Michael Brenes
Yale University
Michael Brenes is Interim Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at Yale University. He is the author of For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy, published by University of Massachusetts Press. In addition to his academic articles and book chapters, his writing has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, Politico, Dissent, and Boston Review. He is currently writing a history of the War on Terror.
Undergraduate Syllabus
America’s Wars: From Reconstruction to the Present
This course explores the history of American warfare since the late 19th century, focusing on the development of U.S. military strategy and policy since the end of the Civil War. We discuss how the United States waged war—why the United States got into wars, and how the U.S. extricated itself (or tried to extricate itself) from war. The course also pays close attention to the relationship between war and state-building in the United States and abroad, as we cover topics such as the history of American occupations, the political economy of the American military, and the technology of modern warfare. By taking an expansive view of American military power, we therefore seek to understand how wartime, as well as “peacetime,” shaped the history of the United States throughout the twentieth century.