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History 122: Short Essay Projects for Part 3 and 4 |
Two of your four course projects can be on site visits. Recommended sites are shown on the right. There are many other suitable sites that you may use; they should be relevant to the part of hthe course you are working on. They should consist of a 3-5 page discussion of where you went, what you observed and what you thought about your visit and background information you gained about the site or events depicted.
Your third short essay deals with America's changing role in the world and its changing face at home. The 20 years between 1920 and 1940, from America's involvement in World War I to the start of World War II saw great changes in America as the Roaring Twenties and the Depression decade passed. The Second World War was an even more transforming period. Indeed, as the entire Twentieth Century, both wonderful and terrible, fades slowly into the past, we are still left trying to fathom the depths of who we are as a species—the human race—and how we can have accomplished such wonders even as we perpetrated such horrors.
Your fourth short essay should deals World War 2 and Postwar America. Now, in the early years of the Twenty-first Century, America faces new and different challenges as technology races ahead, terrorism stalks our consciousness and the rate of change continues to accelerate. But the past is still with us.
Here are a few suggestions for projects, but feel free to consider alternatives. |
| Project |
Suggested Site Visit |
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National Museum of
the Marine Corps
Quantico, Virginia |
The Twenties The Roaring Twenties were a decade of change, elation, frustration, celebration and many other emotions.
Note: The National Museum of American History has been closed for rennovation until 2008. Many of their exhibits will be displayed elsewhere, including other parts of the Smithsonian in Washington. |
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| The Roosevelts (This topic can be broken into short essays or combined as a double project.) This project invites to investigate the lives and times of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their impact on America. Theodore and Franklin, 5th cousins, were very different, yet they shared many common goals. |
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| The Depression & New Deal The legacy of the Depression and New Deal are still with us. You may have older relatives who remember that era. If so, work them into yur project. |
FDR Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. |
Film Projects: See Special Instructions | How to Critique
Iron Jawed Angels. HBO, 2004. Hilary Swank, Frances O'Connor, Julia Ormond, Angelica Huston. A film about the women's suffrage movement that led to passage of the 19th amendment.
Inherit the Wind, 1960. Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, Gene Kelly. Fictionalized but sound version of the famous Scopes trial of 1925 dealing with the teaching of evolution in public schools. |
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| World War II The “Good War.” Many topics can be created out of World War II. The Holocaust, although not part of American history directly, could be one. Both the European and Pacific wars can generate multiple topics. Many sites around the U.S. and the world would be appropriate for visits, such as Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the Normandy beaches on France or the camps in Germany and Poland. Many excellent films also depict events from World War II. |
National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
The National D-Day Memorial, Bedford, Virginia
Holocaust Museum |
| The Cold War The “Balance of Terror.” NATO and the Warsaw Pact.Mutual Assured Destruction. The Cuban Missile Crisis. World War III was avoided, but at times it seemed very close at hand. |
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| The Civil Rights Movement In a sense the American civil rights movement has been going on since before the American Revolution, but in modern times it came into sharper focus as African Americans and other minorities sought equality. |
National Museum of American History
Check for online exhibits
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| Vietnam With the Gulf War more than a decade in the past, and the War in Irag raging, memories of the Vietnam conflict grow dimmer, but its lessons are not forgotten. Or are they? |
Vietnam Memorial, “The Wall,” Washington, D.C. |
| The Sixties College Campuses were never the same again. Violence erupted everywhere, starting with the the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy were also killed, as were students on campuses, rioters in the cities and soldiers in Vietnam. Progress in civil rights came at a price, and the younger and older generations saw the world through different lenses. |
| The Women's Liberation Movement Another movement that goe back into the 19th Century, the Women's movement also came into sharper focus. Most doors historically closed to women are now open, but true, full equlaity reamins an elusive goal. |
Women's Rights National Historic Park, Seneca Falls, New York. |
| The Watergate Crisis President Richard Nixon actually achieved much that was good, such as his opening relations with China and reducing tensions with the Soviet Union. But he will always be remembered for Watergate, a third-rate burglary that became a constitutional crisis. |
| Wars of the Twentieth Century |
Site Visits |
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