Hist 221 Conferences

To: History 221B

From: Gil Troy

Re: Sections and Readings

The sections are designed to help you make sense out of the mass of reading and lecture information you receive each week. The challenge for any historian is to learn how to assimilate large amounts of data and then make coherent patterns from them — what we call interpretations or arguments. To keep up with this course, it is essential that you not fall behind in the readings

and that you take the time to make sense of them, to look at the big picture that emerges amid all the facts and anecdotes.

Just as the instructors and I take a few minutes before each section to collect our thoughts, so should you. To that end, the “admission ticket” for sections will be a short one-page essay based on the week’s reading. These assignments can either summarize the particular reading, or they can answer any of the major questions that emerge from the reading or the lectures that week. Alternatively, you can link one or two of the primary source readings in Thinking Through the Past to the broader themes addressed by the authors or in the lectures.

Feel free to search out contradictions and alternative voices — you need not accept my interpretation of events. These need not be works of art. Rather, think of them as works in progress, a series of memoranda to yourself that will help you digest all the material as the course moves along and could be useful when you study for the midterm and final.

What follows is a list of questions you could (but need not) answer for each week:

Week 1: RECONSTRUCTION: What did Reconstruction accomplish? What limited its accomplishments? What, if anything, was the secret to its success? the reason for its failure? How do you account for the different interpretations advanced over the years?

Week 2: A GILDED AGE? — Was the industrial revolution a blessing or a curse for the U.S.? Was there “distress” among the “laboring classes” at the time? (Are the Hollitz documents representative or distorted?) Were the “Robber Barons” knaves or heroes? Does the Gilded Age mark a continuation of, or a dramatic break from, earlier American history?

Week 3: POPULISM: — Who were the populists? What did they accomplish? Was the Populist platform moderate or radical? Why was the Cross of Gold Speech so popular? Is Pollack or Hofstadter correct? Which interpretation do the primary sources support?

Week 4: PROGRESSIVISM: LEISURELY REVOLT? Is the Coney Island experience unique or is it representative of other, broader trends? How can a “bungalow” be “progressive.” Just how revolutionary was this twentieth-century culture that Kasson describes? Was Theodore Roosevelt a reaction to this new twentieth century culture? Was Progressivism? How?

Week 5: WOODROW WILSON: PROGRESSIVE WARRIOR: Who was the better Progressive Wilson or Roosevelt? Who was the better President? What was Progressivism? What did it accomplish? What is the relationship (if any) between Progressivism and Imperialism? Did Progressivism propel the U.S. into the Spanish-American War? Into the Great War? Was it wise for the U.S. to enter World War I? What was the effect of U.S. involvement in the war?

Week 6: THE TWENTIES: Were the twenties as “roaring” as everyone claims? Do the twenties really mark the start of the modern twentieth-century American experience? Was the 1928 campaign a harbinger of future political change or an exceptional moment in history?

Week 7: NO CONFERENCES.

Week 8: THE GREAT DEPRESSION: What can you find that is particularly American in the response to the Great Depression depicted in “The Grapes of Wrath” or in the other readings? How did the Great Depression transform the U.S.? Why Wasn’t there a revolution? Is there any connection between Eleanor Roosevelt’s emergence as a force in her own right and the Depression?

Week 9: FDR IN PEACE AND WAR: What caused the Great Crash? What did the New Deal accomplish? Are you more struck by the continuities or the discontinuities between the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations? What was the secret to FDR’s success?

Week 10: THE COLD WAR: Did World War II traumatize or liberate the U.S.? Was the Cold War avoidable? What impact did the Cold War have on American culture? Why?

Week 11: CIVIL RIGHTS: Why did the Civil Rights movement emerge when it did? Was it successful? Would there have been a Civil Rights movement without Dr. King? What effect, if any, did Otis Redding and other black entertainers have on race relations in the U.S.?

Week 12: THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE NEW LEFT: THEN AND NOW: Why did the women’s movement emerge when it did? Was it successful? Compare and contrast the movements for civil rights and for women’s liberation. What was the impact of the Vietnam experience on civil rights? What was the great mistake (if any) of 1960s liberals? of the black community? What is the most devastating and accurate critique Brooks offers about modern American culture? What is the most devastating and accurate critique he offers about your own life? How does Brooks link the 60s and the 90s?

Week 13: WAS THERE A REAGAN REVOLUTION?: Did Reagan succeed or fail? Where his policies revolutionary or more marked by continuity? What is his greatest accomplishment? His greatest failure? How long did the Reagan Revolution last? What is the relationship between politics and culture in general? What is the link between politics and culture when looking at the Bill Clinton Administration?