Course Syllabus
Lecture 1 Junius Scales and My Sixth-Grade Teacher:
Two Stories of the McCarthy Era and What They Tell Us
About Political Repression in Cold War America
Lecture 2 Communism in America: The World of the Witches
Lecture 3 Anticommunism in America: The World of the
Witch Hunters
Lecture 4 The Rehearsal for McCarthyism: Anticommunism and
Political Repression Before the Cold War
Lecture 5 The Cold War Comes to Washington: Communism,
Anticommunism, and the Truman Administration’s
Loyalty-Security Program
Lecture 6 The Orchestra Leader: J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and
the Machinery of McCarthyism
Lecture 7 Soviet Espionage and Internal Security: The Big Spy
Cases and Their Political Impact
Lecture 8 The Committees and Their Witnesses: “Are You Now or
Have You Ever Been . . .?”
Lecture 9 Joe McCarthy and the Loss of China: Anticommunism
as Partisan Politics
Lecture 10 The Hollywood Blacklist and Beyond: The Entertainment
Industry Under Fire
Lecture 11 On the Waterfront and in the Schools: Political Tests
for Employment
Lecture 12 The Dog That Didn’t Bark: The Collapse of the
Liberals
Lecture 13 Collateral Damage: Private Lives During the
Red Scare
Lecture 14 McCarthyism and American Democracy: What Were
the Costs?
|
|  | | |
During the early years of the Cold War, the anticommunist witch hunt that we now call
McCarthyism swept through American society. As we will discover, McCarthyism was much more than
the career of the blustering senator from Wisconsin who gave it a name. It was the most
widespread and longest-lasting episode of political repression in American history. Dozens of
men and women went to prison, thousands lost their jobs, and untold numbers of others saw what
happened to those people and refrained from expressing controversial or unpopular ideas.
McCarthyism remains all too relevant today;
if nothing else, it reminds us that we cannot take our basic freedoms
for granted.
This course aims to provide a basic understanding of what happened during the Cold War red scare
of the late 1940s and 1950s. It will look at this red scare from the perspective of both the
victims and the perpetrators, and will try to answer the following question: How could such a
politically repressive movement arise in a modern democratic society such as the post-World War
II United States?
In order to answer that question, this course will look at earlier red scares as well as at
some of the key players and institutions involved. It will examine those aspects of the domestic
and international politics of the late 1940s and 1950s that contributed to the rise of the
anticommunist furor. It will also explore the most important political trials of the era as
well as investigate the experiences of its more anonymous (and perhaps more typical) victims.
Finally, it will assess the costs of McCarthyism. How did it affect the men and women directly
involved with it? And, more important, how did it affect American culture, politics, and the
rest of American society?
 American Inquisition: The Era of McCarthyism (Booklet)
|
| | |
Professor
Professor Ellen Schrecker
(Yeshiva University)
Ellen Schrecker is a professor of history at Yeshiva University in New York City. After receiving her B.A. and M.A. from Radcliffe College and her Ph.D. from Harvard, she switched from European to American history. She then taught at Harvard, Princeton, and New York University before taking her curr...
 - Course password Required.
|
Course Forum
Course Final Exam
History