AMH 4930-1546, Spring 2011

History Research Seminar/ Baby Boom America

Jack E. Davis

273-3398/Keene-Flint 113

Monday, 1:55-4:55 PM

Ofc Hours: M,W, F: 12:40-1:40 PM

*Please note: The major’s requirements allow you one opportunity to successfully complete this course. If you fail in that opportunity, you will be dismissed from the major.*

This course is a capstone course for history majors. One of its principal goals is to introduce students to a specific topic, in this case baby boom America. As such, the course emphasizes the execution of the skills–reading comprehension, research, and writing–that are central to the practice of history. In other words, the faculty in the department do not want to send you off into the cold, hard world after graduation unless you can compose a well-structured paragraph, seek and find obscure but important information in a library or archive, and explain the content of a scholarly book or article. To that end, you will be required to read several books in this course and undertake several short research and writing assignments. Your work will be shared with and scrutinized by not only the professor but with the entire class. And you will be required in turn to scrutinize the work of your classmates. Generally, we will use the first two hours of the class to discuss books and assignments. The last hour will serve for individual meetings with me in my office. We will do the latter by a rotation established in class at the beginning of the semester.

Class participation: 10% of the course grade

* You must attend class. Each absence after one freebie will result in a deduction from your class-participation grade. Do NOT bother with doctor’s notes; they will not excuse an absence. Alas, if you’re sick and miss class, you lose participation credit.

Course Assignments:

(see assignment descriptions at the end of the syllabus; each assignment--except the Writing Mechanics Exercise--is worth 15% of the course grade) Late papers will not be accepted.

Defining the Baby Boom (due Jan 24)

Writing Mechanics Exercise (due Jan 24)

Time Magazine Paper (due Feb 7)

Key Events Paper 1 (due Feb 21)

Who Was Lois Gibbs Paper (due March 28)

Key Events Paper 2 (due March 28)

Book Review (due April 18)

Course Grading Scale (see the UF grading scale at the end of syllabus):

A+ =97-100

A =94-96

A- =90-93

B+ =87-89

B =84-86

B- =80-83

C+ =77-79

C =74-76

C- =70-73

D =65-69

Assignments not completed earn a 0

Plagiarized assignment (see plagiarism section below) earn a 0

Assignments not turned in before or by stated due date will not be accepted. All assignments must be made available in hard copy. Emailed assignments cannot be accepted.

Required Books:

Mark S. Foster, A Nation on Wheels: The Automobile Culture in America Since 1945

Archie Loss, Pop Dreams: Music, Movies, and the Media in the 1960s

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

Stephen Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War

Lawrence Wright, In the New World: Growing Up with American from the Sixties to the Eighties (this book is out of print but you can find plenty of used copies on Amazon.com; this book is also on reserve at Library West)

Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

Course Schedule:

Week 1: Jan 10

Class Introduction

Dan Barry, “Boomers Hit New Self-Absorption Milestone: Age 65,” New York Times, 31 December 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/us/01boomers.html

Jan 17: MLK Holiday

Week 2: Jan 24

Defining the Baby Boom Paper due

Writing Mechanics Exercise due

Week 3: Jan 31

Reading for discussion: Foster, A Nation on Wheels, 46-140

Week 4: Feb 7

Time Magazine Paper due

Week 5: Feb 14

Reading for Discussion: Yates, Revolutionary Road

Week 6: Feb 21

Key Events Paper 1 due

Week 7: Feb 28

Reading for Discussion: Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, introduction-chapter 4

Spring Break: March 7-11

Week 8: March 14

Reading for Discussion: Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War, chapters 1-6

Week 9: March 21

Reading for discussion: Wright, In the New World

Week 10: March 28

Key Events Paper 2 Due

Who was Lois Gibbs Paper Due

Week 11: April 4

Reading for Discussion: Loss, Pop Dreams

Week 12: April 11

Reading for Discussion: Foster, A Nation on Wheels, chapters 7-9; Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, chapters 5-10

Week 13: April 18

Book Review due

Writing Assignment Descriptions

All assignments must draw from printed materials. Do not use Internet sources, especially Wikipedia, unless they are Internet databases (such as Proquest or Jstor) from which you can access primary sources or scholarly materials. Newspaper on-line are also fine. For hard-copy sources, use original documents or published works. Restrict yourself to the page-length limit noted for each assignment. All papers should be double spaced, computer generated, using default margin and header and footer setting, and 12-point font. Comply with the rules outlined in the Writing Mechanics Exercise. Noncompliance will result in a lower grade for your assignment. Cite all your sources using the Chicago Manual of Style rules.

Defining the Baby Boom (due Jan 14) After consulting published sources, write a one-page paper defining the baby boom and baby boomers (what was it and who are they?) and what makes this generation significant or unique in American history. You must, first of all, define what a generation is, as in what in terms temporally makes a generation.

Writing Mechanics Exercise (due Jan 14) Find the link to the WME on my web site, print it out, and answer the twenty questions. The assignment will not receive a grade itself. The assignment instead should be used as a guide for writing your papers. Violating the rules outlined on the WME will earn a penalty on your writing assignments. Failure to complete the WME will result in an automatic 5-point deduction from each assignment (save the first) completed before turning in the WME (due Jan 14).

Time Magazine Paper (due Jan 28) Find the issue of Time magazine, a weekly publication, closest to the birthday of one of your baby-boomer parents. Write a two-page paper about the issue’s contents, the key events reported, the character of the advertisements, the tone and tempo of the times suggested by the magazine.

Key Events Paper 1 (due Feb 18) Define the individual terms writing no more than three sentences for each. Cite your sources.

1. 1948, presidential executive order 9981

2. 1948 (Oct 30-31), Donora, Pennsylvania

3. Dr. Benjamin Spock studies

4. 1955, Salk vaccine

5. 1958, National Defense Education Act

Who Was Lois Gibbs (due March 25) Write a one-page brief biography of Lois Gibbs, what she did to become a national figure and what she’s doing now.

Key Events Paper 2 (due March 25) Define the individual terms writing no more than three sentences for each. Cite your sources.

1. 1962, Silent Spring

2. 1962, Port Huron Statement

3. 1963, Abington Township School District v. Schempp

4. 1964, Civil Rights Act

5. 1969, Stonewall Rebellion

Book Review (due April 22) Write a 700-word book review of Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War (the entire book, not only the chapter we read for class discussion). Your Review should summarize the contents of the book, and identify the types of sources the author consulted, the central argument presented, and the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

Plagiarism:

Keep in mind that your written assignments must represent original work. You cannot copy the work of anyone else or text from the Internet. Do not cobble together paragraphs or passages of separate texts and then try to claim that you have done original and legitimate work. You must write with your own ideas and in your own words. If you copy the words of someone else without putting those words in quotation marks, you are plagiarizing. Plagiarism is theft, and it is academic dishonesty. Plagiarism is grounds for an automatic failing grade in the course, a grade that is final and that cannot be made up. Please, if you have any questions about how you are citing or using sources, come to me for the answers.

Classroom Assistance:

Please do not hesitate to contact the instructor during the semester if you have any individual concerns or issues that need to be discussed. Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office {http://www.dso.ufl.edu/drp/}. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide that documentation to the instructor when requesting accommodation.

UF Grading Scale

Please note UF’s new grading scale with the addition of minuses.

A = 4.0

A- = 3.67

B+ = 3.33

B = 3.0

B- = 2.67

C+ = 2.33

C = 2.0

C- = 1.67

D+ = 1.33

D = 1.0

D- = 0.67

E = 0.0

E1 = 0.0 Stopped attending or participating prior to end of class

I (incomplete) = 0.0