(This syllabus is representative of my course as I taught it from 2005 through 2017. I now run the class via Canvas).
Welcome to History 10B. Through the quarter, we will explore the United States’ bumpy road from the 1870s through the 1970s. The course begins with the end of Reconstruction, and continues with the Gilded Age, the dawn of US imperialism, the Progressive Era, the First World War, the 1920s, the Great Depression, the New Deal, the Second World War, McCarthyism, The Sixties, and concludes as the USA approaches the last decade of the Cold War. All in all, I think that century represented an Age of Progress. History 10b explains why.
The class meets at the Humanities Lecture Hall from 1:30 pm through 3:05 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Contact your teaching assistants: .
Readings
Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! Volume 2
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows
Burdick and Lederer, The Ugly American
Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl
All books available at Bay Tree Bookstore
Schedule
Sections do not start until week two; please don’t go to sections until week two, unless you like hanging around in empty rooms by yourself.
Week 1: January 10 and 12
The “Weird and Ghastly” Late Nineteenth Century
Give Me Liberty!, chapters 15 and 16
Looking Backward, entire book
Book question 1: Based on your reading of Looking Backward, what was Edward Bellamy’s critique of the world of Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller? Why do you think that Bellamy’s vision of the future was so popular in the late 19th-century? Would you want to live in Bellamy’s utopia? This essay will be due on week 3.
A guide to how to write the papers.
Please note: All book response papers will now be due on Fridays at noon via Google Classroom.
Online readings:
The People’s Party Omaha Platform of 1892; Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth; the Exodusters; the Pullman Strike
Week 2: January 17 and 19
The Progressive Empire
Give Me Liberty! chapters 17 and 18
The Souls of Black Folk, entire book
Book question 2: What was W.E.B. Du Bois’ strategy for uplifting black America? How did he disagree with Booker T. Washington’s strategy? Do you see any weaknesses in Du Bois’ “talented tenth” philosophy? To what extent does Du Bois’ concept of “two-ness” apply to everyone in American life? This essay will be due on week 4.
Online readings: The “Black Man’s Burden”; Eugene Debs on the “Monstrous System”; Ida Tarbell: “History of the Standard Oil Company”; John Harlan, dissent to Plessy versus Ferguson, 1896
Week 3: January 24 and 26
The Great War and its Consequences
Give Me Liberty!, chapter 19
Section discussion question: Why do you think that during the War to Save Democracy we almost lost democracy at home?
Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points speech; the Montana Sedition Project
Essay for Bellamy due in section.
Week 4: January 31 and February 2
Anything but Normal: The 1920s
Give Me Liberty!, chapter 20
Barton, The Man Nobody Knows, entire book
Clarence Darrow cross examines William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Trial, Monday July 10, 1925
Book question 3: Historians, citing Prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan, see the 1920s as a revolt against modern urban life. Others, citing the Harlem Renaissance and emergence of radio and other technologies, see it as the dawn of modernism. How does Bruce Barton’s Man Nobody Knows fit into the picture? This essay is due on Week 5.
Essay for Du Bois due in section.
Thursday—Short answer quiz in lecture hall (10 minutes at start of class). Quiz will focus on Foner chapters 16 through 18.
Week 5: February 7 and 9
The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War
Give Me Liberty!, chapters 21 and 22
President Franklin D. Roosevelt Fireside Chat on Banking (March 12, 1933)
Section discussion question: In what ways did Franklin Roosevelt’s approach to World War II differ from Woodrow Wilson’s approach to World War I? How were they similar?
Essay for Barton due in section.
Week 6: February 14 and 16
Cold War America
Give Me Liberty!, chapter 23
The Ugly American, entire book
The Nixon/Khrushchev “Kitchen Debate” (1959)
Book question 4: What makes the “Ugly American” ugly in the minds of the Burdick and Lederer? Do you think that the authors have a point? Do you find their supposedly un-ugly Americans more attractive? This essay is due on week 7.
Midterm examination, Thursday February 16
Week 7: February 21 and 23
The Semi-Affluent Society
Give Me Liberty!, chapter 24
Section discussion question: Who missed out on the “Affluent Society”? And why?
Book question essay 4 (Burdick and Lederer) due.
Week 8: February 28 and March 2
The Sixties Era / Fade In
Give Me Liberty!, chapter 25
Brown, Sex and the Single Girl
Book question: Imagine that you are a social historian. What does Helen Gurley Brown’s book Sex and the Single Girl tell you about gender relations and the work world in the United States in the early 1960s? Essay due on week 9.
Week 9: March 7 and 9
The Sixties Era / Fade Out
Give Me Liberty!, chapter 25 (continued)
Section discussion question: How did the movement of the early 1960s evolve through the later 1960s? What problems challenged the unity and idealism of the years before 1965? How did the Vietnam war influence these changes?
Essay for Brown, Sex and the Single Girl due.
Quiz on Thursday; Foner chapters 21 through 25
Week 10: March 14 and 16
Right Turn
Give Me Liberty!, chapter 26
Section discussion question: How did Ronald Reagan and his supporters borrow from the rhetoric and values of The Sixties to win public support for their “revolution”?
Final examination: Thursday, March 23, noon to 3 pm; please note: This date is firm. Barring personal emergencies involving your health or the health of your family, I cannot reschedule your final.
Requirements
This course has four requirements: a mid-term, a final examination, five book response papers, and the completion of quizzes.
Response papers
Over the course of the quarter you will be required to write five two page papers for your section. These papers will respond to questions posed about the five advocacy books that you will read for the class. Each of these books was a best-seller in its time, very controversial, and remains an important document to the present. Your teaching assistant will grade these response papers.
The papers will be graded on the clarity with which they respond to the questions, and their quality of presentation. Papers with lots of grammatical errors and misspelled words will lose substantial credit. Papers that focus on the questions in a clear way will do well.
Please do not plagiarize on these papers.
A guide on to how to write the papers can be found here.
The rest of the time in section you will discuss all of your readings, including the online readings posted on the syllabus, and Eric Foner’s book Give Me Liberty!
Exams
The mid-term and final examinations will be the same. You will be given essay questions in advance for both the midterm and the final. When you show up for each test, some of those questions will be on the exam. You’ll pick one to answer as a detailed essay. In addition, there will be identifications: seven on the mid-term and on the final. You will describe five of them in a paragraph of three or four sentences. The essay will be worth 50 percent of your grade; the identifications 10 points each.
The exams will be based on your textbook, online readings, non-fiction book readings, and my lectures and presentation slides, which I will post on the syllabus for you to download.
Quizzes
In-lecture hall quizzes will be held during the quarter. You will have 10 minutes to complete each quiz. They will each consist of 10 multiple choice questions, based upon your textbook, Give Me Liberty!
The mid-term will be worth 25 percent of your grade, the final 30 percent, your quizzes two point five (2.5) points each, the section papers worth 25 percent (four papers each worth 6.25 points), and section participation another fifteen percent.
Please read my attendance and class behavior policy page.