An Age of Regulation and
Standardization.
Members of the RED group will need to read the prize-winning senior essay by
Nathaniel Allen, "The
Times They Are A-Changing: The Influence of Railroad Technology on the
Adoption of Standard Time Zones in 1883" The History Teacher
33 (February 2000): 241-256 and post comments in preparation for class
discussion.
Members of the GREEN group will need to read the essay by Charles W. McCurdy,
"American
Law and the Marketing Structure of the Large Corporation, 1875- 1890,"
Journal of Economic History 38 (September 1978): 631-649, and
post comments in preparation for class discussion.
Members of the BLUE group will need to read the article by Burrus M.
Carnahan,
"Lincoln, Lieber and the Laws of War: The Origins and Limits of the
Principle of Military Necessity," American Journal of International
Law 92 (April 1998): 213-231 as well as the Wikipedia
summary of the Hague
Conventions of 1899 and 1907, posting comments in preparation for class
discussion.
All participants in the class should read the "Brief History of the ISO" produced by a student at the University of Pittsburgh and the "ANSI - an Historical Overview," webpage at the American National Standards Institute website.
For for your assigned article, identify the key policies, organizations, laws, or conventions that were established. Who advocated for these measures and why? What were the most important proposals in each case that did not succeed? Why did they fail and what does that tell us? What groups or entities opposed (the successful) measures, and why? Why did each of these initiatives at standardization and regulation take so long to implement? What, in other words, explains their timing? Why now and not before? How did American participation in these international standardization and regulation efforts compare with efforts by other nations? What were the benefits and weaknesses of these international policies?
Before class members of ALL discussion groups will need to post comments on these articles to the course discussion board.
Social Darwinism, the Social Gospel,
and Socialism in America.
Read Guarneri, America, pp. 191-199. Read industrialist Andrew Carnegie's
essay on "Wealth,"
North American Review, 48 (June 1889): 653-64. Read the
Encyclopedia Britannica biographies of Washington
Gladden and Walter
Rauschenbusch. What were the key crises, problems, and innovations of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that these social theories
sought to address? How and why did these theories evolve over time?
What were the motives for American Imperialism? In what ways were the impulses for international intervention a natural outgrowth of widely-held American values? In what ways was this moment unique or a significant deviance from core national values and practices? How, if at all, have these interventions become incorporated into popular memory of the nation's history? How do the memories of these interventions illustrate the processes of selectivity and reputation in how we use history?
No Meeting Today.
You may want to use this time to work on your research project.
No Meeting Today.
You may want to use this time to work on your research project.
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Note: The instructor reserves the right to change any provisions, due dates, grading percentages, or any other items without prior notice. All assignments on this schedule are covered under the university's policy on plagiarism and academic integrity. See the syllabus statement for further details. This page was last updated on 9/31/2007.