American Social History

In our last class on Monday 5/2, we’ll consider whether, as some argue (or wish), America is a “post-racial” society. Is this more true, or less true, since Obama’s election, for instance?

Reading – some links are below: start with the top one, and proceed as time and interest allow, taking note of the core questions and issues in this ongoing cultural discussion in America today:

• “The Myth of Post-Racial America,” June 2010 column in the Washington Post by Steven Levingston
• Commentary on CNN.com, “Post-Racial America Isn’t Here Yet” by Leonard Pitts Jr.
• “Not in my Neighborhood” author Lawrence Bobo also says no – a view from black America, posted on The Root blog
• NPR radio clip (20 minutes) on “Are We Living in a Post-Racial America?“
• “What is Post-Racial America?” – a conservative viewpoint posted on “View From the Right” blog
• “Edging (At Times Clumsily) Toward a Post-Racial America,” Robin Givhan, Washington Post, 16 March 2008
• “Post-Racial America?” by University of California professor John Iceland
• “Post-Racial,” by Michael Crowley, in New Republic, March 2008

Deadlines and Grades

I will be doing project data input to the Digital Worcester website, aiming to get that done before the end of finals period. If anyone would like to help me with the data entry, I will give extra credit for that service. Let me know if you’re interested, I would love to get those all into the database before summer. Since everyone completed the project & submitted all necessary parts, everyone will be receiving the full 20 points for that project.

Your research paper can be submitted anytime from now until May 9th. It needs to be in by the afternoon of May 9th. If you want it returned to you with comments (or electronic markup if it’s submitted in electronic form), let me know. Otherwise I do not plan to write extensive comments–I’ll just give it a grade, since I rarely have students ask for their final papers or exams back.

The exam on the third unit will be Monday, May 9th at 12:30 pm in our regular classroom. You don’t need to bring anything special, just something to write with. It will be similar to the other two exams: essays based on our class discussion and on our course readings. I always get this question at the end of the term, so let me address it now: no, you do not HAVE to take the 3rd exam. Doing so will help you provide closure on the unit and will demonstrate your learning in the course to yourself as well as to me. That in itself is reason enough to take it, in my opinion. However, since the lowest exam is dropped, if you have 2 exam grades that you are happy with, you are not required to take the third one or to show up on that day.

The last assignment is a reflection paper, which is due on or before May 9th. Please respond to these questions in a well-constructed paper of 2-3 pages long:

1) The course objective is:

In this course, we will explore topics in the social history of the United States, through a wide variety of sources including newspapers, periodicals, tracts, photographs, archival records, didactic literature, fiction and oral history. You will gain experience with the work of social history in your readings and assignments. You’ll consider and experiment with ways of writing history that take “the little guy” (and gal) into account.

Discuss how well you’ve achieved this course objective through your participation in class, your written work, and your scholarly research.

2) Provide feedback on the Digital Worcester project. What did you learn from it? How could it be improved?

3) Reflect on your learning in this course. What was your approach to learning social history? How well did it work for you? And if you have specific suggestions on the course’s design (either what worked or what didn’t), I would welcome your feedback.

The reflection paper can be dropped off in my office mailbox (S-327B) along with your research paper if you don’t plan to be there on the 9th.

Thanks for a great semester!

Project overview and guidelines (PDF)

For those of you going on Friday, here are the details:

Meet your drivers & riders at 12:30 and head to the WHM, 30 Elm Street, Worcester. Here’s the map – the parking is on Chestnut St which is a one-way street, so you need to turn onto Chestnut from Pleasant below the museum and park behind the museum in the church parking lot. I go to the rotary where Pleasant, June & Highland come together (near Doherty HS) and take Pleasant all the way to Chestnut. It’s about 5 minutes.

View Larger Map

We will be working at the WHM until 2. You don’t need to bring anything special, just a notebook and pencil. I will provide the worksheet you’ll use to analyze your chosen envelope.

I emailed you my phone number to text me to coordinate the transportation or any last-minute things you need to tell me. I also posted these car lists on Blackboard. It would be very courteous for the groups to exchange contact info so you can communicate & meet up easily & so the drivers can keep me informed on everyone’s whereabouts.

Drivers: text me sometime today so that I have your #s.

This week, we continue looking at Progressive-Era labor from the workers’ point of view by coming home to Worcester.

(Image: Dining Hall of the Royal Worcester Corset Company; copyright Harvard University)

Mon 2/8 – Workers in Worcester
Reading: Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, Parts I and II (“Context” and “Culture”)

Here’s a chance for us to combine our growing knowledge of urban working class life with a well-written, detailed local history of the city right under our nose. Roy Rosenzweig earned his PhD from Harvard in 1978, and was a professor of history at WPI here in Worcester. After writing Eight Hours, he got interested in the possibilities of digital history. He wrote one of the first electronic textbooks, a CD-ROM documenting ordinary Americans’ contributions to US History, called “Who Built America?” and he founded the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He pioneered digital history both as a way to preserve historical resources, and as a forum for making history more accessible, especially to the ordinary folks who make it. He died in 2007; more about his life and work here.

On Monday we’ll talk about Worcester as an industrial city 1870-1920. What was made here? Who worked here? Where did they come from? Where did they live?

Read Chapter 1 carefully. You can skim Chapter 2, or focus only on its first 10 pages. For Chapter 3, jot some notes about how there were different “ethnic” Fourths of July – it’s okay to give it just a quick read.

Wed 2/10 – Workers in Worcester, Part II
Reading: Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, Parts III and IV (“Conflict” and “Culture, Conflict and Change”)

Read the rest of the book for our Wednesday discussion. If you don’t have time to read the entire rest of the book, do this: Choose one chapter from Part III (either Chapter 4, 5, or 6) to read more closely than the other two. Do the same for Part IV. Class discussion will focus specifically on the following questions:

• How did Rosenzweig use sources to construct a portrait of workers in Worcester?
• What changes over time are documented here? What caused these changes?
• What was it like to live in Worcester at this time period? How do we know?
• What is Rosenzweig’s overall argument?
• How might we go about researching Worcester in the same time period?

Fri 2/12 – Presentation Day #2
Our presenters this week can draw on any of last week’s topics, or come up with a new one that’s Worcester-related.

Some ideas:

Check out the digital database to which we will be adding our projects (http://digitalworcester.org) and find a few items that connect to each other or to Rosenzweig’s book. Make a “virtual exhibit” of them and be the tour guide for us in your presentation.

Read, and then highlight for us, the employee handbook of the Royal Worcester Corset Company, circa 1910. The booklet is owned (and beautifully digitized for our benefit) by the Harvard University Schlesinger Library; it promotes workers’ health, and lauds its own forward-thinking industrial design as a “model factory.” What can you learn from it about the working lives of women employed by Royal Corset–and the women who were its customers?

Discuss a more recent example of Worcester oral history, from the list of interviewees at the Oral History Project of the Worcester Women’s History Project. Give it the sensitive “Like a Family” treatment. What can you learn about work–and about Worcester–from a contemporary oral history?

Profile FDR’s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a cabinet-level position in US History. She grew up in Worcester; her home is now a women’s shelter called Friendly House. You can learn more about her starting at the Frances Perkins Center website (in Maine). What does a Secretary of Labor do? What were her responsibilities and legacy during the Great Depression and New Deal, when all eyes were on federal efforts to end unemployment?

Create a public Google map of the Worcester neighborhoods or locations mentioned in Rosenzweig’s book. Map and label important sites, events, conflicts, or addresses from his account. For instructions on how to create a Google map, see the Google Map User Guide.

Everyone: thanks for a terrific field trip! I thought it went really well and I want to thank everyone for their cooperation. I hope you enjoyed the trip and the experience of doing primary source research and I hope you have the chance to get back there on your own for research or to see the rest of the museum.

The librarian, Robyn Christensen, has a list of your names and Worcester State College email addresses, and which envelope you worked on. Over the weekend she & her volunteers will scan the cards in your envelope and email them to you as image (jpg) files. (It may be in several emails).

If you took your packet home, you should check to make sure she has emailed you all the fronts & backs of the cards in your envelope. If something is missing, crooked, etc, then reply to HER (not to me) by email and let her know. If it’s complete, also let HER know with a short email, like: “Got everything, it all looked good, thanks.”

If I have your packet, then you can do that on Wednesday in class.

If you wanted her to copy something else in the envelope – a personal letter, a newspaper clipping, a photograph, etc – you also need to let her know with a polite and clear request saying exactly which envelope and which items. The default is, only the cards will be scanned and not the other materials. Scanning the extra materials might take longer – you might not have it by next week, which is okay, just be patient. We made a lot of work for them all in one day and they are being VERY gracious about doing all the scanning and copying for us!

I have uploaded the Word document on which you were taking notes at the museum. It is posted under “Assignments” and is also found by clicking here. Open the Word document, and input the information as a typed transcript. You will make a typed version of the envelope contents. You should save it to your own computer but in such a way that you can open it on Wednesday from a computer in Sullivan. It should be on a flash drive, or emailed to yourself, or saved to your Zspace, or whatever works for you. It will help if you save the document with your last name in the file name.

Any questions? Email me before Wednesday 2/18 and I’ll try to clear up anything muddy, and we will work on this together in class on Wednesday. See you then!

And: if you missed the field trip, you need to come see me in person so we can talk about how to schedule a makeup visit. My office hours are posted on my door (Sullivan 327B) or email me for an appointment ASAP.