HST 305 offers students the opportunity to learn and analyze the momentous events, themes, and movements of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, a period during which Americans took decisive steps toward the creation of a modern national state that would be.  The course combines traditional lecture, reading, and writing with active learning, including primary source research and digital history. Students are expected to become intermediate practitioners of key skills that are the foundation of the discipline of History—including subject knowledge, primary source research, critical analysis, and communication (written, oral, digital). The latter three are skills that are applicable across academic fields and careers.