US History II

For lecture / discussion today: Chapter 14 and the multiple, competing, contentious versions of Reconstruction history … and why we’re still living with the legacies of that era (for more on Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler’s work on disparate funding for southern cemeteries, see “The Costs of the Confederacy,” Smithsonian Magazine Dec 2018).

Handout: Transcript and discussion questions for this clip

For Friday: in addition to reading Chapter 15, please listen to the 1-hour episode of the podcast This American Life, “Little War on the Prairie” (November 23, 2018) about the Dakota War of 1862 and how it’s been remembered — and selectively forgotten.

Additional resources:

Civil War Era Maps (University of South Florida)

Freedmen’s Bureau – How Effective? (National Archives DocsTeach)

Freedmen’s Bureau Primary Source Set (Digital Public Library of America)

Freedmen and Southern Society Project (Univ of Maryland)

Black Codes (PBS)

African American Odyssey: Quest for Full Citizenship (Library of Congress)

U.S. History in Context (WSU Library)

Nice to meet everyone this week, I hope you had a good start to your semester. For those of you who submitted a Practice Primary Source Analysis (PSA) today: I’ll comment and return those by Monday so you can incorporate the feedback into your first graded PSA paper, due Wednesday Jan 30th.

Check Blackboard for a new section called “Slides and Handouts” for any material shown or distributed in class.

Links from Friday’s class:

• Martin Luther King Jr, NBC interview explaining how white and black “peasants” have different historical legacies, Atlanta Georgia, 8 May 1967
• How Textbooks can Teach Different Versions of History (Houston Public Media via NPR, 13 July 2015

For Monday, Jan 28th — Read Chapter 14 and prepare to bring your book or laptop to class for our first Document Workshop using the Ch 14 Document Project. You don’t need to write anything in advance.

Welcome to our class! 

What to do for Friday, Jan 25th: 

Bring your textbook to class on Friday

Read the syllabus. Read it twice. 

Explore the course Blackboard environment and course website

Read Hewitt & Lawson, EAH (Exploring American Histories) Chapter 14 section on “Emancipations”

Write a practice PSA paper and either bring it to Friday’s class or upload it to the Pre-PSA assignment portal on Blackboard by start of class on Friday. For your document, use the one you got in today’s class, or any one from Chapter 14 of the textbook, or one from this online collection of documents. For more info on what a PSA Paper is and how to write one, see p. 3 of the syllabus, the PSA Papers section of Blackboard, or the PSA Papers tab, above. You might not be able to fully cite the document you got in class (not all of them had dates / authors), so just do your best with making a footnote for it this time around.

If you can’t obtain the textbook this week, there is 1 copy on course reserve at the Library circulation desk. You will need your OneCard to check it out, and you can use it for up to 2 hours at a time during regular library hours. 

Thanks, all! ~ Dr. Hangen

Welcome to HI 112 US History II for Spring 2019. This course meets LASC requirements for USW or Constitutions. We meet MWF 9:30 am in Sullivan 314.

You will study broad themes in the history of modern America, including race and ethnicity, immigration, social and political reform, contested meanings of freedom, industrialization, cycles of prosperity and recession, popular culture, modernity, and rights movements.

You will improve your ability to think historically through critical analysis of primary and secondary sources; set events, documents, and people in their historical contexts; and craft your own interpretations from the “raw material” of the past.

If your prior experience in history courses involved a lot of memorization of facts and dates, then you will find this course to be very different. The goal is for you to actively DO history, not passively learn about history.

In addition to Blackboard I use this website to organize our course and its materials. Please bookmark it. Older material is from previous semesters; you can ignore anything not tagged “Spr19.”

The required textbook is Nancy A. Hewitt and Steven F. Lawson, Exploring American Histories: A Brief Survey With Sources, Volume 2 Since 1865 (Bedford / St. Martins) 2nd edition ISBN 978-1457694714. Please make sure you get Vol 2 and the 2nd Edition.

I look forward to meeting you on January 23rd. If you have questions in the meantime, feel free to reach out by email at thangen @ worcester.edu.