20080925_Modern_America_syllabus_HIS3257

HIS3257

Explorations in Modern
American History
Dr. Thomas J. Brophy, FKHB 112, Tel.: 2609-7118
E-mail:
Tutor: Lo Chi Hung
E-mail:
Time and Venue: Tuesday, 10:30-12:15, New Asia Humanities Bldg 11
Language: English


HIS3257

Explorations in Modern
American History
Course description: Our course will stand true to its name and explore modern
American history rather than recount it. We will take a thematic rather than a progressive
line of inquiry and essentially sacrifice the comforts of an orderly timeline for the
challenges of a non-linear exploration. Chronology will not be eliminated as the lectures
will roughly flow from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries and the events and
the movements we investigate will be placed in their temporal contexts, but we will be
most interested in the links between different periods with regards to specific subjects.
The weekly lecture topics include economics; territorial expansion; popular movements
that originated outside government structures and the influence they later wielded within
them; the betrayal, confrontations, and confinement of Native Americans; slavery and
institutionalized bigotry; religion and popular culture; urban development; the causes of
and responses to economic impoverishment; international relations; and crises of
authority. For example, we will consider what the country’s “Founding Fathers” meant
by their declaration of each individual’s right to the “pursuit of happiness,” and how that
resulted in a clique of late nineteenth century “Robber Barons.”

As befits the course’s thematic approach, its readings will give voice to many
scholarly perspectives and will engage with a variety of primary sources that should be
viewed as historical texts that open windows onto inquiries into the nature of class,
gender, minority status, immigration, foreign relations, religion, technology, and culture.
With our emphasis on critical thinking, essay writing, and primary source interpretation,
not only will students be profoundly better informed as to the subject matter and
demonstrably more expert on matters of historical investigation; you will also leave with
an enhanced set of skills. After successfully completing the coursework, students will be
better able to express ideas clearly in writing, to conduct scholarly research, to analyze
information and to critique differing viewpoints, to compare and to contrast contrary
cases of historical interpretation, to discern and to explain the links between historical
events, and to assess the importance of historical documents or of cultural artifacts
whether they comprise a political cartoon, book, painting, speech, song, or film.

Course requirements: Students are expected to faithfully attend the course’s
lectures and tutorials and to arrive familiar with each week’s assigned reading material.
Each student will write a mid-term and end-of-term essay that will be derived from a list
of provided paper topics. In both cases, the essays are to be typed, presented in proper
academic form, and fully referenced. Please be aware that while mid- and end-of-term
essay subjects will be provided, each student may propose their own assignment topic
and will have it reviewed and more than likely approved. In tutorials, each student will
present a brief paper on any aspect of the subject matter covered in lecture that week or
derived from the pertinent tutorial material. Percentages for these means of assessment
and how they contribute to a final grade are provided below. A student’s ability to


demonstrate mastery of the material from the assigned reading material and lectures
serves as the basis for grades. Plagiarism or any other form of academic dishonesty is
unacceptable, will be reported, and will be dealt with in terms of CUHK’s policy for such
transgressions. Our classroom is not a lounge; so, sleeping, eating, telephoning, texting,

or any other leisure time activity is not permitted and will serve as cause for ejection.
In the 2008/2009 academic year CUHK implements a mandatory program to
facilitate academic honesty. Students must now upload a soft copy of all text based
assignments (essays) to the university’s CUPIDE (Chinese University Plagiarism
Identification Engine) program. The system can accommodate documents in a variety of
formats including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, HTML, and plain text; for this course
please use Word as your primary format. Upon uploading your document the system
issues a receipt containing a declaration of honesty, which students sign and attach to the
hard copy of their assignment prior to submission. Work submitted without the CUPIDE
issued receipt will not be graded. After comparing the assignments alongside each other
and reviewing them against other documents in the central database, digital libraries, and
the Internet, CUPIDE e-mails an originality report to each teacher that highlights
suspected plagiarized content with detailed analytic and statistical data.
For CUPIDE purposes everybody’s tutorial presentation constitutes Assignment
#1.

Assessment:
1.
2.
3.

Lecture attendance, written assignments, and tutorial participation [contributions
to discussion and presentation(s) on related topics], 35%.
Mid-term Paper of about 2000 words due on or before 24 February 2009, 25%.
Final Term Paper of about 3000 words due on or before 14 April, 40%.

Lecture & Tutorial Schedule:
Week One, 6 January 2009: Introduction
“A More Perfect Union,” Administration, Class goals.
Alan Brinkley, Chapter 5: “The American Revolution,” The unfinished nation: a concise

history of the American People. (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1997): 115-149.

Week Two, 13 January 2009: The Business of America Is Business
Howard Zinn, Chapter 5: “A Kind of Revolution,” A people's history of the United States,
1492-present, (New York: Perennial Classics, 2003): 76-101.
Jacqueline Jones, et al., Chapter 16: Standardizing the Nation: Innovation in Technology,
Business, and Culture, 1877-1890, Created equal: a social and political history of the
United States. (New York: Longman, 2003): 538-571.

Week Three, 20 January 2009: From Sea to Shining Sea
B. W. Beacroft, Chapter 6, Manifest Destiny, The making of America: from wilderness to
world power, (Essex : Longman, 1982): 68-83.


Jacqueline Jones, et al., Chapter 11: Expanding Westward: Society and Politics in Age of
Common Man, 1819-1832, Created equal: a social and political history of the United
States: 354-389.
Assignment #2: Write 200-word informative abstract of Frank Prochaska’s article, “The
American Monarchy,” History Today 57:8 (2007): 22-29.

Week Four, 27 January 2009: Holiday
Week Five, 3 February 2009: Power to the People
George Brown Tindall, Chapter 10, “The Jacksonian Impulse,” America: a narrative
history, (New York: Norton, 1996): 301-329.
Alan Brinkley, Chapter: “The Rise of Progressivism,” The unfinished nation: a concise
history of the American People: 581-609.
Assignment #2 due: Hand in your informative abstract of “The American Monarchy.”
Assignment #3: Examine the collection of images from the American West and write a
500-word reaction to what a single, several, or all of the representations say about the
period and the people who populated it. You may delve into the historical significance of

the event and/or person(s) being depicted, engage in a comparative analysis of mixed
messages, or investigate the success of the image(s) as political or cultural propaganda.

Tutorial One: An American Storyteller
Primary Reading: Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County
Complementary Reading: S. J. Krause, “The Art and Satire of Twain’s
‘Jumping Frog” Story, American Quarterly 16:4 (Winter 1964): 562-576.

Week Six, 10 February 2009: Three-Fifths of a Man
Carl N. Degler, Chapter 6: The American Tragedy,” Out of our Past: The Forces that
Shaped Modern America, (New York: Harper & Row, 1970): 175-204.
Howard Zinn, Chapter 7: “Slavery without Submission, Emancipation without Freedom,”
A people's history of the United States, 1492-present: 167-205.
Cornel West, Chapter 8: “Malcolm X and Black Rage,” Race Matters, (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1993): 93-105.
Assignment #3 due: Submit reaction to images of American West.
Assignment #4: Compose an outline that addresses one of the supplied essay topics

Week Seven, 17 February 2009: A Trail of Tears
Howard Zinn, Chapter 7: “As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs,” A people's history of
the United States, 1492-present: 124-146.
Alan Brinkley, Chapter 16: “The Conquest of the Far West,” The unfinished nation: a
concise history of the American People: 454-486.
Assignment #4 due: Hand in your outline of your chosen essay topic.
Assignment #5: Discussion of mid-term essay.

Tutorial Two: Depictions of the American West

Primary Material: Painting and Photographs of the American West
Complementary Reading: David M. Wrobel, “Exceptionalism and
Globalism: Travel Writers and the Nineteenth-Century American West,”
The Historian (22 September 2006): 431-460.

Week Eight, 24 February 2009, A House Divided
Jacqueline Jones, et al., Chapter 14: “To fight to Gain a Country: The Civil War,”
Created equal: a social and political history of the United States: 462-498.
Alan Brinkley, Chapter 15: “Reconstruction and the New South,” The unfinished nation:
a concise history of the American People: 454-486.

Week Nine, 3 March 2009, In God We Trust
Gary Scott Smith, “Introduction,” Faith and the presidency: From George Washington to
George W. Bush, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): 3-19.
Carl N. Degler, Chapter 12: The New World A-Coming,” Out of our Past: The Forces
that Shaped Modern America, 368-411.

Week Ten, 10 March 2009, Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick
George Brown Tindall, Chapter 22, “The Course of Empire,” America: a narrative
history, 663-693.
Barry M. Rubin, Chapter 6: “Cold War and Coca Cola, Hating America : a history,
(Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004): 125-154.
Assignment #5 due: Mid-term essay submitted.

Tutorial Three: Remembering the Maine
Primary Reading: Examples of Yellow Journalism
Complementary Reading: Richard L. Kaplan, “American Journalism
Goes to War, 1898-2001,” Media History 9:3 (2003): 209-219.

Week Eleven, 17 March 2009, Buildings that Stretch towards Heaven

Carl N. Degler, Chapter 11: Alabaster Cities and Amber Waves of Grain,” Out of our
Past: The Forces that Shaped Modern America, 331-367
Alan Brinkley, Chapter 18: “The Age of the City,” The unfinished nation: a concise
history of the American People: 510-534.
Assignment #6: Discussion of end-of-term essay.

Week Twelve, 24 March 2009, You Oughta be in Pictures
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chapter 3, The Great Gatsby, (New York: Bantam Books, 1974).
Jacqueline Jones, et al., Chapter 21: “The Promise of Consumer Culture,” Created equal:
a social and political history of the United States: 702-732.
George Brown Tindall, Chapter 10, “Through the Picture Window,” America: a narrative
history, (New York: Norton, 1996): 981-1004.

Tutorial Four: The American Jukebox
Primary Reading: Song Lyrics


Complementary Reading: Marybeth Hamilton, “Sexual Politics and
African-American Music; or Placing Little Richard in History,” History
Workshop Journal Issue 46 (1998): 161-176.

Week Thirteen, 31 March 2009, Brother Can You Spare a Dime?
Howard Zinn, Chapter 11: “Robber Barons and Rebels,” A people's history of the United
States, 1492-present: 247-289.
Jacqueline Jones, et al., Chapter 24: “Hardship and Hope in the 1930s: The Great
Depression,” Created equal: a social and political history of the United States: 736-767.

Week Fourteen, 7 April 2009, The Good and Bad Wars
Alan Brinkley, Chapter 28: “America in a World War,” The unfinished nation: a concise
history of the American People: 748-772.

Jacqueline Jones, et al., Chapter 26: “The Nation Dvides, The Vietnam War and Social
Conflict, 1964-1971,” Created equal: a social and political history of the United States:
866-898.

Week Fifteen, 14 April 2009, Woodstock, Watergate, and Beyond
Alan Brinkley, Chapter 32: “The Crisis of Authority,” The unfinished nation: a concise
history of the American People: 861-875.
George Moss, Chapter 14: “An Era of Limits,” America in the Twentieth Century, (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004): 479-516.
Assignment #6 due: End-of-term essay submitted.

Tutorials
During term the course includes four tutorials during which students will have the
opportunity to clarify and to discuss issues rose in the lectures as well as to review class
assignments. While the tutorials will present a forum to thrash out matters raised in the
course as a whole, each will have a focal point from which to advance. These topics will
largely try to refine the lectures’ broader pictures and focus upon how the lives of
ordinary people were affected by the sweep of history. Each student will present at least
one short paper (1000 words) in the tutorials based on that week’s subject matter. A
possible essay topic is supplied for each week, but you are free and encouraged to write
an essay of your own inspiration. Be expansive in your thinking about your tutorial
assignments. For example, while the tutorial’s primary reading about the evils of the
African slave trade, you can write about any of the multiple social and/or economic
impacts from this linchpin of Britain’s, greater Europe’s, and the United States’
commercial development as well as the deleterious effect on Africa. On the weeks you
do not present a paper, students should come to the tutorial prepared to pose pertinent
questions to their fellows who are presenting. All elements of tutorial activity, papers,
prepared questions, and discussions contribute to this portion of your final grade. The
articles noted as pertinent for tutorial reading are available via the CUHK Library site; go
through “E-Journals.” Remember, for CUPIDE purposes everybody’s tutorial

presentation constitutes Assignment #1.


U. S History Bibliography
(In no way consider this the last word on source material for essays, other projects,
or enhanced understanding.)

* = On Desk Reserve
* Beacroft, B. W. The making of America: from wilderness to world power. Essex :
Longman, 1982.
CALL NO. E178.1.B33 1982.
Boorstin, Daniel J. A history of the United States. Lexington, MA: Ginn, 1981.
CALL NO. E178.1 .B716 1981.
* Brinkley, Alan. The unfinished nation : a concise history of the American
People. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1997.
CALL NO. E178.1 .B75 1997.
Brogan, Hugh. Longman history of the United States of America. London: Guild
Publishing, 1985.
CALL NO. E178.B7.
Carnes, Mark C. The American nation : a history of the United States. New York :
Longman, c2003.
CALL NO. E178.1 .G24 2003.
Conlin, Joseph Robert. The American past: a survey of American history. Belmont, Calif.
: Wadsworth, c2004.
CALL NO. E178.1 .C76 2004.
Current, Richard Nelson. American history : a survey. New York: Knopf, 1961.
CALL NO. E178.1.C39.
Davidson, James West. After the fact: the art of historical detection. Boston: McGrawHill, c2000.
CALL NO. E175 .D38 2000.
* Degler, Carl N. Out of our Past: The Forces that Shaped Modern America. New York:

Harper & Row, 1970.
CALL NO. E178.D37 1970
Divine, Robert A., et al. America, past and present. New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, 1991.
CALL NO. E178.1.A4894 1991.


Fine, Sidney. The American past; conflicting interpretations of great issues. New York :
Macmillan, 1970.
CALL NO. E178.6.F52 1970.
Frazier, Thomas R. The underside of American history; other readings / New York :
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.
CALL NO. E178.F78.
Garraty, John Arthur. Historical viewpoints; notable articles from American heritage,
the magazine of history. New York : American Heritage Pub. Co., [1970]
CALL NO. E178.6.G26.
Grob, Gerald N. and George Athan Billias eds. Interpretations of American history :
patterns and perspectives. New York: Free Press ; London: Collier Macmillan, c1982CALL NO. E178.6.I53.
Hamilton, Neil A. Rebels and renegades : a chronology of social and political dissent in
the United States. New York: Routledge, 2002.
CALL NO. HN90.R3 H354 2002.
Handlin, Oscar. America; a history. New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
CALL NO. E178.H23.
Johnston, Robert D. The making of America : the history of the United States from 1492
to the present. Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, 2002.
CALL NO. E178.3 .J735 2002.
* Jones, Jacqueline, et al. Created equal : a social and political history of the United
States. New York: Longman, c2003.
CALL NO. E178 .C86 2003.
Leeming, David and Jake Page eds. Myths, legends, and folktales of America : an

anthology. New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.
CALL NO. GR105 .M94 1999.
Meinig, D. W. (Donald William), The shaping of America. Vol. 2, Continental America,
1800-1967 [electronic resource] : a geographical perspective on 500 years of history.
New Haven: Yale University Press, c1993.
CALL NO. E178 .M57 1993eb.
* Moss, George. America in the Twentieth Century. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004.
CALL NO. E741.M67 2004
Nash, Gary B., et al. The American people : creating a nation and a society. New York:
Harper Collins, c1990-


CALL NO.

E178.1 .A49355 1990.

Nash, Roderick. From these beginnings ...; a biographical approach to American
history. New York : Harper & Row, 1973.
CALL NO. E178.N18.
Nevins, Allan and Henry Steele Commager. A Short History of the United States. New
York: A. A. Knopf, 1966.
CALL NO. E178.N44 1966
* Rubin, Barry M. Hating America : a history. Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2004.
CALL NO. E183.7 .R89 2004.
Sellers, Charles Grier. A synopsis of American history. Boston : Houghton Mifflin,
c1985.
CALL NO. E178.1.S46 1985.
* Smith, Gary Scott. Faith and the presidency: From George Washington to George W.

Bush. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Streitmatter, Rodger. Mightier than the sword : how the news media have shaped
American history. Boulder, CO : Westview Press, 1997.
CALL NO. PN4888.I53 S77 1997.
* Tindall, George Brown. America: a narrative history. New York: Norton, 1996.
CALL NO. E178.1 .T55 1996.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The significance of the frontier in American history. Madison,
WI: Silver Buckle Press, c1984.
CALL NO. E179.5 .T958 1984.
Woods, Randall Bennett. The American experience : a concise history. Fort Worth :
Harcourt College, 2000.
CALL NO. E178.1 .W94 2000.
Woodward, C. Vann (Comer Vann). The future of the past. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
CALL NO. E175.5.W66A2 1989.
* Zinn, Howard, A people's history of the United States, 1492-present. New York :
Perennial Classics, c2003.
CALL NO. E169.1 Z53.