Books that you need (in addition to periodic handouts and on-line readings):
Major Problems in American History Since 1945 (3rd edition)
All Shook Up: How Rock n Roll Changed America by Glenn Altschuler
Takin' It to the Streets Edited by Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines
Jan 3 Introductions and Overview of the Course Film "Pleasantville"
| Topic 1: Categories of Identity |
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Jan 5 Finish Pleasantville...begin Presentations
Who are "we"? How do we understand ourselves? -- Components of Identity
Use pictures, videos, and anything else you'd like to explain who you are to your classmates and Dr. Berry AND who others seem to think you should be. Think especially about your ethnic, racial, class, and gender identity components. You will share this information ...and while it may be a bit scary to share ideas about who you are, it will be a more powerful discussion if you are willing to do so in deep and profound ways. Your presentation can utilize pictures, video, music clips, but it needs to be a formal presentation...2-3 minutes long.
Prompt: I am__________________. Others think I am_________.
Jan 9: What does it mean to be an American?
READ: "Identities and Social Locations..." HANDOUT
READ: "The Need for a Social Theory of National Identity" HANDOUT
And this article from one of the Cato Institute's leaders. Pay particular attention to the last paragraph.
Jan. 11: Brainstorming on Race, Gender, Class, and Family and political ideology
Take The Political Typology Quiz in class!
Jan. 13: Continue Discussion no homework
How do we Identify History?
Jan 18: What is History? What should it be?
READ: Read the ONE of the following you've been assigned:
Joan Wallach Scott, "History in Crisis: The Others' Side of the Story," The American Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 3 (June, 1989): 680-692.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Some Reflections on the New History," The American Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 3 (June, 1989): 661-670.
Lawrence Levine, "The Unpredictable Past," The American Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 3 (June, 1989): 671-679.
Jan 20: Expert Reports and Conclusions Day
Experts are Tessa, Jeremy, Olivia! Blogs and Questions DUE -- POSTED on Schoology. A blog is a an informal thought piece on your reaction to a topic (in this case it should be about the information we have covered in the particular topic that your group is responsible for reviewing).
Guiding Questions for expert papers:
1) How do nationalism, identity, and history inform each other?
2) If nationalism and historical scholarship are at the macro level of identity, how do they affect the micro and meso levels?
3) How might old/new history affect nationalism and identity?
4) How does an individual's identity become affected by the American nation and the history it holds?
| Topic 2: Beginnings of the Cold War Background 1945-1950s | McCarthy and Red Scare Containment (policy) Military Industrial Complex Restructuring of Wartime Economy |
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Jan 24 :Lecture on 1940s “The Best War Ever”: World War II on the Homefront 1941-1945
WRITE: 3-5 page Expert Paper is DUE for everyone but Tessa, Olivia, and Jeremy!
READ: Speech from Harold Ickes trying to convince Americans to go to war (and start reading for next class!)
LISTEN: to FDR's Declaration of War speech
Jan 26: WWII Workers and Consumers on the Homefront
READ:
1/2 read Robin Kelley, Chapter on Zoot Suit riots
1/2 read Catherine Ramierez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit HANDED OUT in class!
Jan 30: Film "The War" Episode 7 (stream from Amazon)
Feb 1-3 Ropes Course...no class
Feb 9: The Aftermath of WWII
READ: Maj Problems Alan Brinkley "The Legacies of WWII" -- ALL AND Shafer "The Puzzle of Postwar Politics" pp. 31-34 (beginning with the paragraph on pp 31 "The issue substance")
Write: One page (summarizing) reaction paper summarizing both articles and suggesting their importance for understanding the ways in which WWII was critical to American Identity -- submit via Google Docs by classtime.
Feb 13: Cold War Culture
READ: Maj Problems Chpt 2 Documents 1,2, 5, 6, 7
Please analyze 2 of the primary sources and submit via google doc to Dr. Berry. To help you, please refer to your notes and the google doc shared by Dr. Berry on "How to Read Primary Sources" -- 1 pg single-spaced
Feb 15: Finish Cold War Culture
Feb 17: Expert Reports and Conclusions day (Experts: Olivia Larsen, Ivan Escobosa, Edward, Ali Salzar -- Dom to film)
| Topic 3: Gender 1950s | Suburbia Feminine Mystique Containment and baby boom Corporate Man Conformity |
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Feb 21: Begin Gender
READ: Joan Wallach Scott "Gender: A Useful Catgory of Historical Analysis" -- HANDOUT
Feb 27-29 : WATCH: Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
March 2: Continue Gender -- There will be a reading response in class on the article linked below.
READ: Joanne Meyerowitz "Beyond the Feminine Mystique" -- Please print out!
READ: The Cartoons from the VERY popular Blondie comic strip. Homemaking or Love or any of the others categories -- but please be sure you look at at least ONE from the late 1940s or 1950s!
WRITE: In a google doc apply gender analysis to 2 of these comics. What gender stereotypes are present? Do we recognize them today or have they changed? How is household power arranged in the comics? What about power in the public sphere? Is there any resistence to dominant stereotypes in the comics on the part of any of the characters? Does there seem to be change over time (from the 30s to the 50s) in gender stereotypes? Due by the beginning of class!
March 8: Expert Reports and Discussion -- Juliana, Mark Kissiniger, Amanda
| Topic 4: Consumerism 1950s | Patriotic to buy (cars) Teen Markets GI Bill Rock n Roll Disney Davy Crockett (TV) |
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March 13: Consumerism in the Postwar World
Expert Papers due.
Duck and Cover!
READ: Major Problems ALL the Documents chpt 3
March 19: Rock n Roll and Teens and Disney and Davy as Consumer Heaven
READ: Chpt 1 in All Shook Up
Disney and Davy as Consumer Heaven
Check out: Yesterland (to see and learn about the minutiae of Disneyland changes)
READ: this USC history of Disney... (be sure to check out the photos -- they can be enlarged) and look at the space today
THINK: about the context of Disney's opening (1955)...what about this space was SOOOO Cold War and what about it is STILL Cold War but also 21st Century?
LISTEN: to Davy Crockett song... and see the actor who played Davy in the Disney mini-series
WATCH: Mickey Mouse Club episode
March 21: Expert Reports and Conclusions on 50s Consumerism
| Topic 5: Race in the 1950s | Brown v. Board Emmett Till MLK vs. Malcolm SCLC etc. Cesar Chavez Elvis |
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March 23: Race in the 1950s Context Lecture
READ: Brown v. Board decision
and Maj Problems pp 226-233 ("The Rise of Rights Consciousness")
In-Class Reading Check!
March 27:Read : Article on Emmett Till "I wanted the Whole World to See" -- HANDOUT
Questions to consider: What is Historian Ruth Feldstein studying in this article?
What is her central argument?
Who was Maime Till Bradley? What did she have to do to make herself respectable in order to speak out against her son's murder? What actions did she do that were received as controversial by the conservative press?
What questions about gender and race did the murder and subsequent trial represent?
What were the culturally perceived differences between black motherhood and white motherhood? And the differences among the murderers' and Till's families ?
What crucial American categories were invoked and contested during the funeral?
pp 1-12 in Takin' It to the Streets
Maj Probs: pps 193-203
March 29: 50s desegregation
Topic 6: 1960s-70s
April 9: Finish 50s race
April 11: Expert Day
April 13: Project Overview, Group Assignments, and Work Timelines and Political Context Lecture (JFK, LBJ, Vietnam)
READ: Takin' it to the Streets pp 152-165
April 17: Expert Papers due
Finish Context -- Focus on Vietnam and Project Overview, Group Assignments, and Work Timelines
READ Takin it to the Streets pp 161-165; 172-206;
329-339; 472-490
April 19: Work Day
BE WORKING ON YOUR PROPOSALS
April 25-30: Work Days
May 2: Proposal Presentations due
The presentations are to be formal. Everyone in the group must participate verablly in some part of the presentation. You must dress professionally.
Remember you are presenting to PBS executives (there will be guests in our class that day playing the role of the PBS executives). It should be a formal, polished, and engaging presentation.
Your presentation must be 10 min long NOT including the 3-5 minute trailer or the podcast (shorter will result in a 2% grade deducation for every minute you are under). You must expalin why your movement is the best candidate for a new documentary AND you must utilize your website and show the trailer and podcast/screencast.
If you cannot get the trailer and casts on Weebly, do not worry but DO bring them on a flash drive so you may use them in your presentation!
May 8: Rough Drafts of your papers are due
May 8: Uh....so...who are "we" today? Race and Gender and Nationalism in the 21st Century
READ: Chpt 12 docs and Holt article
Watch Need to Know on politics of resentment
May 10: What have we learned? Create final
May 14-16: Review
May 18: Final 1960s paper due (by the end of the day)
NOT USING 2011
Project Rubric
(? maybe...for Spring) READ: Captain America and 9/11
1920s and 1930s Race
DAY1 : Race -- 1920s
In-class reading: Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes
Harlem -- Listen to Jazz
READ:
4 documents on race riots at http://www.historymatters.gmu.edu
2 on Chicago – enter in the Quick Search Box race riot 1919 click on go and read “A Crowd of Howling Negroes” and “Says Lax Conditions Caused Race Riots”
1 on Tulsa – enter in Quick Search Box Tulsa Race Riot 1921 and read “The Eruption of Tulsa”
DuBois’ response to the 1919 riots, enter “Let Us Reason Together”
DAY 2: Race -- 1930s
Read: Excerpt from Grapes of Wrath (find)
1920s and 1930s Gender
DAY 1: Gender -- 1920s Watch "It"
Movie Analysis due next class
DAY 2: Gender -- 1930s
Read: (HANDOUT!)
“Men, Women and the Assumptions of American Social Provision,” Linda Gordon in MAJOR PROBLEMS 329-336
“A Working Class Woman on Making Do in the 1930s,” in MAJOR PROBLEMS pp. 274
“An Ordinary American Appeals to her Government, 1935” in MAJOR PROBLEMS pp. 280
“Women’s Work in Hard Times,” Ruth Milkman in MAJOR PROBLEMS 281-286
“Gender and Community in the Minneapolis Labor Movement,” Elizabeth Faue in MAJOR PROBLEMS pp. 356-363
1920s and 1930s Workers and Consumers
Day 1: Workers and Consumers -- 1920s Ad analysis in class
READ:
“The Ku Klux Klan Defines Americanism, 1926” in MAJOR PROBLEMS pp. 157 HANDOUT!
Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan chapters 3, 4, 5 ?????
1919 Steel Strike documents on-line at:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/