HST102
Lecture Outlines
Spring 2006


January 12 — The Legacy of War & Reconstruction

Questions: What were the lasting impacts of the Civil War? Did Reconstruction radically transform the South?
Terms: Thirteenth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Fifteenth Amendment, Presidential Reconstruction, Congressional Reconstruction, Military Reconstruction, Andrew Johnson, carpetbaggers, scalawags, KKK, redemption
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January 17 — A New South?

Questions: In what ways did "New South" advocates hope to transform the South? To what extent was this "New South" realized by the end of the nineteenth century
Terms: Henry Grady, “New South” movement, sharecropping, crop-lien system, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois
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January 24 — The Rise of Industrial America

Questions: What conditions or factors promoted industrialization in nineteenth-century America? How did industrialization transform the lives of American workers? How did workers try to regain control of their working lives?
Terms: Bessemer process, Thomas Edison, the corporation, Managerial Revolution, horizontal/vertical integration, laissez faire, social Darwinism, Knights of Labor, American Federation of Labor
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January 26 — The Rise of Urban America

Questions: How were American cities transformed in the late nineteenth century? What problems plagued American cities by century's end? How do Vaudeville, baseball, Coney Island, and the department store reflect the new urban culture?
Terms: Vaudeville, Coney Island, consumer culture, Gilded Age
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January 31 — Plight of the Farmer

Questions: What are the primary problems that plagued farmers in the late nineteenth century? How did farmers attempt to solve those problems? What was the Populist Party, and would you describe it as a success or failure?
Terms: Grange, Farmers Alliances, Populist Party, subtreasury plan, “free silver,” Election of 1896, William Jennings Bryan
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February 2 — The Progressive Movement

Questions: What was the "Progressive Movement"? What were the primary issues and problems addressed by Progressives? How would you compare and contrast Populism and Progressivism?
Terms: Muckrakers, Prohibition, The Jungle, Meat Inspection Act / Pure Food and Drug Act, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Election of 1912, 19th Amendment, the "new" woman, referendum/recall/initiative
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February 7 — America's Rise to World Power

Questions: How would you characterize US foreign policy up to the late nineteenth century? Did US foreign policy change by the end of that century? If so, how did its focus change? What arguments and ideals informed and shaped US foreign policy?
Terms: isolationism, Spanish-American War, yellow journalism, DeLôme letter, Maine, Turner’s Frontier Thesis, Open Door Notes
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February 14 — Origins of US Involvement in WWI

Questions: What triggered the Great War (WWI), and why did it escalate into a global conflict? How did the war differ from what leaders had expected? What was the US response to the outbreak of war in 1914?
Terms: Franz Ferdinand, Princip and the Black Hand, limited/total war, machine gun, U-boat
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February 21 — The Great War

Questions: What were the major events of WWI? Why did the United States intervene, and why did it wait until 1917? What role did Americans play in shaping the outcome?
Terms: "He Kept Us Out of the War," preparedness, Lusitania, Sussex Pledge, unrestricted submarine warfare, Zimmermann telegram, Fourteen Points
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February 23 — The Roaring Twenties: Modernism vs Traditionalism

Questions: How did World War I help usher in the "modern" age? To what extent did American society in the Twenties reflect the tensions between "modernism" and "traditionalism," or between the past and the future?
Terms: modernism, irony, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Sigmund Freud, Einstein's theory of relativity, Prohibition, the flapper, Harlem Renaissance, jazz, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the new Klan, Scopes Trial
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February 28— Hoover, the GOP, and the Great Depression

Questions: What are the primary causes of the Great Depression? What ideals and policies did the "New Era" Republicans represent? What was the response of the Hoover administration and the "New Era" Republicans to the Great Depression?
Terms: under-consumptionist theory, monetarist theory, Herbert Hoover, “New Era” Republicans, voluntarism/individualism/localism, trickle-down theory, RFC, POUR
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March 2 — FDR, "New Deal" Democrats, and the Great Depression

Questions: What ideals and policies did the "New Deal" Democrats represent? What was the response of the Roosevelt administration and the "New Deal" Democrats to the Great Depression?
Terms: Interregnum, Bonus Army, Franklin Roosevelt, New Deal, AAA, NIRA, Social Security Act, ERAA, Court-Packing Plan
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March 14— Between the Wars

Questions: What is the legacy of the Great War and how did it influence the coming of the Second World War? How did the US respond to the outbreak of WWII and why did it eventually intervene?
Terms: Versailles Treaty, League of Nations, isolationism, Washington Conference, Kellogg-Briand Pact, Neutrality Acts, Pearl Harbor
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March 16 — World War II & Its Legacy

Questions: In what ways did World War II and its legacy mark a watershed in American history?
Terms: Rosie the Riveter, A. Philip Randolph, March on Washington Movement, Executive Order #8802, Manhattan Project, Hiroshima, Nagasaki
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March 23 — Cold War at Home and Abroad

Questions: What is a Cold War? When did the Cold War begin, and why? What is the Red Scare?
Terms: Communism, “Second Front” controversy, atomic diplomacy, Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Joseph McCarthy
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March 30 — The Fifties

Questions: Were the 1950s a "Golden Age" for America? Why were such images created and why do they persist?
Terms: Serviceman's Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill), Interstate Highway Act, marriage boom, baby boom, housing boom, Levittowns, suburbinization, Betty Friedan, McCarthyism, Michael Harrington, The Other America, beatniks
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April 4 & 6 — Vietnam

Questions: Why did the United States become involved in Vietnam? What were the goals and strategies employed by the United States in the Vietnam War? What obstacles did Americans face during that war? What impact did the war have on American society?
Terms: French Indochina, Ho Chi Minh, the Geneva Accords, Ngo Dinh Diem, Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Americanization, Vietnamization, Tet Offensive, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon
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April 11 — The Early Civil Rights Movement

Questions: What were the main events of the Civil Rights Movement? How did the movement evolve over time?
Terms: Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King, SCLC, Little Rock Nine, Orval Faubus, Sit-ins, Greensboro Four, SNCC, Freedom Rides, "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," Bull Connor, March on Washington, "I Have a Dream"
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April 20 — The Sixties

Questions: How did the seeming consensus of the 1950s degenerate into the violence and conflict of the 1960s?
Terms: New Frontier, Great Society, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, War on Poverty, Freedom Summer, Stokely Carmichael, Black Power, SDS, Weathermen, counterculture, Black Panthers
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April 25 — The Seventies

Questions: Why can the seventies be called the disillusioned decade? What illusions did we have and where did we lose them?
Terms: Kent State, stagflation, Cuyahoga River fire, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Watergate, Ayatollah Khomeini, hostage crisis
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