Face-to-face and online discussion tests your ability to communicate ideas, your appreciation and comprehension of the themes and concepts discussed in the course, your ability to critically assess and evaluate the arguments of others, and your ability to clearly articulate your thoughts. It also monitors your progress across the unit topics. Internal students are expected to attend weekly tutorials and participate in weekly discussions in class.

External students are expected to make online postings within the time frame of each discussion topic. These begin on Monday of the discussion week and run through to the following Sunday. You will be assessed on the quality of your responses, the frequency of your posts and your engagement with other students. A professional and courteous approach towards staff and fellow students is expected at all times. The purpose of this forum is not the presentation of your personal opinions but the discussion of topics arising from the lectures and readings. You can comment on other students' posts provided you follow the rules of netiquette and keep your discussion within the bounds of the question raised. This forum should be a substitute for a live tutorial.

This Essay Plan and Bibliography is designed to help you begin preparing your essay at an early stage of semester.

You should ensure you address the following questions:

1. What is my topic about?
2. Who are the some of the important historians in this field?
3. What are there other themes or issues I need to understand in order to explore this topic properly?
4. What is my proposed structure for the essay?

This task which assesses whether students have understood the history of the topic; demonstrated good judgement regarding the kinds of historical primary and secondary sources required for 200-level university history essay; and understood how and why different historians have different approaches to or interpretations of historical events.

Some of you are no doubt wondering: can I change my mind about which question I answer?

Answer: If your interest has changed by the time you start work on your essay and you want to write about a different topic, you may do so. You should be aware, however, that you may be disadvantaging yourself in comparison to other students since you will not have the feedback provided after the project proposal. If you need help, please contact Daniel or Chris.

The Essay Plan should be approx. 500 words in length.

Due Friday 19 October 2018, 11:59pm, 2,500 words (including references)

The aim of this task is to assess your ability to produce an extended response, in written form, to a specific question. Chose from the list of questions included below.

At 200 level, you should aim to produce history essays that reflect your ability to research (in both primary and secondary sources), to find and analyse information, to make an historical argument and to write clearly and cogently. You need to try to write analytically not descriptively. Take care not to tell “only” us a story about the past. You need to make an argument about the past. Indeed, you must build a strong argument through every paragraph.

You must present your essay with a title, wide margins, page numbers, and double-spaced. You must cite your references correctly and provide a bibliography at the end, starting on a new page.

The main essay should be fully referenced in line with the “writing essays in history” referencing guide. You will be penalised in the major essay for inadequate or incorrect referencing.

Essay Questions

1.      Focussing on 1-2 social issues from the 1950s (gender dynamics, race relations, sexuality, youth culture, political movements, other social critique/s, etc.), analyse the proposition that the era was, “a fertile period, a seedbed of ideas that would burgeon and live in the more activist, less reflective climate that followed.”

2.      Analyze the notion that “the Cold War reflected American fears, rather than the reality of Soviet power.”

3.      Analyse the proposition that “the period from the middle of the 1950s in the United States up to the impact of the crisis of the 1960s was an age of consensus.”

4.      Analyse the objectives and tactics of a social or political movement of the 1960s and/or 1970s (feminism, gay rights, anti-war movement, Native American rights, Chicano movement, environmentalism, etc). What were the movement’s successes – and failures?

5.      Discuss and analyse the ways in which the Vietnam War heightened social, political, and economic tensions in the United States in the period 1964-1973 and beyond.

6.      Analyse resistance to the African American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

7.      Analyse the changes that occurred within the African American civil rights movement during the 1960s, paying attention to the goals and strategies of the movement.

8.      Analyse the proposition that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter sought to engineer America’s “retreat from empire.”

9.      Analyse the proposition that, “After Goldwater led the party to a disastrous defeat, Nixon would be the only man available to act as party unifier, to lead the rehabilitation of Republicanism, and help himself at the same time.”

10.  Analyse the proposition that “the 1980 election was a watershed election in American politics.”

11.  Analyse the debate over abortion in the post-war United States, focusing particularly on the debate since the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision.

12.  Analyse the proposition that “the addition of AIDS to the political agenda was slow because of the way the problem was defined and the epidemic framed.”

13.  Analyse the extent to which the Clinton presidency was beset by scandal.

14.  You are welcome to devise your own topic on a relevant issue provided this is done in consultation with your tutor.

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