Students taking this class for graduate credit should expect to do everything the undergraduates do plus some. Since graduate students are assumed to have some basic content and academic skills under their belt already, I will ask you to cover a little more ground this semester both in terms of learning material and analyzing it critically. This business of critical analysis marks the most important distinction between graduate and undergraduate education. In this course, that means that you should learn how historians agree and disagree in their analyses of post-1945 American history and be able to assess their various interpretations through a critical analysis of their arguments, sources, and methods. You should also be able to interpret primary sources in light of their historical context, authors, audience, and form as well as content. I hope to teach the undergraduates the beginnings of these skills; you should be refining them.

To that end, you will have slightly more rigorous requirements for this class and my expectations for the work you share with the undergraduates will be higher. We will need to meet four times as a group in addition to the weekly Wednesday nights.

These will be the same as for the undergraduates with the following changes:

We will schedule additional meetings to discuss the outside reading (Kennedy, Moody, and Santoli) and you will read the chapter in Major Problems that corresponds with each book so we can discuss the books in more depth. When you write the short papers that are due, yours will incorporate this added reading and should wind up being 3-5 pages long rather than 2-3. I might give you separate paper topics to help you do this—we’ll see.

Your final papers will be different and will count for 30% of your course grade:

Students in the graduate history program will write a historiographical essay on a topic of their choice. It should incorporate about five monographs, book reviews of them, and at least one scholarly article, and be about 10 pages long.

Other graduate students may elect to do a more teaching-oriented project. These final projects will be a short teaching unit (20-30 minutes), with supporting material. These will also be on a topic of your choice, and geared towards a student audience of a level you may designate. You must present the topic on three levels: 1) information—what information should students at this level know about your topic; 2) analysis—place the information in its appropriate historical context, identify important themes, and explain how this topic is connected to other related topics and events; and 3) interpretation—how have different people interpreted this topic/event, where do they agree and disagree, and why? In addition to presenting your topic, you will hand in a detailed lesson plan and a bibliography that should include about five monographs, book reviews of them, and at least one scholarly article.

The weight of your assignments towards your final course grade will be:

Midterm and final (20% each, 40% total)
Short papers (10% each, 20% total)
Final paper (30%)
Participation (10%)

Due dates for the intermediary assignments and extra class meetings are as follows:

- Jan. 31 - topics due (same as undergrads)

- Week of Feb. 14 meeting to discuss Moody and MP ch. 8 (short papers due)

- Feb. 14 – bibliography of monographs due

- Week of Feb. 28 meeting to discuss Kennedy and MP ch. 6 (short papers due)

- Mar. 7 – bibliography of book reviews and scholarly article(s) due

- Week of Mar. 21 meeting to discuss Santoli and MP ch. 9 (short papers due)

- Mar. 28 – optional draft of final paper/project due (same as undergrads)

- Week of Apr. 11 – papers/projects due at time of extra meeting