California State University,
Long Beach
History 172, Section 10 (#18718)
Dr. Brett Mizelle
Fall Semester 2002
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11:00 – 12:15
Room LA3-204
Office: Room FO2-109
Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:30-2:00, Wednesdays 5:00-6:30, and by appointment.
E-Mail: dmizelle@csulb.edu
Websites: http://www.csulb.edu/~dmizelle/
http://beachboard.csulb.edu/
http://www.ilrn.com/
Phone: 562-985-4424 (Office); 562-985-4431 (History Department)
"History does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do." James Baldwin
"The past is never dead. It
is not even past." William Faulkner
"Among the biggest difficulties in making a historical film is presenting the idea that there may be more than one reasonable version of events. Understanding that is a very, very difficult thing for most Americans, who have been trained by popular entertainment to want an answer in half an hour, an hour, or two hours, depending on whether it's television or the movies. And they want an unambiguous answer." John Sayles
History 172: The Key Questions:
Everything we do in this course is
designed to address one or more of these questions.
What You Can Expect to Learn in this Class:
Knowledge: This course aims to broaden and deepen your knowledge of some of the most important events, people, developments, and issues in U.S. history from the eve of European contact to the aftermath of Civil War.
Ways of Thinking: This course will help you develop fundamental skills of critical and historical thinking, such as reading for the main point, asking good questions, drawing connections, assessing the reliability of sources, constructing sound arguments, assessing change over time, and determining the limits of what can be known. Equipped with such skills, you will learn to exercise discernment when confronting historical claims people make about the past. In addition to learning how to "think like a historian," you'll also learn why it makes sense to want to do so.
A Point of View on American History: As we examine some of the major issues in early American history and how they've been depicted in films and documentaries, you will take steps toward developing your own perspective on the nation's past. You will also learn to recognize and critique other perspectives. You will also develop a more sophisticated understanding of the cultural work of historical imagination and historical memory in contemporary American culture.
Communication Skills: This course will help you improve your ability to listen, talk, write, and assume responsibility for your own education. Because curiosity is fundamental to learning, the skill that will be valued above all others in this course is the ability to ask good questions.
The CSULB Learning Alliance:
This section of History 172
is taught as part of the CSULB Learning Alliance, a community committed to
advancing knowledge and assisting your passage through the university
system. This course is
"linked" with two sections of English 100 taught by Bill Gilbert, who
will be using the same texts as we are in History 172. Sometimes these "links" between
content, materials, and assignments will be explicit, but at other times they
will not be so discernible. You will
also draw your own connections between English 100 and History 172 throughout
the semester as you develop ways of thinking and communication skills that are both
shared and unique to these two disciplines.
Required Course Texts:
· Peter N. Carroll & David W. Noble, The Free and the Unfree: A Progressive History of the United States, 3rd. ed. (2001).
·
Elizabeth Hoffman and Jon
Gjerde, eds., Major Problems in American History: Volume 1: to 1877 (2002).
·
Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, ed. David W. Blight (1993).
·
Gunther Barth, ed., The
Lewis & Clark Expedition: Selections from the Journals Arranged by Topic (1998).
·
iLrn On-Line Classroom access
card
These texts may be purchased at the University Bookstore. Additional readings and materials may be distributed in class or electronically. You should also possess a style manual and a quality dictionary to look up the unfamiliar words you will inevitably find in our readings.
Course Assignments & Grading:
Your final grade will be determined by your performance on the following:
· Quizzes and Questions on Major Problems & Free and the Unfree Readings (20%)
· Paper on Exploration of the Trans-Mississippi West (20%)
· Paper on Life Under Slavery (20%)
· In-Class Midterm Exam (15%)
· In-Class Final Exam (15%)
· Attendance, Participation and Miscellaneous Assignments (10%)
Additional information about these assignments will be distributed and discussed in class.
Course Design:
Topics: In fifteen weeks it is impossible to cover everything of importance in U.S. history for this period. Emphasizing major historical issues and their treatment in the American imagination, I have instead selected key topics for our primary consideration. In addition to these topics, we will discuss two facets of American history—the Lewis & Clark expedition and life under slavery—in greater detail.
Time Allocation: This class meets in one-hour and fifteen minute blocks twice per week. If you are unable to participate in class as scheduled you should seek out another offering. Class time will be used for film screenings, in-class writing and quizzes, brief lectures on key topics, and both small group and full class discussion.
BeachBoard: This class is using the web as a means of information sharing and communication. To that end, all students enrolled in the class are simultaneously enrolled in BeachBoard. To contact me with questions, participate in discussion groups, access assignments and grades, you'll need to log-in to www.beachboard.csulb.edu.
Film Screenings: Our study of historical topics will often begin with the screening of a historical film of some sort: usually a documentary or Hollywood movie. We begin our study of history this way because, growing up in a media culture, most of us find it easier to apprehend the past when we can see visual representations of it. Unfortunately, little in our culture equips us to be critical, discerning viewers of moving images. Therefore I will teach you some basic skills of visual literacy that will sharpen your habits of critical thinking when it comes to watching historical films. As a means to this end, we will analyze these films through writing and discussion.
iLrn On-Line Classroom: This course incorporates interactive learning presentations created by iLrn. We will be using two iLrn modules in this course to facilitate our study of the colonization of the Chesapeake and life under slavery in the antebellum south. You will have received instructions on how to enter iLrn.com when you purchased the access card at the bookstore. We'll also talk about how to access and to use iLrn in our classroom meetings.
Reading Historical Sources: To prepare for most of our class meetings, you will be asked to read primary documents and secondary historical interpretations from Major Problems in American History. These readings on important topics in U.S. history will be contextualized through brief lectures in class and your readings in The Free and the Unfree, which provides an synthetic overview of American history. As you read:
These strategies central to developing your knowledge, ways of thinking, and points of view on American history can be applied to our two additional texts (the Lewis & Clark journals and Douglass' Narrative) and our iLrn web modules as well.
Papers & Exams: Although we will watch filmed versions of American history and discuss historical documents and issues, history is fundamentally a written discipline. Accordingly, in your efforts to practice historical thinking, you will write two papers and take two in-class exams. The blue-book midterm and final exams will require you to read and interpret historical texts, giving you a chance to practice being a historian. Using knowledge gleaned from our readings and discussion, you should draw your own conclusions about these texts and their relevance and significance to the period under study. The text will resemble material we have analyzed in class and in Major Problems. In these exams, historical accuracy (i.e. figuring out authors and dates) is not as important as your ability to place the texts in context and to ask interesting questions of them. I am particularly interested in your analyses of the texts (what do they say or mean?) and your historical reasoning (what do the texts add to our understanding of the period or issue?).
Our two formal papers will be connected to our in-depth study of the Lewis & Clark expedition and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. While I will give you a choice of topics to consider, your papers should articulate and defend a point of some kind you wish to make about the materials you have read. Please do not use your papers to merely summarize the readings (I've read them, of course). Instead, your papers should demonstrate that you thought about the readings and took the trouble to wrestle your musings and insights into coherent, defensible arguments.
All work written outside the classroom must be typed or word-processed in a standard 10 or 12 point font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. All papers should have your name, the course title and number, the due date, and an appropriate title or label for the assignment at the top. I strongly recommend that you keep copies of all your work, either on paper or electronically, for your protection.
Grading: Your exams and formal papers will be evaluated for earnest effort and thoughtful, coherent content. Usage and grammar are not major concerns of grading, but a minimum mechanical competence to insure the "readability" of these papers is expected. I expect that you will proofread your papers and exams before handing them in. All papers are due in class on the day assigned. If you know you are going to miss class on dates any assignments are due you must be proactive and turn the assignment in early or request an extension in advance. Late assignments will lose one-third of a letter grade for each day they are late and will not be accepted more than one week past their due date without a previously agreed to extension. Please note that while I will grade your papers on a twelve-step scale that includes plus and minus grades, your final grade will fall along a five step scale because the College of Liberal Arts does not draw distinctions within grades (no plusses or minuses).
Quizzes & Questions: In order to have productive discussions of events and themes in early American history you will need to have completed all readings prior to coming to class. To reward those who are staying on top of the readings, I will randomly distribute quizzes on the assigned readings. There will be no make-up quizzes for any reason. However, you may take a quiz ahead of time if you know in advance that you will miss class. To facilitate classroom discussion I will also occasionally ask you to generate questions about the assigned readings. Sometimes you will be asked to prepare these questions as homework, bringing a printed version with you at our next class meeting. Other times we may take time out of class to come up with these questions; if so, I will collect this in-class writing at the end of the period for later grading.
Attendance & Participation: Because we cover a great deal of material in this course, prompt and regular attendance is a necessity, especially if you expect to earn a good grade. Students who frequently miss classes run the risk of receiving a failing grade or receiving a lower grade than the student might have secured with regular attendance. Excused absences must be documented by a doctor's note, a note from the Dean, or advance notice from the Athletic Director. Absences for religious observances are excused; please let me know of dates in advance.
Other Course Policies:
Classroom Environment: Please ask questions and express opinions in this course, approaching readings and ideas actively and critically. As you do so, however, please strive to be courteous to your fellow students. To create a respectful and productive environment please avoid unnecessary distractions (such as ringing cell phones, beeping pagers, and conspicuous food consumption) during class meetings.
Disability Accommodation: Any student who feels that he or she may need an accommodation for any sort of disability should make an appointment to see me during my office hours so we can make arrangements for you to complete the requirements of the class.
Plagiarism & Academic Integrity: Students in this class will be held to a high standard of academic integrity, which is defined as "the pursuit of scholarly activity free from fraud and deception." Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, cheating, plagiarizing, fabricating information or citations, facilitating acts of academic dishonesty by others, having unauthorized possession of examinations, submitting work of another person or work previously used without informing the instructor, or tampering with the academic work of other students. If you have any questions about academic integrity, please talk with me. I can and will fail a student for major infractions.
Student Services: In addition to the excellent advice provided by Learning Alliance staff, there are a host of other campus resources for students. If you need help with written assignments or require guidance on note-taking and critical reading, please take advantage of the Writer's Resource Lab (LAB-312; 985-4329) or the Learning Assistance Center (Library East 12; 985-5350). The CSULB Technology Help Desk is also available for students. Help is available on a wide range of computer issues including: BeachBoard, Windows and Mac OS, CSULB Internet Accounts, Remote Connectivity, Microsoft Desktop Applications, Anti-Virus, Internet and Web related topics. Visit them on the web at http://helpdesk.csulb.edu or by phone (562-985-4959) or e-mail: helpdesk@csulb.edu.
Course Schedule:
The schedule below is organized by week, not by specific
class meeting. In general, however,
we will watch films and take notes on lectures that contextualize our materials
on Tuesdays and get our hands dirty with the primary and secondary documents on
Thursdays. While I will clarify
specific reading assignments in class, you may wish to make sure you have read our
selections from Carroll & Noble before our first meeting on a given issue. You should definitely have the Major
Problems readings completed by our second
meeting on a topic. A final
disclaimer: This syllabus is a work in progress and is subject to change. Any changes will be announced in class
and posted on the course web page.
Week 1 Introduction
film: The Simpsons, "Lisa the Iconoclast"
reading: MP-"Introduction to Students" and CN-"Prefaces"
Week 2 European & Native American Cultures in Collision
film: Black Robe (excerpt)
reading: MP-01, documents 4-7, Merrell & Salisbury essays; CN-01
Week 3 Colonizing North America
film: TBA
reading: MP-02, documents 1-2; MP-03, documents 1-2; CN-02
iLrn module: Vanishing Footholds on the Chesapeake: Jamestown & St. Mary's City
Week 4 Development of American Slavery
film: Amistad (excerpt)
reading: MP-02, documents 4-6, Brown & Morgan essays; CN-03
Week 5 Interpreting the American Revolution
film: Liberty (excerpt); Revolution (excerpt)
reading: MP-04, documents 1-5, 7-10, Bailyn & Wood essays; CN-04
Week 6 Competing Visions of Post-Revolutionary America
film: TBA
reading: MP-05, documents 7-9; MP-06, documents 1, 3-5, Kerber & McCoy essays; CN-05; CN-08, pp. 187-205
Week 7-8 The Journey of the Corps of Discovery
film: Lewis & Clark
reading: Barth, ed., The Lewis & Clark Expedition (specific assignments TBA)
Tuesday, October 22nd: Lewis & Clark Paper due
Thursday, October 24th: Midterm Exam
Week 9 American Expansion & Indian Response
film: 500 Nations (excerpt)
reading: MP-07, documents 1-2, 4-5, 10, Dowd & Perdue essays; CN-07, pp. 165-178
Week 10 Social Change in the Antebellum North
film: TBA
reading: MP-11, documents 2, 3-5, 7, Roediger & Ashworth essays; CN-06, pp. 145-156; CN-07, pp. 178-184
Week 11-12 Life Under Slavery
film: TBA
reading: MP-12, documents 1-2, 4-5, 8; David Blight, "Introduction: A Psalm of Freedom" & Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; CN-06, pp. 156-160
iLrn module: Life Under Slavery
Tuesday, November 19th: Douglass paper due
Week 12-13 Religious Revival and Social Reform
film: Africans in America (excerpt)
reading: MP-09, documents 1-6, 8-9, Johnson & Hatch essays
Thursday, November 28th: Thanksgiving (no class)
Week 14 Antebellum Women's Lives
film: Not for Ourselves Alone (excerpt)
reading: MP-10, documents 2-6, 8, Cott & DuBois essays; MP-11, document 1; CN-06, pp. 160-162
Week 15 Slavery & the Civil War
film: Glory (excerpt)
reading: MP-14, documents 1-2, 4, 7, McPherson & Berlin essays; CN-08, 205-209, CN-09
Thursday, 19 December 10:15-12:15, Final Exam