US History II

I have posted the new syllabus schedule, based on the results of Friday’s voting, in the sidebar links. You can also download it here (2-page PDF). The “lens” for the first unit is gender, so as we look at the period from 1875 to 1900 we will be interested in how men & women were defined and the contexts in which they experienced being male or female. Gender mattered deeply in work, home, citizenship, and opportunity during this period.

Here’s a brief overview of the unit:

Mon 9/10 – Finish talking about Reconstruction – reading is to review Ch 1-3 to get an overview of the time period’s major events

Wed 9/12 – Self-Made Men & Women; Homesteaders; Westerners and Immigrants. Reading: Ch 2.2 Winning & Losing the West AND 2.3 Growth of Industrial America and the New South. BRING LAPTOPS/DEVICES TO CLASS!

Fri 9/14 – Workshop Day on Victorian Masculinity and Femininity. Reading: Davidson, “City Life and City Culture” (PDF – Click here to download). BRING LAPTOPS TO CLASS.

Mon 9/17 – Gilded Age Gender. Reading: Ch 2.4 Challenging the Gilded Age

Wed 9/19 – American “Nadir.” Reading: Ch 3.3 Immigration, Ethnicity and the “Nadir of Race Relations.” The online portion of the exam will open on this day (see below for more information).

Fri 9/21 – The written portion of the exam will be in class. The in-class exam will cover what we’ve talked about in class during this unit, including the assigned portions of the textbook and any other assigned readings. The online portion will cover the following basic concepts and events from the rest of Chapters 1-3:

• Reconstruction Amendments
• Sharecropping
• The New South
• Exodusters
• Compromise of 1877
• political machines/ Tammany Hall
• Dawes Act
• Farmers’ Alliances
• Populism/ Omaha Platform
• Knights of Labor v. American Federation of Labor
• Panic of 1893
• Pullman Strike
• Wounded Knee
• Ellis Island
• Election of 1896