US History II

Today’s document workshop focuses on interactions between whites and American Indians in the West, particularly in the upper Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Northwest. Keep in mind that federal policy itself was developing in several different directions over this time, even as greater numbers of people moved to the West from the Eastern U.S. and from Europe in search of opportunity and a new start, making it a constantly changing situation.

If you have your textbook, use the Chapter 15 Document Project

If you don’t have your textbook but you do have a laptop, use the Primary Source set about the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre from the Digital Public Library of America.

If you don’t have either of these, use one of the books at the front of the class.

Reminder: PSA #2 is due on Wednesday, and I recommend you use one of the documents you used in today’s workshop as the basis for your paper.

Today’s class looks at overlapping stories and cultures in the American West in the late 19th century. We will try to define the region (where does the West begin and end?) and map its human, geographic, and mythic landscapes.

To prepare for today, you read Chapter 15 up through page 504 and listened to to the 1-hour episode of the podcast This American Life, “Little War on the Prairie” (November 23, 2018) about the Dakota War of 1862 and how it’s been remembered — and selectively forgotten.

On Monday, Feb 4 we will engage in a Document Workshop about the Chapter 15 documents; here’s a worksheet to help you prepare ahead of time for the workshop. It was handed out in class but I’m also providing it as a Word doc you can download if you prefer to type your responses.

Speaking of mythmaking and memory on the American western prairie, this week I spotted an essay about the return of the “prairie dress” (a popular style in the 1980s) in women’s boho fashion. Lots to think about here….

For lecture / discussion today: Chapter 14 and the multiple, competing, contentious versions of Reconstruction history … and why we’re still living with the legacies of that era (for more on Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler’s work on disparate funding for southern cemeteries, see “The Costs of the Confederacy,” Smithsonian Magazine Dec 2018).

Handout: Transcript and discussion questions for this clip

For Friday: in addition to reading Chapter 15, please listen to the 1-hour episode of the podcast This American Life, “Little War on the Prairie” (November 23, 2018) about the Dakota War of 1862 and how it’s been remembered — and selectively forgotten.

Additional resources:

Civil War Era Maps (University of South Florida)

Freedmen’s Bureau – How Effective? (National Archives DocsTeach)

Freedmen’s Bureau Primary Source Set (Digital Public Library of America)

Freedmen and Southern Society Project (Univ of Maryland)

Black Codes (PBS)

African American Odyssey: Quest for Full Citizenship (Library of Congress)

U.S. History in Context (WSU Library)

Nice to meet everyone this week, I hope you had a good start to your semester. For those of you who submitted a Practice Primary Source Analysis (PSA) today: I’ll comment and return those by Monday so you can incorporate the feedback into your first graded PSA paper, due Wednesday Jan 30th.

Check Blackboard for a new section called “Slides and Handouts” for any material shown or distributed in class.

Links from Friday’s class:

• Martin Luther King Jr, NBC interview explaining how white and black “peasants” have different historical legacies, Atlanta Georgia, 8 May 1967
• How Textbooks can Teach Different Versions of History (Houston Public Media via NPR, 13 July 2015

For Monday, Jan 28th — Read Chapter 14 and prepare to bring your book or laptop to class for our first Document Workshop using the Ch 14 Document Project. You don’t need to write anything in advance.

Welcome to our class! 

What to do for Friday, Jan 25th: 

Bring your textbook to class on Friday

Read the syllabus. Read it twice. 

Explore the course Blackboard environment and course website

Read Hewitt & Lawson, EAH (Exploring American Histories) Chapter 14 section on “Emancipations”

Write a practice PSA paper and either bring it to Friday’s class or upload it to the Pre-PSA assignment portal on Blackboard by start of class on Friday. For your document, use the one you got in today’s class, or any one from Chapter 14 of the textbook, or one from this online collection of documents. For more info on what a PSA Paper is and how to write one, see p. 3 of the syllabus, the PSA Papers section of Blackboard, or the PSA Papers tab, above. You might not be able to fully cite the document you got in class (not all of them had dates / authors), so just do your best with making a footnote for it this time around.

If you can’t obtain the textbook this week, there is 1 copy on course reserve at the Library circulation desk. You will need your OneCard to check it out, and you can use it for up to 2 hours at a time during regular library hours. 

Thanks, all! ~ Dr. Hangen

Welcome to HI 112 US History II for Spring 2019. This course meets LASC requirements for USW or Constitutions. We meet MWF 9:30 am in Sullivan 314.

You will study broad themes in the history of modern America, including race and ethnicity, immigration, social and political reform, contested meanings of freedom, industrialization, cycles of prosperity and recession, popular culture, modernity, and rights movements.

You will improve your ability to think historically through critical analysis of primary and secondary sources; set events, documents, and people in their historical contexts; and craft your own interpretations from the “raw material” of the past.

If your prior experience in history courses involved a lot of memorization of facts and dates, then you will find this course to be very different. The goal is for you to actively DO history, not passively learn about history.

In addition to Blackboard I use this website to organize our course and its materials. Please bookmark it. Older material is from previous semesters; you can ignore anything not tagged “Spr19.”

The required textbook is Nancy A. Hewitt and Steven F. Lawson, Exploring American Histories: A Brief Survey With Sources, Volume 2 Since 1865 (Bedford / St. Martins) 2nd edition ISBN 978-1457694714. Please make sure you get Vol 2 and the 2nd Edition.

I look forward to meeting you on January 23rd. If you have questions in the meantime, feel free to reach out by email at thangen @ worcester.edu.

Exam #4 will take place on Monday, May 14 at 8:30 am in the Eager Auditorium. As before, you may bring 1 8.5×11″ notes page.

Study Guide here

In our last unit, we explore the history of the United States since the 1950s. This unit includes a final Skillbuilder, Constitutions Module #3, and a project about American recent history, due on May 4.

Exam #4 (not a final, just the 4th unit exam) will take place on Monday May 14 at 8:30 in Eager Auditorium.

Link from Wednesday, April 11 – “Two Ford Family” commercial

Handout for Wednesday, April 11 – Questions for Chapter 25

Link from Friday, April 13 – Eyes on the Prize, Part I (it’s a 6-part series, highly recommended viewing)

Link for Wednesday, April 18 – Excerpt from JFK Inaugural speech and Sam Cooke, Change Gonna Come

Links for Wednesday, April 25 – All in the Family and Foner on Conservatism

Links for Monday, April 30 – George HW Bush Defines “New World Order” (Sept 1990) and Interactive Map of 200 Years of US Military Deployments (ABC News Australia)

Guidelines for History Now Project (topic due Mon 4/30, project due Fri 5/4)

Link for Wednesday, May 2 – “The World in a TShirt” project (NPR / Planet Money)

Link for Friday, May 4 – George W. Bush Addresses the Nation on 9/11/01 and Obama 2016 WHCD

Supplemental Reading for Monday May 7: The Culture Wars Are Dead and Bill Gates on How the World Will Change by 2030

Welcome back from Spring Break! This week we will study World War II (Chapter 23), and your Evidence-Based Paper is due on Friday, March 30. Next week we explore how the Cold War began (Chapter 24). The Unit 3 test is on Monday April 9 in Sullivan Room 320.

You don’t need to bring your book to class on our two Document Workshop days – I’ll have documents to hand out in class for us to work from.

Handout: Chapter 23 Questions (World War II)

Handout: Atlantic Charter / Everybody’s War (Mon, March 26) – Link to Film “Everybody’s War“. Link to “The Power of Art” about the Guernica painting

Handout: Executive Order 9066 (Wed, March 28)

Links: 99% Invisible Podcast “Manzanar” on Japanese internment camps; VE Day from BBC (1945, as read in 1995, 10 min); End of WW2 (AP Archive, 3 min); American Experience, “America and the Holocaust” (1.5 hours)

Handout: Chapter 24 Questions (Cold War)

Exam 3 Study Guide – Exam is on April 9 in Room S-320