US History II

Thank you, everyone, for making my early mornings so enjoyable! I hope you learned a lot this term – both about US history itself, and about the process by which it gets made and why it’s so fascinating & important.

Please take note of these details to finish up the term well:

Mon Dec 7th – Turn in your History Now projects in class. The online portion of the last exam will go live by 9:00 am. You have until Dec 12th at 8:00 am to take it up to 3 times. It is 20 questions, worth 12 points total. Everyone needs to take this one, because ALL of the online tests are required and none gets dropped.

The terms and concepts on the online test are from Chapters 13 and 14:
New Right
Reaganomics
Deregulation (in the context of the Reagan Era)
SDI
Iran-Contra
Berlin Wall’s fall
NAFTA
1986 Immigration Act
Clinton’s impeachment
2000 Election
Al Qaeda
Bush Doctrine
War in Iran & Afghanistan
Patriot Act
SB 1070

Wed Dec 12th – online test closes at 8:00 am. The written portion will be given in our classroom starting at 8:30 am, and I will also have the History Now evaluations & grades for you then. The lowest exam is dropped, so you do not have to take the written portion if you are happy with your other exam grades.

Updated: The written exam will be based on our discussions in class about race, immigration and identity since the 1980s. Please study the textbook sections for this unit as listed in the syllabus: 13.1, 13.2, 13.4, and 14.3. Be prepared to answer questions or write about: Reaganomics and its consequences, globalization, and changes in immigration and racial/ethnic diversity. There will likely be a question about what you learned about recent history from doing the “History Now” project, similar to what you wrote on in class. It is not designed to take 3 hours – plan on about 50-70 minutes to take the exam.

Thanks, and have a great holiday!

In this last unit of the course, we consider recent history – what matters, who decides, and how best to learn about more recent events. The “lens” is Race, Identity and Immigration, i.e. the “New Face of the USA.” What does America look (and sound, and taste) like in 2012, and why?

Here’s a unit overview. Note there’s also a new tab above for your unit SkillBuilder due on Friday 11/30.

Mon 11/26 – “What Happened to the 1960s?” Reading: Skim Ch 12, especially 12.4 Middle East and Malaise: America in the Late 1970s

Wed 11/30 – Reaganomics and the End of the Cold War. Reading: Chapter 13.1 and 13.2

Fri 11/30 – History Now Workshop Day. Very important that you’re in class on this day, I’ll be handing out the packets for our History Now project (guidelines here). No reading. SkillBuilder #6 is due by the start of class.

Mon 12/3 – Immigration in Your Time. Reading: Ch 13.4 Technology and Globalization

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno _ Citizenship Test by hulu

Wed 12/5 – American Diversity. Reading: Ch 14.3 Diversity in the New America

Fri 12/7 – History Now, Discussion Day. No reading, History Now Project is due in class. No electronic submission on this project and NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED.

The last exam will be Wed 12/12 at 8:30 am in our classroom

Well, the water main break has made a really long weekend – no class today, Wed 11/14.

Here is how we will revise the schedule and grading for Unit 4:

1. I am cancelling the in-class exam on Monday 11/19. That day will be a regular class, on popular culture during the Vietnam War. Here’s one minute from 10 years of network news coverage of the war, with CBS’s Walter Cronkite:

2. In place of that exam, I am making a longer online (i.e. open-book) multiple-choice test. It will be 30 questions long, each worth 2 points, for a total of 60 points replacing the 57 points of the online + written portions. The online test will open on Friday, November 16th after class and remain open until just before midnight, Wednesday the 21st. You can take it up to 3 times.

3. Please read chapters 10.3 (“America and the World During the Kennedy Years”), and all of 11 and 12. The test will cover the following concepts and terms from those chapters:

Cuban Missile Crisis
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Great Society (including Medicare, Medicaid)
Second-wave feminism including NOW, Ms, ERA, and Title IX
Vietnam War terms: Gulf of Tonkin, Rolling Thunder, Tet Offensive, My Lai Massacre, War Powers Act
Election of 1968
New Left
Kent State shooting
Pentagon Papers
Watergate
detente
the 1970s “crisis of confidence”
Iranian revolution and hostage crisis

Our lens for this unit is Media and Popular Culture, especially television and rock&roll music.

Mon 11/5 – Television, Media and Music. Reading: excerpt from David Halberstam, The Fifties (PDF)

Check out some TV of the era:

Milton Berle, an early 1949 show

News film on the Kefauver hearings on organized crime (1951)

The Jack Benny Show (guest star Fred Allen) in 1953

Camel News Caravan nightly newscast from 1952

Wed 11/7 – Postwar America. Reading: Ch 9.2 Postwar America + 9.3 Red Scares

Two film trailers:  THEM! (1954) and Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Fri 11/9 – Workshop Day on Juvies and Youth Culture. We will work in class with a PDF packet of documents which I will provide (although it can be downloaded here if you want to look ahead at it). SkillBuilder #5 is due, please use the links provided in the 1954-1980 tab above.

Links: Blackboard Jungle (1955), The Wild One (1953), Teenage Doll (1957)

Mon 11/12 – No School, Veterans Day

Wed 11/14 – Updated: No School, campus closed

Fri 11/16 – Updated: Songs of the Long Sixties. Reading: Ch 10.3 America and the World During the Kennedy Years. Online test (30 questions) opens up after class and will remain open until Wed 21st just before midnight. See post above for details and coverage.

Mon 11/19 – Media and Popular Culture in the Vietnam Era. Reading: Ch 11.2 The Great Society and the Vietnam War

No class on Wed 11/21 – enjoy your Thanksgiving! Online test closes just before midnight 11/21.

Background reading for this unit = Ch 7-10. Our lens is the economy and labor, which is well suited to helping us understand the Crash, Depression and New Deal. This is a longer unit, because it also includes time to develop and write a 5-page paper based on a book of primary sources (paper guidelines here).

Image of the FDR Memorial credit: Getty Images/CNN

Mon 10/8 – No classes, Columbus Day

Wed 10/10 – Hard Fall from the 1920s. Reading: Ch 6.4 through the end of that chapter

Fri 10/12 – SkillBuilder #4 is due (use the 1932-1954 tab at the top to access primary sources for this unit). No reading – we will use class time to begin the Primary Source paper project.

Mon 10/15 – FDR and the First New Deal. Reading: Ch 7.1 The First New Deal

Wed 10/17 – New Deal Winners and Losers. Reading: Ch 7.2 Last Hired, First Fired

Fri 10/19 – Writing Workshop – please bring your PRINTED paper draft to class for a peer review session.

Mon 10/22 – Second New Deal. Reading: Ch 7.3 Second New Deal and its Opponents

Wed 10/24 – Popular Culture of the 1930s. Reading: explore some of the other resources on the 1932-1954 Tab besides the one you chose for your unit SkillBuilder.

Fri 10/26 – Grapes of Wrath. No reading; your Primary Source paper is due in class.

Mon 10/29 – No Class today, WSU is cancelled. Assuming you have power and internet, you can complete the task we would have done in class, which is to take a look at either some letters to, or newspaper columns written by, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt from one of the links below. After looking at several, choose one and complete a Library of Congress primary source analysis on it (here’s a link to a type-into PDF version of the form which you can use). I’ll give up to 5 points extra credit to anyone who emails or brings me a completed primary source analysis by the time we meet again on Wednesday. The online quiz is scheduled to open up on Wednesday after class as planned.

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

Wed 10/31 – WW2 in One Day. Yes. This is what we will do. Reading: All of Ch 8. The online quiz will open up on this day after class.

Terms and concepts that will be on the online portion of the exam: Lend-Lease, Neutrality Acts, Executive Order 9066, Fred Korematsu, Code Talkers, Bracero Program, Double V Campaign, CORE, Tuskegee Airmen, D-Day, Manhattan Project, Iron Curtain, Marshall Plan/ Berlin Airlift, NATO, United Nations, GI Bill and McCarthyism

Fri 11/2 – Unit 3 Exam.

This unit will focus on war and the military from 1898 to 1920, which will include American imperialism, US involvement in Latin America, and World War I. It is a short unit and will move quickly through the material. The online quiz will cover other terms and concepts listed below, drawn from Chapters 4-6. Use the 1900-1932 tab above to find primary sources for your SkillBuilder #3.

Here’s an overview of the unit (also found on the schedule, see the link in the left sidebar).

Mon 9/24 – The Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. Reading: Ch 3.4 “Imperialism at Home and Abroad”

Wed 9/26 – Foreign Policy and the Flag. Reading: Ch 4.1.5 “Latin America and Asia”

Fri 9/28 – Workshop Day on the Insular Cases, Hawaii and the start of WW1. SkillBuilder #3 is due . BRING YOUR LAPTOPS TO CLASS. Reading: Ch 5.1 “Wilson Administration and the Coming War”

Mon 10/1 – World War I. Reading: Ch 5.2 “The Great War and America” + 5.3 “Armistice and Aftermath.”

Wed 10/3 – Constitutions Day. Reading: Amar, “How Women Won the Vote” (PDF). The online quiz will open up after class on this day.

Just for fun –

Fri 10/5 – In-class Exam #2

List of terms and concepts for the online quiz:
Progressivism – who were Progressives? What were their goals? What did the movement achieve?
Theodore Roosevelt – his political philosophies, accomplishments, and complexities
Muckrakers – who they were, what they wrote about, strategies and goals
Niagara Movement – what was it, who was involved?
Lawrence Textile Strike (this is the 100th anniversary), also called the “Bread and Roses” strike, why?
IWW or the “Wobblies”
Constitutional Amendments #16, 17, 18 and 19
Fordism and the American Plan
The Second Klan
National Origins Act of 1924
Harlem Renaissance
Garveyism

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

Today we voted to decide which “lens” we will use in each unit of the course this term. Our textbook (like most textbooks) takes a mainly political “lens,” so we will explore other aspects of American history in our workshops and class sessions to help supplement that perspective.

Update: On Monday 9/10 you’ll receive an updated and more detailed syllabus schedule based on these voting results. On the course Blackboard, I have added a short (ungraded) “Practice Quiz” so you can try out the online testing environment – it will be available until Tuesday the 11th under “Quizzes”. I have also added a new tab to this website (above) called “Slides” which will have a weekly “digest” of the PowerPoint slides. Read & study chapters 1-3 which are the background reading for the unit on 1875-1900.

Also today, we began a conversation about a very important period in American history: Reconstruction. There is no one simple definition of the word. The term has multiple meanings and historians disagree about the impact and legacy of the post-Civil War era. One view is that Reconstruction happened from the top down – that’s the interpretation put forward by this brief History Channel overview –

A different interpretation is that Reconstruction was part of a long history of African-American efforts to secure and define freedom for themselves (which is alluded to at the end of that clip). Different groups had very different goals for how the country should mend after the Civil War, and their goals were often at cross-purposes.

Find your own answers to these questions: Was Reconstruction a “failure” or a “success”, or some combination of the two? Who benefited and who lost? By 1877, in what ways had the U.S. been “reconstructed”?

1) Read the syllabus

2) Decide how you will access the AHUS textbook this semester

3) Read AHUS Table of Contents and Ch 1. Understand the multiple meanings for the word “RECONSTRUCTION”

4) Write your first SkillBuilder. The first assignment is a little simpler than the subsequent ones will be. Choose ONE primary source from one of the following sites, and DESCRIBE it in a short 2-page paper (exactly 2 pages – no more, no less). EXPLAIN how it is a useful piece of evidence about the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877). CITE the source using your best approximation of a correct Chicago Style footnote (see your copy of Hacker, A Writer’s Reference or use the sidebar link to Hacker’s guide to citing historical sources). TITLE your paper with something clever or relevant (not “SkillBuilder #1”). SUBMIT it as a printed paper on Friday or EMAIL it to me BEFORE CLASS BEGINS.

• Library of Congress Primary Documents, Civil War and Reconstruction 1860-1877 *Choose a document from 1865 or after*
• Freedmen & Southern Society Project *Scroll to the bottom of the page for post-1865 documents*
• African American Odyssey, Reconstruction and its Aftermath

5) Prepare to vote on the unit lenses & bring your ballot to class with each lens USED ONLY ONCE. If you need a new ballot, download the PDF here.

This website serves as the hub for Tona Hangen’s sections of US History II (HI 112), the US Since 1877. In Fall 2012 I will teach one section, on MWF at 8:30 am. The course number is HI 112-07 or HI 112-H1 if you’re taking it for honors credit.

Our textbook this term is David J. Trowbridge, A History of the United States, Vol II (Flat World Knowledge, 2012). The book is FREE (to read online) or you can purchase one of several different pricing options for mobile, downloadable or print versions. It will not be available for rent or sale in the bookstore; instead you should access the book online or purchase your preferred format directly from the publisher. Click on the title or the left sidebar link to learn more.

From this site, you can download the syllabus or access it online, stay up to date with course news and any changes, see the guidelines for the course papers and projects, and follow links to my recommended history and writing resources on the web. You can also add the course’s Google calendar to your own; just click on the “About & Course Calendar” tab above.

This site is a blog, meaning it updates frequently and you should bookmark it or subscribe to it using an RSS feed reader (such as Google Reader). Please check it often or make sure that you subscribe to its updates to stay on top of our coursework. I leave up the previous semesters’ information as an archive for my past students. You can safely ignore any post not tagged “Fall 12.”

If you have questions about the course before we meet in person on Wednesday, September 5th, please feel free to email me, at thangen (at) worcester.edu