HISTORY 101
AMERICAN POLITICAL AND
SOCIAL HISTORY II
Spring 1997
Course Organizer and Lecturer: Dr. Robert R. Dykstra
Web Resource Organizer: Dr. Gerald Zahavi
Discussion Leader: Chris Cyphers
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Instructors
TB 302-2, Office Hours: Tues.,Wed. 4-5
TB 202-2, Office Hours: Wed. 9-12 and 2-4; Th. 2:30-5
TB 308-1, Office Hours: Monday 1-2:30 |
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A. Course goals:
This course introduces undergraduates to the basics of U.S. history for the period from the end of the Civil War to the 1990s. Particular emphasis is given to furthering students' "cultural literacy" -- that is, their exposure to subject matter of importance -- rather than to student self-expression. Besides learning from large lectures, small-group discussions, and assigned reading, all
students will participate in the exploration of relevant historical information located on the World Wide Web (WWW).
Students will be expected to acquire a minimal level of computing literacy in the course. Toward that end, instructors will spend
some time early in the semester introducing students to the Internet and to the use of WWW browsers. There are presently millions of pages
of primary historical sources (texts, videos/films, oral "testimony," and graphical images) on the Web. Each day, thousands more appear.
Learning how to access and use these electronic documents is an important skill -- one that all educated people should acquire.
Computers with Web browsers (specifically Netscape) will be available to History 101 students in LC-15; we will announce
the schedule to the room in class. There are other sites around campus with Netscape-loaded computers and we will let you know
where and when you can use them when we meet. Those of you who already have a computer and modem will be able to
access the WWW on your own schedules.
B. Attendance:
Each week of classes includes two lectures, given Tuesday and Thursday in Lecture Center 20, and one discussion session, held on either Friday or Monday in Ten Broeck 1 or 2. Students are expected to attend all three classes each week. Attendance will be taken. If any student has more than four unexcused cuts during the semester, his or her course grade will be reduced by one point (for example, from B- to C+). Valid excuses must be grounded in written documentation of a medical or personal emergency.
C. Grades:
Each student's grade will be based on four separate evaluations: two midterm exams, a final exam, and a discussion grade. Each will count 25 percent of the course grade. Exams will be based on both lectures and reading. Special credit may be given for dramatic improvement between the first exam and the third. Discussion grades will be based on oral participation, quizzes, and special Web project assignments.
D. Academic integrity:
The discovery of cheating on any exam or plagiarism on any project paper will result in immediate expulsion from the course with a failing grade and a report to the Dean of Undergraduate Studies.
E. Lecture Center behavior:
While in class students may not read, whisper, doze, pass notes, or engage in any other type of disruptive behavior. The risk is a complete loss of temper by the lecturer. All students must be seated on time (that is, before the lecture begins); latecomers may be turned away at the door. Permission ahead of time is required for any student who must leave class early.
F. Readings (paperbound books to purchase)
Three "period" novels:
- Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893).
- Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (1948).
- Marilyn French, The Women's Room (1977).
Textbook:
- Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant
(1994), vol. II
G. Weekly schedule of Lecture Center and discussion sessions:
Part 1: Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, World War I (1865-1920)
LC/ Jan. 23 Introductory
Disc/ Jan. 24/27 Computer lab: how to use the Worldwide Web
Assignments: none
LC/ Jan. 28 Lecture 1: "Emancipation and Equal Rights"
LC/ Jan. 30 Video (Lecture 2): Ethnic Notions
Disc/ Jan. 31/Feb. 3
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 487-91, 493-94, 497-503,
505-06, 518-19, 579-80, A1, A17-18
Web links:
- Organization and Principles of the Ku Klux Klan, 1868
- Booker T. Washington's Views on Race, Economics, and Social Progress
B. T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address (1895) and selections from Up from Slavery (1901)
- Up From Slavery
The complete text of Booker T. Washington's autobiography.
- Mary Church Terrell on African-American Women in the Post-Reconstruction Era (1898)
"The Progress of Colored Women," by
Mary Church Terrell,
President, National Association of Colored Women.
An address delivered before the National American Women's Suffrage
Association at the Columbia Theater, Washington, D.C.,
February 18, 1898.
- Selections from W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks, 1903
- Voices from the 1930s (The WPA Life Histories Collection) The Life Histories Collection is
part of the U.S. Work Progress Administration Federal Writers' Project and Historical Records Survey.
- "Reminiscence of a Negro Preacher" (1939). One item from the above collection.
- Rural Blacks in Post-Reconstruction South Carolina: Mattie Hammond Harrell's Story (1938). Another selection from the Life Histories Collection.
- A Black North Carolina Tenant Farmer's Life (1938). Yet another selection from the WPA Life Histories Collection.
LC/ Feb. 4 Lecture 3: "Immigrant Americans"
LC/ Feb. 6 Lecture 4: "Imperialism"
Disc/ Feb. 7/10
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 568-76, 641-55, 662-65,
668, 671-76, 710-14
Web links:
LC/ Feb. 11 Lecture 5: "Big Business"
LC/ Feb. 13 Lecture 6: "Progressivism"
Disc/ Feb. 14/17 no sessions [Washington-Lincoln Day]
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 539-51, 608-09, 681-91,
698, 703-10
Web links:
- Inside an American Factory: The Westinghouse Works
- A Glove Cutters' Strike (Fulton County, N.Y. 1914). Original transcription of worker and management testimony concerning a 1914 strike in upstate N.Y. This is part of the "Glovers of Fulton County" WWW site soon to appear on
the SUNY-Albany home page. The "Glovers of Fulton County" is the first multimedia venture of the History and Media Project of the Department
of History. This selection was typed by Debbie Neuls from an original copy of the Board of Mediation and Arbitration hearing records.
LC/ Feb. 18 Lecture 7: "U.S. Entry into WWI: External Factors"
LC/ Feb. 20 Lecture 8: "U.S. Entry into WWI: Internal Factors"
Disc/ Feb. 21/24
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 714-19, 722-42;
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Web links:
LC/ Feb. 25 Lecture 9: "The Peace Settlement and the League"
LC/ Feb. 27 First Examination
Disc/ Feb. 28/Mar. 3
Assignments: No reading assignment
Web links:
Part II: The twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II (1920-1945)
LC/ Mar. 4 Lecture 10: "Labor and Business in the Twenties"
LC/ Mar. 6 Lecture 11: "Cultural Conflict in the Twenties"
Disc/ Mar. 7/10
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 745-55, 764-65, 768-71,
774-82
Web links:
- N.Y.S. Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities (Lusk Committee). Introduction to the printed guide to the records of the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities, giving background information on the Committee.
- Example 1: Original Scanned Informant's Report Sent to the Lusk Committee. This
document is directly drawn from Prof. Gerald Zahavi's research on labor and radicalism in America.
It, and the ones that follow, profile post-WWI radicalism in Broome County, New York. Broome
County radicals were a divided lot in late 1919. This division--shared by many of their comrades across the nation--reflected
the strength of ethnic and national chauvinisms, the general crisis in American socialism precipitated
by World War I, and the impact of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
The vast majority of the County's radicals were right wing socialists, but there was also a substantial pro-Bolshevik left-wing.
Local socialists were organized into a number of foreign language federations -- Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Russian, and so on. This document is a report on pro-Bolshevik Lithuanians active in Binghamton N.Y. [Source: N.Y. State Archives]
- Example 2: Original Scanned Informant's Report Sent to the Lusk Committee. An informant's report on a recent Socialist Party meeting in Binghamton. It was written by Julia Preston, a Binghamton
Press reporter fluent in a number of East European languages. Preston, a right-wing socialist who detested pro-Bolshevik left-wingers, attended many local socialist
meetings. Little did her comrades know that she was sending regular reports on their activities to the state legislature. Preston identified herself in her correspondence as agent 100. [Source: N.Y. State Archives]
- Example 3: Original Scanned Informant's Report Sent to the Lusk Committee. Here's another report by Julia Preston (agent 100), this time with a fascinating profile of the cultural
world of Slovak radicals. [Source: N.Y. State Archives]
- Transcribed Versions of Informants' Reports and Correspondence
Sent to the Lusk Committee. Here are more informant reports, this time from A. Adomaitis, along with correspondence
from the Chief Investigator of the Lusk Committee and Binghamton attorneys
responsible for relaying the reports to the Committee.
- Selection from 1921 FBI File on Broome County, NY Radicals A fascinating account
of religious conflicts, Endicott radicals, and George F. Johnson, head of the Endicott-Johnson Company. E-J
was a shoe manufacturing firm with plants in Endicott, Johnson City, and Binghamton, N.Y.
- Red Scare, Broome County, I. An article in the Binghamton Press from 1919, illustrating the erosion of civil liberties during the red scare years.
- Red Scare, Broome County, II. Two articles from the Binghamton Press from 1919. More examples of the erosion of civil liberties.
- The Edge Trimmers and the Patriarch. Endicott, NY (1927). A transcription of a conversation between the head of
the Endicott Johnson Corporation and a group of employees. The Endicott Johnson Corporation instituted
paternalistic practices in the 1890s. Under the direction of George F. Johnson, the company
became a quintessential practitioner of both corporate and community welfare capitalism by the 1920s.
LC/ Mar. 11 Lecture 12: "Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Depression"
LC/ Mar. 13 Lecture 13: "Economic Stabilization"
Disc/ Mar. 14/17
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 782-89, 794-800, 804-11
Web links:
LC/ Mar. 18 Lecture 14: "Labor and the New Deal"
LC/ Mar. 20 Lecture 15: "The Social Programs of the New Deal"
Disc/ Mar. 21/23
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 802-04, 811-21;
The Naked and the Dead, pp. 3-721
Web links:
LC/ Apr. 1 Lecture 16: "U.S. Entry into World War II"
LC/ Apr. 3 Lecture 17: "The United States in World War II"
Disc/ Apr. 4/7
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 789-91, 827-44, 847-51,
858-73
Web links:
- Target Committee Meeting Minutes, May 10-11, 1945.
- Atomic Bomb Decision -- Bard Memorandum, June 27, 1945.
- Atomic Bomb Decision -- Truman Tells Stalin, July 24, 1945.
- Atomic Bomb Decision -- Truman Diary, July 25, 1945.
- Atomic Bomb Decision -- Official Bombing Order, July 25, 1945.
- Atomic Explosion Sites: Nevada Test Site.
- Atomic Explosion Sites: Trinity Site.
- The City of Hiroshima: Effects of the Nuclear Bomb Blast. A WWW exhibit by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
.
LC/ Apr. 8 Second Examination
Part III: The Cold War Era: from Truman to Clinton (1945-1995)
LC/ Apr. 10 Lecture 18: "The Cold War: Europe"
Disc/ Apr. 11/14
Assignments: No reading assignment
Web links:
.
LC/ Apr. 15 Lecture 19: "The Cold War: Latin America"
LC/ Apr. 17 Lecture 20: "The Cold War: Asia"
Disc/ Apr. 18/21 no sessions [Passover]
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 886-96, 900-02, 916-17,
921-23, 932-36, 940-42, 945-50, 960-62, 969-70,
973-75, 1000-04
Web links: None this week.
LC/ Apr. 22 no class [Passover]
LC/ Apr. 24 Lecture 21: "Communism, Espionage, McCarthyism"
Disc/ Apr. 25/28
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 884-85, 898-900, 910-14,
936-40, 942-45, 1031
Web links:
- Anticommunism at Columbia University. From the Columbia Spectator, Wednesday, April 8, 1953
- Hiss and Chambers: Strange Story of Two Men. From the New York Times, Sunday, December 12, 1948.
- Is This Tomorrow? (poster, 1947).
- The [political] "outing" of Richard Edsall. A brief excerpt from: SUBVERSIVE INFLUENCE IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS: Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Comm on the Judiciary, US Senate, 82nd congress, 2nd session, Sept. 8, 9, 10, 23, 24, 25, and Oct. 13, 1952.
- Fred Schwarz, You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists). On brainwashing and literature. Published by the Christian Anti-Communists Crusade and Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1960
- Fred Schwarz, You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists). On children and literature. Published by the Christian Anti-Communists Crusade and Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1960.
- Homosexuals in government, 1950. From the Congressional Record, volume 96, part 4, 81st Congress 2nd Session, March 29 -- April 24, 1950, (pages 4527-4528).
- Runaway Daughter (1953). Hollywood film -- poster and promotional copy.
- I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951). Hollywood film -- poster and promotional copy.
LC/ Apr. 29 Lecture 22: "The Secret Conduct of Foreign Policy"
LC/ May 1 Lecture 23: "Civil Rights, 1945-1965"
Disc/ May 2/5
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 896-98, 908-10, 918-19,
933-36, 981-82, 994, 996-97; The Women's Room, pp. 1-503
Web links:
LC/ May 6 Lecture 24: "G.O.P. Politics: From Ike to Newt"
Assignments: American Pageant, pp. 882-83, 906-08, 919, 923-25, 950-53, 966-69, 971-73, 976-77, 987-93,1007-11
Web links: No assignment
LC/ May 14 Final Examination (time to be announced)
This page maintained by:
Prof. Gerald Zahavi
Department of History
202-2 Ten Broeck Hall
University at Albany
Albany, N.Y. 12222
Tel. #: (518) 442-4780
Email: [email protected]