Monday (11/5)
Conservationism.
Read the excerpt from naturalist John Muir, "The American Forests," originally published in the
Atlantic Monthly, (1897) on the UVa. etext center website. Read
Theodore Roosevelt's Special Message from the President of the United States
Transmitting a Report of the National Conservation Commission (1909),
including the sections on waters, forests, land, and minerals, on the
American Memory website of the Library of Congress. How would you compare the
the two authors' views of the goals of conservation? To what extent are
nature romanticism and technological mastery of nature for human benefit in
competition with each other? How do American ideals of liberty, progress, and
opportunity get manifested in these documents? What arguments do the two
authors make about the role of private activity and the role of government
regulation?
Before class, members of the RED discussion group will need to post to the
course
discussion board.
Tuesday (11/6)
Research Paper Discussions.
No Meeting Today.
Please schedule a time for a group appointment. We will meet in groups of
four. Each group will visit for a twenty minute block either Monday
afternoon, class time, or Tuesday afternoon.
Wednesday (11/7)
America and the Safety of Democracy.
Read Guarneri,
America, pp. 231-235.
Read Woodrow Wilson's
Message Calling for a Declaration of War on Germany (1917)
and his
Fourteen Points for settlement of the conflict. Read the
Wikipedia articles describing the Supreme Court case of
Schenck v. United States (1919) and the so-called
Palmer
Raids of 1919-1921. Read decision excerpts from the Supreme Court case of
Buchanan v. Warley (1917).
Read a summary of the
Chicago Race Riot of 1919 on the Jazz Age Chicago website.
Read an account of the
background and passage of the Nineteenth Amendment on the
National Women's History Project website. Read the Wikipedia biography of
Margaret
Sanger. Taken as a group, what do these documents tell us about the
progress, challenges, and paradoxes of liberty in the early twentieth
century? How do these incidents fit into the general trends apparent from the
other topics over the last two weeks?
Thursday (11/8)
Radio Days: Technology and Culture
in a New Electronic Age.
Read the
Encyclopedia Britannica biographies of
Guglielmo Marconi,
Edwin H. Armstrong and
David Sarnoff.
You may optionally browse the illustrated chronology of
Recording Technology History at the University of San Diego.
Friday (11/9)
The Consumer Revolution.
Finish reading Rachel Bowlby,
Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping
in preparation for discussion in class.
What does the book tell us about the place of material transactions and commodities
in shaping American freedom and social order? How did the emergence
of modern methods of product distribution liberate consumers, and how has it
shackled them? How does the mall's vision of human nature and autonomy differ
from those of Jefferson and Madison or of First Peoples on the American Plains?
What does Bowlby's use of literary analysis bring to historical understanding
that other approaches we have used this term might have overlooked? How have
the functions and structures of shopping changed over time, and why? To what
extent are the processes she describes trans-national phenomena? From the
perspective of people in our own time, how would the significance of supermarkets
and shopping centers compare to, say, the Constitution, the Civil War, or
Custer's Last Stand at Little Bighorn?
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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 9/30/2007.