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Over
the course of the semester you must complete 10 short question
sets.
Use the sets of questions below. Each reading response requires a
1.5 to 2 page, double-spaced, typed paper. You may go over that length
if you so choose, but short papers will receive a failing grade. These
will be graded on a pass/fail basis.
WEEK 1 Introduction
to Course
THURS
SEPT. 1 Course syllabi, outline of class, introduction.
WEEK 2 Defining
a Decade
TUES SEPT
6 Unger, “Introduction,” in The Times were a Changin’; Farber,
“Preface,”
in The Age of Great Dreams; Morris Dickstein, “Introduction: The View
from
the End of the Century,” in Gates of Eden: American Culture in the
Sixties
(photocopied handout)
Set
1: Answer one question from section A, B, and C.
Section
A, Unger, “Introduction”
1. As early
as 1960, the authors contend, “forces stirred that would soon transform
the lives of almost everyone.” What do they mean by this
statement?
2. In the opinion
of Irwin and Debi Unger, what accounted for the great social turmoil in
America after 1965?
3. In general,
why do the authors view the sixties as an era of sexual revolution?
Section
B, Farber, “Preface”
4. What is
the goal of David Farber’s book? What does he intend to reveal
about
the 1960s?
5. Farber quotes
sociologist Daniel Bell, who argued that Americans in the decade of the
‘60s were trapped in the “cultural contradictions of
capitalism”(5).
What do Farber and Bell mean here?
6. Is the story
of the 1960s a “tragedy,” as Farber suggests?
Section
C, Dickstein, “Introduction”
7. How do
various Americans remember the 1960s? Is there anything in
particular
that defined the era?
8. What are
the diverging “political paths” Dickstein mentions on pg. xii?
What
does Dickstein think is most significant about the decade?
9. What does
Allen Ginsberg Symbolize for Dickstein?
10. How have
Americans changed since the 1960s? What makes Americans today
different
then Americans of that period?
THURS SEPT 8 Postwar
Economic Boom and the Fifties Consensus
Unger, chpt.
1, “The Economic Miracle”; Farber, chpt. 1, “Good Times”and Farber,
chpt.
3, “The Meaning of National Culture”
Set
2: Answer two questions from section A, one from section B, and one
from section C.
Section
A, Unger, chpt. 1, “The Economic Miracle”
1. Irwin and
Debi Unger write that “affluence made possible the Sixties as we know
it”
(13). How is this the case? Looking at the selection
“Sustained
Expansion of 1961-64” what accounted for the economic growth of the era?
2. What was
the impact of Michael Harrington’s book, The Other America?
3. What did
Harrington’s book suggest about the economic boom of the post-War years?
4. Where were
the poor in America? Why was poverty seemingly invisible to so
many
U. S. citizens? Why were conditions different for the poor in the
1930s?
Section
B, Farber, chpt. 1, “Good Times”
5. What was
America like as the 1950s gave way to the ‘60s?
6. How did
most American’s experience “prosperity”? What did Vice President
Richard Nixon’s Kitchen Debate with Nikita Khrushchev symbolize?
7. Farber remarks
that “America’s general abundance hid its gross economic inequality”
(17).
Is that still the case today, decades after Michael Harrington wrote
The
Other America?
Section
C, Farber, chpt. 3, “The Meaning of National Culture”
8. What elements
helped create a national American culture?
9. How did
television reflect the changing values of Americans in the ‘50s and
‘60s?
What might we learn, if anything, about those Americans who watched the
Beverly Hillbillies?
10. What role
did young people play in creating America’s new mass culture?
11. What does
Farber mean when he uses the term “consumer equality” on page 64?
WEEK
3 The New Frontier, the Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism
TUES SEPT
13 Farber, chpt. 2, “The World as Seen From the White House, 1960-1963”
Set
3: Answer two questions from
section A and one from section B.
Section A,
Farber, chpt. 2, “The World as Seen
From the White House, 1960-1963”
1. David Farber
comments that “little of major
importance divided” Richard Nixon and John Kennedy (25). Why does
Farber argue that these men were so similar?
2. What did
differentiate Nixon and Kennedy’s
1960 campaigns?
3. What made
John F. Kennedy a powerful political
figure? Why did he appeal to so many American voters?
4. Were
Americans, and Kennedy in particular,
justified in their fears of worldwide communism?
Section B,
Farber, chpt. 2 continued
5. Describe the
outcome of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
6. How and why
would third world countries become
the new battlegrounds of the 1960s Cold War?
7. Was
Kennedy’s diplomacy successful? Was
America stronger and more secure as a result of his presidency?
Last day drop/add
a class is Sept 14
THUR SEPT 15
Unger, chpt. 2, “The New Frontier–Great Society”; Unger, chpt. 8,
“Judicial
Activism”
Set
4: Answer one from section A, one from section B, and two from
section
C.
Section
A, Unger, chpt. 2, “The New Frontier–Great Society”
1. According
to Irwin and Debi Unger, what was the purpose of JFK’s “New Frontier”
program?
How did it reflect the values of American liberalism stretching back to
the New Deal of the 1930s?
2. Why was
the term Camelot applied to the first family in the early ‘60s?
How
does Theodore H. White’s “For President Kennedy” depict the lives of
Jackie
and President Kennedy?
3. What were
some of the basic findings of the Warren Commission Report? Why
did
so many Americans refuse to believe the Commission’s final draft?
4. What else
might the Warren Commission have done?
Section
B, Unger, chpt. 2 continued
5. What was
the point of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiative? What
elements
of post-War liberalism did his policies contain? How did Johnson
hope to achieve his goals?
6. Describe
the War on Poverty? Was it “winnable”? What should the role
of the government be when it comes to poverty, education, and
healthcare?
7. What are
the positive and negative features of the Great Society? Are
Americans
better off today as a result of LBJ’s social initiatives?
Section
C, Unger, chpt. 8, “Judicial Activism”
8. What do
the authors say about the role the Supreme Court has played through the
nation’s history? How has that role changed? What is the
meaning
of the term judicial activism? How is this used today?
9. In the landmark
case Engel v. Vitale how did the Supreme Court challenge the
legality
of prayer in public schools? What kinds of arguments did the
justices
make? Were these legitimate?
10. How
did Griswold v. State of Connecticut alter the law concerning
an
individual’s right to privacy and personal freedom?
11. What precedents
did the last three cases—Mapp v. Ohio, Gideon v. Wainright,
and Miranda v. Arizona—set regarding the “overbearing”
practices
of law enforcement officials? Were these decisions judicious?
WEEK
4 The African American Freedom Struggle and White Resistance
TUES SEPT
20 Farber, chpt. 4, “Freedom”; Unger, chpt. 5, “The Civil Rights
Movement”
Set
6: Answer one question from section A, one from section B, and one
from section C
Section
A, Farber, chpt. 4, “Freedom”
1. Describe
the successes and failures of integration and racial justice Farber
highlights
in the years before 1960. What role did the federal government
play
up to 1960?
2. What was
the long-term impact of the sit-in movement? What did it
accomplish?
3. Explain
the tactics young civil rights leaders employed in the early
1960s.
What strategies and philosophies did they use? To what extent
were
their efforts successful?
4. What did
the civil rights movement reveal about state vs. federal government
policy?
How did the era of the ‘50s and ‘60s challenge the federal government
to
play a more active role in insuring social justice?
Section
B, Unger, chpt. 5, “The Civil Rights Movement”
5. According
to Debi and Irwin Unger, what events and critical moments in US history
set the scene for the modern civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s?
6. What happened
to the movement after Martin Luther King’s death?
7. In 1954,
Supreme Court Justices answered this question: “Does segregation of
children
in public schools solely on the basis of race . . . deprive the
children
of the minority group of equal education opportunities?” (123)
How
did the Court answer this question? What evidence and arguments
did
the Justices use?
8. Following
the Brown decision, the White Citizen’s Council emerged in the South to
exploit the resentment and bitterness many whites in the region felt
concerning
desegregation. Even ten years after this famous court case,
numerous
schools in the South were still segregated. What is the chief argument
made by the author of “How We Educate Our Children”? What was the
supposed threat posed by integration?
9. Why did
King write his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”? What purpose did
it serve? Is it an effective piece?
Section
C, Unger, chpt. 5 continued
10. In “To
Fulfill These Rights” President Johnson called for a new response to
poverty
and racism. What does he identify as the major problems of black
America? How did he intend to deal with the issues?
11. In the
selection titled “We Want Black Power” how do the arguments here
represent
a new militancy that goes beyond Martin Luther King and the mainstream
movement? How did the promoters of black power raise the issue of
black consciousness/black identity?
12. After reading
“What We Want, What We Believe,” describe the working strategy of the
Black
Panthers. How did they want to redress racial injustices?
13. Why was
Resurrection City a failure? What forces conspired to destroy the
work of the Poor People’s Campaign? What does all this say about
America in the Summer of 1968?
THUR SEPT 22 Brian
Ward, “‘Our day will come’: Black Pop, White Pop and the Sounds of
Integration,”
in Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness,
and
Race Relations (photocopied handout)
Set
7: Answer one question from each section.
Section
A
1. What does
historian Brian Ward mean by the terms “pop biracialism” and
“integrated
market”?
2. Shelley
Stewart, a ‘50s-era deejay, believed that “Music really started
breaking
the barriers long before the politics in America began to deal with it”
(Ward 128). According to Ward, how did r&b and rock music
alter
race relations?
3. Describe
the way the black community responded to Nat King Cole’s politics in
the
late 1950s. Should entertainers such as Cole have taken a certain
position on race matters?
Section
B
4. What was
the mass black reaction to Elvis Presley’s popularity? Similarly,
how did black listeners respond to popular white deejays of the
era?
What do these reactions tell us about the state of race relations in
the
early 1960s?
5. What accounts
for the dwindling popularity of what Ward calls “blacker” musical
styles
in the 1950s and ‘60s? (142) How did black musicians respond to
the
public shift in taste?
6. How did
a solo artist like Sam Cooke fashion his career to reach a wider
audience?
Section
C
7. Ward contends
that in the early 1960s “girl groups” like the Shirelles and the
Ronnettes
represented a new kind of pop music and pop marketing. Describe
this
new style. What roles did race and gender play?
8. What was
payola? How did it affect the industry? Why does Ward argue
that Dick Clark and American Bandstand emerged from the scandal
relatively
unscathed?
9. How had
rock and r&b changed in the first decade of its existence?
What
accounts for the transformation?
WEEK 5 The
New Left and the New Right
TUES SEPT
27 Farber, chpt 5, “The Liberal Dream and its Nightmare”; Unger, chpt.
3, “The New Left.” Changed schedule for Sept. 27, ENC’s
Inauguration
Day. Our class will meet from 2:30 - 3:30 pm.
Set 8: Answer one
question from section A, one from
section B, and one from section C.
Section A
1. What events in 1963-64 brought the civil rights movement to the
nation’s attention? Why did it rise in visibility and power?
2. Did Lyndon Johnson actually
support the civil rights movement?
Describe his involvement.
3. What role, if any, did J. Edgar
Hoover, director of the FBI, play
in the struggle for black equality?
4. Was LBJ justified in his response
to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention?
5. How and why did Stokely
Carmichael come to the conclusion that black
Americans “could not rely on their co-called allies”? Was he
right
to assume that?
Section B
6. Describe Barry Goldwater’s 1964 platform. How did his campaign
contrast with that of Johnson’s?
7. Why did the 1964 election
complicate America’s involvement in Vietnam?
8. What were the root causes of
urban violence that plagued American
cities after 1965? How did the federal government respond?
9. After reading Irwin and Debbi
Unger’s preface to chapter 3, explain
some of the basic differences between the new and old left.
10. Why did new left sociologist C.
Wright Mills believe that the working
class could not lead a social revolution?
Section C
11. Why were the young scholars associated with Studies on the Left
dissatisfied with the academy?
12. What is the “new sensibility”
Herbert Marcuse wrote about?
13. In a 1964 speech, Mario Savio
vented: “We have encountered the organized
status quo in Mississippi, but it is the same in Berkeley.” What
did Savio mean by that statement?
14. What did Jeff Shero and members
of the SDS hope to achieve through
their activities on the Columbia campus in 1968?
15. Describe the essential ideas and
beliefs of the Weathermen underground.
What motivated these young left radicals? Are there any social or
political movements today that mirror this organization?
THUR SEPT 29 Unger,
chpt. 4, “The New Right”
Set
9: Answer one question from each section.
Section
A
1. According
to Irwin and Debi Unger in the preface to chapter 4, what were some of
the basic tenets of the new right? Are the Ungers fair in their
brief
assessment?
2. Looking
at the excerpt “Political Planning for Victory over Communism,” what
did
the Oklahoma fundamentalist minister Billy James Hargis argue was wrong
with America? How were the views of Hargis’ in any sense
“conservative”?
3. Frank S.
Meyer, an editor of The National Review, wrote: “Sharp and
vivid
extremes do exist in reality, no matter how much the Liberal and
relativist
mind strives to cloak the real presence of glorious and desperate
alternatives”
(99). What did Meyer mean by this?
4. What point
did Meyer make about the Crusaders of the Middle Ages? How strong
was his argument? Would conservatives today agree with Meyer on
most
of the issues he raises?
Section
B
5. Barry Goldwater,
Republican candidate for president in 1964, would come to represent the
new right more than any other political figure. Goldwater pointed
out that many conservatives felt compelled to apologize for or qualify
their political views. Why did he critique such back
peddling?
6. In The
Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater challenged: “The root
difference
between Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives
take
account of the whole man, while Liberals tend to look only at
the
material side of man’s nature” (103). How did Goldwater back up
this
argument?
7. What did
Goldwater mean by the term “freedom”? Do Goldwater’s analyses
still
apply to conservatism and liberalism today?
Section
C
8. Describe
the beliefs of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). How did the
YAF’s views differ from those of the Students for a Democratic
Society?
9. What were
some of the practical goals of the YAF?
10. Ayn Rand
found fault in questions such as: “What will be done about the poor or
the handicapped in a free society?” (109) What rang false for her
about such questions?
11. Why did
Rand challenge what she called the “collectivist society”?
WEEK
6 The New Right and Conservative Christianity
SCHEDULE CHANGE: Lisa McGirr,
Suburban Warriors, questions now due
on Oct 11.
TUES OCT 4 Grant Wacker, “Searching
for Norman Rockwell: Popular Evangelicalism
in Contemporary America,” in The Evangelical Tradition in America
(photocopied
handout); articles from the 1960s in the Church of the Nazarene’s
Herald
of Holiness (photocopied handout)
Set 10: Answer to
questions from each section.
Section A, Grant Wacker,
“Searching for Norman Rockwell” (photocopied
handout)
1. Duke professor or religious history Grant Wacker suggests that even
though Time and Newsweek dubbed 1976 “the Year of the Evangelical,” the
movement had been flourishing for at least twenty years. What
were
some of the signs of Evangelical growth in these decades?
2. What is the answer to Wacker’s
question: “After decades of relative
quiet, why did Evangelicalism mushroom like this in the 1960s?” (293)
3. What is the meaning of Wacker’s
title “Searching for Norman Rockwell”,
and how does that tie into the idea of “Christian Civilization”?
4. Why is it that some stalwarts of
the new right, including William
Safire and Barry Goldwater, distanced themselves from the Evangelical
Right?
5. Why did the Evangelical Right
focus so much attention on sexuality,
education, and the family? Do you agree with Wacker’s basic
assessment?
6. How does Wacker answer the
question: “Why are Evangelicals so powerfully
attracted to the Christian Civilization ideal in the first place?”
(311)
Section B, selections from the
Church of the Nazarene’s denominational
magazine, Herald of Holiness, 1968.
7. What critique did Paul Bassett, pastor and later church history
professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary, offer of various protests
movements
in his article, “Strange Bedfellows”?
8. What were some of Bassett’s basic
questions for hawks and doves?
9. Leslie Parrot, who served as
president of ENC, writes of what he
calls “the unhappy American.” Why did he think Americans were so
distressed, and what did he think the solution to this malaise was?
10. Judging from the three pieces on
the War on Poverty, the assassination
of Martin Luther King, Jr., and race relations, how would you describe
the Church of the Nazarene’s position on social justice and race in the
late 1960s?
11. The remaining selections deal
with the church and youth, or the
church and the emerging counterculture. How did these few
Nazarene
authors address the generation gap and the secular youth culture of the
era?
THUR OCT 6 No class. Online
study guide for midterm. Work on final papers.
WEEK 7
TUES OCT 11 Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New
American Right.
Set 11: Choose two
discussion questions (website below)
from the intro to chpt. 3 and two from chpts. 4 - 6. Do not
answer
more than one question from each chpt.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~eherman/teaching/352/McGirr%20Questions.htm
THUR OCT 13
MIDTERM EXAM. Online
study guide.
WEEK 8 The
Cold War and Vietnam
TUES OCT 18
No class
THUR OCT 20
Farber, chpt. 6, “Vietnam”; Unger, chpt. 9, “Foreign Affairs and
Vietnam”;
Turn in a bibliography of no less than six works (journal articles and
or books) for your final paper. Do not use webpages or
encyclopedia
articles. Your bibliography grade will be deducted five points
for
every day it is overdue.
Set 12: No specific
questions. If you chose
to do this set, turn in a general review of the material in both Farber,
chpt. 6, “Vietnam”, and Unger, chpt. 9, “Foreign Affairs and Vietnam.”
WEEK 9 The
Cold War and Vietnam continued
TUES OCT 25
Cover above material (Oct 20) missed on Thur.
Last
day to withdraw or change a course to pass/fail or audit is Oct 26
THUR OCT 27 Philip
Caputo, A Rumor of War
Answer one
question from each section (A, B, C) of this reading
guide.
WEEK 10
Rock Music and the Sixties Counterculture
TUES NOV 1
Larry Kane, “Prologue” and “North to Boston: Does Anyone Have a
Compass?”
in Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles 1964 & 1965 Tours (photocopied
handout); George Lipsitz, “Who'll Stop the Rain? Youth Culture, Rock
'n'
Roll, and Social Crises,” in The Sixties: From Memory to History
(photocopied handout) also online at http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=51944047
Set 14: Answer one
question from each section.
Section A, Larry Kane, “North to
Boston: Does Anyone Have a Compass?”
in Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles 1964 & 1965 Tours
(photocopied
handout).
1. In journalist Larry Kane’s “Prologue” he describes the
enthusiasm/fanaticism
of one young Beatlemaniac he met in August, 1964. What drew her
too
the group? How does Kane measure her passion?
2. How did Kane come to know the
fab-four? What did Kane remember
about the Beatles?
3. Describe the scene at the Madison
Hotel in Boston? What does
Kane’s description of the press conference say about fans?
4. How does Jim Morin recall the
concert at Boston Garden? What
stands out to him?
Section B, George Lipsitz,
“Who'll Stop the Rain? Youth Culture,
Rock 'n' Roll, and Social Crises,” in The Sixties: From Memory to
History
(photocopied handout)
5. According to George Lipsitz, what did it mean to be young in the
1960s?
6. Lipsitz remarks that any “account
of the sixties inevitably runs
up against our collective societal capacities for remembering and
forgetting”
(Lipsitz 208) Explain what he means by this.
7. What is the answer to Lipsitz’s
question: “Was popular music in the
sixties the product of young people struggling to establish their own
artistic
vision, or was it the creation of marketing executives eager to cash in
on demographic trends by tailoring mass media commodities to the
interests
of the nation’s largest age cohort?” (211)
8. What new elements of the music
business helped change the industry
in the 1960s?
Section C
9. Explain Lipsitz’s main point in the section titled “Dancing in the
Street” (213-219). How was public space transformed?
10. Lipsitz states that the youth
culture “in the sixties represented
both a rejection of the dominant culture in America and a peculiar
reaffirmation
of it at the same time” (221). How was that so?
11. Describe the ways various
political factions in the 1980s and 1990s
came to understand the legacy of the counterculture and youth rebellion
of the sixties.
THUR NOV
3 Unger, chpt. 6, “The Counterculture”; selections from Alexander Bloom
and Wini Breines, “Eight Miles High: The Counter Culture,” in “Takin'
It to the Streets”: A Sixties Reader (photocopied handout); Sally
Thomlinson,
“Psychedelic Rock Posters: History, Ideas, and Art,” in The
Portable
Sixties Reader (photocopied handout)
Set 15: Answer one
question from each section.
Section
A, Unger, chpt. 6, “The Counterculture”
1. What were
some of the bohemian movements that emerged in the US before the 1960s?
(Unger, 158-160).
2. How did
the young people interviewed in the first document come to find out
about
the Woodstock music fest? What kinds of experiences did these
individuals
have while attending the event?
3. What does
the document entitled “HIPpocrates” reveal about the lifestyle of
hippies?
4. What happened
at the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969? How did onlookers react?
5. Explain
the essence of the “psychedelic revolution” Timothy Leary hoped would
change
America.
Section B, Unger,
chpt. 6 and Sally Thomlinson, “Psychedelic Rock Posters: History,
Ideas,
and Art,” in The Portable Sixties Reader (photocopied handout)
6. How did
the two alternative press reports (pgs 184-190) describe the Summer of
Love? Judging from all three accounts, what kind of community was
Haight-Ashbury?
7. The Bay
Area rock scene of the mid to late 1960s was incredibly eclectic.
What were some of the influences driving the musicians and artists in
San
Francisco? What do the posters of the era tell us about the
spirit
of the age?
8. Describe
the mass public events held in an around San Francisco in the late
sixties.
Section
C, Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines, “Eight Miles High: The Counter
Culture,”
in “Takin' It to the Streets”: A Sixties Reader (photocopied
handout)
9. According
to the introduction to the chapter “’Eight Miles High’: The
Counterculture”
(227-229) how would artists in the sixties try to influence
politics?
10. How did
Gary Snyder and Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd make their faiths
relevant
to the sixties generation?
11. What was
the appeal of the psychotropic drug LSD? Who took it and why?
12. What did
the communes of the late sixties and early seventies represent?
Why
did they draw so many to them? (283-86)
WEEK
11 The Antiwar Movement
TUES NOV 8
Farber, chpt. 7, “A Nation at War”
Set
16: Answer two questions from each section.
Section
A
1. Why did
Paul Potter and the SDS stand in opposition to the Vietnam War in 1965?
2. What does
David Farber mean when he suggest that the Vietnam conflict was much
more
complex than young radicals imagined? Were left wing antiwar
college
students naïve?
3. What did
victory in Vietnam mean for the Johnson administration? Was
victory
achievable? Why or why not?
4. Who fought
the war in Vietnam? Who was able to avoid the draft? Why?
Section
B
5. Farber
writes that all “wars have their atrocities, but in Vietnam some
Americans
did things that cannot be forgotten” (152). Was Vietnam, on this
count, any worse than previous American wars? If so, why?
6. How did
President Johnson and the media, as Farber contends, lie “to the
American
people about both the nature and the development of the war[?]” (153)
7. Explain
the development of the antiwar movement from the mid-1960s on.
How
would the movement change over the years?
8. Why did
much of the US media, at least by 1967-68, start to slter its position
on the war?
THUR NOV 10 Farber,
chpt. 8, “The War Within”; Unger, chpt. 10, “The Antiwar Movement”;
Turn
in a one to two page abstract for your final research paper, describing
what your major thesis will be and highlighting what you hope to
achieve.
See this guide to writing abstracts on the University
of North Carolina’s Writing Center webpage. Your abstract
grade
will be deducted five points for every day it is overdue.
Set
17: Answer one question from each section.
Section A, Farber, chpt.
8, “The War Within”
1. David Farber writes that by “the late 1960s the Vietnam War had
become a prism on American society, refracting that society into bands
of linked but separate realities” (167). Describe what Farber
means
by this.
2. “The Diggers represented the
counterculture at its most productive
and its most fantastic,” comments Farber (170). Explain this
statement?
3. How and why did drug use spread
so quickly within the 60s counterculture?
Section B
4. What were some of the basic connections between the new drug culture
and the so-called “free love” movement?
Unger, chpt. 10, “The Antiwar
Movement”
5. How would the Vietnam War change the American peace movement? (Unger
282-86)
6. What did David Potter mean by
“cultural genocide”? Did he make
a strong argument?
7. Potter described what he called
“the system.” What did he mean
by that term? Is there such a thing as “the system”?
Section C
8. What was the motivation behind the document “Facts You Should Know
About Nuclear Fallout”? What sort of arguments did the authors of
this document make?
9. How would the “March Against
Death” represent a more active and aggressive
antiwar stance?
10. Describe the tactics of antiwar
activists who wrote the pamphlet,
“We Refuse to Serve.” How did these protesters plan to counter
the
draft? Were there actions justified or lawful?
WEEK 12 Social
Unrest in the US during the Late Sixties and the Election of 1968
TUES NOV 15
Farber, chpt. 9, “Stormy Weather”; Unger, chpt. 7, “The New Feminism”
Set
18: Answer one question from each section.
Section A, Farber, chpt. 9,
“Stormy Weather”
1. Describe some of the forces that influenced the SDS. What
drew so many college students together in the protest movement?
2. What were the goals of the Free
Speech Movement? What type
of student did it attract?
3. David Farber writes that by the
“late 1960s, many young black activists
had lost faith in white society and preached a vague doctrine of
revolutionary
violence” (199). How did this change take place and what new movements
emerged as a result?
4. How would the Black Panther Party
come to symbolize the new “revolutionary
black militancy”? (206)
Section B
5. Do you agree with Farber’s conclusion that radicals of the era
“poisoned”
American political life and weakened the antiwar movement? (211)
Unger, chpt. 7, “The New Feminism”
6. Why do Debi and Irwin Unger write
that of “all these ‘liberation
movements,’ the New Feminism was the most significant”? (194) Is
this true?
7. What was the nameless “problem”
Betty Freidan wrote about?
What did Freidan learn from her interviews with housewives?
8. What does the 1967 “NOW Bill of
Rights” reveal about the growing
women’s movement in the US? What rights did NOW organizers
demand?
Have those been achieved in the years since ’67?
Section C
9. Why did Anne Koedt address Sigmund Freud’s theory of vaginal
orgasm?
Is this a minor point, an obscure issue of female anatomy? Why or
why not?
10. How did Koedt and the authors of
the “Redstockings Manifesto” (215)
view male leadership and patriarchy?
11. What were the issues at stake
for the protesters of the 1968 Miss
America Pageant? What parallels existed between this movement and
other liberation movements of the era?
THUR NOV 17 Farber,
chpt. 10, “RN and the Politics of Deception”; Unger, chpt. 12,
“Election
‘68”
Set
19: Answer one question from each section.
Section
A, Farber, chpt. 10, “RN and the Politics of Deception”
1. Why did
Lyndon Johnson, who David Fraber describes as “America’s greatest
political
infighter,” refuse to run for the presidency in 1968?
2. Farber argues
that the “law and order” campaigns of conservative politicians had a
strong
appeal for large segments of America. (217-219) What made this
such
a powerful strategy?
3. What did
protesters at the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention hope to
accomplish?
Were they successful? Why or why not?
4. Explain
the Nixon’s administration role in the affirmative action initiative.
Section
B
5. What was
Nixon’s Vietnam strategy? What was the meaning of “peace with
honor”?
6. Farber remarks
that “Nixon had built his political career by lashing out against those
he perceived as enemies” (232-33). How would Nixon respond to his
enemies in the early 1970s?
Unger, chpt.
12, “Election ‘68”
7. Why did
Robert Kennedy run for president in 1968?
8. Why was
Eugene McCarthy’s campaign called the “children’s crusade”? What
drew college students and young people to McCarthy?
Section
C
9. What was
Jerry Rubin’s plan for the Democratic convention? How might one
describe
the Yippie philosophy?
10. After reading
“Right in Conflict,” describe the scene in Chicago in 1968. What
roles did the police and protesters play?
11. How did
George Wallace’s 1968 campaign speech play to the late sixties
backlash?
WEEK 13
TUES NOV 22
No class
THANKSGIVING
BREAK – NOV 23-25
WEEK 14
The Election of 1968 and the Legacy of the Sixties
TUES NOV 29
Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History
of
the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968
Set 20: Answer
any three of the five questions on this subpage.
THUR DEC 1 Farber,
chpt. 11, “A New World”; David Burner, “Epilogue,” in Making Peace
with
the 60s (photocopied handout)
Set 20: No specific
questions. If you chose
to do this set, turn in a general review of the material in both Farber,
chpt. 11, “A New World” and David Burner, “Epilogue,” in Making
Peace
with the 60s (photocopied handout)
WEEK 15
TUES
DEC 6 Turn in and discuss research paper
FINAL EXAM
Tues, 12/13/2005, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM,
OC101
Online study
guide for final exam.
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