The Teaching of American Urban History

Abstract

A MERICAN urban history has recently become a subject of prime concern in college curricula. Courses in the history of the American city are proliferating nowadays in a way that once was true of courses dealing with the history of the American frontier. Interest in the history of the city has been prompted not, as in the case of the frontier, by its supposed disappearance but by its ever increasing domination of the American scene. In terms of research, American historians began giving attention to the city as early as the 1920s, after the Census of 1920 had shown that, for the first time, the nation was predominantly urban. It was not until the late 1940s, however, that courses in the history of the American city began to be listed in college catalogues; and only in the last five years or so has the multiplication of courses in urban history been reminiscent of the rapid rise to popularity in the early twentieth century of courses in the history of the American West. Proof of this interest is revealed in the responses to two recently circulated questionnaires concerning the teaching of American urban history: one to more than 400 colleges and universities, and the other to sixty urban studies centers, institutes, and programs.2 The first, to which 350 replies