This course examines the role of social science in the United States during the 20th century. there have been popular social scientific theories since the early 19th century, when the craze spread for interpreting individuals' character by feeling the bumps on their heads. But popular social science is really a 20th century phenomenon. And popular culture influenced academic research. Our coverage cannot be comprehensive. We have insufficient time to treat all human sciences equally. For example, there is enormous popular interest in paleoanthropology and archaeology, but we will not discuss these in class-although you mibht choose to write your research paper for the course on a spcific aspect of one of these disciplines.
