Instructor: Dr. Bruce Daniels

Dates: January 10, 17, 24, 31, February 7, 14

Course description:
American history began amidst two-centuries of bedlam and internal animosities. Thanks to the mis-management of British politicians, a bunch of squabbling colonies found enough cohesion to fight a revolution and create a country in the late 18th century. As that country has grown from a fragile republic to the colossus of the present, it has struggled every step of the way with the regional, racial, and social divisions that bedeviled its founding.

We will examine those divisions in the lectures and discussions.

Dr. Bruce Daniels

Bruce Daniels is a graduate of Syracuse University (A.B.) and the University of Connecticut (M.A., Ph.D.). He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bihar, India where he worked as an agricultural extension agent. For 31 years, Daniels taught at the University of Winnipeg where he received the Clifford Robson Award for Excellence in Teaching and the first annual Rogers Award for Excellence in Research. Daniels is the author of over two hundred scholarly articles and reviews, and ten books, including: Connecticut’s First Family (1975); Local Government in the American Colonies (1978); The Connecticut Town (1979); Dissent and Conformity on Narragansett Bay

(1983); Office-holding in the American Colonies (1986); The Fragmentation of New England: Economic, Political, and Social Divisions in the Eighteenth Century (1986); Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England (1995 and 2005 editions); Living with Stalin’s Ghost: A Fulbright Memoir of Moscow and the New Russia (2005); New England Nation: The Country the Puritans Built (2012).  From 1980 to 2004, Daniels held SSHRC research grants. In 1993 he was a Fulbright Scholar and in 2005, he was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair. While working at the University of Winnipeg, Daniels served as Editor of the Canadian Review of American Studies, President of the Canadian Association of American Studies, Associate Editor of American National Biography, Book Review Editor of the Urban History Review, and Contributing Editor of the Journal of American History.

Daniels also served as History Department Chair at Texas Tech University; as a member of The American Studies Faculty at the Salzburg Seminar (Austria); and held the Nicolai Sivachev Chair at Moscow State University (Russia), and the Denman Endowed Chair in History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In addition he has been a visiting professor at Bowling Green State University, Connecticut College for Women, Duke University, The University of Connecticut, Wilfrid Laurier University, Jinan University (Hangzhou, China), and Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan.

A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, Daniels ran for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination in 1996 and served as Lieutenant Governor of the Manitoba Youth Parliament (1997).

To find out more about the 55 Plus Program, click here.

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If you have any questions, or would like to be added to a waitlist for this class, please email 55plus@uwinnipeg.ca.