Dr. Paul Douglas Newman T-Th 9:30-10:50 & 12:30-1:50 Classroom: Blackington Hall 131 Office: Krebs 123, 269-2987, Fax 7255 Home: 535-3176 (not after 9pm, or else!) Office Hours: T & R 11-12, 2-3pm & by appt. pnewman@pitt.edu www.pitt.edu/~pnewman

1.One purpose is to make you employable by teaching you how to think, how to reason, and then, training you to communicate your rationalized thought in an intelligent and efficient manner. These skills are Mandatory in today's world of gainful employment. I intend to impart these skills to you by presenting you with massive quantities of historical information, and then challenging you to use the facts--to synthesize them--in forming your own opinion about the themes and events of American history in clear and efficiently written essays.

2.Most of you are citizens of this republic, the United States of America. As citizens, you are endowed not only with many "fundamental" rights and privileges but also with some heavy-duty responsibility. You are charged with the task of choosing the local, state, and national officials of one of the most (if not the most) powerful country on earth. But the problem is that so very few of you take this responsibility seriously. Eighteen to twenty-five year-olds are the group least likely to even know where the polls are--much less when to vote! This type of apathy is what frightened many of the Founders most. Apathy concerning who governs and the policies implemented by government is the seedbed for tyranny! And those rights and privileges that you so readily identify as fundamental and automatic to your citizenship can and will be quite easily denied and stripped of you. The Founders understood that government is power, and that power corrupts the men who possess it, and that the powerful seek to gain more power by seizing it from the people. In order to combat this inevitable truth, they created a republic (not a democracy) in which the power of the country remained invested in the hands of the people, the electorate, who shared and controlled the power of their government. It will be one purpose of this course to re-infuse you with the actions and intentions of the Founders, their predecessors and their followers, who created and continued the first and arguably the most successful experiment in republican government in the world so that with your generation, the experiment can continue.

3.Another purpose is to expose you to a side of American history that you probably have never experienced, its darker side. The reason for this is plain. The history of human beings--that is the writing of the story of man--has encompassed many themes: progress, expansion, declension, imperialism, etc... but one theme that is inherent within them all, and which--unfortunately--seems to have characterized the entire story of human interaction, is Conflict. The story of Americans' relationships with one another and with other nations is no different.

During the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, Rodney King passionately beseeched his fellow citizens, "Can't we all get along?" The immediate answer was no, as the violence continued for days. But gradually it did stop, and more importantly, the citizens of that community strove to rebuild it, and are now making efforts to heal not only the wounds that the riots caused, but the wounds that caused the riots. Much, much work remains to be done in the area of race relations, poverty, and xenophobia, but people try, and through their effort society usually improves.

And King's question is a poignant one for us--Hist 620--to apply to the history of the interaction of American human beings with one another, as well as with those of differing races, religions, and ethnicity since 1877. Again, you will find this semester that the answer to "Can't we all get along?" has been no many times, as various racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, socioeconomic, political, and national groups have squared off against one another in hateful, hurtful, and often deadly conflict--as we all saw two years ago in Los Angeles. One reason for these tragedies--the same as Los Angeles--is a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge, and a lack of empathy (not sympathy, empathy--thecapacity for participating in the feelings or ideas of others; sympathy is the actual participation). In short, these tragedies are to a great extent the result of ignorance. Over time, Americans have slowly learned to empathize with one another and with the rest of the world, and in various arenas certain levels of progress have been made, but just as in Los Angeles, much work remains in most of those areas.

By examining the conflicts of our past, and most importantly their participants, hopefully we will all gain a better understanding of the differing peoples we live with in this country and around the world today. By learning the histories of various peoples we can better understand their present situation, and more importantly, the way in which they think, since people view the present in terms of their past. Armed with this type of education, it is my hope, and the hope of the state of Pennsylvania, that we all can learn to be empathetic--to attain at least the capacity to participate in the feelings and ideas of others. Neither I, William Penn, nor Tom Ridge can or will force you to be sympathetic, but we will provide you with the opportunity to sympathize by preparing you to empathize! If we succeed to the point that everyone in the world is prepared to empathize, the answer to Rodney King's question in the future will probably still be no, but that does not mean that progress cannot be made. Perhaps enough progress can occur so that two hundred years from now, historians can look back to the end of the twentieth century as the beginning of a time when progress replaced conflict as the main theme of American history. Lets' hope! But more importantly, lets' do something about it!

Required Books:
Out of Many: A History of the American People, Brief Edition, Vol. 2, by John Mack Faragher.
Out of Many: Study Guide for Volume 2
United States History Atlas, Hammond Inc.

If you read this syllabus carefully, you will notice that there are three separate types of "Study Guides" available to you:

• The printed study guide on sale in the bookstore
• Prentice-Hall On-Line has a similar guide that compliments the printed version (you canclick on "Prentice Hall On-Line" in the Menu box above to reach this site)
• Three separate on-line study guides that I have created to assist you in the lecture andAtlas materials (also click-able as "Exam 1" "Exam 2" and "Final" from the Menu boxabove.

Examinations
There will be three examinations worth 100 points each. They will be a mix of objective and short answer questions, and map questions and historical geography. The test questions will come from my lectures and the test banks from Out of Many and United States History Atlas. The final exam will NOT be comprehensive.

Grading
This course will operate on a point system. Every exercise in this course will be worth a certain number of points, which will add up to 300 points by the end of the semester. Criteria for final grades: A = 270-300, B = 240-269, C = 210-239, D = 180-209, F = 179 and below

Supplemental Instruction
This class will have a Supplemental Instruction Tutor assigned to it by the Learning Resources Center.  The Tutor will attend all of my lectures, and host two sections of a one hour review session each week during the term beginning the week of September 5.  Mr. McCoy will meet with students on Mondays and Tuesdays, from 4-6 pm in the Owen Library basement, room 51.  You do not have to attend for the full two hours.  Mr. McCoy will divide the time into two one hour sessions--you can attend from 4-5 or 5-6.  If there are no students for his 5 pm session by 5:10, he will leave.

The Supplemental Instruction sessions are open to all History 0620 students and attendance is purely voluntary.  However, you will want to attend as many of these review sessions as possible, and not just the week before the exam.  Every week I will meet with the SI Instructor and inform him of the pertinent material to be covered in review.  Most of the material that will be used for essays on the exam will be directly discussed in review.  Do not, however, think that you can cut class and make up for it in review.  The review will only assist people who have already come to class and have read their assignments.  As such, you will be required to present your notebook at review to prove that you have been attending classes.  The SI instructor will not TEACH you, he will help you to review the material and clear up inconsistencies in your notes.  Every time I teach History 0610 and 0620, as many as 20% of students receive D or F for their final grade.  Do not let yourself become another such statistic.  Take advantage of this helpful study aide.

The tutor is Michael McCoy.  Mr. McCoy is a senior majoring in History with a Sociology minor.  His general grade point average is above a 3.9 and his gpa in History is a 4.0.  Mike was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta International Honor Society in History in 1999, and in 2000, his essay won "Best in Session" at the Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference held at Gannon University.  Mike will be a very capable tutor.  To find out more about the Learning Resources Center and the Supplemental Instruction program, check out their web-site at www.pitt.edu/~upjlrc

Attendance
There will be no attendance policy for this class.  Therefore, there is no need to inform me of any absences unless they will fall on an exam day (if so, see "Make-Up Exams below).  Otherwise, you are on your own.  However, be warned, irregular attendance will certainly impact your grade to the negative.  Conversely, those with perfect attendance tend to do quite well in my class.

Make-Up Exams
I retain the prerogative to approve or deny applications for taking the exams at any time other than the appointed hour.  Make-Up Exams will only be administered to those students who inform me of their intention to miss the exam date BEFOREHAND. There will be NO EXCEPTIONS. Failure to comply with this rule will result in a grade of zero for the exam.

Incompletes
Only students with severe cases of hardship will be permitted a grade of "I" or "G" at term's end with the permission to finish the course work at a later date.  I reserve the right to determine what is a "severe case of hardship."

Cheating
Any attempt to offer anyone else's work as your own will merit a zero for that assignment, a G grade for the course, and will automatically begin the proceedings for an F in the course and for your expulsion from this university in accordance with the Academic Integrity Guidelines found in your student handbook.

Disabilities
Anyone in need of special accommodations due to a disability of any kind must seek guidance from the Disability Resources and Services Director Kurt Bouman, Biddle 133, 269-7001 immediately in order to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Do so now.

Professorial Prerogative
I reserve the right to make any changes to this syllabus that I deem necessary at any time for any reason of my choosing.  Failure to comply with any revisions to the syllabus will not be excusable due to absence on the day the changes were announced.  You are responsible for everything that transpires in the classroom every class meeting.

• Below are listed 23 lectures, readings, atlas, and study guide assignments.  You should read the text, perform the exercises in the Study Guide, and read the maps/charts in the Atlas BEFORE you come to that lecture.  this is not a requirement, but a helpful suggestion.  The few who religiously follow this advice tend to do very well in my class.
• I will deliver the lectures in this order.  I have not assigned a particular date to each lecture to allow for modifications to the calendar--such as my illness, snow days (God forbid!), or for more in depth analysis of a particular subject in which the class exhibits an interest.  You must attend class regularly in order to know exactly where we are on the syllabus and to know exactly when the exams will be offered.
• By clicking on the title to each lecture below, you will access the lecture outline for that lecture.  I will place an overhead of the outline on the screen before each lecture, but you may wish to print out these outlines to save yourself from the frustration of scrambling to write down the entire outline in two minutes.

2. "The Gilded Age: The Industrial Revolution and the Worker."
TEXT: pages 356-359 "Labor in the Age of Big Business," 398-402 "Working Class Communities and Protest"
ATLAS: 38B, 39

3. "The Gilded Age: The Industrial Revolution and the Farmer."
TEXT: 372-376 "Toward a National Governing Class" and "Farmers and Workers Organize Their Communities"

4. "The Wizard of Oz and William Jennings Bryan."
TEXT: pages 376-381 "The Crisis of the 1890s" and "The Politics of Reform..."

5. "Progressive Era~Progressive Origins?"
TEXT: chapter 21, and pages 433-434 "Resistance to Modernity"
ATLAS: 31D
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 21 for lectures 5 & 6

6. "Progressive Era~Progressive Achievements?"

7. "The Foreign Policy of Progressivism: Manifest Destiny Extended."
TEXT: pages 381-386, "Imperialism of Righteousness," and "The Spanish-American War"
ATLAS: 32
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 20

FIRST MID-TERM EXAM--Date to be announced in class.

8. "Safe For Democracy!: A Progressive World War?"
TEXT: chapter 22
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 22
ATLAS: 40A, 41D

9. "The Roaring Twenties: The Model T and the Road to Ruin."
TEXT: chapter 23
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 23
ATLAS: 35C, 37C(1900-1930)

10. "New Era Political Economy and the Crash of the Market."
TEXT: pages 431-433 "The State and Business," 446-447 "Hard Times--The Crash/Underlying Weaknesses/Mass Unemployment"
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 24 for lectures 10, 11, 12, & 13
ATLAS: 43

11. "The Great Depression and 'Nobody's Starving'?"
TEXT: pages 453-456 "The New Deal and the West," "Depression Era Culture," pages 447-448 "Hard Times--Hoover's Failure/Protest and the Election of 1932"
ATLAS: 42

12. "FDR: The First New Deal and Indirect Relief."
TEXT: pages 448-450 "FDR and the First New Deal"

13. "FDR: The Second New Deal and Direct Relief."
TEXT: pages 450-453 "Left Turn and the Second New Deal," pages 456-458 "The Limits of Reform"

SECOND MID-TERM EXAM--Date to be announced in class.

14. "Toward a Second World War."
TEXT: 463-465 "The Coming of World War II"
ATLAS: 46, 47C, 48A
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 24 for lectures 14, 15, and 16

15."Winning the War Abroad."
TEXT: 471-480 "Men and Women in Uniform," "The World at War," & "Last Stages of the War"
ATLAS: 47D, 48B, 49

16. "Winning the War at Home."
TEXT: 465-471, "Arsenal of Democracy" and "The Home Front"

17. "The Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1950."
TEXT: 486-490 "Global Insecurities..." and "Policy of Containment"
ATLAS: 50B, 51C
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 26

18. "The 1950s: Happy Days in an Age of Fear"
TEXT: 492-497 "Cold War at Home" and "Age of Anxiety" 503-511 "American Communities..." and "American Society at Mid-Century" and "Youth Culture" and "Mass Culture..."
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 27

19. "The Cold War Heats Up: Korea, Latin America, and Vietnam to 1968."
TEXT: 497--500 "End of the Democratic Era" 511-517 "Cold War Continued" and "JFK and the New Frontier" 543-545 "Vietnam"
ATLAS: 52B, 53C, 33

20. "The American Civil Rights Movement: African Americans, 1954-1968."
TEXT: chapter 28
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 28

21. "The Sixties... Man, and Civil Rights for Everybody."
TEXT: chapter 29
STUDY GUIDE: chapter 29

22. "Ending the Cold War: 1969-1999?"
TEXT: 560-565 "The Nixon Presidency" and "Watergate" 582-586 "Adjusting to a New World" and "Carter's Crisis of Confidence" 594-596 "Reagan's Foreign Policy" 603 "Collapse of Communism"
STUDY GUIDE: chapters 30 and 31 for lectures 22 and 23

23. "The U.S., the Middle East, and the New American Political Economy, 1972-1999."
TEXT: chapter 30, 591-594 "The Reagan Revolution" 596-609 "Best of Times, Worst of Times," "End of an Era"

FINAL EXAMINATION
9:30 Class-- Tuesday, December 12, 3-5pm
12:30 Class-- Monday, December 11, 9-11am

NOTE:  There will be no exceptions to the final exam schedule for any reason.  I am inflexible on this.  You must take the exam when you are scheduled.

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