The international influence of the United States, a phenomenon assimilated to the term Americanization, began to be seen from the first decades of the 20th century in Europe, with a clearer impact in the economic and cultural fields. A number of American companies and investors, associations, universities and philanthropic foundations became spokesmen for the American Way of Life. The decisive intervention of the State in this process and its collaboration with the private sector became more intense from the end of the 1930s, partly in response to the European crisis and the rise of fascism. After World War II, the United States was the architect of a Western security system designed to contain Soviet expansionism, initially centered in Europe but later extended to Asia and other regions of the planet. Linked to this strategic design, the United States was essential in post-war economic reconstruction, while at the same time propagating its methods of business management and organization; promoting cultural and scientific transfers; establishing human capital formation circuits; and serving as a model for the expansion of the consumer society. American leadership had to face, from its origins, the mobilization of sectors critical of its effects, which nurtured the ranks of cultural and political anti-Americanism. From the mid-1960s onwards, the Vietnam War and the fractures in American society eroded the country's international image, which has nevertheless maintained a leading role in the evolution of the world beyond the end of the Cold War, with Globalization being identified as a variant of Americanization.

Through the analysis of this phenomenon, the aim is to put students in contact with some of the keys to today's world. To this end, a historical review of the factors that drove the international presence of the United States, its survival and transformation throughout the twentieth century, together with its various effects, will be addressed. Finally, the impact of Americanization in Spain will be examined as a case study. 

The course will privilege participatory teaching, seeking the intervention of the students both in the debates initiated in the sessions and through content reinforcement activities (oral presentations, comments on texts and graphic material, viewing of documentaries and films, etc.). Likewise, we will try to combine the teacher's expositions with the intervention of other specialists in some of the sessions.

1. The idea of America. Americanization and other alleged implications: Modernization, Globalization, Anti-Americanism.

2. The "irresistible empire". The emergence of the United States as a socio-economic model.

3. Crisis of 1929, Great Depression and New Deal. The challenges of nationalism and fascism.

4. World War II and the attempt to establish a Pax Americana. Bretton Woods and the United Nations.

5. Cold War and crystallization of a bipolar order.

6. The cohesion of the Western bloc and the battle for the Hearts and Minds: propaganda, public diplomacy, mass culture.

7. Modernization made in USA. Nation-building processes in the Third World, Vietnam War and resistance to "cultural imperialism". Dissolution of the Soviet bloc, expansion of neo-liberalism and telematic revolution Towards the end of history?

8. From Hollywood to CNN.

9. The road to the White House. The globalization of the political and electoral model of the United States.

10. The American Century, Reloaded. The American model in the digital era: power, seduction and rejection.

11. From Cuba to the Gran Vía. The United States and Spain in the early decades of the 20th century: stereotypes, commercial interests and intellectual networks.

12. "Welcome Mr. Marshall"? The American friend before Franco's dictatorship. Democratic Spain facing a polemic link: Atlanticism and Europeanism, model or counter-model.

13 and 14. Presentation of final papers in class.