Lancaster Region

This extensive course will encourage you to engage in critical thinking as we consider the inventions, events, and people that have shaped and influenced American journalism from colonial times to the internet. The impact of technical, economic, political, and cultural developments will be considered as we examine what “freedom of the press” and “the truth” have meant in American society from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of President Trump.

This course is based on Dr. Stefany’s doctoral dissertation in history at the University of Kansas. It is the first English language study of the December 1986 Alma-Ata (“Zheltoksan”) protests, which were in response to Mikhail Gorbachev’s replacement of long-serving First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan Dinmukhamed Kunaev with the Russian Gennadi Kolbin – and which many view as a harbinger of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The instructor will discuss the history and Russian colonization of the Kazakhs, Soviet “nationalities problem” dating from Lenin on, Stalinism, and the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods – during which Kunaev rose to power and began putting Kazahs in positions of authority in the Kazakh Societ Socialist Republic (KSSR).