Broad View (individual units below)
*How and why did Americans craft an ideal of limited government, and what forces and events have challenged or sustained this model?
*How have the tensions between the ideal of equality and the realities of various historical inequalities shaped the nation? What has led to the challenging of these inequalities, and to what degree have they changed?
*What forces have shaped U.S. approaches to foreign policy, and what are the impacts of these policies?
*To what degree has individualism shaped American society, and in what ways is this ethic a positive or negative one?
*How has religious enthusiasm shaped the nation’s history?
*How do economic and technological forces transform society?
*How to analyze challenging texts, focusing on the main ideas and key supporting evidence
*How to identify and articulate interactions between economic, cultural, technological and political factors, leading to multicausal explanations of phenomena
*How to answer a complex paper question, with clarity, focused argument, and rigorous use of evidence and reasoning
*How to participate in and sustain a vigorous, intellectually fruitful classroom atmosphere
Essays (both conventional thesis-driven arguments and non-conventional, such as a historical guide to the film, Black Robe, and a Dinner Party Dialogue of antebellum characters.)
Tests (essay based)
Pop Quizzes
Classroom Participation
The American story, in its essence, is a multiracial, multi-ethnic and culturally fragmented story; to tell it otherwise would be highly unadvisable. Hence, our approach focuses not only on such traditional themes as slavery, European conquest of Native America, Japanese-American Internment and the Civil Rights movement, but seeks to centralize race as ever-present theme in constructing American culture and politics. We approach this in many forms, including, but not limited to:
*a multi-lens focus on Iroquois/Algonquin/Huron contact with French/Dutch/English in the colonial era
*a close look at the role that slavery had in defusing boiling class resentments in colonial Virginia
*the role of non-whites in defining “whiteness” for generations of immigrants
*post-1965 immigration
*the evolution and political impact of American Gay and Lesbian communities