History 551
Fall 2006
Wed, 4:30-7:30
Homewood Flossmoor High School
Robert Johnston
University Hall 930, UIC
(o) 312-413-9164
(h) 773-381-7285
johnsto1@uic.edu
PROBLEMS AND CASES IN UNITED STATES HISTORY AFTER 1877
Homewood-Flossmoor American History Consortium
Teaching American History Grant
This course is one of many possible introductions to the massive and amazing historical
literature on the United States after 1877. The purposes of the course are many: to offer
some sense of coverage of the modern American past, as well as a realization that
complete coverage is impossible; to provide a communal forum for discussing some of
the boldest and most imaginative works of scholarship around; to prepare you for a
lifetime of world-class scholarly literacy; and to aid you in the thought processes that will
eventually allow you to teach (and perhaps even produce) this kind of scholarship.
Your primary assignment each week is to think creatively about all of the readings and
come prepared to engage the issues that they present in a lively, contentious, and
respectful discussion. We will, of course, honor the teaching of history by discussing
pedagogical issues. Yet the main purpose of the course is to provide a space to talk about
historical scholarship and big intellectual issues in a graduate-level environment. The
core of the course will be weekly discussions of one common book, along with some
additional reading from academic journals (the journal articles are, with one exception,
all available through the UIC Library webpage and will not be distributed in hard copy).
Through the grant, each district has received a copy of Eric Foner’s Give Me Liberty!: An
American History (2004). I invite you to look at the appropriate sections of Foner during
the course in order to see how his treatment of issues differs from those in the texts that
you use, and also how he incorporates scholarship of the kind that we are examining.
Your other assignments for the class are:
1)
For September 6th, you must find reviews of Suzanne Lebsock’s A Murder in
Virginia. Please see below for details.
2)
Due at the start of class, by email or in hard copy, a two-page evaluation of the
main reading for each week. This should emphatically not be a summary of the book, but
rather an analysis that explores the strengths and weaknesses of each book. Please attach
to this paper three questions that you would like the class to explore, and cite three
passages from the text that you believe are worthy of further intellectual exploration (you
can reproduce the passages if they are short; otherwise just point to where we can find
them if they are long). You are exempt from this assignment in weeks in which you are
doing assignments #s 3 and 4.
3)
Due at the start of class, by email or in hard copy, two five-page analytical
reviews of the week’s readings. You will probably wish to model such reviews after the
ones you see in Reviews in American History. One of these papers needs to be done
before October 4th, and the other one before November 15th. If you have not done a
similar assignment for a course in this grant, please print out and attach to the first paper
the review from Reviews in American History (or elsewhere, such as the New York
Review of Books or The New Republic) that served as the model and inspiration for the
kind of review you wished to do. In the weeks that you write these papers, you do not
need to do the two-page assignment above.
4)
In groups of either three or four, you will present a secondary book to the class.
Your report should be, strictly, no longer than 20 minutes long, with 15 minutes highly
preferable. You should spend no more than one-third of your time summarizing the
book: its themes, characters, events, and stories. You should spend the other half of your
time critically evaluating and analyzing the book, answering questions that might include:
Is the argument compelling or unsatisfactory? How does the book fit into the existing
scholarly literature? How does it relate to that week’s common book? How has the book
fared in reviews? Would you recommend the book to other teachers, and how might the
book change your teaching? Please work together with your group to produce a
presentation that will be informative and provocative. You will have at least 10 minutes
for questions at the end of your presentation. You should also produce and distribute to
the class a one- to two-page handout that summarizes your presentation. Again, less is
also generally more when it comes to the handout; please present us with something
useful that won’t overwhelm us! In the weeks that you give these reports, you do not
need to do the two-page assignment above.
5)
Your final project will be the creation and presentation of two lesson plans, along
with two accompanying three- to five-page papers.
a)
The first lesson plan must incorporate primary documents used by one of
the scholars that we have read in either the common or secondary
readings.
b)
The second lesson plan must incorporate a historical debate that one of our
readings is part of. You must do further research on this debate, bringing
in the perspectives of at least four other articles or books.
The lessons must identify content objectives for student learning, the materials you will
use, the process students will follow, and the assessment(s) you will employ to gauge
student achievement. You may use whatever lesson plan template you are familiar with.
The guidelines for the papers are a bit more complex. Your paper should address the
following issues:
1) Why did you choose this topic?
2


What is significant about this topic to high school students?
What is significant about this topic to you? What content and
historiographical arguments during the course prompted your intellectual
engagement with this topic?
2) Why did you choose these sources?

What is significant about these sources compared to others you might
have chosen?
Note: Responses to questions one and two should constitute a significant component of
your paper. You should think of it as the intellectual foundation upon which your lesson
rests. It is the part of your paper that distinguishes it from the type of paper you might
write in an Education class.
3) Why did you choose the process/method that you did?

If you chose to have your students do a jigsaw, for example, what
pedagogical reasons did you have for doing so?
4) What obstacles or potential difficulties do you anticipate when conducting this lesson
with your students?
5) Why have you chosen your method of assessment?
The drafts of these lesson plans and papers are due on November 22nd, with final versions
due on December 6th. That latter evening they will be presented to the class (please note
that we will be meeting that night until 9:00 p.m.); you will also present them at a
symposium at the Newberry Library on December 12th. You will need to distribute the
lesson plans to all members of the class, and you will have ten minutes total to discuss
both of your plans.
The evaluation you will receive in this course follows the spirit of the way professional
historians work, and the way assessment is done in most humanities graduate courses.
Just as scholars do not get letter notations on their book reviews or books—but they do
receive plenty of challenging comments—I will not provide any grades on your work.
Instead, I will offer copious feedback. If, though, at any time you feel unsure of your
standing in the course, please do not hesitate to contact me.
COURSE SCHEDULE
8/30
Introduction
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9/6
The New South and the New Writing of History
Suzanne Lebsock, A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial (2003)
***ASSIGNMENT DUE: Find, print, and read at least five reviews of Lebsock’s book.
You need to track down the ones from the Journal of American History, American
Historical Review, and Reviews in American History. Besides those three, at least one of
the others must be from a non-scholarly source (such as the New York Times or the New
York Review of Books). Be prepared to discuss the most important points of the
reviews.***
Secondary Book: Rebecca J. Scott, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after
Slavery (2005)
9/13
The Politics of Environmental History
William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1992)
Robert D. Johnston, “Beyond ‘The West’: Regionalism, Liberalism, and the Evasion of
Politics in the New Western History,” Rethinking History 2(Summer 1998): 239-277
Secondary Book: Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration
and the Roots of American Environmentalism (2006)
9/20
Church and State and … Populism
Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006)
Jeffrey P. Moran, “Reading Race into the Scopes Trial: African American Elites, Science,
and Fundamentalism,” Journal of American History 90(December 2003): 891-911
Secondary Book: Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age (2006)
9/27
How Progressive Was Progressivism?
Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (1998)
Robert D. Johnston, “Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era: The Politics of Progressive
Era Political Historiography,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1(Jan.
2002): 68-92
Secondary Book: Philip L. Fradkin, The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How
San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself (2005)
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10/4
How Valuable was, and is, “Whiteness”?
Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (1999)
Daniel Wickberg, “Heterosexual White Male: Some Recent Inversions in American
Cultural History,” Journal of American History 92(June 2005): 136-156
Recommended: Eric Arnesen, “Whiteness and the Historians’ Imagination” and
responses by James Barrett, David Brody, Barbara Fields, Eric Foner, Victoria Hattam,
Adolph Reed, and Arnesen in International Labor and Working-Class History, No.
60(Fall 2001): 3-92
Secondary Book: Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of
Modern America (2004)
10/11
Gay History and the History of Sexuality
George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay
Male World, 1890-1940 (1994)
Elizabeth Reis, “Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620-1960,” Journal
of American History 92(September 2005): 411-441
Secondary Book: Mary Ting Yi Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder,
Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City
(2004)
10/18
Race and the Urban North
Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
(2004)
Thomas J. Sugrue, “Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction Against
Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964,” Journal of American History 82(September
1995): 551-578
Secondary Book: Nick Salvatore, Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black
Church, and the Transformation of America (2005)
10/25
*****BREAK***** (BUT READ AHEAD, BECAUSE THE
LONGEST BOOK ON THE SYLLABUS IS NEXT WEEK!)
5
11/1
New Perspectives on the Greatest Generation
John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999)
Robert B. Westbrook, “Fighting for the American Family: Private Interests and Political
Obligation in World War II,” in Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds.,
The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History (1993), 194-221
Secondary Book: Brian Masaru Hayashi, Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese
American Internment (2004)
11/8
Reckoning with Violence and Nonviolence
Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and The Roots of Black Power
(1999)
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the
Past,” Journal of American History 89(March 2005): 1233-1263
John D’Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (2003)
11/15
The Rise of the Right
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (2001)
M. J. Heale, “The Sixties as History: A Review of the Political Historiography,” Reviews
in American History (March 2005): 133-152
Secondary Book: Sylvie Murray, The Progressive Housewife: Community Activism in
Suburban Queens, 1945-1965 (2003)
11/22
11/29
12/6
Thanksgiving Break
*****Assignment Due: Drafts of Final Assignments (by email)*****
Break
*****Titles and Equipment Needs for 12/12 Symposium Due*****
Final Presentations and Potluck
Class Meets until 9:00 p.m.
6
Tuesday, 12/12
Symposium at the Newberry Library, 9:00-3:00
Keynote speaker: Suzanne Lebsock
Presentation of lesson plans
Guidelines for Symposium Presentation
(with great thanks, as in so much of the preparation of the grant, to Paul Kolimas)
Plan your presentation to be 15 minutes.
1) Begin by explaining why you chose this topic.


What is significant about this topic to high school students?
What is significant about this topic to you? What content and
historiographical arguments during the course prompted your intellectual
engagement with this topic?
2) Why did you choose these sources?

What is significant about these sources compared to others you might
have chosen?
Note: Think of these first two questions as providing the context for your audience
members. Remember, they have not been exposed to the same intellectual discussions
and the same books you have. It is very likely that you know a lot more about the content
of the lesson than they do. You need to prepare them for the lesson by explaining why the
lesson matters. Try to get them to care about the intellectual issues upon which your
lesson rests.
3) Pick some part of your lesson and have audience members do it like your students
would. For example, if your lesson includes a variety of primary sources, choose one and
have audience members engage with it just as you would your students.
Lessons are much better experienced than they are described. Giving audience members
five minutes to interact with you is likely to help keep them engaged.
4) Describe the rest of the process the students will follow in the lesson.
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