Syllabus
Dr. Samuel Finesurrey: [email protected]
Spring 2025
Class Information: Monday & Wednesday 9:45-11:15 Room 502
Office Hours — Mondays 1-2
Open Educational Resource & Zero Textbook Cost Course
Course Description:
This course is a survey of United States history from 1865 to the present era. It highlights a range of people, movements, ideologies and events, which shaped U.S. society and the U.S. presence in the world over this long historical period. Major themes will include Reconstruction and Jim Crow, U.S. Empire in the Caribbean and Latin America, World War I, The Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, U.S. Interventions in East Asia, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, the Feminist Movements, the Gay Rights Movement, Movements for Immigrant Justice, The War on “Terror”, and Contemporary Social Movements. In exploring these events, we will attempt to answer the central questions concerning U.S. history after the Civil War. Who has benefited and who suffered from U.S. Empire? How did groups without political, social and economic power challenge the structures that shape U.S. society? Furthermore, we will examine how history has become a battlefield between those who want things to stay the same, and those who seek a more just society. Students will be engaged in using critical thinking skills to analyze primary documents and secondary source materials.
Prerequisites
No prerequisites for this course
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
- Identify and discuss the importance of struggles for equal social, political and economic rights, the increasing engagement of the U.S. in the world, the development of the U.S. economy, the expanding scope and power of the federal government, and shifting attitudes and policies regarding diversity in U.S. history since the Civil War.
- Identify and apply the key historical concepts of change-over-time, cause-and-effect, agency, historical empathy, and continuity and discontinuity, and recognize how these concepts are employed in the historical method.
- Explain how conceptions of freedom, equality, and opportunity changed from the Civil War to the present.
- Analyze and interpret primary sources with attention to audience, authorship and context.
- Evaluate the ways in which historians have conflicting interpretations of the past.
- Recognize how and why U.S. history has been taught differently to different generations and communities.
- Produce a paper with a clear thesis and appropriate citations based on strong evidence drawn from historical sources.
Course Resources
Course Textbook
The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History (Stanford University Press, Last Updated January 2022)
Primary Resources
The American Yawp Reader: A Documentary Companion to the American Yawp (Stanford University Press, Last Updated January 2022)
Additional Materials
Corbett, P. Scott, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Sylvie Waskiewicz, Paul Vickery, U.S. History,(OpenStax, Last Updated 2021)
Finesurrey, Samuel Case Studies in the History of U.S. Empire and Society (OER Commons, Last Updated 2022)
_________, “Conducting Interviews,” in Ethnographies of Work, edited by Alia R. Tyler-Mullings, Mary Gotta, Ryan Coughlan, (Manifold, 2019).
Friedman, Max Paul “The Good Neighbor Policy” Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Latin American History(2018)
Holloway, Kali “American History Is Getting Whitewashed, Again” The Nation (October 2, 2020)
Norouzi, Ebrahim, “The Dulles Brothers,” The Mossadegh Project (2010)
Shaffer, Robert “The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Spanish Civil War in U.S. History Textbooks,” The Volunteer (2021)
Course Assignments and Grading
| A+ | 4.0 | 97-100% |
| A | 4.0 | 93-96.9% |
| A- | 3.7 | 90-92.9% |
| B+ | 3.3 | 87-89.9% |
| B | 3.0 | 83-86.9% |
| B- | 2.7 | 80-82.9% |
| C+ | 2.3 | 77-79.9% |
| C | 2.0 | 73-76.9% |
| C- | 1.7 | 70-72.9% |
| D+ | 1.3 | 67-69.9% |
| D (passing) | 1.0 | 60-66.9% |
| F | 0 | 0-59.9% |
| NC* | Not calculated | 0-59.9% |
Weekly Quizzes (35 Percent):
- Every week there will be a quiz on the assigned materials and the previous week’s lecture. There are open note quizzes so you are expected to bring your notes on both the readings and from the previous week’s lecture. A times there will be map questions and timeline questions, but the vast majority of questions will be standard multiple choice questions.
- There will be 11 quzzes throughout the semester and seven will count towards your final grade. They will almost always taking place on Mondays in the first 10-15 min. of class. If you miss a quiz it will count as a dropped quiz and not hurt you, but you cannot make it up.
Exploring and Writing the Offical Narrative Assignment (35 Percent):
Exploring the Offical Narrative Assignment Presentations: (150 Points)
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- In groups or as individuals you will look at a single historical subject matter of your choosing. You will create a presentation 10-15 explaining the debates surrounding that topic of study. You will also produce a five page paper as an individual that analyzes the differing points of views. Further as the experts, you will draw your own conclusions about which concepts make the most sense.
- You will examine at least four textbooks including possible of options of: 1776 Textbook, Patriots History of the United States, A People’s History of the United States, Subject Specific Textbooks, Eric Foner (Labor, NA, African American, U.S. Empire, Immigration)
Interviews: (50 Points)
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- You will also have data from the interviews you collected from family members and friends on how they were taught the history of events covered by the various groups in this assignment.
Writing The Official Narrative: (150 Points)
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- As individuals you must create a short textbook section – three pages double spaced without images or charts – and discussion questions about the topic you selected as a group.
- You will be evaluated on the writing, the clarity of the information, the citations, and the quality of the discussion questions. I encourage you to add pictures and original charts to improve the textbook section.
- You must cite your sources throughout (Last Name, Text, Pg. Number) and have a bibliography at the end of the section.
Final Exam (20 Percent): The final exam will consist of short answers and a single essay.
Participation (10 Percent): You are expected to participate in class discussion.
Course Schedule
| Monday March 10 | Map Quiz — Introduction to Course, Evaluating Grading System |
| Due Tuesday March 11 | Assignment 1 — Amercian Yawp, Reconstruction Reading |
| Wednesday March 12 | Quiz 1 — Reconstruction |
| Due Sunday March 16 | Assignment Two — 1) Indian Country |
| Monday March 17 | Quiz 2 + The Native Genocide Continues after Civil War |
| Wednesday March 19 | Selecting and Bibliography of Exploring and Writing the Offical Narrative Assignment |
| Due Sunday March 23 | Assignment Three — 1) Pullman Strke/Ludlow Massacre 2) Crash Course: The Industrial Economy 3) Haymarket and Knights of Labor |
| Monday March 24 | The Gilded Age and The Labor Movement |
| Wednesday March 26 | Writing the Offical Narrative Assignment |
| Due Sunday March 30 | Assignment Four — 1) Zinn, An Overseas Empire 2) Case Studies in the History of U.S. Empire and Society: “An Overseas Empire” & “Dollar Diplomacy in Haiti” — Early Semester Checkin Form |
| Monday March 31 | No Class |
| Wednesday April 2 | Quiz 4 + An Overseas Empire |
| Friday April 4 | No History Class — Monday Schedule (PTK Catalyst) |
| Due Sunday April 6 | Assignment Five — 1) Zinn, World War One 2) Goldman, On Patriotism, 3) DuBois “Returning Soldiers“ |
| Monday April 7 | Quiz 5 — World War One At Home and Abroad |
| Wednesday April 9 | Finish WWI — Exploring and Writing the Offical Narrative Assignment |
| Due Sunday April 13 | No Work |
| Monday April 14 | Spring Break |
| Wednesday April 16 | Spring Break |
| Due Sunday April 20 | Assignment Six — 1) Zinn, The Great Depression 2) Crash Course: The Great Depression 3) Crash Course: The New Deal |
| Monday April 21 | Quiz 6 — The Great Depression |
| Wednesday April 23 | Exploring and Writing the Offical Narrative Assignment |
| Due Sunday April 27 | Assignment Seven — 1) Crash Course: World War II: Part I 2) Crash Course: World War II: Part II |
| Monday April 28 | Quiz Seven + World War II |
| Wednesday April 30 | Exploring and Writing the Offical Narrative Assignment & One-on-Ones |
| Due Sunday May 4 | Assignment Eight — 1) What is McCarthyism? And How Did it Happen? 2) Case Studies in the History of U.S. Empire: Korean War, Overthrowing Guatemala President Jacobo Arbenz & The Vietnam War |
| Monday May 5 | Quiz 8 + The Early Cold War |
| Wednesday May 7 | The Wars in East Asia |
| Due Sunday May 11 | Assignment Nine — 1) Zinn, Early Civil Rights 2) Zinn, The 1960s 3) Crash Course: The 1960s |
| Monday May 12 | Quiz 9 + The Long Civil Rights Movement |
| Wednesday May 14 | The Radical Movements of the 1960s and 1970s |
| Due Sunday May 18 | Assignment 10 — 1) Vox: How the War on Drugs Perpetuates Violence in Latin America 2) Zinn, Wars in Central America |
| Monday May 19 | Quiz 10 — Wars on Drugs and Communism (Angola, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador) |
| Wednesday May 21 | No Class |
| Due Sunday May 25 | Assignment 11 — 1) Case Studies in the History of U.S. Empire: The War on Terror & Libyian Intervention 2) Zinn, Wars in the Middle East |
| Monday May 26 | Memorial Day |
| Wednesday May 28 | Quiz 11 — The War on Terror |
| Due Sunday June 1 | Submit Textbook Slides and Presentations |
| Monday June 2 | Exploring the Offical Narrative Assignment Presentations |
| Wednesday June 4 | Exploring the Offical Narrative Assignment Presentations |
| Due Sunday June 8 | |
| Monday June 9 | Optional Virtual One-on-Ones |
June 15 — Submit Final Exam and Writing the Official Narrative Assignment
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