Assignments/Schedule

HST 355.ZP

Summer 2012

Dr. Janet R. Bednarek (jbednarek1@udayton.edu)

Registration Requirements:

 

Before you register for the class, you must have completed the following tasks:

 

1.  This is a permission course.  To gain permission, first go the instructor web site and carefully read the syllabus (http://academic.udayton.edu/JanetBednarek ).  Click the link to the Summer 12 syllabus for HST 355.ZP.

 

After reading through the syllabus, e-mail the instructor (see e-mail address above) with a note stating that you have read the syllabus and understand the course structure and requirements.  If you don’t understand the course structure and requirements or have any other questions about the course, now is the time to ask.

 

Students who fail to contact the instructor by email before registering for the course may be dropped.

 

2.  After e-mailing the instructor, register for the course.

 

No assignments will be graded or returned to you until registration is complete.

 

All contact and correspondence and for the course will be via e-mail.  Make sure that you provide your preferred e-mail address when you register for the course.  Provide the e-mail address you check regularly, not one that you don’t.

 

Important Dates:  Last day to complete registration:  Friday, 11 May 20112.  First day of Full Summer Term:  Monday, 14 May 2012.  Last day for late registration:  Thursday, 17 May 2012.  The last day to withdraw without record:  Thursday, 5 July 2012.  Last day to withdraw with grade of W:  16 July 2012.  Grades due:  Tuesday, 7 August 2012.

 

Assignments:  Schedule

 

Assignment                                           ZP Schedule

One (100 pts)                                       25 May

Two (100 pts)                                      8 June

Three (100 pts)                                    22 June

Four (100 pts)                                      6 July

Five (100 pts)                                       20 July

Six (100 pts)                                        3 Aug

 


How to send in your papers on time:

 

Remember the date listed is the date the assignment is due at the instructor’s address AND to Turnitin (see below).  You have two options for sending assignments to the instructor.  The first (and preferred) option is to e-mail your papers.  If you e-mail your papers, all assignments must be time-coded (show they were sent/received) by 9:30 a.m. on the day the assignment is due. Assignments time-coded after 9:30 a.m. will be considered late.  The second option is to hand deliver the paper to UD history department office.

 

If you hand-deliver your papers (two copies, see below), all assignments must be in the office or the instructor’s mailbox no later than 9:30 a.m. on the day the assignment is due.  Papers turned in after 9:30 a.m. will be considered late.

 

Turnitin:  In addition to submitting your papers via e-mail or hard copy to the instructor by 9:30 a.m. on the due date, you must also submit a copy of your paper to Turnitin.com.  Instructions as to how to register for Turnitin.com will be sent to all students in advance of the first assignment.

 

Late papers will be penalized.  Your grade for each assignment will be lowered by 1/3 of a grade for every “day” the assignment is late (i.e. from B to B- or C+ to C).  The late penalty begins after 9:30 a.m. on the due-date.  Therefore, for example, if you hand-deliver a paper or e-mail a paper at 10:00 a.m. on the due date, it will be considered one day late.  The second “day” begins at 9:30 a.m. the day after the due date.

 

Where to e-mail/deliver papers:

E-mail:                                      jbednarek1@udayton.edu

Papers can be delivered to:     Department of History

                                                Humanities Building, Room 400

 

HONOR PLEDGE:

 

I understand that as a student of the University of Dayton, I am a member of our academic and social community.  I recognize the importance of my education and the value of experiencing life in such an integrated community.  I believe that the value of my education and degree is critically dependent upon the academic integrity of the university community, and so in order to maintain our academic integrity, I pledge to:

 

Complete all assignments and examinations by the guidelines given to me by my instructors;

 

Avoid plagiarism and any other form of misrepresenting someone else's work as my own;

 

Adhere to the Standards of Conduct as outlined in the Academic Honor Code.

 

In doing this, I hold myself and my community to a higher standard of excellence, and set an example for my peers to follow.

 

 

Grading and Grade Reporting

 

Grading will be based on points.  There are 600 total points.  Your final grade

will be based on how many points you earn.  Final grades will be posted by

Tuesday, August 3 2010.

 

      A         558-600 pts           C         438-461 pts

      A-        540-557 pts           C-         420-437 pts

      B+       522-539 pts           D         360-419 pts

      B          498-521 pts          F          000-359 pts

      B-        480-497 pts

      C+       462-479 pts

 

Assignments:  General Rules

 

Note:  If you hand-deliver, you must bring two copies of each of your papers.  One copy will be corrected and returned to you.  The second copy will remain on file in the history department.  With e-mailed assignments, the instructor will print one copy – which will be returned to you – and keep a second electronic copy on file. 

 

Please note the following suggestions for writing your assignments.

 

1.      Writing is hard work done to make reading easy and enjoyable.  Put yourself in the shoes of the reader.  Would you enjoy reading your paper is someone else had written it?  Think about it, hard!

 

2.      Procrastination is the enemy of a good paper.  Get it done early.  Leave plenty of time to rewrite and edit.  Don’t expect to hand in a good paper until you work it over several times.  The practice of type, save, send (or print) generally does not produce a high quality essay.

 

3.      As part of the rewrite and edit process, try reading the paper aloud to yourself or better yet to someone else.  Reading aloud will help you smooth out the flow of sentences and remove errors of syntax (sentence organization).  If you find it hard or confusing to read aloud, it is probably not “reading” very clearly either.

 

4.      The sequence of any essay is important.  Essays should start with a clear thesis paragraph that outlines the major points you will make in the essay.  The paragraphs that follow must support the thesis and lead progressively to a conclusion.  The conclusion should restate the thesis.

 

5.      Use a reasonable font size.  This was typed using Times New Roman 12 point.  That is pretty standard these days.  The font size you use should be approximately this size.  What I don’t want to see is something like Times New Roman 14 point or Courier New 12 point or larger.  (Yes, life was easier when there was only pica or elite type.  If you don’t know what those mean, ask your parents, especially if they went to college in the 1960s or 1970s.)

 

Any academic dishonesty will result in a failing grade for the course.  If you are not sure of the definition of plagiarism see: http://www.wadsworth.com/english_d/special_features/plagiarism/definition.html

 

Papers will be graded primarily on their content.  However, as suggested above, grammar, spelling, organization and other factors will also play an important role.  Writing is one of our most important forms of communication.  It is, in part, based on following the rules.  Writing that does not follow the basic rules, that is difficult to follow and decipher is bad writing.  Bad writing

obscures content.  You cannot expect to gain full credit for your ideas if bad writing makes those ideas difficult to understand and follow.  If you think is this something nobody does or should care about, remember that one of the best selling books of 2004 was about punctuation (Eats, Shoots and Leaves).

 

Readings:

 

The course assignments will be based on the course readings.  Five books will be

available at the bookstore (and on-line booksellers – all are available on Amazon for example – and libraries).  They are (in order of reading and with sources beyond bookstore and Amazon):

 

Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years, Enlarged Edition (UD library and OHIOLINK)

Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837  (UD Library and OHIOLINK, also Kindle edition)

Barth, City People: The Rise of City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (UD library and OHIOLINK, also Kindle edition)

Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. (UD Library and OHIOLINK, also Kindle edition)

Gillette, Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (OHIOLINK)

 

Additional readings for assignment four, from Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, will be posted on Isidore.  For an introduction to Isidore, go to http://learn.udayton.edu/index.jsp and click on the Isidore tab.  If you have any questions about using Isidore, ask them early.  (Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier should also be available in libraries and, if you want to purchase, on-line booksellers.)

 

Therefore, given the wide variety of ways you have to acquire them, there is NO EXCUSE for not having the readings in time to do the assignments.  All you have to do is NOT wait until the last minute.  OHIO LINK and Amazon can take up to a week!

 

Especially do not expect to find the book at the last minute at the bookstore – it may be sold out as the bookstore does not always buy enough copies to match course registration because these other options are out there.  And the bookstore clears the shelves in late June to make way for the fall.  Instructors have no control over the bookstore’s policies.  If you order the book from the bookstore after the class starts, expect to wait at least a week to receive it.

Especially if you are off-campus, it is highly recommended that you purchase the books in advance from the bookstore or Amazon.

Assignments

 

ASSIGNMENT ONE (100 pts):  Due 25 May

 

The theme we will concentrate on all summer is community.  Each of the books you will read deals in one way or another with community – how communities are formed, does the physical environment play a role in community formation or in the hindering of community formation, what are a community’s values, how do communities govern themselves, how do communities organize, who belongs in a community and who doesn’t, what does it mean for an individual or group to be

included in a community, what does it mean for an individual or group to be excluded, and so on.

 

The first assignment is based on a careful and thorough reading of Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years.  This, like many the books you will be reading this summer, is a classic in the field.  It was the first to explore indepth and critically examine the nature of the New England town – separating myth from reality.  As the New England town has been highly romanticized, this book was an important corrective to many of the misperceptions held by many who viewed the New England town as somehow a better expression of community than contemporary cities and towns.

 

For assignment one you will be asked to write two, 5-page essays.  Each essay will be worth 50 points.  Please read carefully the suggestions made for essay writing in this syllabus – particularly point #4.  These are essays you will be writing.  All essays have a thesis, body, and conclusion.  All essays must clearly and specifically address the assignments.  The assignments are structured in a way that requires a response in essay form.  History is a discipline dependent upon the written word.  The essay is a classic form of history writing.  The essay form also requires a form and degree of critical thinking that is valuable not only in history, but in many different disciplines and pursuits.  These assignments also are structured in such a way as to have you exercise your critical thinking and writing skills.

 

Essay One:  Write a 5-page essay in which you discuss Lockridge’s answers to three of the following questions:

            Was Dedham democratic?

            Was Dedham equalitarian?

            Was Dedham static or dynamic?

            Was Dedham “American”?

 

Essay Two:  Write a 5-page essay in which you demonstrate how the definition and

expression of community changed over time (1636-1736).

 

ASSIGNMENT TWO (100 pts):  8 June

 

Assignment two is based on a careful and thoughtful reading of Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium.  This book was an early example of the so-called new social history.  Johnson's main focus was on an event that swept through many of the cities of the United States in the early 1830s, the Second Great Awakening.  In examining that phenomenon, using the tools of the new social history, he uncovered the significant social, economic and political changes that gripped US cities in the 1820s and 1830s as the nation entered the first stages of the Industrial Revolution.  As a result, the book was as much a study of early industrializing cities (his case study was Rochester, New York) as the religious event.  He clearly argued that the Second Great Awakening took place

during a time of significant change in these new industrializing cities.  He also noted a reciprocal relationship between the broader society, economic, and political changes and the Second Great Awakening -- in other words broad social, economic and political changes set the stage for the revival, but once the revival happened it influenced the further shape and direction of those changes.

 

For assignment four you will be asked to write three 3-4-page essays.  Total length should be between 9 and 12 pages.  Each essay will be worth approximately 33 points.  NOTE:  Play close attention the page numbers and dates for each essay.

 

Essay One:  Based on pages 3-78 of the book, write a 3-4 page essay in which you describe the social, political and economic world of Rochester, New York, in (basically) the 1820s (before the Great Awakening).  (NOTE:  Though the author will sometimes bring a few examples from the 1830s, his focus is on Rochester before the Second Great Awakening).

 

Essay Two:  Based on pages 79-141, write a 3-4 page essay in which you describe how the revival of 1830-1831 (the Second Great Awakening) reshaped Rochester's society (social relationships, politics, economic relationships), particularly the relationships between the urban upper and middle classes with the working class, as well as between whites and African Americans.

 

Essay Three:  Based on the entire book, write a 3-4 page essay in which you describe how between the 1820s and 1830s, due to broad changes generally as well as the revival specifically, the roles of urban upper/middle class men and women changed.  NOTE:  Think about roles/relationships within the home, the workshop (men there) and within the city.  Also, make sure your focus is on the upper and middle classes, not the working class.

 

ASSIGNMENT THREE (100 pts):  Due 24 June

 

Assignment three is based on a careful and thorough reading of Gunther Barth, City People.  Barth’s work explores the 19th century city – a type of city some consider almost an ideal city form – highly centralized, with institutions providing ways for all citizens to find a common sense of belonging.  Barth argues that in the 19th century city people developed a relatively common culture, expressed in such shared institutions and experiences as the downtown department store, metropolitan newspaper, and the vaudeville theater, among others.  Those three, in particular, have gone away or are in danger of going away.  Barth argued that their demise (as well as the city culture they created) disappeared after the appearance of the automobile (something we’ll explore with the next assignment).  Some people today believe that for cities to survive they must recapture some of the elements of that 19th century city – especially its thriving downtown and its sense of shared culture and experience.

 

For assignment three you will be asked to write three 3-4-page essays.  Total length should be between 9 and 12 pages.  Each essay will be worth approximately 33 points.

 

Essay One:  Based on pages 3-109, write a 3-4 pages essay in which you discuss the role/function of parks, apartment houses and the metropolitan press in the 19th century city.

 

Essay Two:  Based on pages 110-234, write a 3-4 page essay in which you discuss the role/function of department stores, baseball, and the vaudeville house in the 19th century city.

 

Essay Three:  Based on the entire book, write a 3-4 page essay in which you compare and contrast how men and women found ways to find a sense of belonging within the 19th century city.

 

NOTE:  It seems common sense that a compare/contrast essay should focus on points of comparison and contrast.  However, many students write describe/describe essays instead – they describe the first thing (X), then describe the second thing (Y) with just a few, often off-hand remarks, about how the two things are similar or different.  A strong comparison/contrast essay begins with a thesis that outlines overall points of comparison (i.e., X and Y are similar in that both …) and overall points of contrast (i.e., X is different than Y in that X ….).  The paragraphs within the essay then focus on explaining those points of comparison and contrast.

 

ASSIGNMENT FOUR (100 pts):  Due 8 July (Readings available on Isidore website):

 

https://isidore.udayton.edu/portal

 

Assignment four is based on a careful and thorough reading of chapters from Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States.  This was a very important book.  It was one of the first to examine the forces behind and the impact of suburbanization on the American city.  Whereas the first three assignments focused largely on center cities, with assignments four and five, we’ll turn to the suburbs.  (We’ll return to the center city with assignment six).

 

Overall, Jackson’s book focuses primarily on the middle and upper classes within cities.  They are people who most definitely saw themselves as “belonging” to their communities.  And yet, as Jackson argued, they embraced a vision and adopted technologies that allowed them to physically separate themselves from the urban community in order to form new suburban communities.  It is clear that the values they held shaped the types of communities they sought to establish (physically, socially, economically, etc.)

 

This work also introduces you to the distant roots of one of the most vexing issues facing urban/metropolitan areas today – urban sprawl.  Writing in the 1970s, Jackson was sure that a number of factors, including the oil crises, would reverse the trend toward suburbanization.  In hindsight, his prediction seems optimistic.

 

For assignment four you will be asked to write three 3-4-page essays.  Total length should be between 9 and 12 pages.  Each essay will be worth approximately 33 points.

 

Essay one:  Based on Chapters 2, 6 and 7, write a 3-4 page essay in which you discuss how evolving urban transportation technologies contributed to the creation of suburbs.

 

Essay two:  Based on Chapters 3 and 4, write a 3-4 in which you discuss the social and cultural values underlying the choice of many middle and upper-class Americans to seek homes away from the city in the new suburbs emerging in the 19th century.

 

Essay three:  Based on Chapters 9 and 11, write a 3-4 page essay in which you explain how both the automobile and the government policies promoted suburbanization in the first four decades of the 20th century.

 

ASSIGNMENT FIVE (100 pts):  Due 22 July

 

Assignment five is based on a careful and thorough reading of Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. This is one of the most acclaimed books of recent years.  It won many major awards – not only in history but in sociology.  Jackson focused on those who left the city for the suburbs.  Sugrue’s begins our look at those left within the heart of the city.  It examines how structures of racism and deinstrustrialization contributed to the “urban crisis” that swept American cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 

For assignment five you will be asked to write three 3-4 page essays.  Total length should be between 9-12 pages.  Each essay will be worth approximately 33 points.

 

Essay one:  Write an essay in which you discuss the challenges faced by African-American migrants to Detroit in finding jobs and housing during World War II.

 

Essay two:  Write an essay in which you explain how racism and deindustrialization combined to create conditions of economic insecurity for African-Americans in Detroit in from the late 1940s through the 1960s.

 

Essay three:  Write an essay in which you discuss how whites in Detroit enforced the so-called “color line” in both jobs and housing from the late 1940s through the 1960s.

 

ASSIGNMENT SIX (100 pts):  Due 3 July

 

As you learned in the Sugrue book, the full consequences of suburbanization for central cities became glaringly apparent after World War II.  Howard Gillette, in Camden After the Fall, traces the consequences of suburbanization for Camden, New Jersey – once a vibrant industrial community, but by the 1960s clearly one of the most distressed central city areas in the United States.  As Gillette notes in his introduction, many people believed in a simple causation for the decline of Camden – white people moved out; minorities (especially African-Americans) moved in.  Gillette’s book is focused first on examining the validity of that simplistic notion and second on exploring the varied ways in which the people of Camden and others have responded to its decline.  While some of this covers the same ground as the Sugrue book, Gillette brings the story up to the early 21st century.

 

For assignment six you will be asked to write two 5 page essays.  Total length should be 10 pages.  Each essay will be worth 50 points.

 

Essay One:  Based on parts I and II (pp. 1-119), write an essay in which you first briefly survey the situation in Camden as the 1940s and then discuss the various factors (i.e. internal/external, social, political, economic) that contributed to the decline of the city after World War II.

 

Essay Two:  Based on part III (pp. 123-250), write an essay in which you identify and assess four major efforts aimed at revitalizing Camden.   The four should include two public (local, state or national) and two private (local, neighborhood not-for-profit or corporate) initiatives.