AP US History Syllabus
AP US History Syllabus
Mr. Bell
2011-2012
Course Description: This course is designed to provide students with an in-depth survey of US history with the goal of having each student pass the AP examination. This course is taught at a college level. The major difference between a high school and college history course is the amount of reading and depth of focus. This being the case, students should expect to read between 80-100 pages per week (as homework!). Thus this class requires a tremendous commitment, and ultimately, what you get out of this class will be dependent on what you put into it.
Student Objectives--Students will:
Develop an understanding of the history of the United States (politically, economically, socially, and culturally).
Understand differing historical interpretations
Critically analyze a variety of primary sources including, but not limited to, maps, graphs, cartoons, and works of arts.
Effectively write expository essays using historical evidence.
Successfully prepare for the AP exam in May.
Course Materials:
Brinkley, Alan. American History: A Survey. 12th ed. New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2007. (Main Text)
Davidson, James West, and Mark H. Lyte. After the Fact: The Art of Historical
Detection. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Dover Thrift-Edition. New York: Dover Publications, 1995.
Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition. New York:
Vintage, 1989.
Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1973.
Plus assorted handouts throughout the year
Class Structure: Our regular class meetings will be devoted to a variety of activities. They will consist of the following: Lecture/note-taking; discussion; primary source analysis; and AP exam preparation (with emphasis on the DBQ).
Reading: As mentioned above, reading outside of class is a key component of the course. Indeed, you will find it key to being able to pass the AP exam. Besides the main text, there will be AT LEAST one additional supplementary reading per week. It is imperative that you do the reading by the assigned date to be able to participate in discussions (remember, participation is 5% of your grade). Moreover, because of the fast pace of the class, most students find it very difficult to make up reading once the due date has passed.
Weekly Homework: Besides reading, you will need to define key terms for each chapter. You will also be assigned a selection of primary sources and maps to analyze. There will be questions to guide you. Additionally, you will be assigned between three-to-five essential questions for each chapter. You will be required to provide a thesis statement and an outline response for each question and be prepared to discuss them in class.
Writing Assignments: Besides the weekly homework, there will be three different types of writing assignments that we will do throughout the year (All writing needs to be typed and double-spaced).
The first type will deal with historiography (differing historical interpretations). After reading a brief historiographical essay, you will need to summarize the historiography of a particular era, event, or movement (for example “The Cold War” or “The Populists”) and then say which interpretation you find most convincing. These essays are usually 2-4 pages in length. (While you are expected to read all of the historiographical essays, you only have to write about three of them. It is your choice as to which three you choose).
The second type of writing assignment will be take-home DBQs. We will do two of these before we begin doing them in a timed setting in class. The second take-home DBQ will be graded by another student (we will exchange papers) using a rubric similar to those used by AP readers. This has proven to be very valuable in gaining insight into what the AP graders look for as well as how other students approach their writing.
The third type of writing assignment in this class will involve responses to some of the supplemental readings. For instance, after reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, you will have a choice of questions in which you will write a 2-3 page essay/response.
Please note that throughout the year I will use examples of student writings (without the names) to exhibit both writing to emulate as well as common mistakes.
Tests & Quizzes: There will be a short multiple choice quiz after each chapter in the Brinkley textbook. It will be the day that the reading is supposed to be done by. If you are absent, you must take quiz the first day you return. NO EXCEPTIONS. Every three weeks (approximately), we will take a test on Friday. Each test will consist of multiple choice questions, some short identifications, and an essay. There will be a total of 10 tests (half of which will be DBQ’s). We will also take a Mid-term test during finals week of the Fall semester. This test will consist of multiple choice questions as well as a DBQ and a Free Response question.
Grading: 95% of your grade in this class will be based on the percentage of the total points on all assignments. The grading scale is as follows: A = 90% -100%
B = 80% - 89%
C = 70% - 79%
D = 60% - 69%
F = 0% - 59%
The remaining 5% of your grade will be based on class participation (primarily discussion).
Late Work: I do not accept late work. If you have an assignment due on a day that you will miss class--say for an athletic event--it is up to you to get it to me before you leave.
Make-Up Work: Make up work will only be given in cases of excused absences. It is the student’s responsibility to get make-up work ON THE FIRST DAY upon returning to class.
Class Rules: 1. Be in your seat when the bell rings
2. Be Prepared – Have something to write on (and with) and be ready to participate.
3. Respect the Rights of Others – Only one person talks while everyone else listens. Moreover, everyone has the right to express themselves. If you disagree with someone’s viewpoint, wait until they have finished and then, in a respectful manner, you may state your disagreement.
4. Be in your seat when the dismissal bell rings –Don’t mill about the door before it is time to go.
5. Absolutely no food or drinks in the classroom.
6. No electronic devices are allowed.
Finally, Stay Positive. While this class will be challenging, it will also be rewarding to those that are willing to commit themselves.
Course Outline
2007-2008
Summer Assignment
Read: Brinkley Ch. 1 “The Meeting of Cultures”
Brinkley Ch. 2 Pg. 33-62 “Transplantations and Borderlands”
Davidson Pg. XVII – XXXIII “The Strange Death of Silas Deane”
Pg. 1 – 22 “Serving Time in Virginia”
Homework: Packet of terms/questions (DUE 1ST DAY OF CLASS)
Main Themes:
a. The colonization of America was a collision of cultures—the European and native American—that had been developing along completely different lines for thousands of years.
b. A variety of ambitions and impulses moved individuals and nations to colonize the New World.
c. The motives of the colonizers and their experiences prior to immigrating shaped their attitudes toward Native American cultures.
d. How these same motives and experiences helped determine the sociopolitical arrangements in the new colonies.
e. The ways that the Old World influenced the history of the New.
Week 1 (Colonial History)
Reading:
Davidson Pg. 23 – 47 “ The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem.”
Main Themes:
a. The origins and objectives of England’s first settlements in the New World.
b. How and why English colonies—mainland and Caribbean—differed from one another in purpose and administration.
c. The problems that arose as colonies matured and expanded, and how colonists attempted to solve them.
d. How the Spanish colonial system functioned and thrived, and its impact on the British colonies.
e. The impact that events in England had on the development of colonies in British America.
Week 2 (Colonial Cont.)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 3 Pg. 65 – 97 “Society and Culture in Provincial America”
*Brinkley pg. 72-73 Historiography of slavery
Main Themes:
a. How the colonial population grew and diversified.
b. How the colonial economy expanded to meet the needs of this rapidly growing population.
c. The emergence of a particularly American “mind and spirit.”
Test: Take-Home DBQ “English Colonies, North and South”
Week 3 (American Revolution)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 4 Pg. 100 – 125 “The Empire in Transition”
Davidson Pg. 48 – 70 “Declaring Independence”
Test: In class Free-Response essay on Friday.
Main Themes:
a. The primary reasons for the differences between colonial Americans and the British government that resulted in a clash of interests.
b. The causes and results of the French and Indian War.
c. How and why British policies towards the colonies changed after 1763.
d. The change in colonial attitudes toward Parliament, the English constitution, and the king.
e. The significance of the First Continental Congress and what it accomplished.
Week 4 (Am. Rev. Cont.)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 5 Pg. 126 – 156
*Brinkley Pg. 130 – 131 Historiography of the American Rev.
Main Themes:
a. How the thirteen American colonies were able to win their independence from one of the most powerful nations on earth.
b. How the American Revolution was not only a war for independence, but also a struggle to determine the nature of the nation being created.
c. How Americans attempted to apply revolutionary ideology to the building of the nation and to the remaking of society.
d. The problems that remained after, or were created by, the American Revolution.
e. The American Revolution was the first and in many ways the most influential of the Enlightenment-derived uprisings against established orders.
f. The historical debate concerning the nature of the American Revolution and the reasons for disagreement.
Week 5 (The Age of Federalism)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 6 Pg. 158 – 178 “The Constitution and the New Republic”
*Brinkley pg. 164 – 165 Historiographical essay on the Constitution.
Hofstadter Pg. 3 – 21. “The Founding Fathers…”
Main Themes:
a. How and why the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation.
b. How differing views of what the nation should become led to the rise of America’s first political parties.
c. The way in which the New United States was able to establish itself as a nation in the eyes of foreign powers and its own people.
d. The rise and fall of the Federalist Party.
Week 6 (The Age of Jefferson)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 7 Pg. 178 – 213 “The Jeffersonian Era”
Hofstadter Pg. 22 – 55 “Thomas Jefferson…”
Test: In class Free-Response essay.
Main Themes:
a. How Americans expressed their cultural independence.
b. The impact of industrialism on the United States and its people.
c. The role that Thomas Jefferson played in shaping the American Character.
d. How the American people and their political system responded to the nation’s physical expansion.
e. How American ambitions and attitudes came into conflict with British policies and led to the War of 1812.
f. How Americans were able to “win” the war and the peace that followed.
Week 7 (The Era of Good Feelings)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 8 Pg. 215 – 230 “Varieties of American Nationalism”
Davidson Pg. 71 – 95 “Jackson’s Frontier and Turner’s”
Main Themes:
a. How postwar expansion shaped the nation during the “era of good feelings.”
b. How sectionalism and nationalism could exist at the same time in the same country.
c. How the “era of good feelings” came to and end and a new, two-party system emerged.
Week 8 (The Age of Jackson)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 9 Pg. 232 – 256 “Jacksonian America”
*Brinkley Pg. 236 – 237 Historiographical Essay on Jackson
Hofstadter Pg. 56 – 85 “Andrew Jackson…”
Main Themes:
a. How mass participation became the hallmark of the American political system.
b. The growing tension between nationalism and state’s rights.
c. The rise of the Whig party as an alternative to Jackson and the Democrats.
Test: In class DBQ “Jacksonian Democracy”
Week 9 (The Market Revolution)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 10 Pg. 258 – 290 “America’s Economic Revolution”
Hofstadter Pg. 86 – 117 “John C. Calhoun…”
Main Themes:
a. How the American population changed between 1820 and 1840, and the effect this had on the nation’s economic, social, and political systems.
b. How the dramatic economic growth of the 1820s and 1830s was accomplished.
c. How the rapid development of the economy and society of the North influenced the rest of the nation.
Week 10 (Slavery in the Antebellum South)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 11 Pg. 292 – 313 “Cotton, Slavery, and the Old South”
*Brinkley pg. 306 – 307 Historiography of Slavery
*Douglass 1 - 34
Main Themes:
a. How economic power shifted from the “upper” to the “lower” South and the impact this had on southern social and political development.
b. How society in the South developed in both myth and reality.
c. The nature of the South’s “peculiar institution” and the effect it had on the southern way of life for both whites and blacks.
Week 11 (Antebellum Reform)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 12 pg. 314 – 337 “Antebellum Culture and Reform.”
*Douglass 35 – 70
Main Themes:
a. How American Intellectuals developed a national culture committed to the liberation of the human spirit.
b. How this commitment to the liberation of the human spirit led to and reinforced the reform impulse of the period.
c. How the crusade against slavery became the most powerful element in this reform movement.
Test: In class Free-Response essay.
Week 12 (Sectional Tensions)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 13 Pg. 338 – 364 “The Impending Crisis”
Davidson Pg. 122 – 145 “The Madness of John Brown”
Main Themes:
a. How the idea of Manifest Destiny influenced America and Americans during this period.
b. How the question of the expansion of slavery deepened divisions between the North and the South.
c. How the issue of slavery reshaped the American political-party system.
Thanksgiving Break
*Homework: Take Home DBQ “The 1850s: Prelude to Civil War”
Week 13 (The Civil War)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 14 Pg. 366 – 398 “The Civil War”
*Brinkley Pg. 372 – 373 Historiography of Civil War
Hofstadter Pg. 118 – 174 “Abe Lincoln…”
Main Themes:
a. How the South came to attempt secession and how the government of the United States responded.
b. How both sides mobilized for war, and what the mobilization revealed about the nature and character of each.
c. How the North won the Civil War.
Week 14 (Reconstruction)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 15 Pg. 399 – 431 “Reconstruction and the New South”
*Brinkley Pg. 418 – 419 Historiography of Reconstruction
Main Themes:
a. That the defeat and devastation of the South presented the nation with severe social, economic, and political problems.
b. How Radical Reconstruction changed the South but fell short of the full transformation needed to secure equality for the freedmen.
c. That white society and the federal government lacked the will to enforce effectively most of the constitutional and legal guarantees acquired by blacks during Reconstruction.
d. How the policies of the Grant administration moved beyond Reconstruction matters to foreshadow issues of the late nineteenth century.
Week 15 (The Wild West)
Reading: : Brinkley Ch. 16 Pg. 433 – 461 “The Conquest of the Far West”
*Brinkley Pg. 450 – 451 Historiography of the West
Main Themes:
a. The varied and vibrant ethnic and racial cultures that characterized the American West and how Anglo-American whites enforced their dominant role by the latter part of the nineteenth century.
b. The transformation of the far West from a sparsely populated region of Indians and various early settlers of European and Asian background into a part of the nation’s capitalistic economy.
c. The closing of the frontier as Indian resistance was eliminated, miners and cowboys spearheaded settlements, and railroads opened the area for intensive development.
d. The development of mining, ranching, and commercial farming as the three major industries of the West.
e. The problems faced by farmers as the agricultural sector entered a relative decline.
Week 16 (The Gilded Age)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 17 Pg. 462 – 486 “Industrial Supremacy”
Test: In class Free-Response
Main Themes:
a. How various factors (raw materials, labor supply, technology, business organization, growing markets, and friendly governments) combined to thrust the United States into world industrial leadership.
b. How the explosion of industrial capitalism was both extolled for its accomplishments and attacked for its excesses.
c. How American workers, who on the average benefited, reacted to the physical and psychological realities of the new economic order.
Winter Recess (Dec 21 – Jan 6)
(The New Immigrants)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 18 Pg. 489 – 518 “The Age of the City”
Davidson Pg. 178 – 200 “The Mirror With A Memory”
Main Themes:
a. How the social and economic lure of the city attracted foreign and domestic migrants, and how these newcomers adjusted to urban life.
b. How rapid urban growth forced adaptations to severe problems of government mismanagement, poverty, crime, inadequate housing, and precarious health and safety conditions.
c. How urban environment served as the locus for new philosophical ideas, expanded leisure opportunities, fresh approaches to education, rapid expansion in journalism, and a new consumerism.
d. How the new order of “high” urban culture inspired both serious writers and artists to render realistic portrayals of the seamy side of city life, while many middle- and upper-class Americans were engaging in expanded forms of leisure and entertainment.
Week 17 (Populism)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 19 Pg. 521 – 540 “From Stalemate to Crisis”
*Brinkley Pg. 534 – 535 Historiography of the Populists
Handout on The Wizard of Oz as a populist parable
Test: In class DBQ on Friday
Main Themes:
a. How evenly balanced the Democratic and Republican parties were during the late nineteenth century and how this balance flowed from differing regional and sociocultural bases.
b. The inability of the political system and a limited national government to respond effectively to the nation’s rapid social land economic changes.
c. How the troubled agrarian sector mounted a powerful but unsuccessful challenge to the new directions of American industrial capitalism and how this confrontation came to a head during the crisis of the 1890s.
Week 18 (U.S.Imperialism)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 20 Pg. 543 – 562 “The Imperial Republic”
Hofstadter Pg. 266 – 307 “Teddy Roosevelt…”
Main Themes:
a. Why Americans turned from the old continental concept of Manifest Destiny to a new worldwide expansionism.
b. How the Spanish-American War served as the catalyst to transform imperialist stirrings into a full-fledged empire.
c. How the nation had to make attitudinal, political, and military adjustments to its new role as a major world power.
Week 19 (The Progressive Era)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 21 Pg. 565 – 589 “The Rise of Progressivism”
Brinkley Ch. 22 Pg. 593 – 609 “The Battle for National Reform”
*Brinkley Pg. 568 – 569 Historiography of Progressives.
Main Themes:
a. How progressivism was a reaction to the rapid industrialization and urbanization of the United States in the late nineteenth century.
b. That all progressives shared an optimistic vision that an active government could solve problems and create and efficient, ordered society.
c. That progressives wanted to reduce the influence of party machines on politics.
d. How temperance, immigration restriction, and women’s suffrage movements took on crusade-like aspects.
e. How Teddy Roosevelt’s leadership helped fashion a new, expanded role for the national government.
f. The politics during the administration of William Howard Taft showed hat most of the nation desired a more progressive approach.
g. How the administration of Woodrow Wilson embodied both conservative and progressive features.
h. That the United States assumed a much more assertive and interventionist foreign policy, especially towards the Caribbean region.
*Mid-Term Exam on Jan. 25*
Week 20 (WW I)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 23 Pg. 613 – 639 “America and the Great War”
Hofstadter Pg. 308 – 367 “Woodrow Wilson…”
Main Themes:
a. How the United States, which had leaned towards the Allies since the outbreak of WWI, was eventually drawn into full participation in the war.
b. That the American intervention on land and sea provided the balance of victory for the beleaguered Allied forces.
c. How the Wilson administration financed the war, managed the economy, and encouraged public support of the war effort.
d. That Woodrow Wilson tried to apply his lofty war aims to the realities of world politics and that he substantially failed.
e. That the American war effort had profound economic, social, and racial significance.
Week 21 (The Roaring 20s)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 24 Pg. 640 – 664 “The New Era”
Davidson Pg. 229 – 255 “Sacco and Vanzetti”
Main Themes:
a. How the automobile boom and new technology led to the new economic expansion of he 1920s.
b. That most workers and farmers failed to share equitably in the decade’s prosperity.
c. How a nationwide consumer-oriented culture began to shape society and how the “new woman” emerged.
d. How the changing society disenchanted some artists and intellectuals and led to a broad cultural conflict over ethnic and religious concerns.
e. That Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, despite their dissimilar personalities, presided over ardently pro-business administrations.
Week 22 (The Great Depression)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 25 Pg. 667 – 689 “The Great Depression.”
Davidson Pg. 256 – 283 “Dust Bowl Odyssey”
Test: In Class DBQ on Friday.
Main Themes:
a. How weaknesses underlying the apparent prosperity of the 1920s led to the Great Depression and how the stock market crash touched it off in the United States and around the world.
b. That neither the efforts of local and private relief agencies not the early volunteerism of Herbert Hoover were able to halt the spiral of rising unemployment and declining production.
c. How the economic pressures of the depression affected the American people, especially minorities.
d. How the misery of those affected by the depression swept Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the presidency.
Mid-Winter Recess (Feb. 18 – Feb. 24)
(FDR and the New Deal)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 26 Pg. 693 – 715 “The New Deal”
*Brinkley Pg. 712 – 713 Historiography of the New Deal
Hofstadter Pg. 410 – 460 “FDR…”
Main Themes:
a. How FDR, although limited by his basically traditional economic views, pushed through programs of economic planning and depression relief.
b. How popular protests against New Deal policies, protests from rightists, leftists, and those who defied categorization, inspired Roosevelt to launch a new burst of action known as the Second New Deal.
c. That despite FDR’s overwhelming reelection in 1936, the New Deal was virtually moribund by 1938, thanks to increasing conservative opposition, his own political blunders, and continuing hard times.
d. That the New Deal helped give rise to a new role for the national government as a “broker state” among various organized interests.
Week 23 (WW II)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 27 Pg. 719 – 736 “The Global Crisis, 1921 – 1941”
Brinkley Ch. 28 Pg. 739 – 765 “America In A War At War”
*Brinkley Pg. 734 – 735 Historiography of Pearl Harbor
Main Themes:
a. That in the1920s, the United States tried to increase its role in world affairs, especially economically, while avoiding commitments.
b. How America, in the face of growing world crisis in the 1930s turned increasingly toward isolationism and legislated neutrality.
c. How war in Europe and Asia gradually drew the United States closer to war until the attack on Pearl Harbor finally sparked American entry into WWII.
d. That the vast productive capacity of the United States was the key to defeat of the Axis.
e. That the war had a profound effect on the home front.
f. How three major western offensives combined with an ongoing Russian effort to defeat Germany.
g. How sea power contained the Japanese, and how the Allied forces moved steadily closer to Japan and prepared for an invasion until the atomic bomb ended the war.
Week 24 (The Cold War)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 29 Pg. 767 – 786 “The Cold War”
*Brinkley Pg. 770 – 771 Historiography of the Cold War
*Brinkley Pg. 784 – 785 Historiography of McCarthyism
Test: In Class Free-Response on Friday
Main Themes:
a. How the legacy of mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union combined with the events of World War II to cause the Cold War.
b. How the policy of containment led to an increasing United States involvement in crisis around the world.
c. How World War II ended the Depression and ushered in an era of nervous prosperity.
d. That the turbulent postwar era climaxed in a period of hysterical anticommunism.
Week 25 (The 1950s)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 30 Pg. 789 – 817 “The Affluent Society”
Davidson Pg. 312 – 338 “From Rosie to Lucy”
Main Themes:
a. That the technological, consumer-oriented society of the 1950s was remarkably affluent and unified despite the persistence of a less privileged underclass and the existence of a small corps of detractors.
b. How the Supreme Court’s social desegregation of 1954 marked the beginning of a civil-rights revolution for American blacks.
c. How President Dwight Eisenhower presided over a business-oriented “dynamic conservatism” that resisted most new reforms without significantly rolling back the activist government programs born in the 1930s.
d. That while Eisenhower continued to allow containment by building alliances, supporting anticommunist regimes, maintaining the arms race, and conducting limited interventions, he also showed and awareness of American limitations and resisted temptations for greater commitments.
Week 26 (1960s--JFK, LBJ, & Vietnam)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 31 Pg. 821 – 848 “The Ordeal of Liberalism”
*Brinkley Pg. 836 – 837 Historiography of Vietnam
Main Themes:
a. How Lyndon Johnson used the legacy of John Kennedy plus his own political skill to erect his Great Society and fight the war on poverty with programs for health, education, job training, and urban development.
b. How the civil-rights movement finally generated enough sympathy among whites to accomplish the legal end of segregation, but the persistence of racism gave rise to the black power philosophy and left many problems unsolved.
c. How containment and the U.S. preoccupation with communism led the nation to use military force against leftist nationalist movements in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and, most disastrously, Vietnam.
d. How 1968 became a critical year for American liberalism.
Week 27 (Nixon and Watergate)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 32 Pg. 851 – 882 “The Crisis of Authority”
Davidson Pg. 339 – 363 “Breaking Into Watergate”
Test: In Class Free-Response on Friday
Main Themes:
a. How Richard Nixon gradually reduced the American ground forces in Vietnam, but increased the air war as he and Henry Kissinger sought “peace with honor.”
b. That Nixon and Kissinger believed that stability in a “multipolar” world could be achieved only by having the United States forge a bold new relationship with China and, at the same time, seek a détente with the Soviet Union.
c. The reasons for the rise of the New Left and the counterculture.
d. The civil rights efforts of American Indians and Hispanics.
e. The meaning of the “New Feminism.”
f. The ways in which the Supreme Court during the Nixon presidency adopted a more conservative posture.
g. The reasons for the decline in the American economy in the early 1970s and President Nixon’s reaction to its decline.
h. The significance of Watergate as an indication of the abuse of executive power.
Week 28 (The Reagan Revolution)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 33 Pg. 885 – 907 “From the Age of Limits to the Age of
Reagan.”
Main Themes:
a. The efforts of Gerald Ford to overcome the effects of Nixon’s resignation.
b. The difficult problems faced by Jimmy Carter, including a sluggish economy, an energy crunch, and a Middle Eastern Crisis.
c. The nature of the “Reagan Revolution” and the meaning of supply-side economics.
d. The staunchly anticommunist foreign policy and the impact it had on the fall of the Soviet Union.
e. The changing demography of America from 1970 to 1990.
f. The increasingly conservative mood of the American electorate.
g. The emergence of a new era in foreign policy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Week 29 (1992 – Present)
Reading: Brinkley Ch. 34 Pg. 909 – 939 “The Age of Globalization”
Main Themes:
a. The reasons that Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, the successes and failures of his first administration, the factors behind the Republican resurgence in 1994, the reasons Clinton won reelection in 1996, and the issues that led to his impeachment and subsequent acquittal.
b. The issues surrounding the election of 2000 and the reasons behind the Republican victory.
c. The reasons for the economic boom of the 1990s and the recession of 2001 – 2002.
d. The emergence of a global economy, the technological revolution that made it happen, and the role that the United States played in these developments.
e. The profound demographic changes that the nation experienced in the last decades of the twentieth century.
f. The tense and fragmented culture issues that affected American politics and social relations.
g. The issues that gave rise to Islamic terrorism and America’s response.
Weeks 30 & 31
Review for AP Exam
Week 32
Reading: Malcolm X Ch. 1-6 (Quiz on Following Monday).
Davidson Pg. 364 – 393 “Where Trouble Comes”
Film: Platoon
Homework: Begin Oral History Project (You will receive a handout on the instructions)
Week 33
Reading: Malcolm X Ch. 7 – 12 (Quiz on the following Monday)
Film: Apocalypse Now
Week 34
Reading: Malcolm X Ch. 13 – 15
Film: Born On The Fourth Of July
Week 35
Reading: Malcolm X Ch. 16 – 19
*Oral History Presentations
Week 36
Reading: Malcolm X Epilogue and Afterword
*Oral History Presentations
