US History II

Hello all,

I know that many students are impacted by the snowstorm and by the campus’s loss of electrical power. Some students have gone home or are staying with friends and don’t have their usual access to course materials, computers, etc.

This means that I am not going to be a Grinch about the 9:30 Friday morning deadline for this week’s Document Duel. If you intend to turn one in, write it and get it to me when you can, whether that’s a few hours late or a few days late. Don’t panic. Just proceed at whatever pace you can given your personal circumstances.

See you tomorrow (I hope!) –Prof. Hangen

Outlet image via Sixth Lie, used by Creative Commons license

I’m giving you a heads-up that I will be out of town the end of next week for a conference, so we will not have class on Friday, Feb 4th. Document Duels will still be due; you can upload them before 9:30 am to Digital Dropbox, turn them in on Wednesday Feb 2 in class, or drop them Thursday or Friday in my office mailbox in Sullivan 327-B.

Every Friday, I will post a PowerPoint highlighting the week’s in-class slides, to help you review and improve your class notes. Those will also be archived on a new course webpage called “Slides” starting this Friday 1/28. I’ll still post one next Friday even though we won’t have class. And we will keep to the reading schedule as outlined in the syllabus, although it means we only have one day to discuss Chapter 19 (Wed 2/2).

If you wrote a Document Duel for last week, I have graded them and will hand them back tomorrow. However, to help you in writing your second paper, I’ll be emailing each of you my comments so you know how you did before you finish writing DD#2.

Finally, I have posted an example of a strongly-written Document Duel, for those of you who would like to have a model to work from. Yours does not have to look like this one, but sometimes students benefit from seeing what a good paper looks like. It will also be on the updated Document Duel page; click the tab above.

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.