Over the course of the semester you must
complete
all of the response papers. You must answer 5 sets of
questions over the semester. These will be graded on a pass/fail
basis. Your answers to each of the five sets of questions should
be 1.5 pages. These are due in class on the day that the reading
is assigned. Additionally, students will write one major (4-5
pages) and one minor (1.5-2 pages) book review. Book reviews will
be based on the supplemental books. (Review questions and a guide
to writing reviews will be placed on the web.) Graded on a 1-100
scale, reviews must be handed in during class on the day they are due.
SCHEDULE
& QUESTION SETS
(All readings are to be completed on the day they are listed.)
WEEK 1
THUR Sept
6: Course intro
WEEK 2:
THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA
TUES Sept
11: Faragher, Out of Many, 434-444.
THUR Sept 13: Faragher, 444-49; “Reconstruction and Free Plantation
Labor,” in The Way We Lived, 3-21, course pack
(CP).
Set 1:
Choose two questions from section A and two from section B.
Section A:
1.
Is the system that historian Peter Kolchin describes any different than
slavery? Why or why not? How free were freedmen?
2. Why
were
freedman and white planters first attracted to the sharecropping
system?
3. What
were
the Black Codes in Louisiana designed to do?
Section
B:
4.
What do the Kolchin essay and the documents indicate about the goals of
the newly freed African-Americans?
5. What
actions
did the freedmen take to achieve their objectives and what sorts of
obstacles
did they face?
6. In "A Letter
to Master"� a freedman agrees to work for his former master if his
master
would give him back pay for all the work he and his family had
done.
Considering how devastating and soul-crushing slavery actually was,
would
reparations for African-Americans be an effective tool to right a
horrible
wrong?
WEEK 3:
RECONSTRUCTION ERA
TUES Sept
18: Faragher, 449-55; Claude G. Bowers, The Tragic Era: The Revolution
after Lincoln (1929), pgs 306-10 (CP); Henry T. Thompson, Ousting the
Carpetbagger from South Carolina (1927), pgs 32-35 (CP).
Set 2:
Answer all questions.
1.
According to Claude Bowers, who wrote in the 1920s, what role did the
Klan
play during Reconstruction? Why did the KKK exist?
2. What
is
Henry Thompson's view about the Recontruction governments in South
Carolina?
Why do both Bowers and Thompson describe this period as a "tragic era"?
3. What
criticisms
might historians today have of Bowers' and Thompson's interpretations?
Last day drop/add a class is Sept 18
THUR Sept
20: Faragher, 455-63; Eric
Foner and LaWanda Cox, “Was Reconstruction a ‘Splendid Failure,’” in
Taking Sides, pgs 391-410 (CP).
Set 3: Answer
all questions.
1. Why does Columbia
University historian Eric Foner find
Reconstruction
to have been a "spendid" failure? What evidence does he use to
support his
case?
2. LaWanda Cox counters Foner.
Why does she find
Reconstruction
to be a failure that not even Lincoln, had he lived, could have made
into a success?
3. Which argument seems more
persuasive? Why?
WEEK 4:
RECONSTRUCTION ERA & THE WESTERN FRONTIER
TUES Sept
25: Read Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War
and turn in short reaction paper or four-page review essay. See on-line guide
for more details.
Set 4 or
Book Review: If you intend to write your book review, answer one
of the two questions below. If you will be completing one of your
question sets answer all three below.
Indicate which question(s) you are answering on your paper. Make
sure to label your paper as a “discussion set” or “review.”
1.
Nicholas Lemann writes, “The great national questions the war had
raised had by no means been settled” (4) Describe in detail what Lemann
means.
2. Judging from Redemption: The Last
Battle of the Civil War, why was the Reconstruction era such a
violent, turbulent time in the nation’s history?
3. According to Nicholas Lemann, how did the federal government handle
the conflicts and disputes dividing the South? Was federal
policy a success or a failure?
THUR Sept 27: Faragher, 468-485; “The Last Frontier” and “Indian
Schools: ‘Americanizing’ the Native American,” The Way We Lived, 36-43,
56-62 (CP).
Set 4: Answer
one from section A and one from section B.
Section A:
1.
The first selection is by Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark
Twain.
Clemens often employed witty sarcasm and bighting irony in his
work.
What sorts of ironies does he note about the mining town of Virginia
City,
Nevada? How is the system he describes like the dot com boom of
the
1990s?
2. How
does "A Montana Cowtown, 1899" by future president Teddy Roosevelt draw
on
the
myths of the American West? How does this contrast with the
realities
of the West?
Section B:
3.
What did the white writers of the document "Rules for Indian Schools"�
think
of Native American youth? What can you conclude from this
document
about the long term goals of Indian education? Did educators at such
schools
want what was best for Indian children?
4. In
the late
19th and early 20th centuries many white American intellectuals
believed
that the human kind could be divided into superior and inferior
races.
This modified Darwinian theory is evident in the selection "A
Government
Official Describes Indian Race and Culture, 1905."� What evidence
does the author offer to support his claims about Indian peoples?
Does this differ significantly from what people now think about race
and
culture?
WEEK 5:
THE WESTERN FRONTIER & INDUSTRIALIZATION & URBANIZATION
TUES Oct
2: Faragher, 485-496; Owen Wister, “When you call me that, smile!”, in
Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902) (CP).
Set 5: Answer
all questions.
1. In many ways Owen Wister
is the father of the modern
Western.
How believable is his tale of the "Virginian"?
2. Why do you think Wister's novel
appealed to so many Americans
in
the early 20th century?
3. Is Wister's tale similar or
different than modern
Westerns?
Why or why not?
THUR Oct 4: Faragher, 504-527.
WEEK 6:
THE GILDED AGE
TUES Oct
9: Sean Dennis Cashman, “Industrial Spring: America in the Gilded Age,”
in Leon Fink, ed., Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive
Era, pgs. 2-7 (CP); and Donald Fleming, “Harvard’s Golden Age?” in
Glimpses of the Harvard Past (1986) 77-94 (CP). This latter chapter
covers the rapid growth of Harvard under president Charles Eliot.
Student life figures prominently in this piece.
Set 6: Answer two questions in
each section.
Section A
1. According to Sean Dennis
Cashman, what was the meaning
of
Mark Twain's use of the term "Gilded Age"� to describe the era of the
late
19th century?
2. What features of the Gilded Age
does Cashman find in three
later
periods of American history? What does this, then, say about the
Gilded Age?
3. How would the Industrial
Revolution alter American
society?
Section B
4. Describe the ways Harvard was
growing in the years 1880-1910. Why was that growth taking
place? What changes did the institution undergo as a result?
5. What was the average student at
Harvard like? Who went to Harvard in these years?
6. What was life like for the
typical undergraduate?
THUR Oct 11: Faragher, 532-546. Selection from Michael Lesy,
Wisconsin Death Trip (1973), recording the effects of the 1893 economic
and psychic depression in Wisconsin.
WEEK 7:
MIDTERM
WEEK 8:
MASS PROTEST
TUES Oct
23: “Thomas E. Watson” and Tom Watson, “The Negro Question in the
South,” in Charles E. Wynes, ed., Forgotten Voices: Dissenting
Southerners in An Age of Conformity, pgs 57-72, (CP); “Women’s Sphere:
Women’s Work,” in The Way We Lived, 63-65, 77-82, (CP).
Set 7: Answer any 1 from
section A and any 2 from setion B.
Section A
1.
What did the Georgia populist Senator Tom Watson argue was the answer
to
the so-called "Negro Question"?
2.
According
to Watson, what role would the "People's party" play in the South?
Section B
3.
In 1844, Massachusetts secretary of education Horace Mann thought
women's
status would change in the years ahead. Why did he think
this?
4.
Judging
from the first document, "Only Heroic Women Were Doctors Then (1865),
1916,"�
how did the perception of a separate place for women within the medical
profession change between 1865 and 1916?
5.What
kinds
of challenges did Dr. Anna Manning Comfort face? Do women in
today's
workforce confront similar challenges?
6. In "Women's
Separate Sphere, 1872," Supreme Court Justice William Bradley upheld an
Illinois decision barring women from the legal profession. How
ddi
Bradley make his case? What does this reflect about popular
conceptions
of gender following the Civil War?
THUR Oct 25: Read Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 and turn
in short reaction paper or four-page review essay. See on-line guide
for more details.
WEEK 9:
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
TUES Oct
30: Faragher, 547-56; Document 20-25, William McKinley, “Decision on
the Philippines (1900)” from your US History Docs CD-ROM and answer
questions.
Set 8:
Questions from CD-ROM
THUR Nov 1: No class
WEEK 10:
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM & THE PROGRESSIVE IMPULSE
TUES Nov
6: Ian Urbina and Chris Toensing, “In
the Good Old Wallow Time,” The Baffler (January 2003); Document
20-8, Mark Twain “Incident in the Philippines (1924)” from your US
History Docs CD-ROM and answer questions.
Set 9:
Questions from CD-ROM
THUR Nov 8: Faragher, 562-571; 21-6 Document 21-6, Jane Addams, “Twenty
Years at Hull House (1910),” from your US History Docs CD-ROM and
answer questions.
Set 10:
Questions from CD-ROM
WEEK 11:
THE PROGRESSIVE IMPULSE & POPULAR CULTURE
TUES Nov
13: Faragher, 578-583; “Life and Labor in Industrial America,” in The
Way We Lived, 83-98 (CP).
Set 11: Answer all three of the
following.
1.
According to Bonnie Mitelman's article, "Rose Schneiderman and the
Triangle
Fire," what were working conditions like at the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory
before the fire? How had workers responded to these
conditions?
What did management do about it? How could workplace conditions
be
so bad? In what ways did the Triangle fire change both public
opinion
and the relationship of employees to management?
2.
Looking
at America in the distant past and in the present, can you think of
other
large-scale catastrophes that led to sweeping reform or major changes
in
society?
3. After reading "An Italian Bootblack's Story,"
describe the hardships newcomers
faced at
the
turn-of-the-century. If working and living conditions were so
bad,
why did so many immigrants stream into the US during this period?
THUR Nov 15: “Consumer Culture and Commercialized Leisure,” in Leon
Fink, ed., Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era,
pgs. 325-346 (CP).
Set
12: Answer two questions from one section and one from the other.
Section A
1. In the introduction to this chapter on consumer culture, Leon Fink
writes: “Collapsing older social divisions based on region, ethnicity,
class, and sex, the new mass leisure and commercialization empires
exercised a powerful nationalizing force within the culture.” In
specific terms, how did this transition occur?
2. What does the poor country girl in Theodore Dreiser’s novel make of
the department store and its customers?
3. Explain Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s critique of consumerism.
Are such critiques still applicable today?
Section B
4. According to the author of document 4, how could movies be a
democratizing force?
5. What was the “carnival spirit” Frederic Thompson hoped to create in
the selection from 1908?
6. How did baseball help Americans cope with the onslaughts of
industrialization and social change?
WEEK 12:
POPULAR CULTURE
TUES Nov
20: Read John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn
of the Century and turn in short reaction paper or four-page review
essay. See
on-line guide for more details.
Set
13: Answer both questions if you are doing a discussion
set. Answer only one if you are doing your short or longer book
review.
IMPORTANT: Indicate the question(s) you will answer at the top of your
paper
and note whether your assignment is the short or longer paper or the
discussion set.
1. According to John F. Kasson, Coney Island symbolized the rise of the
new mass culture. Write a review essay describing what exactly
was "new" about the new mass culture. How did the new mass
culture challenge the values of Victorianism? What role did this
amusement park play within traditional society? Be sure to offer
specific examples to back up your argument.
2. Write a review essay describing how Coney Island often served as an
attractive escape for individuals from all classes. How does John
F. Kasson argue that Coney Island served as a social leveler?
THUR Nov 22: Thanksgiving break, no class
WEEK 13:
RACE, IMMIGRATION, & REFORM
TUES Nov
27: Faragher 546-47, 571-78; “The Triumph of Racism,” in The Way We
Lived, 99-114 (CP).
Set
14: Answer all four.
1. "The
Birth of 'Separate but Equal'": How did the Supreme Court's decision in
Plessy v. Ferguson conclude that segregation did not violate the
Fourteenth Amendment, which should guarantee equal protection under the
law? How would this case shape race relations in the South?
2. "A United States Senator Defends Lynching, 1907": What did the
southern Senator Ben Tillman think was the cause of white on black
violence, specifically lynching? How did he argue his case?
3. "A Call for Equality, 1905": What did W.E.B. Du Bois offer as a
solution to racism?
4. "I Want to Come North, 1917": Given the fact that race relations
were at such a low point in the early twentieth century South, did it
have make sense for African Americans to flee to the urban North?
Would you have left the region if you had faced the kind of
circumstances they faced?
THUR Nov 29: Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian
America: Transformations in
Everyday Life, 1876-1915 (1991), pgs. 7-18 (CP).
Set 16: Answer all four.
1. Why
did immigrants leave their homelands and travel thousands of miles to
America?
2. How did Americans react to the new wave of immigration in the late
1800s and early 1900s?
3. On page 12 Thomas Schlereth titles one section “Resettling and
Migrating.” What does he mean by those two words? Why did a
“fairly substantial ‘floating proletariat’ drift in and out of American
cities in these years”? (17)
4. Did any of your relatives experience something similar to what
Schlereth describes?
WEEK 14:
THE GREAT WAR
TUES Dec
4: Faragher, 588-598; “America Goes to War,” in The Way We Lived,
115-116, 129-133 (CP).
Set
16: Answer all three.
1.
"Letters From Mennonite Draftees, 1918." How were Mennonite
conscientious objectors treated by military and legal authorities?
2. Most people today would agree that they suffered horrible
abuse. Yet should conscientious objectors have faced any
punishment by the federal government? Should they have served
prison time, for instance, for refusing to fight? Would you apply
for CO status if the US reinstated the draft?
3. "Racism and the Army, 1918." Judging from this document, what
did French officials think about the US military's race policy?
Why did US officials issue these demands?
THUR Dec 6: Faragher, 598-611.
WEEK 15:
Final Exam, Tues, 12/11/07, 10:30am - 12:30pm, OC101
Studyguide for
final exam
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