Wednesdays 6:10 to 10:00 p.m.
Classroom: King Hall B4015
Instructor’s Office: King Hall C4076A
Email: cendy@calstatela.edu
Office Phone: 323-343-2046
Office Hours: Mon/Wed 2:15-4:20, and by appointment.
Instructor’s Web Page: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/cendy

This course is designed for advanced undergraduates or graduate students who seek an in-depth examination of U.S. history.  We will study a broad range of concerns, including politics, foreign relations, labor, gender, culture, and race.  We will also use a variety of sources, such as written documents, historical scholarship, film, and fiction.  This course will also help you develop skills in critical reading, thinking, and writing.   By the end of the quarter you will have improved your ability to: analyze critically primary documents within their historical context, identify a writer’s thesis and judge how well he or she supports it, and write a logical and coherent argument in essay form.

Discussions: We will spend substantial class time engaged in some activity other than lecture.  Often this will mean breaking into small groups to discuss course material conduct close readings of primary documents, or engage in mock debates or role-playing exercises.  Class participation is a part of your final grade and will be based on both your attendance and participation in activities.  If you encounter obstacles to your participation in class (for whatever reason), please meet with the instructor so we can work out a solution.

Required Readings:
• Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch, eds., The War in American Culture:  Society and Consciousness During World War II (University of  Chicago Press, 1996).
Américo Paredes, George Washington Gómez (Arte Público, 1993).
Eric Paul Roorda, The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the  Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945 (Duke  University Press, 1998).
•Various articles on Electronic Reserve through JFK Library or occasionally on  the instructor’s webpage (see syllabus for details).

Assignments and Grading:
Paper One (3-4 pages): 10%
Paper Two and Three (3-4 pages): 15% each
Document responses: 20%
Final exam (8-10 page take-home essay): 30%
Class Participation: 10%

Your grades on all essay assignments will be based on three major, closely related criteria:
 1. use of the relevant class material (evidence);
 2. development of an argument or point of view that is pertinent to   the issue at hand and that has breadth, coherence, and   insight (interpretation); and
 3. expression of ideas in a clear, concise, engaging prose (style).

 Grading Rubric:
A: excellent. Outstanding in all three areas.
B: good.  Strong in all three areas or notable strengths in one balanced by  weakness in another.
C: average.  Adequate performance in one or more areas offset by serious  weakness in others.
D: poor.  Problems in all three areas.
F: unacceptable. Serious flaws in all three areas.
 •We will use a “+/-” system: A (93-100), A- (90-92), B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82), C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72), D+ (67-69), D (60-66), F (0-59).  If you don’t understand the basis of the grade you received or if you disagree with the assessment, speak to the instructor—but only after letting twenty-four hours pass for you to absorb and reflect on the evaluation. Please act within two weeks of the return of the paper.

Late Policy: Out of fairness to other students, late essays will be penalized one whole grade (10% of their value) for each class session that they are late.  Essays turned in on due date but after the start of class will be penalized 2% of their value.  The Free Late: For one of the essay assignments (but not the final exam), you will be allowed to turn in your essay one week after the due date with no penalty.  Simply write “Free Late” on the top of the essay when you turn it in.  You may only take advantage of this option once; use it wisely.  The “free late” policy does not apply to document responses.  NOTE: In case of a family emergency, special allowances may be made.  Please contact the instructor as soon as possible.  If you suspect that you might have a problem meeting a deadline, please see the instructor beforehand so that we can make a special arrangement.
Reading Responses: For most readings, you will receive study questions designed to promote class discussion with key reading assignments.  You are required to turn in responses for seven of those sessions.  Responses may be typed or hand-written and are due at the start of class.  Late reading responses will not be accepted.  If you think that you might miss a class when an assignment is due, you can turn it in beforehand.  Grading on responses is based on a scale of one to ten.

Plagiarism:  Plagiarism is the use of somebody else’s words or ideas without acknowledgement of this borrowing.  This includes copying from texts or webpages as well as submitting work done by somebody else.  See the attached guidelines on essay writings for acceptable methods of acknowledging when you are borrowing from other people in your own writing.

12 January: Culture and Power in the 1910s and 1920s
McClellan, Historical Moments, on Prohibition & Women’s Suffrage, 217-54  [E-Reserve]
Response One Due
 

19 January: Consumerism and the Harlem Renaissance
AdAccess web search [see Response Two instructions]
Harlem Renaissance Readings [on instructor’s webpage]
Schuyler & Hughes, “The Negro-Art Hokum” [E-Reserve]
Response Two Due
 

26 January: Responses to Capitalism’s Crises in the 1930s
Shi & Mayer, For the Record, on the New Deal, 228-48 [E-Reserve]
Paper One Due
 

2 February: History and Fiction on the Texas Borderland
Paredes, 5-6, 9-63, 71-82, 99-118, 124-137, 147-75, 189-302
Response Three and Four Due

9 February: Interwar Foreign Relations and the Good Neighbor Policy
Roorda, whole book
Response Five and Six Due
 

16 February: New World Orders
Gallicchio, African American Encounter with Japan and China, 58-84 [E- Reserve]
Response Seven Due
Paper Two Due
 

23 February: The “Good War” Abroad
Erenberg, 46-70 and 169-201
Adams, The Best War Ever, 20-42 [E-Reserve]
Paul Fussell, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” and exchange with Michael  Walzer, 1-28 [E-Reserve]
Response Eight and Nine Due
 

2 March: The “Good War” at Home
Erenberg, 17-45, 71-102, 128-43, 263-309, and 313-30.
Response Ten Due
Paper Three Due
 

9 March: Triumph or Trauma? America Enters the Postwar Era
Wheeler/Becker, Discovering the American Past, on Red Scare [E-Reserve].
Response Eleven Due
 

16 March (Wednesday): Take-Home Final Exam due at professor’s  office by 7:30 p.m.

Writing is a process, and no paper reaches perfection on the first try. Any kind of writing needs time for the ideas to take shape and for the exposition to gain polish.  Here are some suggestions:
 1. Take a few minutes to figure out the assignment. What are you being asked to do? To resolve any uncertainties, talk with the professor.
 2. Prepare a rough draft. Don’t worry about perfection. Writing can be a way of trying ideas out. Strike out those that don’t work and concentrate on those that do. Identify relevant information and illustrations to give depth to your case and make it convincing. If at this stage you are having difficulty getting started, return to the discussion questions and material or consult with the instructor. The most frequent cause for blockage at this point is the need for either a stronger grasp of what you are talking about or a willingness to take a stand (to have a personal reaction to an issue or topic, to ask hard questions about the materials, or to identify key concepts and seek relationships among them).
 3. Set the draft aside for a time. Twenty-four hours (or at least overnight) will give you the fresh critical perspective needed to edit. If you don't have much time, take whatever interval you can—the longer the better.
 4. Return to the draft for a careful editing. This can be the most pleasurable part of writing as you see an interpretation or argument emerge ever more sharply. Particularly difficult sections may require even more attention, perhaps even another visit after some time away.  Consider having a friend not in the class look over the draft for clarity, style, and grammar.  If that outside reader can understand your argument, chances are you have a compelling and clear essay.

 Here are some questions to keep in mind as you revise:
 • Do you have a clear, descriptive, engaging title? The title is your first chance to communicate your intentions to your reader. Use it well.
 • Does your opening (or thesis) paragraph indicate clearly your paper’s direction?  Make sure that all the sentences making up the paragraph point the reader in the same general direction. If they don’t, the reader will be confused from the outset.  In early drafts the conclusion often offers the most precise version of your thesis. If so, move all or part of that draft conclusion to the front of the paper where it will serve you and your reader far better.  Make sure that your opening paragraph is clear and short. Long introductions eat up the limited space available to develop and support your argument.
 • Are the supporting paragraphs tied together so that they make a connected argument? Give the transitions between paragraphs attention so that your argument does not degenerate into a series of separate mini-arguments. Each supporting paragraph should also begin with a topic sentence. This topic sentence, at the start of each paragraph, should announce the purpose of the paragraph and indicate how the paragraph fits into the overall argument of your essay.  Think of the topic sentence as a mini-thesis for each paragraph.
 • Do the supporting paragraphs deploy evidence from class materials (e.g., names, events, statistics, points of view, or quotes) to support the argument? Evidence requires careful selection—only pick the best and most relevant examples.  Evidence also requires balance in quantity—enough to convince the reader but not so much that the reader is overwhelmed, bored or even distracted from the general point that you want to make.
 • Does the concluding paragraph (usually relatively short) offer more than a simple repetition of the general argument? An intelligent reader will have already gotten your argument if it is well made. Instead of merely repeating yourself (and wasting valuable lines), use the conclusion to extend your argument, explore its significance, or view it from a fresh angle. What have you learned? Why is the major point made in the paper important to you?
 • Can you condense by making key points more concisely?  Words, phrases, and sentences that don’t serve your purpose take up valuable space. Remove whatever seems tangential or repetitious and make each line count.
 • Did you proofread to catch any remaining errors or glitches, especially in grammar and spelling. Also look for the most common enemies of engaging style: passive voice verbs (which kill the action and obscure the actor), long quotations (which use space while silencing your own voice), and run-on or incomplete sentences (which disrupt your flow and make it hard for a reader to understand your ideas). The more polished and error-free a paper is, the more the reader can concentrate on your argument. If you have trouble finding errors, ask for help in proofreading.
 • Have you read your writing aloud?  Imagine how it might sound to someone coming to the topic for the first time.  Each little improvement will make your argument more accessible.
 
Tips to avoid common stylistic problems in history papers:
1. No anonymous quotations.  Always identify the speaker or author of a  quotation you select.
BAD: Idealism thrived in 1898 as with the statement, “Our purpose is noble.”
GOOD: Idealism thrived in 1898.  As the president told Congress, “Our  purpose is noble.”
2. Use the past tense when writing about past events or statements.
BAD: In his 1898 letter to Congress, President McKinley writes that “our  purpose is noble.”
GOOD: In his 1898 letter to Congress, President McKinley wrote that “our  purpose is noble.”
3. Avoid passive voice sentences that obscure the real person or thing doing  the action:
BAD: The movement was accused of being Communist.
GOOD: Congress accused the movement of being Communist.
BAD: By 1942 the unemployment problem was solved.
GOOD: By 1942 the new war industries had helped solve the unemployment  problem.

Citations: You must indicate the sources for quotations and borrowed details or ideas. You can thus pay your intellectual debts, and a reader can easily determine where your material came from. Because we are working from a limited body of assigned readings, you do not need to produce a formal bibliography.  You can indicate your sources simply in parenthesis within the text at the appropriate point. Rather than supply full, formal citations, it is enough to indicate the book through the author’s name and the page(s).  (Tucker, 152) or (Hunt, 34).  For specific information or ideas taken from class, you can cite the date of the class session: (lecture, 4/22).

Final Note: Learning to write with power and beauty depends on constant practice and critical feedback. Do not expect to become a good writer in one single effort.  And do not let ego and a reluctance to ask questions stand in the way of listening to criticism and figuring out how to respond to it.  Most important, don’t let feedback on your paper become a referendum on you as a person.