History H106/Section 3856/Fall 2005/Dr. Ashendel

Office:  CA 506

Office Telephone:  278-9020

Office Hours:  MW 2:15-3:15 and by appointment

Email:  aashende@iupui.edu

 

Required  Readings:

American Passages, volume 2

Out of This Furnace

Hard Times

The Movements of the New Left

 

This syllabus may be amended by the instructor at any time.

 

“Reality often astonishes theory.”  Car Talk

 

Course Description and Objectives:  Despite all opinions to the contrary, history survey courses such as this one are not designed to make undergraduates jump through hoops or torture them with requirements to learn useless information and meaningless dates, all irrelevant to the students’ futures.  Instead, a survey course is meant to give students a framework for understanding how both the present and future unfold within structures largely defined by the past.  Even the fast-paced, technology-driven society we find ourselves in today has roots in historical precedents that are still shaping its development.  This course will focus on the usual themes of politics and economics, but will also show how ordinary people shaped those forces. History is not just a mountain of facts, but is instead a sequence of interconnected events.  Understanding those connections and explaining them through the use of facts is one way to sharpen your analytical skills, improve your ability to communicate with others, and, hopefully, to learn something to apply to your own life.  These objectives are stated another way as the IUPUI Principles of Undergraduate Learning:  ww.iupui.edu/~history/principlesundergradlearning.htm.  We will also discuss these on the first day of class.  More specifically, class objectives include:  understanding the consequences of the Civil War for all regions of the country; analyzing the rise of big business and labor unions at the end of the nineteenth century; understanding the interplay between business and the federal government; analyzing the move from an isolationist foreign policy to one of intervention; analyzing the role of reform organizations; and finally, students will examine all events from multiple perspectives to understand how all segments of society influenced important events.

 

This section of H106 is open only to student enrolled in the Thematic Learning Community.  This section of H106 will ground students in the content of the past.  In addition, this class will meet on several Friday afternoons for visits to cultural resource institutions in the metropolitan area.  In each case, the class will have an overview tour, meet with professionals who work with teachers, and engage in some type of group-based participatory exercise.  Students should come away from the class with more appreciation for, and confidence in, their ability to make that historical content come alive by taking advantage of what cultural resource institutions have to offer to teachers and students. 

 

Attendance:  Attendance is required and will be taken at every class meeting.  Consistent attendance will be used to determine borderline grades.  Further, material covered in lecture is not necessarily covered in the required readings.  Attendance at every class meeting will result in a better grade for the course.

 

Classroom procedures:  Please arrive on time.  If you must arrive late, please enter the room quietly.  Place all cell phones on vibrate or turn them off for the duration of the class.  Please do not leave class early for other appointments.  Listening and note taking are important life skills, therefore, no tape recorders are allowed without special permission from the instructor. 

 

Cheating and plagiarism:  Don’t do it.  You will earn a zero on the work in question.  We will discuss plagiarism on the first day of class.  The IUPUI student code of conduct pertaining to this matter is found in the IUPUI Bulletin 2004-2006, pp. 36-8 and http://life.iupui.edu/help/code.asp.

 

Assignments:  Students will take three examinations.  These examinations will consist of 6 identifications and an essay question.  A study guide will be distributed in class one week prior to each exam.  The study guide will include 13 possible identifications and at least 3 possible essays.  The actual exam will be taken directly from that study guide.  There will also be a quiz over Out of This Furnace and Hard Times, and a paper on The New Left.  The study questions for those quizzes are part of this syllabus.  Students will also attend 5 of 8 scheduled field trips and complete an analysis of each institution visited.

Grading:

3 examinations @ 100 points                300

2 quizzes @ 50 points                           100

1 paper @ 50 points                               50

5 field trips and reports @ 30 points     150

Total points                                          600

Grades are based on a straight scale:  600-580=A+; 579-560=A; 559-540=A-; 539-520 = B+; 519-500=B; 499-480=B-; 479-460=C+; 459-440=C; 439-420=C-; 419-400=D+; 399-380=D; 379-360=D-; 359 and lower = F. A zero has a greater negative impact on your final grade than at least some attempt to complete an assignment.  Makeup examinations and quizzes are strongly discouraged.  Makeup quizzes WILL NOT be taken from the study guide.  No makeup exam or quiz will be given without documentation proving an extreme emergency.  Documentation includes doctors’ forms, funeral notices, accident reports, and similar verifiable papers.  The instructor reserves the right to refuse to grant a makeup exam or quiz if the documentation is not presented or is deemed invalid.  If a makeup exam or quiz is approved it must be completed within one week of the original exam or quiz.  Incompletes are strongly discouraged and rarely given.  It is not fair to the rest of the class to request extra time to complete the work.  NO EXTRA CREDIT WILL BE OFFERED IN THIS COURSE.

 

 

Schedule of lecture topics, readings, quizzes, and examinations.  Please complete the readings before class.

August  24: Introduction to the Course/Reconstruction

            Read:  AP Chapters 15 and 16

August 29:  Reconstruction

August 31:  The Rise of Big Business

            Read: AP Chapter 17

September 5:  HOLIDAY NO CLASS

September 7:  The Rise of Big Business

September 12:   Labor

September 14:  Labor

            Read:  Out of This Furnace

September 19:  QUIZ Out of This Furnace

September 21:   Farmers

            Read:  AP Chapter 18

September 26:  Progressives

            Read:  AP Chapters 20 and 21

September 28:  Progressives

October 3:  EXAM I

October 5:  Imperialism

            Read:  AP Chapter 19

October 10:  World War I

            Read:  AP Chapter 22

October 12:  The 1920s

            Read:  AP Chapter 23

October 17:  The Depression

            Read:  AP Chapter 24 and Hard Times

October 19:  QUIZ over Hard Times

October 24:  The New Deal

            Read:  AP Chapter 25

October 26:  EXAM II

October 31:  World War II

            Read:  AP Chapter 26

November 2:  The Cold War

            Read:  AP Chapters 27 and 28 (except pp. 847-50)

November 7:  The Cold War

November 9:  The Civil Rights Movement

            Read:  AP Chapter 29 and 28 (pp. 847-50)

November 14:  The Civil Rights Movement

November 16:  Vietnam

            Read:  AP Chapter 30

November 21:  Vietnam

November 23:  HOLIDAY NO CLASS

November 28:  The 1960s

November 30:   EXAM III

December 5:   The 1960s

                Read:  The New Left

December 7:  That 70s Decade

            Read:  AP Chapter 30

December 12:  The 80s

            PAPER DUE ON THE NEW LEFT

 

Study Guide for Out of This Furnace.  Be sure to read the Afterward before the novel.

Part One:  Kracha:  What sort of jobs did Kracha do in America?  What was the pay?  How stable were those jobs?  Where and under what conditions did he live?  What did people in the immigrant community do for fun?

Part Two:  Mike:  How did Mike and Mary make money?  Why did Mike buy the desk?  What was the point of Mike’s drunken tirade to Bodner?

Part Three:  Mary:  What sort of choices for work and housing did Mary have?/  What did her son, Johnny, do to try to help his mother?

Part Four:  Dobie:  How did the Depression affect their lives?  How did the union slowly organize in Dobie’s town?  How did the headquarters of the Union, the government, and the company try to prohibit unionization?

Overall question:  How do things change in the Slovak immigrant community from one generation to the next?  How does the meaning of the American dream evolve over the course of the book?  Do the characters ever consider themselves truly “American”?  Why or why not?

 

Study Guide for Hard Times

You are required to read through page 281, omitting the sections entitled, “Bonnie Labor Boy” and “Sixteen Ton.”

1.      “The March” describes the Bonus March on Washington, D.C.  Who were the Bonus Marchers?  What was their goal?  Did they succeed?

2.      “Hard Travelin’” describes the ways people looked for work during the Depression.  What types of jobs did people find?  How did they find those jobs?  How did people acquire food?  Describe life in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

3.      How did the families in “Big Money” and “Old Families” respond to the Depression?

4.      What strikes are depicted in “Three Strikes?”  What happened?

5.      How did the farmers who were interviewed for the section entitled, “The Farmer is the Man,” respond to possible and actual foreclosures?  How did they try to raise farm prices?  Did they join any organizations?  If so, what were they?

6.      Using evidence from “Concerning the New Deal,” how did the government develop some of its New Deal programs?

 

Study Guide for The Movements of the New Left paper(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

1.      Describe how the anti-war movement, Black Power, and the women’s movement destroyed the cold war consensus.

2.      What happened to the individual movements of the New Left in the 1970s?  Did the New Left die or is it still part of our political and cultural lives today?  Why?

3.      What led to the revival of feminism in the 1960s?  What various groups of women made it possible?  What did they have in common?

4.      How did the civil rights movement develop?  How did the Black Power movement grow out of the civil rights movement?

5.      What did the African American, Native American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Asian American movements have in common?  How did they differ?  Why did so many of these movements appear at the same time?

6.      What common strategies and tactics were used by the various movements?  How did they inspire and learn from one another?  Were particular types of protest used by all the movements?

7.      Pick 3 documents from either the anti-war movement, the women’s movement, or the civil rights movement and explain what these documents tell us about that organization.

For your paper answer question 7 plus 2 other questions. Papers will be typed, double-spaced with one inch margins all around and in 12 point font. It is due at the beginning of class on Dec. 12.

 

Required Field Trips

Schedule of Field Trips (all are scheduled 1:00-3:30 p.m.)  ARRIVE BY 12:50

Directions to the Field Trips will be distributed in class

Eiteljorg  SEPT. 9

Indiana Medical History Museum  SEPT. 16

Indiana Historical Society  SEPT 30

Indiana State Museum  OCT. 7

Indianapolis Museum of Art/Lilly House  OCT. 14

Benjamin Harrison Home   OCT. 21

Morris-Butler House  OCT. 28

Historic Landmarks of Indiana  NOV. 4

 

You are required to attend 5 of 8 scheduled field trips.  You will earn 30 points for each field trip that you attend which includes the completion of a required analysis of the visit. The report MUST be included to receive the 30 points. I will not subtract points for excused absences, but because you are required to attend 5 out of 8 scheduled field trips, I expect that you will make every effort to attend the field trips for which you sign up.  The institutions we will visit have agreed to provide considerable staff time to make your experiences there worthwhile.  Additionally these visits are a key component of this class and they only add to your educational experience if you attend. We will attend these field trips with the other H106 section for teachers in training.  The maximum capacity for each trip will be 25 students.  Let me know well in advance if you are unable to attend a trip so that someone else may attend in your place.

 

Field trip report:  Report on the activity in which you participated and also how you would use this site for a specific age group (K-12) of your own choosing.  You may also consult the institution’s web site.  Remember that some cultural institutions might not be appropriate for all age groups.  This report, which will be 2-4 pages in length, typed, double-spaced with one inch margins all around and in12 point font, is due the Wednesday following the field trip at the beginning of class.  A late paper will receive 3 points off for each day it is late.