History 117B: U.S. History since 1865

INTRODUCTION

This course will emphasize the growth of the United States within the context of world events. Since the Civil War, U.S. history has been dominated by four issues:

Growth. The United States has experienced explosive growth since the Civil War, in several dimensions: population, the economy, occupation and use of its land area, and world hegemony. Growth always implies change, and change always "stirs the pot," in terms of social structure and political power.
The role of the U.S. in world events. Despite the United States's size, geographical isolation, and relatively recent entry on the world scene, it has never been possible to consider domestic events without also considering both how they are influenced by outside forces and ideas, and in turn influence other countries.
Attempts to deal with diversity. How has the U.S. attempted to include or exclude religious minorities, women, blacks, Native Americans, immigrants, homosexuals, or other groups from full participation in society? Have these attempts been successful? Why or why not?
The changing relationships between individuals and government. The United States began as a novelty, with an experimental form of government which tried to balance the will of the majority with the rights of the minority. It is not one government but a hierarchy of national, state, and local governments. How this arrangement has worked in the past, and how the relationships among its parts have changed over time, will be a constant theme in this course.

This document explains the basic requirements for this course and the procedures for meeting these requirements.

MATERIALS

The following materials are necessary for this course:

Henretta, James, and David Brody. America: A Concise History, 4th ed. Volume II: Since 1865. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. This is bundled with another volume, Documents to Accompany America: A Concise History, and includes access to the publisher's web site. The ISBN for the bundled package is 0-32161-484-5.
Rampolla, Mary Lynn. A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. ISBN 0-312-53503-1.
Access to the World Wide Web, either from your own computer or from one of the computers in the labs on campus.
A notebook for taking notes in class.
Bluebooks and a pen with dark blue or black ink for the midterm and final examinations.

You can purchase all of the supplies at the campus bookstore.

REQUIREMENTS

To earn three semester units of transferable college credit for this course, you must complete the following requirements with a cumulative average of C or better:

You must be enrolled in Section 05 of History 117B.
You must attend classes. Quizzes (see below) are given during class time; in addition, examinations will cover lecture material as well as readings. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of every class meeting, so if you must arrive late, be sure to see me after class.
You must pass one essay midterm and an essay final examination, both of which must be written in bluebooks, in ink. If you cannot take the exams at the regularly-scheduled times, you must present an excuse signed by a physician, counselor, performing arts instructor, or sports team coach. Failure to take the final exam will result in an automatic "F" regardless of your average grade prior to the final.
You must write one four- to six-page paper based on primary sources. Instructions for this assignment will be distributed during the semester.
You must complete an oral history project. Full instructions for this will be distributed approximately four weeks into the semester. Briefly, this project will require you to interview someone who has lived through a major, "defining" event in modern American history. You will then transcribe the interview and compare it with those you will read in one of the books I will recommend. The person you select can be a family member or acquaintance, a neighbor, a resident of a retirement home, or anyone else who has a good memory and is willing to discuss his or her experiences with you.

The class also includes three brief quizzes dealing with the lecture and reading materials. These quizzes will require you to write a paragraph or two which identifies a person, place, or thing, and explains its historical significance. The quizzes may be written on ordinary notebook paper, using pen or pencil. No make-up quizzes will be given, but the lowest of the three quiz grades will be dropped.

There is no prerequisite for this class, but ..., as you can see from the descriptions above, the class involves considerable reading and writing. I expect you to be able to write grammatically-correct English sentences, to be able to compose cohesive paragraphs, to understand the concepts of an essay and a thesis, and to be able to write an effective essay. If your English skills are weak, you may wish to consider enrolling in an introductory English class (such as Engl 101A) either concurrently or before you take this class.

GRADING

The requirements discussed above will be assigned the following weights when computing your course grade:

Quizzes (3 @ 5% each—lowest dropped)	10%
Research paper	15%
Oral history project	20%
Midterm	20%
Final	35%

The midterm and final will be evaluated for your ability to demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships in analyzing the facts of U.S. history. They will not be primarily a drill on names and dates; however, you must know the facts before you can analyze them. Therefore, minor slips in dates will probably result in no more than a correction, with no deduction in your grade. (Major errors of fact, however, will result in a decrease in your grade.) More important, though, is your ability to demonstrate that you understand the relationships among events.

At the end of the semester, close grade decisions will be made based on attendance and classroom participation. Attendance will be taken at every class period, so please make sure you sign the attendance log.

There is no grading curve for this class. If you do the work well and demonstrate that you understand the material presented, you will receive an A. If you fail to do all of the work assigned, or demonstrate inadequate understanding of the material, you will receive a lower grade.

You may take this class on a credit/no credit basis. Your grade will be computed as discussed above, but will be recorded as CR if your course grade is C or higher, and as NC if your grade is below a C. Classes taken for CR/NC are not included when computing your GPA.

Work must be turned in on time. There will be a late penalty of one-third of a grade letter for every calendar day work is late. Thus, an A paper turned in one day late will receive an A—, a B+ paper will receive a B, and so on. Two calendar days late = 2/3 letters deducted, and so forth. No work will be accepted more than two calendar weeks late. This penalty will be waived only if you present a written note from a physician.

I will require you to submit a series of milestones for your paper assignment on a weekly basis. I will comment on these milestones as you submit them, offering suggestions for improvement. If you fail to submit these milestones when they are due, or if the content of the submissions does not meet at least minimal quality standard, I will deduct 1/3 of a letter grade for each missed milestone.

Extra Credit and Alternative Assignments. If you wish, you may teach the class part of one day. You may do this either instead of one of the two papers assigned, or as extra credit (in which case your lecture will count for an additional 15% of your grade). You must, however, present your topic at the appropriate chronological point in the course (for example, if you want to present something on settlement of the West, you must do it at the beginning of the semester). If you have some special knowledge about one of the topics we will cover—perhaps one of your ancestors fought in the Spanish-American War—please come see me about teaching part of that day's class. Please note that as the end of the semester approaches, and people start to be concerned about their grades, the number of people who ask to do extra-credit presentations at the last minute increases dramatically. Because of time, we can only accommodate a limited number of presentations. If you wait until the last minute, not only is your choice of topic limited by the chronological requirement, but you may be left out for lack of time.

DUE DATES

The due dates for homework and tests for this semester are as follows. Except for the final versions of the papers and the final exam, you will normally receive each piece of work back, graded and with whatever comments I have, on the first class meeting following the due date.

Paper #1 assigned	Tuesday, September 15
Paper #1 topic & sources due	Tuesday, September 22
Quiz #1	Thursday, September 24
Paper #1 thesis & outline due	Tuesday, September 29
Paper #1 rough draft due	Tuesday, October 6
Quiz #2	Thursday, October 8
Paper #1 final version due	Tuesday, October 13
Midterm	Thursday, October 15
Oral History assigned	Tuesday, October 20
Quiz #3	Thursday, December 3
Oral History due	Tuesday, December 8

CLASS RESOURCES

Please check my home page for general resources available to help you at Ohlone. Besides these materials, the following resources are available for your use in this class:

Primary Source Documents for History 117B: This is a collection of primary sources that may be useful to supplement your textbook or to use while writing your term papers. Most of these are supplied by the Avalon Project of the Yale University Law School. You can access these documents from either an alphabetical list or a chronological list (both lists contain the same documents).
Handouts: This is a list of printed documents handed out in class. You may download these and print them as you need to (they are in PDF form).
The Annals of America: This collection, published by the Encyclopaedia Britannica Press, is a collection of about twenty volumes of primary source documents applicable to American history. It is available in the Newark Learning Center.
Ohlone's librarians have kindly produced a handout, which you can get here or at the desk of the NCHST Library, which both describes this collection and shows you specifically how to cite articles from it.
The Founders' Constitution: This five-volume set, also available in the Newark Learning Center, contains the background for all parts of the U.S. Constitution. Every precedent, theoretical discussion, and argument that went into every clause of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is discussed in this set, along with Supreme Court decisions that further defined the meaning of the Constitution, up to 1835 (the death of John Marshall).
University of Chicago (Turabian) Style Guide: The papers you write for this class must be footnoted using the University of Chicago citation style (NOT the MLA style, with which you may be familiar). I'm not trying to make life difficult for you, but the history profession uses the Chicago style. This document, from UC Berkeley, describes how to construct footnotes and bibliography entries correctly. The description includes two variants: for this class, use the "Notes and Bibliography" style. "Turabian" refers to Kate L. Turabian, who was with the University of Chicago Graduate School for many years and published a summary of the Chicago style, entitled A Handbook for Writers of Theses, Term Papers, and Dissertations.
Several Web sites are available that give examples of all the types of citations you are likely to need. Some will generate proper Turabian/Chicago footnotes and bibliographic entries for you, based on answering a few questions. While some of these are very flexible, they often require you to enter an enormous amount of detail. One I can recommend is Diana Hacker's site, www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c10_s2.html. Use the pull-down menu to select the type of reference you want. For The Annals of America, select 11. Work in an anthology as your model (you can also check the handout mentioned above). For articles taken from the Web, the appropriate model is probably 22. Short document from a web site. Just substitute the information you have for your source for the information shown in these models, making sure to format them as the models show, and you'll probably get it right.
Search the Ellis Island Database: Dr. Stephen Morse, a computer scientist living in San Francisco (and the architect of the computer chip in your computer), has built a web site that allows you to search the immigration records kept at Ellis Island, New York, using a simple "OneStep" approach. You are welcome to explore this if you wish to do research on immigration issues.

MISCELLANEOUS INSIGHTS

This is essentially a lecture class, but pertinent questions are always welcome. Some class time will be devoted to discussion of the readings in your textbook. I strongly encourage you to keep up with the reading schedule as the semester proceeds. You will need to have read the assigned materials to participate in class discussions and to take quizzes; additionally, postponing the readings to the night before a test makes it virtually impossible to put the ideas and events mentioned in the text into their proper historical context—this is largely the purpose of the lectures. While this course will not emphasize memorization of names and dates, some memorization is unavoidable, and it is easier to memorize one thing per day than fifty things in one night.

Learning takes place most effectively in an atmosphere of courtesy and mutual respect. This does not mean blindly accepting everything I say; it does mean treating my opinions, and those of your fellow students, with respect. While it is a reasonable presumption that I know more about American history in general than you do, it is virtually certain that one or more of you will know more about a particular aspect of it than I will. When this is the case, please do not be shy about sharing your insights with the rest of the class. (This includes correcting my errors!)

Courtesy also takes more mundane, but no less important, forms, to wit:

Please do not bring food or beverages into the classroom, or chew gum during class.
I will make every attempt to start class on time. When class starts, please give me your attention. If extenuating circumstances force you to arrive after class has started, please take your seat with a minimum of disruption.
I expect you to demonstrate a commitment to education that lasts at least as long as the class period. Falling asleep during class, engaging in activities not related to this class, or engaging in any disruptive behavior will, when noticed, solicit a request that you leave the classroom, and you will be counted absent for that day.
If you have a cellular telephone, pager, or beeping watch, please TURN IT OFF before you come to class. If you cannot afford to be out of telephone contact for the duration of the class, you cannot afford to take this class.
If you must leave class early, please let me know this at the beginning of class (obvious emergencies excepted).