AS205 — Fall 2009

Schedule

September 08, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Introduction

Reading

  • Lee, At Americas Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era 1882-1943.

    Read: Introduction, Part I and Part II

    Check out Zotero and particularly the screencast tutorials.

September 15, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Immigration I

Reading

  • Lee, At Americas Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era 1882-1943.

    Read: Part III, Part IV and Afterword

    Install Zotero for syncing, sign up for an account, and join the group for our class: http://www.zotero.org/groups/557.

  • Turner, The Liminal Period.

Writing

  • Blog Posting
September 22, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Immigration II

Reading

Writing

  • Blog Posting
  • Preliminary Project Proposal

    Please post a 2-3 paragraph description of a project that you would like to pursue for your edited collection. The edited collection, which will be built in Omeka, calls for you to explore an inquiry question by gathering a group of primary sources. You will provide headnotes for those sources, and eventually a narrative introduction to the collection.

    Consider topics and questions that you might have about the period we are studying. We are specifically discussing identity and access to power within American society, and your project should touch on those issues in some way, but the field is really very wide open. This will be your first attempt at articulating a project that will group and change through the course of the semester.

September 29, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Immigration III

Reading

Writing

  • Blog Posting–O’Mealia

Discussion

  • Primary Source Analysis

    Select a primary source from one of the archives or collections in our Zotero Group folders. Make that individual source an item in your Zotero folder. Come to class ready to provide a close reading of the source during class. Take a minute to look at others’ choices before we meet.

October 06, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

The Color Line I

Reading

Writing

  • Immigration Paper

    How does immigration shape the understanding of American identity between 1876 and 1924? Be expansive in your considerations and your answer, but make a concrete argument that you support with quotations from the sources. Consider the theoretical frameworks that Turner, Ngai, and Roediger and Barrett might provide to help you with your answer.

    Length: 3-4 pages, double spaced, with a title and endnotes (on a separate page that does not count toward your total.

October 13, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

The Color Line II

Reading

Writing

  • Blog Posting — Moore
  • Annotated Bibliography

    Use your individual Zotero folders to collect citations for the 8-10 key secondary sources on your topic. Add a note to each citation that includes 1) a summary of the argument; 2) a sense of the place of the source in the larger field of literature; and 3) a statement of how the source will contribute to your project.

October 20, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

The Color Line III

Reading

  • Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age.

Writing

  • Blog Posting — Rawson

Discussion

  • Primary Source Analysis

    Select a primary source from one of the archives or collections in our Zotero Group folders. Make that individual source an item in your Zotero folder. Come to class ready to provide a close reading of the source during class. Take a minute to look at others’ choices before we meet.

October 27, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Project Work — No Class

November 03, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

The Color Line IV

Reading

  • Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age.

Writing

  • Color Line Paper

    What is race, and why and how does it matter? Consider this question within boundaries of the time period between Reconstruction and Great Depression. You should draw on some of the theoretical work that we’ve covered so far in the course. Feel free to reach back into the immigration unit. Use specific evidence from primary sources to back up your answer.

    Papers should be 3-4 pages, double spaced with an additional page for endnotes.

November 10, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Science and Modernity I

Reading

Writing

  • Blog Posting — Reen
  • Initial Collection of Sources

    Use your Zotero folder to provide an initial list of the 8-10 sources that you will include in your edited collection. Please include a note that explains why you chose the source, and that gives a brief critical reading of the source.

November 17, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Science and Modernity II

Reading

Writing

  • Blog Posting — Begen

Discussion

  • Primary Source Analysis

    Select a primary source from one of the archives or collections in our Zotero Group folders. Make that individual source an item in your Zotero folder. Come to class ready to provide a close reading of the source during class. Take a minute to look at others’ choices before we meet.

November 24, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Science and Modernity III

Reading

  • Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and Americas Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.

Writing

  • Science and Modernity Paper

    Consider the ways that our readings have presented a tension between tradition and modernity in the context of science. In what ways does recognizing this tension help you to understand the time period? How is this tension at work in conflicts about social goods, policies and ideals? Your answer should draw on the full range of sources from the unit (Adams, Servos, Goddard, the Buck decision, and Larson), citing specific textual evidence to support your argument.

    Papers should be 3-4 pages, double spaced with an additional page for endnotes. And, don’t forget a title.

December 01, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Depression I

Reading

Writing

  • Blog Posting — Swoboda
December 08, 2009, 4:15 pm – 6:35 pm

Depression II

Reading

  • Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression.

Writing

  • Blog Posting — Gofus

Presentation

  • Review of Edited Collections

  • About this blog:

    This is the course site for In-Between Peoples. Here you will find the schedule for the semester. Also, as a class you will use this space to blog your reflections on the readings and the issues raised in our four units: Immigration, The Color Line, Science and Modernity, and the Depression.

Bibliography

Monographs

Du Bois, W.E.B.. The Souls of Black Folk. 1907.

Du Bois, W.E.B.. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880. Free Press, 1998.

Boyle, Kevin. Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age. 2005.

Paul A. Lombardo, Professor. Three Generations No Imbeciles: Eugenics the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Herbert Goddard, Henry. The Kallikak Family. New York: Arno Press, 1973.

Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago 1919-1939. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Larson, Edward J.. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and Americas Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. Basic Books, 2006.

Lopez, Ian. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. NYU Press, 1997.

Lee, Erika. At Americas Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era 1882-1943. The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. New Press, 2000.

Frye Jacobson, Matthew. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press, 1999.

Laughlin, Harry Hamilton and United States. Analysis of Americas Modern Melting Pot. Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization House of Representatives Sixty-Seventh Congress Third Session. November 21 1922. Serial 7-C. Washington: Govt. print off, 1923.

Turner, Victor. Bewtixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967.

Volume Chapters

Adams, Henry. “The Dynamo and the Virgin.” The Education of Henry Adams. 1900.

Articles

Ngai, Mae M.. “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924.” The Journal of American History 86, no. (1999).

W. Servos, John. “Mathematics and the Physical Sciences in America 1880-1930.” Isis 77, no. (1986): 611–629.

Roediger, David and James Barrett. “Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality, and “New-Immigrant” Working Class.” (2002).

Edited Collection

The culminating project for the semester will be an edited collection that addresses an inquiry question of your crafting that deals with some thematic element from the course.  The collection will consist of the following elements:

An Inquiry Question: This is the main frame for your work in the project.  Decide what issues you want to explore in greater detail.  Ask a question that will allow you to assemble a collection of sources and write a narrative introduction.  Our reading for the semester addresses issues of “in-betweenness” for citizens, groups, and cultures in the United States between Reconstruction and World War II.  In the course of thinking about in-betweenness, we are faced with questions of power, authority, citizenship, fitness for self-government, racial formation, gender relations, origin stories and teleology.  Your question should allow you to engage some of these issues while working with particular sources.

An Introductory Essay: This narrative essay (2000-2500 words) will answer your inquiry question and draw on the sources in your collection.  The format for the essay should be that of a traditional academic essay in which you employ accepted conventions of usage and style, you quote from and do close readings of your sources, and draw significant larger conclusions from your work.

8-10 Primary Sources with Annotations: These sources should be selected from a variety of forms (letters, documents, news accounts, advertisements, photos, paintings, songs, etc.).  Your sources should reflect a care effort to represent multiple points of view.  Each source should be presented with a title, an 100-200 word annotation, the source itself, and the Chicago Manual of Style formatted bibliographic citation.  The annotations (3-4 sentences) should situate the source in a general context, in the context of your project/inquiry question, and should point out the most interesting element of the source.

An Annotated Bibliography: This bibliography should include the 6-8 most important secondary sources related to your topic.  Again, you should use the Chicago Manual of Style format for your citations.  Each annotation should provide a summary of the source’s argument and a statement of its relationship to your project.

You will assemble your edited collection in our Omeka installation: http://chnm.gmu.edu/staff/sharon/as205_f09/collections/. To do so, you will begin by logging in at http://chnm.gmu.edu/staff/sharon/as205_f09/collections/admin/, and then adding your primary sources as items in the archive. Each item added should be placed in the Fall 2009 collection. For a brush up on how to add items, watch the following screen cast:

Manage Items in Omeka 1.0 from Omeka on Vimeo.

Writing

Blog Postings

Blogging will be key to the success in this course. For those of you who have never blogged before, no worries. This is not a technically difficult process. It’s more like sending an email than anything else. Pedagogically, however, it serves a number of purposes.

First, blogging allows the members of the class a chance to critically reflect on the readings and our discussions in a public way. Rather than having a private conversation with the instructor through reflection papers, blogging allows the whole class to participate in an ongoing open conversation about the key themes, questions, and problems raised by our materials.

Second, and in a closely related point, blogging encourages vibrant discussion in the classroom. Since every student must critically engage the material before the class meets, the pumps are primed for thoughtful conversation about significant issues when we come together in person.

Finally, blogging leaves an archive of the trajectory of the course–the things in which we are interested and the problems with which we struggle throughout the semester.

To encourage these goals, our blogging will follow a two step process.

  • Initial posting: Each week one student will offer opening posts that will serve as the basis of our conversation for the week. These posts are due the Friday before the class meeting.
  • Response postings: The remaining members of the class, those who did not offer an initial post, will comment on and respond to that initial post. This process will begin our critical discussion before we enter the classroom. These comments and responses are due the Monday before the class meeting.

Some things to consider in your postings include: How does this reading deal with the distribution of power in American society? What frameworks does it offer us for understanding the distribution of power? What do you think is the most interesting part of this reading? Why? What criticisms do you have of the author’s approach? Her use of sources? Has the author overlooked something in her analysis? What will you continue to look for as you read more?

You will be graded both on your initial postings and on the quality of your participation as a commentor and responder.

Short Papers

You will write three short papers during the course of the semester.  Each paper will be 3-4 pages, double spaced, with traditional font and margins.  These assignments will allow you try to tied together the themes and questions that we have raised in the course of discussing our readings for each unit.

You will be graded on the strength of your argument and thesis, the use of both primary and secondary sources to support your work, and the quality of your prose.

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