HST 203: US History (1898
to Present)
Spring
2012
Classroom: Towler 310
T,
Th 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM
Instructor: Patrick
Kane
(503)
338-2473
Office: Adjunct
Offices 1st Floor
Office Hours: T,
Th 11:50 – 12:50
Other
hours by appointment
Aim
and Objective of the Course:
1. Provide students with an
overview of social, political, economic and cultural changes in American
History from the 1898 to Present.
2. Enable students to
discover patterns of historical causation and change while studying diverse
cultures and bodies politic.
3. Analyze significant
primary historical writings and engage in critical thinking and writing about
sources and interpretations of history.
4. Understand the basics of
historical writing as it applies to the various textual course materials.
5. Provide students
opportunities for analysis through class interaction.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An
American History (Norton, 2nd
edition)
Recommended and on Reserve:
Robert D. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of
Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon. Princeton University Press, 2003. (ON
RESERVE at library)
Ardis
Cameron, Looking for America: The Visual Production of Nation and People. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005) (ON RESERVE at CCC
library circulation desk)
Class Assignments and Exams Consist of
the Following:
Weekly
Readings and Participation in Discussion of Texts
Written
Assignments:
1) Write
a critical review of the Progressive era reform. See assignment tab at http://us20th.blogspot.com/p/essay-assignments-and-research-links.html
2) Undertake
an individual project or join in a group project for the second half of the
course on any of the topics listed. Write
a 3-4 page double-spaced interpretive summary on your topic. Turn in a one-page proposal on your topic by
the Midterm (I’ll review it and turn it back with suggestions.) The final paper is due on Friday, June 3,
2011.
Exams:
There will be a midterm and a final exam. The exams will include a
list of key terms, concepts or persons that you should be able to
identify. These key terms will be
identified during the course. There will
also be essay questions, one of which will be a preassigned takehome essay.
Grading Procedures:
Grades for the different credit options will be based on:
(a)
First Review paper 2-3 pages (10%) Due at end of 2nd week.
(b)
Midterm Exam, including takehome essay (25%)
(c) Final Exam, including takehome essay (25%)
(d) Class
Participation (15%)
(e) Group
or Individual Project paper (4-6 pages double-spaced in MLA format with Works
Cited) (25%)
Note that
you have the means to improve your grade by doing more work in the form of
review essays or a presentation on an aspect of social, cultural, economic or
political history. (up to 5 points per
additional project)
Academic
Integrity
Each
student in this course is expected to abide by the college’s code of academic
integrity. Any work submitted by a
student in this course for academic credit will be the student's own. A student
who cheats on exams or submits work that is borrowed from another individual or
publication without providing a citation may face academic discipline,
including lowering of grades or a failing grade. Students may by prearrangement
present joint projects.
Accommodations
for students with disabilities
Students
with documented disabilities are entitled to reasonable accommodations. To receive services, contact Services for
Students with Disabilities, 338-2474, TDD—325-2902
Non-Discrimination
It is the policy of Clatsop Community College that there will be no
discrimination or harassment on the grounds of race, color, sex, marital
status, religion, national origin, age, sexual orientation, or disability in
any educational programs, activities, or employment.
COURSE OUTLINE
AND ASSIGNMENTS
Week 1
4/3 – 4/5
|
Lecture: Introduction – Progressivism and Socialism
at the turn of the century and American radicalism in the labor movement. Progressivism: the Middle Class, Business and the Elite
respond to the Socialist Challenge.
Reading: Foner, Ch. 18 The Progressive Era 1900-1916
Recommended:
Johnston, Portland’s Radical Middle Class (on reserve)
|
Week 2
Tuesday
4/10-4/12
|
Lecture: Isolationism
and Internal Reform – the Mexican Revolution
Reading:
Foner Ch. 19
|
Week 3:
Tues.
4/17-19
|
Reading: Foner Ch. 19 America and the War; Ch. 20 Expansion and Collapse
Issues Post-War American Foreign Policy: Haiti, the League of Nations, Suppression of the Reds; First Review Essay Due on Progressives and Reform (Lewis Hine project on Child Labor or another progressive era reform topic) |
Week 4
Tues
4/24-26
|
No class on Tuesday or Thursday this week
All Online Assignments: First Assignment 1 (due Wed. 4/25): Watch the Pare Lorentz 1938 documentary The River on the Tennessee Valley Authority and the building of dams and electrification projects.Answer and respond to the Blackboard Forum with a response to your viewing of the documentary.This documentary was produced and paid for by the Farm Security Administration. What does this suggest about the role of the federal government in responding to the Depression and environmental and social crises during the 1930s? Is documentary ever an impartial forum or is their a deliberate rhetoric and and structure to the film? Post your review of this film on the Blackboard discussion board. Second Assignment (due Friday 4/27):Option 1: View the documentary film by Pare Lorentz, The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936). This was Lorentz' first documentary film commissioned by the new Federal agency, the Farm Security Administration. It deals with the stark reality and crisis of the drought and the so-called Dust Bowl that ravaged the Midwest during the 1930s and left many areas depleted of topsoil. An excellent study of the Dust Bowl as an environmental, economic and social crisis of dislocation.
Suggested reading: Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. (available from the Clatsop CC library)
Post your review of this film on the Blackboard discussion board.
Option 2: Review the photographic project of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) for documenting conditions in various counties. I suggest you look at how the FSA examined and documented conditions in Clatsop County or other areas of the Northwest during the 1930s.Post your findings and commentary on the Blackboard discussion board.
Main page and index (you can search this by location to find photographs of Pacific Northwest, including Clatsop County and the North Coast.
|
Week 5
5/1
|
Lecture: The Causes of the Great Depression. Reading: Foner, Ch. 20
FDR and the New Deal; the First 100 Days; Institutions and Structural Adjustments of the New Deal; The First New Deal; Excerpts of film: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Ford.
Foner: Ch. 21
|
Thurs.
5/10
|
MIDTERM EXAM ONLINE on Blackboard
Lecture/ Discussion: Recession of 1937 and aftermath: Grassroots Revolt, The Second New Deal
Foner, Online: John Maynard Keynes, Letters to FDR. Foner Ch. 21
Final
Project proposal is due (1 page)
|
Week 6
5/8
– 5/10
|
Lecture: Total War and Wars for Resources. Truman
the Bomb and the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. Cold War and the new international system; Cold
War and Military Industrial Complex – Iran, Lebanon, Guatemala and
interventions by stealth. Foner, Chs. 22-23
|
Week 7
5/15-5/57
|
American cultural paradox of the 1950s. Patriarchy, Beatniks, Rock n Roll, and
nascent feminism; Levittown, and the Organization
Man
Foner: Ch.
24
Culture in the 1950s
|
Week 8
5/22
– 5/24
|
Lecture: From Kennedy to Johnson – Civil Rights,
Popular Resistance and Vietnam – the paradox of the duality of internal and
external crisis
Foner,
Ch. 25
Film
and discussion on the 1960s
|
Week 9
5/29 – 5/31
|
Note: We will only have class on Tuesday 5/29. For our normal Thursday session we will have an online assignment to be designated.
|
Week
10
6/5-6/7
|
Summary on the 1990s - Clinton to Bush II: The Politics of Ungovernability,
Waco, the Religious Right and Evangelical foreign
policy; responses to Islamist
fundamentalism; Financial
Deregulation and its consequences.
Foner Ch. 27
Final Review for Exam / or Student Presentations
Cold War and the new international system; Cold War and Military
Industrial Complex – Iran, Lebanon, Guatemala and interventions by stealth
|
Tues. 6/12
|
FINAL EXAM 10:00 – 11:50
AM
|
Resources
and Texts - On Reserve in the Clatsop Community College
Library:
Supplemental
and Suggested Readings:
John
Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of
1929 (1955). (On reserve)
Robert
D. Johnston, The Radical Middle
Class: Populist Democracy and the
Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon. (2003)
(On Reserve)
Philip
Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, (1941)
John
Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the film of the same title by
John Ford, (1940).
Ardis
Cameron, Looking for America: The Visual Production of Nation and People. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005) (On reserve)
Jeremy
Suri Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente
(Harvard University Press, 2003).
Internet
Sources and Public Open Library Archives:
Writings of Jane Addams: founder of the Hull House for homeless in
Chicago
New Deal Network: The Great Depression,
the 1930s, and the Roosevelt Administration
Primary documents and images from the 1930s.
Primary documents and images from the 1930s.
America from the Great Depression
to WWII: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945
"Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943
Affiliated with the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folk Song.
"Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943
Affiliated with the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folk Song.
The New Deal Stage: Selections
from the Federal Theater Project, 1935-1939
The Federal Theatre Project was one of five arts-related projects established during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
The Federal Theatre Project was one of five arts-related projects established during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
Voices
from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker
Collection
Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center).
Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center).
Woody Guthrie and the Archive of
American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950
Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz, 1938-1948
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940
By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
FDR Cartoon Archive
Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II
"Suffering Under a Great Injustice": Ansel Adams's Photos of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar
Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz, 1938-1948
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940
By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
FDR Cartoon Archive
Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II
"Suffering Under a Great Injustice": Ansel Adams's Photos of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar
Atomic Bomb Decision: Documents
on the Decision to Use Atomic Bombs on the Cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Letter from John Maynard Keynes to Franklin Roosevelt.
Letter from John Maynard Keynes to Franklin Roosevelt.
A History of Jazz
before the 1930s
Index to the National
Civic Foundation Records at the New York Public Library
