US History II

WSU is closed due to the snowstorm. That raises 2 issues: what to do about the Document Duel due today, and what to do about the material we were to have covered in class.

Document Duel: submit by uploading it to Digital Dropbox. If you upload it, I’ll bounce back a quick “I got it” email so you know it was received. I will also accept hard copy (printed) in class on Monday.

Reconstruction: Our discussion today would have re-capped the Reconstruction era, a quick overview that would prepare us to understand what the economic, political and social conditions were in the late 1870s.

Since we can’t conduct that discussion in person, I still would like to give you the opportunity to reflect and synthesize. I created a Word document worksheet for you to complete. Upload it to Digital Dropbox when you are done, and that will count as attending class today even though we are officially closed (i.e. bonus). The Word doc has detailed instructions for how to complete and submit the assignment. This assignment is not required, since the university is closed and not everyone will have a functional internet connection. But I do recommend doing it if you’d done the preparation for today, so that you stay up to schedule with the course material.

We will keep to the syllabus as it’s written, so that means your reading for Monday is the first part of Chapter 18 (up to p. 480), “The New South” (Ask yourself: What was new about it? What wasn’t new?).

One last note: I heard from at least one student that the Experience History textbook is sold out in the University bookstore. While it’s not nearly as complete as the textbook, there is a free online American History textbook created by DigitalHistory.uh.edu at the University of Houston. You could substitute it for the printed textbook while you’re waiting for the order to arrive. It would also be fine to use a statement from that online textbook as the basis for your Document Duel in place of the EH text.

Digital History: Reconstruction
Digital History: The New South

Sorry we are not able to meet today, because of the lousy weather and a 2-hour delay. We will get acquainted in person on Friday, but in the meantime the course’s work will still begin. Missing today’s session should not set us back too far, we will keep to the schedule as planned on the syllabus. There’s a link to the syllabus in the left hand sidebar, and also from the Blackboard page.

Please make sure that you do the following –

As discussed in the syllabus, you will be turning in a “Document Duel” each Friday, starting this week. The instructions are under the “Document Duel” tab at the top of this page. In today’s class I had planned to talk about how to approach your first one; here is my slide of suggestions. Just do your best. Please note that all your DDs must be received by me either in class (printed out) or BEFORE class (if you have to upload to Blackboard’s Digital Dropbox for some reason). I cannot accept any DDs after class begins on Fridays. Also, note that you can drop one or skip one without any penalty, so no worries if you choose not to tackle the first one this week.

If you need help with how to make a footnote, or what “Chicago Style” is see Diana Hacker online, or the CMS Quick Guide. If you’re curious about why it’s called “Chicago Style,” well… it has nothing to do with pizza.

This is the course website for Tona Hangen’s sections of US History II at Worcester State (HI 112-02 and HI 112-H2) meeting in Room S-105, MWF at 9:30 in the Spring 2011 semester.

I used this site for the Fall 2010 section also, and I plan to leave that work in place as a reference for those students. I’ve tagged all their posts with “Fall10.” Spring 2011 students can safely ignore anything that was written before this message (12/22/10), since I’ll re-post new information for your sections as we go along.

The required books for Spring 2011 are:

Shi and Mayer, For the Record: Documentary History of America, Volume 2. 4th ed (Norton, 2010) – ISBN 9780393934045

Davidson, Experience History, Volume 2. 7th ed (McGraw-Hill, 2011) – ISBN 9780077368326

In addition, I highly recommend that you own a copy of Diana Hacker, A Writer’s Reference (ISBN 978 0312450257). This should have been assigned in your English Comp class, and will be a handy reference book for the writing you will do in this class and throughout your college years. The section on Chicago Style (CMS) will help you with history-style footnotes and citation. In addition, I often find myself referring students back to her “Glossary of usage” and her advice on eliminating passive tense. While the Hacker is not a required text, I do assume that all my students have a copy and that they can make use of it. It is available in the university bookstore every semester.

If you missed class, please drop by my office (S327-B) to pick up a packet ASAP

Project instructions (PDF)

NOTE: when you submit the project on Dec 8th, also return the packet folder. Don’t mark on the packet or its materials in any way, because these will be re-used from semester to semester. Treat them as valuable archival primary sources, and leave them pristine for the next group to look at.

Here’s the worksheet for your packet, in Word document form. Just open the document, type into it, and save it.

Stories on the WikiLeaks release of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables, what one journalist called “the 9/11 of diplomacy”

Peter Kornbluh reflects on what it all means, on PRI’s “The World” (11/30/10) 4:25

Monday 28th coverage on NPR All Things Considered “Damage Control by the State Department” 4:00

UK’s Guardian newspaper website on the US Embassy cables

Earlier versions of the syllabus incorrectly listed the “final” exam (Exam #4) for Friday the 17th of December.

The correct date & time is WEDNESDAY, Dec 15 at 8:30 am.

I have corrected both the course Google calendar and the syllabus PDF.

The next three weeks will look at the 1960s (and early 1970s) from three different perspectives. This week, we’ll look at the gaining momentum for school desegregation and the long-overdue but slow dismantling of Jim Crow legislation in the 1950s–and the constitutional conflicts that momentum provoked. On Wednesday and Friday we’ll look at the domestic policy agenda, and mixed achievements, of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. For this week, read Chapters 33 and 34. Since there’s no assigned reading for Friday the 5th, use that as a day to catch up on any missed reading and to review the postwar era so far (Chapters 29-34).

All of this will be essential background and overview for next week, when we look closely at the leaders, organizations, events and strategies of 1960s civil rights movements, and for the week after–a look at the tormented era of the Vietnam War, the turbulent end of the 1960s, and the Watergate crisis that ended Nixon’s presidency (Chapter 35).

The unit exam will be Monday, 11/22, covering Chapters 29-35.

In this course, we explore the history of the United States since end of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Students will learn about broad themes in American history, including immigration, race and ethnicity, social and political reform, mobility and population growth, contested meanings of freedom, industrialization, cycles of prosperity and recession, popular culture, modernity, and rights movements. Students will also develop ways of thinking historically through critical analysis of primary and secondary sources; setting events, documents and people in their historical contexts; and crafting interpretations and historical narratives from the “raw material” of the past. In this course, students should expect to do much more than memorize facts or dates – you will be busy actively doing history, not passively learning about history.

In Fall 2010, I am teaching HI 112 on Mon/Wed/Fri at 9:30 am (HI 112-03) – Room S-314. Think of this site as the Grand Central Station (or, for the local analogy, Union Station) for the course.

Our required readings will be:

George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, America: A Narrative History 8th edition (WW Norton), ISBN: 978-0393934076 – read this one at home (“blue book”)

David Emory Shi and Holly Mayer, For the Record: A Documentary History of America: From Reconstruction through Contemporary Times 4th edition (WW Norton), ISBN: 978-0393934045 – bring this one to class (“red book”)