approaches taken by scholars in the study of McCarthyism, and classify the sort of source materials used in those approaches

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• find, assimilate and analyse diverse and complex information
• formulate arguments that are clearly reasoned and based on evidence
• write fluently and effectively, preparing assessed work independently
• manage your own learning and your time effectively, meeting deadlines

Introduction

Biography: McCarthy the man

Communist espionage and subversion in the early Cold War: debating the threat

McCarthyism as ideological warfare: the contest over the New Deal

McCarthyism in Congress: from HUAC and McCarranism to McCarthy’s censure

McCarthyism and the executive branch: Truman, Eisenhower and J. Edgar Hoover

Anticommunism in the city, state and region

Black lists and red scares: popular culture, media and the arts in 1950s America

Reds in the bed: gender, sexual repression and domestic life in 1950s America

An American ‘paranoid style’? Conservative populist politics in the United States from the Revolution to the modern ‘Alt-Right’

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include

• lectures
• seminars

You will be expected to discuss the issues raised by the lectures and your own reading, and to analyse primary and secondary materials in small and large groups. We will supply you with lists of seminar topics, essay questions and relevant books, articles and sources.

Learning activities include

• intensive reading, guided by annotated reading lists, by the lectures, and by active participation in seminars.

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Ted Morgan. Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth Century America.

Richard Hofstadter. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays.

Ellen Schrecker. The Age of McCarthyism.

Athan Theoharis. Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counter-Intelligence but Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years.

David Caute. The Great Fear: the Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower.

Ellen Schrecker. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America.

M J Heale. McCarthy’s Americans: Red Scare Politics in State and Nation, 1935-1965.

Assessment strategy

Assessments designed to provide informal, on-module feedback

• You will be given informal feedback on your oral contributions and essay planning during the course of the module
• In this option module you will be assessed informally on oral and group skills; communication skills form an important part of your learning and will be developed through interactive teaching and learning activities.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External