U.S. SINCE 1830
Choose at least one question from each section below (three questions in all) and write
responses supporting a clear analysis with ample and well-chosen evidence.
PART ONE:
1. The source of "sectional conflict" and then of the U.S.'s Civil War itself has been the
subject of sharp debate since the war began (and before that). Trace the main lines of that
debate, identify some of the main participants and their views, and then give and defend
your own view of the subject.
2. The Lincoln administration embarked upon the Civil War with a narrowlyframed goal. By 1865 (and especially by 1869), however, the Republican party’s
program had gone far beyond that modest aim. And then, over the following decade,
that same party retreated substantially from its most ambitious plans for transforming the
South and the Union. First, account for the narrowness of the original aim. Then explain
the reason for the broadening of the Republicans’ goals between 1861 and 1869. Finally,
give your explanation for the defeat of/retreat from the project of Reconstruction.
3. Why the North won the Civil War has attracted the attention of generations of scholars.
Discuss some of the alternative and competing explanations of the war’s outcome and
their strengths and weaknesses. Then present your own answer to this question.
PART TWO:
1. Discuss the decade of the 1890s as a watershed in terms of the structure of the
economy, race and class relations, foreign policy, and electoral politics. What marks the
decade as a departure from what came before and how did it set a stage for what came
after?
2. Although the U.S. was slow to enter both the world wars, historians regard the impact
of each as deep and far-reaching. Focus on either WWI or WWII and discuss the changes
that took place in American lives during the war and in such matters as social relations,
labor, reform, the state, and the place of the U.S. in the world after it.
3. Eric Foner contends that the history of the United States might best be framed as a
“story of debates, disagreements, and struggles over freedom” as “both a reality and a
mythic ideal.” Assess the value of this framework by considering the meanings and
boundaries of the contentious concept of “American freedom” through several case
studies of social/politics movements. Your “case studies” should include such
social/political movements as: industrialization and conditions of work, Progressive era
reforms, World War I, World War II, and movements for “cultural liberation” and
“empowerment” of the 1960s and 1970s.
U.S. National Preliminary Exam 2/2010
Answer a total of three questions, including at least one from Part A and one from Part B.
Good luck!
Part A
1.
The era of Reconstruction is often described as a revolution in social,
economic, constitutional, and political terms. Is this a realistic way of viewing
the period? How would you explain the limits of change during
Reconstruction? What were its lasting effects? How does a sensitivity to issues
of gender change our understanding of the period?
2.
How did the decade of the 1890s represent a turning point in the history of the
United States in the areas of immigration, class and race relations, economy,
foreign relations, and politics? What was the relationship between the various
crises of that decade and the reforms of the early twentieth century? What are
some of the most important competing analyses of why and for whom the
1890s was a period of crisis in the US, and how do their different emphases
affect periodization and major themes in narrating the history of the era?
3.
How has greater focus on the role of empire affected histories of class, race,
ethnicity and gender identities nineteenth-century US History? How does a
focus on empire affect the periodization of nineteenth-century US history and
why? Give specific examples.
Part B
4.
When and why did the Cold War begin and how did it shape US foreign
policy? When it how did it end and how did its end change US policy? Be sure
to supply specific situations and events to illustrate your generalizations.
5.
Compare and contrast cultures of reform in the US in during, the Progressive
era, the New Deal, and the post-WWII era with regard to the sources and
consequences or outcomes of reform for the groups whose lives such reform
aimed to transform. In which cases are reforms generated “from below,” and
how do these compare to reforms generated by relative elites, experts, or
federal agencies? What are the sources—social, institutional, cultural etc.—of
the limits to reform?
6.
While many influential social histories locate class formation in the politics of
production, many recent interpretations of class identities and the categories of
race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality that complicate them look to the realms of
consumption and leisure to recover and explain these identities. How do class
relations, everyday life, politics, and identity in the 20th century look different
from the perspective of consumption?
U.S. SINCE 1830 (Levine and Roediger) – Fall 2009
Choose at least one question from each section below (three questions in all) and write
responses supporting a clear analysis with ample and well-chosen evidence.
SECTION ONE:
1. James Madison said that slavery was already a (perhaps the) major divisive factor at
the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. And Thomas Jefferson thought that a
dispute over slavery was about to destroy the Union in 1820. Somehow, however, slaveholding and non-slaveholding states managed to form a common constitution at
Philadelphia, weather the storm of 1820, and hold together for an additional forty years.
Discuss how and why this prolonged unity proved possible -- as well as what changed to
finally destroy it. Take into account the economic, social, cultural, and political
dimensions of this question.
2. The Lincoln administration embarked upon the Civil War with a narrowlyframed goal -- to reunite the country. By 1869, however, the Republican party’s program
had gone far beyond that modest goal. Then, over the following decade and a half, that
same party retreated substantially from its most ambitious plans for transforming the
South and the Union. First account for the broadening of the Republicans’ goals between
1861 and 1869. Then give your explanation for the defeat of/retreat from Reconstruction.
3. One historian has recently written, “Until about 40 years ago, most historians of
slavery concentrated on the master-slave relationship as the center of their story, whether
seeing that relationship as brutal or benign. Beginning in the late 1960s, a new history
placed the slave-slave relationship, and the slave community, at the center of slavery’s
story.” Do you agree with this characterization? Insofar as it has force, which historians
might typify the older historiography? Which historians most tellingly changed the story
by focusing on the slave community? What are the strengths and limitations of each
approach and what are the prospects for combining them?
SECTION TWO
1. Historians have recently been at pains to point out that years ending in “0” or
even “00” do not necessarily signal the move from one historical period to the
next, so that terms like the “short twentieth century” or the “long 1960s” become
common. Given this flexibility, how would you periodize when the nineteenth
century ended and the twentieth century began in U.S. history? Take into account
especially the readings you have done on empire, racial oppression, and
political/economic history? How might various authors specify turning points and
describe the change from one period to the next?
2. One historian argued some time ago that if labor history has had a “race problem”
(that is, has been too ready to collapse questions of race into those of class)
African American history has had a “class problem,” in that it has ignored what
Robin Kelley has called “intraracial class conflict.” Use a range of examples from
works addressing the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuries to assess how
much either or both of these problems might impact scholarship in Black history
and in labor history. What works decisively transcend such separations of race
from class?
3. You contemplate a dissertation on Black labor in the Midwest in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century. Discuss two books from other time
periods and/or other regions that will inspire and inform your work at the level of
methodology, theory, and/or use of sources. What will you specifically take from
each?
U.S. National Preliminary Exam 4/09
Answer a total of three questions in pointed and well-supported essays. Choose at least
one question from each part.
Part A
1.
The history of slavery was, until the 1960s, written with the master/slave
relationship at its center. Since the 1960s, it has often been written with
slave/slave social relations as the focus. Citing key works, assess the strengths
and weaknesses of each approach. Do any studies especially effectively consider
both master (and perhaps mistress)/slave relationships and slave/slave ones in the
same work?
2.
The era of Reconstruction is often described as a revolution in social, economic,
constitutional, and political terms. Is this a realistic way of viewing the period?
How would you explain the limits of change during Reconstruction? What were
its lasting effects?
3.
In his celebrated article on work culture and industrialization, Herbert Gutman
suggested a periodization of U.S. history around successive remakings of the
working class through waves of immigration and industrial growth. On this view,
the Civil War, and emancipation, are seen as less than pivotal moments in that
they do not herald a new historical period. Assess the virtues and drawbacks of
Gutman’s view versus more traditional ones centering the Civil War. Is the
history of slavery central to periodizing working class, and national, history more
generally? Did (and/or, how did) the Civil War broadly matter for all workers?
Part B
4. Compare and contrast the New Deal and the Great Society in terms of the
following: the role of various social movements in producing federal reforms, the
motivations and the short and long term effects of these reforms on American society,
and the impact of the reforms in these two eras on the following groups: African
Americans, industrial and agricultural workers, and women from various social classes.
5. Discuss the roots, the periodization, and the decline of the Cold War. Did US
policy aims in this era have more to do with investments or ideology? Discuss two
periods in which Cold War international politics shaped domestic politics in the US.
6. The modern civil rights movement is sometimes characterized as unfolding onto a
“second Reconstruction.” What points of comparison might make such a
comparison compelling and useful? Are there areas, within or beyond the South,
where the comparisons must emphasize contrast more than similarity?