History 2020

Guidelines for Reading and Writing Exercises

The syllabus for this course requires that you submit two essays as responses to the “reading and writing” questions, one such essay to be written for each of the two units into which the course is divided. Each essay must consist of at least 600 words and is to be based on 250-300 pages of appropriate reading. Each essay is due several days before the examination for the unit with which it is associated (consult the course syllabus for the exact date). Late reports will be marked down 10 points for each day that they are overdue (NOTE: this is each day, not each class meeting).

Well before the due date, choose your topic from those which are listed below. Then determine what reading you will do to gain the background you need to write an essay on that topic. Perhaps the simplest way to start is to examine the suggestions for reading that are at the end of each chapter in the textbook. Many more sources can be found in the Harvard Guide to American History, the Library of Congress’ Guide to the Study of the United States of America, and the numerous volumes in the Goldentree Bibliographies in American History series, all of which may be found in the Reference Room of the Library. If you cannot locate suitable titles on your own, arrange for a conference with your instructor.

You may read all 250-300 pages from a single book, or you may read portions of more than one book for a total of 250-300 pages. Choose your sources, and the pages within those sources, so that they really contribute toward an understanding of your topic. Most of the sources should be available at the Libraries of The University of Memphis or at the Memphis Public Library and Information Center. (Some students buy paperbound copies of books for their personal libraries.)

Do your reading carefully, taking notes as you read so that you can later refer to your notes in the writing of the essay. Write your essay in draft form. Revise it carefully. Then rewrite it in polished form.

“Your written work may be submitted to Turnitin.com, or a similar electronic detection method, for an evaluation of the originality of your ideas and proper use and attribution of sources. As part of this process, you may be required to submit electronic as well as hard copies of your written work, or be given other instructions to follow. By taking this course, you agree that all assignments may undergo this review process and that the assignment may be included as a source document in Turnitin.com’s restricted access database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism in such documents. Any assignment not submitted according to the procedures given by the instructor may be penalized or may not be accepted at all.” (Office of Legal Counsel, The University of Memphis, October 17, 2005)

You must submit your essay in two forms — a paper copy directly to the instructor and a copy in electronic form (either Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, Rich Text Format, or Portable Document Format) to turnitin.com, instructions for which are issued separately.

In addition to the body of the paper copy of your essay, attach both a photocopy or photocopies of the title page(s) and a photocopy or photocopies of the table(s) of contents of the book(s) on which you are reporting. Each photocopy of a title page must include the author’s name, name of the book, place of publication, publisher’s name, and date of publication. Some of this information may not be on the title page itself — it may be found on the page following the title page. If any of the information does not appear on the photocopy, add it in your handwriting. If the book does not have a table of contents, make a list of all the chapter headings in the book. On the photocopy or list of the table of contents, mark in some way (check mark, underlining, bracketing, or other obvious mark) the exact pages which you read in each book — you must show in this way that you have read at least the required number of pages. These photocopies are not required in the electronic submission to turnitin.com — send turnitin.com only the body of the essay.

The body of the essay should be a coherent, organized, literate composition on the theme of your chosen topic. It is not a term paper or a research paper and need not have footnotes, quotations, or other things normally found in such papers. It should be a simple, straightforward setting forth of what you learned from the reading.

The essay must be your own work, in your own words. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. If you have any doubt as to what constitutes plagiarism, read the documents under the heading of Academic integrity and the problem of plagiarism at the Department of History’s Web site on Writing and Literature Resources. The essay must reflect the content of the book or books which you have chosen. Do not use textbooks, encyclopedias, or Internet materials. Copying or paraphrasing something from a textbook, an encyclopedia, or an Internet document, and claiming that it is a summary of what you have read is one of the forms of plagiarism.

In addition to content, the essay will be graded on such mechanical matters as organization, word choice, spelling, punctuation, and other grammatical points. You may find guidance on these points in numerous manuals or handbooks; those used in English composition courses are standard.

READING AND WRITING TOPICS FOR THE FIRST UNIT:

The “Compromise of 1877”
Civil rights and the Supreme Court, 1877-1898
Southern states’ restrictions on black voters in the 1880s and 1890s
Booker T. Washington as a political leader
W. E. B. Du Bois as a political leader
The New South — dream or reality?
Manufacturing and railroads in the South, 1877-1915
U.S. policy toward Indians in the 19th century
Mining in the “Wild West” after 1877
Cattle raising in the “Wild West” after 1877
Farming in the “Wild West” after 1877
American public land policy after the Civil War
The significance of the frontier in American history
Transcontinental railroads
J. P. Morgan and the American economy
John D. Rockefeller and the American economy
Andrew Carnegie and the American economy
Industrial combinations, from pools to interlocking directorates
The Interstate Commerce Act
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act
The Gospel of Wealth
The Social Gospel
The condition of laborers, 1880s-1910s
Labor organizations, late 19th-early 20th centuries
The urbanization of America, late 19th century
Urban living conditions in the late 19th century
Political machines and political bosses
Urban reform movements
Education in the Gilded Age
American art and architecture in the Gilded Age
American literature in the Gilded Age
The spoils system and civil-service reform
The tariff in American politics, late 19th century
The Granger movement
The Populist movement
The controversy over free silver
The Omaha Platform of the Populist Party
The new Manifest Destiny — American expansion in the late 19th century
The Spanish-American War
The debate over the Philippines
The Panama Canal
Origins of the Progressive movement
The Industrial Workers of the World and other radical critics
Robert LaFollette as a reform leader
Theodore Roosevelt as a progressive president
The controversy over conservation under Roosevelt
The Roosevelt Corollary in diplomacy
The “insurgents” and William Howard Taft
The Bull Moose Party in 1912
The election of 1912
Woodrow Wilson as a progressive president

READING AND WRITING TOPICS FOR THE SECOND UNIT:

American neutrality, 1914-1917
The submarine issue in the First World War
American military involvement in the First World War
The home front during the First World War
Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points”
Negotiating the Treaty of Versailles
The League of Nations
The Senate’s consideration of the peace settlement, 1919-1920
Warren G. Harding as a political leader
Prohibition — the “Great Experiment”
The Scopes trial
The Ku Klux Klan and other nativist organizations in the 1920s
The “Jazz Age” — the social history of the 1920s
Progressivism in the 1920s
Causes of the Great Depression
Herbert Hoover’s policies for the Great Depression
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s rise to the presidency
The “Hundred Days” of the New Deal
The New Deal and agriculture
The New Deal and industry
The New Deal and labor
The “second” New Deal
The historical significance of the New Deal
The Good Neighbor Policy
U.S. neutrality legislation in the 1930s
U.S. in the European theatre of the Second World War
U.S. in the Pacific theatre of the Second World War
Wartime diplomacy, from Casablanca to Yalta
The home front during the Second World War
The United Nations
The “Cold War”
Harry S. Truman as a political leader
The Truman Doctrine
The Marshall Plan
The election of 1948
U.S. policy toward China, 1945-1950
The Korean “police action”
McCarthyism
Dwight D. Eisenhower as a political leader
Massive retaliation as a defensive strategy
NATO and other defensive alliances
School desegregation
John F. Kennedy as a political leader
The Cuban missile crisis
The Peace Corps
The race to the moon in the 1960s
The Berlin Wall
The election of 1964
Lyndon B. Johnson as a political leader
American involvement in Vietnam
The “hawks” and the “doves” — American opinion about Vietnam
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s
The Black Power movement
Martin Luther King as a civil rights leader
Stokely Carmichael as a civil rights leader
The Feminist movement
Richard M. Nixon as a political leader
Nixon’s foreign policy
Watergate
The rise of the Republican Party in the recent South