ANSWER PART A. 20% THEN SELECT ONE QUESTION FROMPART B.AND ONE QUESTION FROM PART C. PLEASE RE-STATE THE ENTIRE QUESTION AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH ANSWER. (2 POINTS DEDUCTED FOR FAILURE TO RESTATE QUESTION.) ALL ESSAYS MUST HAVE THESIS STATEMENTS, PREFERABLY ONE SENTENCE, HIGHLIGHTED OR WRITTEN IN BOLD. (2 POINTS DEDUCTED FOR FAILURE TO HAVE BOLD PRINT THESIS STATEMENT.)
THE ANSWER TO PART ASHOULD BY APPROX. 2 PAGES. ANSWERS TO B AND C SHOULD BE 3-4 PAGES PER ESSAY. (DOUBLE-SPACED.) PLEASE USE PARENTHETICAL CITATIONS. IF YOU USE OUTSIDE SOURCES YOU WILL NEED A BIBLIOGRAPHY.
PART A (20%)
Your 19-year-old cousin who flunked out of high school has decided to enlist in the Armed Forces. While you respect his desire to serve his country, his history of bad decision making worries you. Does he know what it means to fight in a war? Has he thought this through? You have just read THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE for this class and you think it might be a good thing for him to read it before he shows up for his physical. Write the letter you would send to your cousin describing this book, its impact on you, and an explanation of why he needs to read it.
PART B (40%)
1.Write an essay in which you examine the failure of of LBJ’s Great Society to be fully realized and link this failure to the emergence of the Hip Hop Nation and ultimately the carceral state. Use lecture material, Pruitt-Igoe, Schulman and, of course the reading from Jeff Chang’s CANT STOP WON’T STOP
2. Stokely Carmichael once made the claim that what is good for Black people is good for American democracy. Discuss this claim and build a case for or against it for the period from 1954 to the present, drawing on course readings, lectures and films.
3.Cornel West has argued that America’s will toward racial justice is weak. Make an argument for or against this claim, using evidence gleaned from the text, lectures. films and most important James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time.
4. The central philosophical underpinning of all of the significant social movements of the 60s and the 70s was the concept of participatory democracy. We now live in an age in which the gathering and the dissemination of information has been greatly democratized by a whole range of social media. Write an essay in which you 1) trace the influence of participatory democracy on one of the following social movements, paying particular attention to the ways in which the broad participation of adherents shaped the movement as a whole: Women’s liberation, environmental, Black Power, Gay & Lesbian rights movement, Chicano Movement. 2.) In a brief conclusion you might want to imagine 21stcentury social media might have impacted that movement.
5. Alice Echols writes: “In a sense the individual became the site of political activity in the 60s.” Argue for or against this idea. (Not only in terms of the women’s movement.) Be sure to include material from lecture, Bruce Schulman’s book and the film Berkeley In the Sixtiesand the readings from Speaking Out.
6. Write an essay in which you describe and discuss the waves of movements concerned with social justice that took place in the 60s and 70s. You need to begin with a brief comment on the Classical phase of the civil rights movement and then discuss at least three significant social movements of the period: Free Speech Movement, the anti-war movement, the Black Power movement, the women’s movement and the gay and lesbian movement. You may also choose to discuss the Chicano power movement or environmentalism.
7.Write an imaginary panel discussion (in the form of a script) concerning the history of race relations in the United States during the period we have studied. You can certainly include current issues and the matter of mass incarceration in the discussion. Include five of the following people on your panel: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, a member of the Black Panthers, Stokley Carmichael, or an artist or political leader of your own choosing. Please make sure that the words spoken by the panel members do, in some way, represent them as accurately as possible. Yes, you are putting words in their mouths but they need to be words they might have spoken. This question is not an invitation to blather on impressionistically. WARNING: This is not an easy question.
PART C (40%)
1. I have stated that an apt title for this course could be: America Since Television. Write a well-organized essay describing the impact of television on U.S. history since its popularization in the late Forties. Be sure to include both fiction and non-fiction offerings.
2. A historian has referred to the 1970s as a decade in which “it seemed like nothing happened,” suggesting a more complacent and conservative decade after the social activism and upheavals of the 60s. Discuss.
3. One historian has argued that Watergate was the crucial event that brought down the “imperial presidency” which emphasized a powerful activist president. Evaluate this view, examining presidential power and challenges to this power between the 1960s and the Reagan Administration
4. How have both male and female gender identities been redefined since the 1950s? What were the larger effects of this redefinition on American society and politics? Be sure to refer to your readings and lecture whenever possible.
5. Interview a family member or acquaintance about their participation in a significant historical event that took place in the period we have studied. Write out your questions in advance and make sure that they are well grounded in historical fact. The person must have been an active PARTICIPANTin a historical event. It doesn’t count if your father once saw a protest going on outside of his window when he was in school. This essay should be in Q & A format. And no, you can’t interview me.
A SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL MOVEMENT IS ONE THAT HAS MADE IT INTO THE HISTORICAL RECORD: LARGE SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENTS, WARS, SIGNIFICANT POLITICAL STRUGGLES, RADICAL PROTEST MOVEMENTS, ETC.