hello everyone and welcome to history
2020 united states history since 1865
for the spring 2017 semester.
This is a course introduction video and
it accompanies a PowerPoint presentation
that is posted in the same area as the
video itself that is in the "start here"
section and in the week one course
materials so if we move to slide 2 you
can see the course instructor
information. That is me.
My name is Epstein and the instructor
for this course. I received a BA in
history from the University of Arizona and a
PhD in history from the University of
Minnesota. My dissertation was a study of
urban tolerance in Asheville North
Carolina between the late 19th century
and mid 20th century.
This is the spring semester of my fourth
year at UTC and the third semester teaching
American history online. I also teach the
modern world history survey as well as
upper-division topical courses in
American history such as immigration and
ethnicity and historical memory. I am
really looking forward to the semester.
I'm going to discuss some of the
important parts of the syllabus in this
introduction. You should still read the
syllabus carefully and let me know if
you have any questions.
My contact information is available on
the second slide of the PowerPoint as
well as in the syllabus. Email is the
best way to get in touch with me.
It is much more reliable than the office
phone in that as i'm not sure that i get
all my messages from the phone so i want
to stress that email is the preferred
method of contacting me and i will get
back to you within 24 hours when you
email me at seth-epstein@utc.edu.
I also want to provide my office
my office hours those again are also on
slide two i am in Brock 303 in my office
hours are from 11am to 12pm, Mondays
Wednesdays, and Fridays. One of
the things that i want to stress right
off the bat that this is not an
independent study course where you go at
your own speed and complete assignments
when you want. Instead, there are due
dates for weekly quizzes and
responses to question prompts. There are
also three essays each with specific due
dates that i will talk about later in
this introduction. Each essay also is
accompanied by another video
introduction where i talk more in depth
about the assignment. All times i
mentioned in this introduction and all
times listed for the course are in
eastern standard time. There are late
penalties for quizzes turned in late, for
weekly responses turned in late, and for
essays turned in late and those
penalties are in the syllabus. We move
now to slide 3 I wanted to take the
opportunity to say a little bit about
the main theme of the course the main
theme is freedom. Freedom has been
central to the American political
vocabulary and identity.
However as historian Daniel Rogers has
noted at least a quote dozen
incompatible notions of the word freedom
have competed for legitimacy over the
years.
Because the concept of freedom has meant
different things in different historical
periods it is a particularly useful tool
for examining American history
Furthermore even within different is
even within a particular historical
period such as the Gilded Age or the
Progressive Era there's never been one
universally accepted definition of
freedom and our textbook Eric Foner's
Give Me Liberty makes that clear. Freedom
provided the language and justification
for actions taken during
different historical episodes such as
the new deals response to the great
depression as well as both world wars.
This main theme is reflected in both the
primary and secondary source readings
each week.
Primary sources are documents created at
the times of the events they are
discussing. Newspaper articles are
classic examples of primary sources. So
for instance we will be reading a debate
in a magazine for nineteen twenties on
the merits of buying on credit.
This is a primary source because it is
discussing a development happening at
the time the document was written. Such a
document helps us understand how people
at the time thought about the subject.
Our primary documents can be found for
each week in the weekly course materials
section. A secondary source in contrast
is a scholarly interpretation of primary
documents written at a later date.
Our textbook Eric Foner's give me liberty
is an example of a secondary source. If
we move on now to slide four you can see
some of the assignments listed. Reading
and discussing the textbook and
documents on a weekly basis will help
prepare you for the writing assignments.
There are required weekly multiple
choice and true false quizzes for each
chapter. The quiz for the first week is a
quiz on the syllabus.
once completed you will receive 20
points for it.
In addition, the lowest quiz grade at the
end of the semester will be dropped.
each quiz has 20 questions in a
30-minute time limit in addition you can
take each quiz twice i did this in case
there are any technical problems with
your first quiz attempt you will not be
able to see which questions you missed
until after the quiz deadline for each
weekly quiz.
The deadline is Friday at 11:59 p.m.
Another requirement for nearly every
week is posting answers to questions on
the class discussion board. For nearly
every week i have posted multiple
question prompts i would recommend reading
these prompts before you read the
chapter and the primary documents. That
way when you are reading the chapter you
can think about which of the question
prompts you want to answer and take
notes on information you think would be
relevant to answer a particular question.
You should post an answer to one prompt by
Saturday at eleven fifty-nine p.m. For
more information please see the prompt
and respond guidelines and sample listed
in the weekly course materials for week
one. We move on now to slide 5 in the
powerpoint presentation. You can see that
for this week the requirement is to post
an introduction where you tell everyone
a little about yourself and what you
think about when you think about freedom
in American history and culture. You can
find the link to the weekly discussion
boards on the left-hand side of the
course website. It is titled weekly
discussion board you will have to create
a thread to post. Moving on to slide 6 I
provide a little more information
regarding the essay assignments. The
written assignments also
reflect the main idea the main theme of
the course. There are three written
assignments. The first assignment asks
you to do something central to a
historian's job to read and assess the
value of primary sources. The first
longer written assignment is to read and
write about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist
Fire in New York City. Your paper will
be based on the sources in Jo Ann E. Argersinger's
The triangle fire a brief
history with documents. Part 1 of this
book provides historical context and
narrative part two is a collection
of primary sources. The assignment
asks you to select two primary sources
from this collection and make an
argument about what insight into a
particular historical topic those
sources provide. I have identified
potential topics to help you narrow and
focus your paper so that it makes an
argument about what the documents tell
us about this particular topic you
should post what sources you have chosen
how you feel they contribute to
understanding a topic by Saturday
february 11th. You are not graded on
this but you will get feedback on it on
that portion of the assignment this
preparatory stage in which you post
which documents are planning to write
about. You should submit the paper online
by Saturday februari 18 @ 1159 p.m.
Moving on to slide 7 we have information
there about the second major writing
assignment.
It is a paper that analyzes a
combination memoir and manifesto by
Robert F Williams. Williams was a civil
rights activist in North Carolina in the
nineteen fifties and 1960s. After a very
public and very tense period of protest
and resistance he was falsely charged
with kidnapping he fled first to Canada
and then Cuba. His book is especially
valuable for a couple reasons first it
illustrates how the Cold War impacted
Civil Rights. second it illustrates some
of the debates between civil rights
activists over strategies of
self-defense and non-violence. Historical
narratives of the civil rights movement
usually described impatience with
non-violence and a focus on economic
inequality as being characteristics of
the late nineteen sixties, but as this
short book demonstrates, those themes
were present throughout the Black
Freedom Movement. You will be asked to
respond to one of at least
two question prompts in an essay. This
assignment is due by 1159 p.m. on Sunday
April 9. Moving on to slide 8, the last
written assignment asks you to find
either a commercial or advertisement, a
song or a music video, or political
statement or political cartoon of your
choice that utilizes some meaning of
freedom.
This source you find should
also be produced since 1980. It is not so
much that you are looking for a
statement about freedom but rather
something that uses some meaning or
meanings of freedom in its argument. You
will write a paper that first identifies
these explicit or implicit definitions
of freedom and secondly places these
definitions within the longer history of
American ideas of freedom by drawn
comparisons and identifying similarities
the work we do prior to this assignment
will help prepare you to write this
paper the textbook takes freedom as a
central theme in American history and
our supplemental readings also provide
examples how people at particular times
in history were thinking about and
seeking to use ideas of freedom. I posted
an example of a paper using a different
interpretive frame to give you a sense
of what the paper should do. By the end
of Thursday April 20, please post
the description of your of your source
as well as how you feel it expresses and
uses ideas of freedom. You'll get
feedback about this posting. The paper is
due by Tuesday April 25th 1159 p.m.
There is no separate final exam for the
class. Moving on to slide 9, slide 9
provides some information about the
expected format of these three written
assignments. Each of these three
assignments will be submitted online
through the course websites paper
assignment submissions section they can
be uploaded in a variety of formats
including word or PDF files. It is your
responsibility to check to make sure
that the files is uploaded correctly. If it
is not uploaded correctly it will be
considered late.
In addition while the papers vary
somewhat in terms of length each paper
should be double-spaced have one inch
margins on the sides top and bottom
should be in 12-point Times New Roman
font there should also be a title - a
separate title page for each paper. The paper
should use formal writing style and
should use chicago-style formats
including footnotes and bibliography. In
the assignments in citation description
section there is a chicago-style
citation guide which explains the
footnote and bibliographic format. It
provides links and resources for the
citation format and has examples of many
of the class sources you will be using
the assignment and citations and
citation descriptions folder also has an
example of a paper written in chicago
style citation format and the example I
provide for instance for assignment
three example paper for assignment 3 is
also written in chicago style format so
that is also another good source to look
at you get a sense of what the footnotes
and bibliography look like.
Slide 10 provides some additional
information including information about
our weekly are optional weekly chats
these are not required but you may find
it useful to have an opportunity to chat
with me while you can always email me
for about an hour each week i will be in
front of my computer ready to answer
your questions
furthermore if you have a question other
people very likely
have the same question. We will be using
zoom meeting software for these chats
and on the powerpoint slide you can see
that there is a link that takes you to
the Walker center webpage for
information on zoom. So what happens that
i will send out a notification reminding
people about the chat living them to
know that it is now live these chats
will take place between seven and eight
p.m. on Wednesday evenings. If you are
not close to campus and that time does
not work for you and you want to chat
I mean of course you can always email
but if you wanted to chat then you can
let me know and we can work out a
separate time to do so. I have posted
additional material for each week as
well in the weekly course materials
this includes a powerpoint overview that
which has slides audio and text of the
weekly historical topics and themes i
would recommend you review these
introductory materials prior to looking
at the weekly question prompts and
reading the material itself. Finally
slide 11 contains some information about
civility we do not meet face-to-face but
i hope that we treat one another as
though we do I aim to treat everyone
with respect to my responses to your
questions during our chats and in my
feedback on your written work when you
email me please include a greeting in
please sign your name i will do the same
if you choose to respond to colleagues
posts please do so respectfully is often
helpful to offer a different perspective
but it can also be useful to point out
some areas of common agreement i hope
this has been a helpful introductory
video please feel free to email me if
you have additional questions thank you
and I look forward to this semester
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