Topic I | The Gilded Age: Chicago, the World's Fair, and a Most Hideous and Infamous Crime
Reading | The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, & Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by
Erik Larson
Writing Prompt: In his best-selling book, The Devil in the White City, author Erik Larson takes readers on a remarkable journey through Chicago, Illinois, at the end of the nineteenth century. Larson's tale highlights the story of two men -- Daniel Burnham, the brilliant architect who designed the 1893 World's Fair, and Henry H. Holmes, the devious serial killer who preyed on the fair's participants. Through the stories of Burnham and Holmes, Larson explores the contrasts and contradictions of Gilded Age America. What picture of late nineteenth-century America emerges from The Devil in the White City? In your review, please use the biographies of Burnham and Holmes as a vehicle to examine the opulence and degradation of the Gilded Age.
Response Statement due on discussion board by: September 5
Online Learning Module Assignment I
Topic Selection posted on Discussion Board by September 8.
Topic II | The Birth of American Pragmatism
Reading | The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
by Louis Menand
Writing Prompt: In his
Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Metaphysical Club, author Louis Menand examines the origins of American Pragmatism. To tell his story, Menand follows the lives of four key figures, Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr., William James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey. Although these men each had "highly distinctive personalities" and often disagreed with one another, their careers intersected at several important moments, and they came to share a particular "idea about ideas."
Using Holmes, James, and Peirce as the central figures in your review, describe the rise of American Pragmatism. Please be sure to discuss Holmes, James, and Peirce in separate sections of your paper. Give ample biographical details for each man and explain what events led him to form a new "idea about ideas."
Finally, provide a paragraph in which you explain the basic idea at the heart of American Pragmatism. Here, you may find the Preface and pages 351-58 particularly useful. Response Statement due on discussion board by: September 19 -- Extended to September 21.
Topic III | Who Killed Lucy Pollard? Race and Law in the 19th Century South
Reading | A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial
by Suzanne Lebsock
Writing Prompt: In her recent book, A Murder in Virginia, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Suzanne Lebsock explores the brutal ax murder of Lucy Pollard, a white farmer’s wife who was killed in rural Virginia in 1895. In Lebsock’s skillful hands, the Pollard murder and resulting series of court cases and investigations become the entre point for a spirited examination of the criminal justice system and race relations in the late nineteenth century American South. What did Lebsock find out in the course of her research? Who was accused of murdering Lucy Pollard? How were the accused treated? And, what was the final outcome of the case?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: October 3 -- Extended to October 6
Topic IV | The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Reading | Triangle: The Fire that Changed America
by David Von Drehle
Writing Prompt: On March 25, 1911, a match or cigarette ember lit a fire at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City. More than 140 young women were killed in the blaze, which remains one of the worst disasters in American industrial history. In his book, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, David Von Drehle places the fire in its proper historical context. What is the story he tells, and how did the fire change America?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: October 17
Topic V | Immigrants and Radicals: "The good shoemaker and the poor fish peddler"
Reading | Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind
by Bruce Watson
Writing Prompt: In 1969, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote that anyone reading the transcript of the Sacco and Vanzetti case would “have difficulty believing that the trial . . . took place in the United States .” Based on your reading of Bruce Watson's recent book on the case, what did Douglas mean? How does Watson characterize the case and its principal figures?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: October 31-- Extended to November 3
Topic VI | Racial Segregation and the Rise of the "New Negro"
Reading | Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
by Kevin Boyle
Writing Prompt: In his fascinating book, Arc of Justice, historian Kevin Boyle examines the infamous Sweet Trials that shook Detroit during the mid-1920s. What does Boyle find? Describe Ossian Sweet and his family. What did they (and their friends) do that was so controversial? And, what important parties played a role in their defense?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: November 14 -- Extended to November 17.
Online Learning Module Assignment II
Research Paper posted as a MICROSOFT WORD attachment on Discussion Board by November 20.
Topic VII | The Mississippi River Flood of 1927
Reading | Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
by John M. Barry
Writing Prompt: "At the peak of the great Mississippi River flood of 1993, the river in Iowa carried 435 cubic feet of water a second; at St. Louis, after the Missouri River added its waters, it carried 1 million cubic feet a second. It was enough water to devastate the Midwest and make headlines across the world." By contrast, in 1927, at the time of the River's worst flood in recorded history, the Mississippi carried in excess of three million cubic feet of water each second."
What was the impact of the Mississippi River flood of 1927? Why did it happen? How did it affect the nation's political, economic, and racial patterns?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: November 30
Online Learning Module Assignment III
Online learning module posted as a zipped attachment on Discussion Board by December 4.
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