Practice Essay Exam Questions

Practice Essay Exam Questions
Focus on Gender/Politics

1 Hour/Question
Contains a central argument
Incorporate as many examples/sources as possible
Anecdotes and Arguments from the sources should be included often

1. How have gender relations changed since the 1970's? How was 2nd Wave Feminism successful and how has it fallen short? How did the Cold War impact the sexual revolution and gender issues in the 1970's-80's?

2. How did the Great Migration transform the United States politically, racially, economically, etc.?

3. How did capitalism/consumerism become dominant in American culture?

4. What were the inspirations for Progressivism, how did it impact American life and why did it fade out? What were major Progressive movements? What is the legacy of Progressivism?

5. How did racism fit into American foreign policy and military policy in the beginning of the twentieth century.

6. What particular issues have been at the heart of the African American struggle towards equal rights since reconstruction?

7. The United States has a mixed history in regards to the role of religion in government. How and why has this relationship between church and state shifted in the 20th century?

8. Discuss the relationship between working-class organization and protest and patterns of state and national political development. Consider the relationship in both directions: e.g. how did the actions of working people shape national state/political development and how did the nature and form of state and politics shape the nature and form of working-class protest and organization?

9. Discuss the relationship between racism and immigration in the 20th century. How did the arrival of different ethnic groups impact the treatment of those already established in the country?

Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides by Christian G. Appy (Post War Era, Military & Foreign Policy)

Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides 

by Christian G. Appy 

Post War Era
Military & Foreign Policy

Thesis:

 The Vietnam War is divisive topic. The books uses the words of soldiers, pows, politicians, generals, antiwar activists, students, and civilians from both sides to demonstrate how many experienced this conflict differently. Appy wanted to open eyes to confront the war's full picture and how personal accounts contradict the collective memory of the conflict.

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

 The Vietnamese were dedicated to national sovereignty and independence. They had been abused by colonial rule of the  French (supported by Americans after WWII) and were willing to fight and die for autonomy. 

Interviews with US policy makers showed that they had no real understanding of what the Vietnamese were fighting for and why they seemed to have no breaking point. They believed there was some magic number of casualties and once they accomplished that, the Vietnamese would surrender. This was not the case. 

The brutality of the acts of war range from, soldiers wearing scalps, to annihilating villages, to chemical ware fare with agent orange. Veterans still carry remorse over their actions against innocents.

Summary:

What does this tell us about Military & Foreign Policy in the Post War Era?

 Military leadership during the Vietnam War was lacking. Policy makers and in country leaders had no clue what the Vietnamese were fighting for. They believed it would be an easy short-lived conflict and they never seemed to determine when enough was enough. US civilians were willing to send some troops but as the war escalated patience and acceptance from the American people dwindled, as soldier deaths increased and journalists began getting the stories out of what was really going on, protesters emerged in the largest antiwar movement we've ever had.

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

My Highlighted Passages: 

One coastal target in the north was identified by Saigon intelligence as a rest and recuperation center for Viet Cong cadre, but the Vietnamese PT skipper said, “No, that’s a leper hospital.” My intelligence said it was a communist R and R center so that was that. We sent a team in there firing as they went, and they killed a lot of people. It turned out to be a leper hospital just as the Vietnamese officer had predicted. When the team got back I’ll never forget the look the skipper gave me. His eyes said everything. He pointed at me and said, “Hospital.” That really did a great deal of damage to our credibility.399

Our hope early on in Vietnam was to win the hearts and minds of the people, but that hope was destroyed by the South Vietnamese government’s failure to gain the people’s allegiance and by Westmoreland’s strategy of search-and-destroy.460

You simply pile on and crush ’em. That was Westmoreland’s approach in Vietnam. There was no subtlety. His idea was to go after people and kill them in great number.463

However, one of the basic problems was that the North Vietnamese had an almost bottomless pit of people with the determination to outlast the Americans. And they were able to engage us on terms favorable to themselves. They would inflict casualties and then disappear.466

Their strategic aim was to wear us down until the American public turned against the war. It worked. People thought, we keep taking terrible casualties and we’re not seeing any benefit.468

Some Americans claim that Hanoi ordered the attack to provoke the United States into these actions; that we did it specifically to kill Americans and planned to do so on a day when [U.S. National Security Adviser] McGeorge Bundy was in Saigon and [Soviet Premier] Alexei Kosygin was in Hanoi. I have never understood why the U.S. government regarded this attack as provocative. It was just a normal battle, part of a long-term dry-season offensive in the Highlands.499

We had such heated discussions about how to fight. Should we be on the offensive or defensive? It was a very hard question. Fighting the U.S. wasn’t easy. We had to rely on our creativity.518

I remember putting the stethoscope in my ears to listen to his pulse. I glanced at my watch and it was almost eleven o’clock. That’s all I can remember.716

Later my friends told me that we were hit by a bomb from a B-52. There were six of us in that room—myself, two male nurses, and three patients. I718

When I got home, I think everybody, including myself, was sick of the war. We abhorred it. It was not only cruel, it was absurd.727

We had guys whose morale was so damaged as a result of returning to the States after their first tour that they volunteered to come back. They could simply not stand to read the paper or watch the television. I couldn’t believe the newspaper clippings my family was sending me after the Tet Offensive2173

I had to tell these boys that had just served their country to get out of their country’s uniform as soon as they could. If they weren’t wearing their uniform then maybe they wouldn’t be targeted by the protesters. disappointed. I had grown up with World War II movies and everybody had a band or something to welcome them home. An ungrateful nation let some twenty-three-year-old stewardess welcome these guys home.2500

“We all have very serious misgivings about the direction of the war. We don’t want to be piling up American boys like cordwood fighting endless Asian troops. We feel that we can bring this war to a quick conclusion by using overwhelming naval and air power.2738

The assumption was that the North Vietnamese would sue for peace if we increased the level of punishment.2742

“So you’re going to cut them off, keep them from being reinforced, and then you’re going to bomb them into the Stone Age.2743

Air force chief McConnell said,

“Well, that’s not exactly it, but you’ve got to punish them.

“Do you fully support these ideas?

Both generals said they totally agreed

“You goddamn fucking assholes. You’re trying to get me to start World War III with your idiotic bullshit—your ‘military wisdom.

“You dumb shit. Do you expect me to believe that kind of crap? I’ve got the weight of the Free World on my shoulders and you want me to start World War III?

“I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to give me an answer. Imagine that you’re me—that you’re the president of the United States—and five incompetents come into your office and try to talk you into starting World War III. Then let’s see what kind of guts you have with the whole damn world to worry about. What would you do?

“Mr. President, we’ve obviously upset you.The understatement of the year.There are many things about the presidency only one human being can understand. You, Mr. President, are that human being. With that thought in mind, I cannot take your place, think your thoughts, know all you know, and tell you what I would do if I were you. I can’t do it, Mr. President. No man can honestly do it. It’s got to be your decision and yours alone. The risk is just too high. How can you fucking assholes ignore what China might do? You have just contaminated my office, you filthy shitheads. Get the hell out of here right now.2763

I think Johnson had already made up his mind long before they got there and was using his most forceful way to kill the plan. When I got back into the car with Admiral McDonald, he said,2767

“Never in my entire life did I ever expect to be put through something as horrible as what you just watched from the president of the United States to his five senior military advisers.2769

He was just destroyed. For three or four days they seriously considered a mass resignation—all of them. I think the reason they didn’t was that we were at war and they did not want to be labeled traitors who quit in the face of the enemy.2769

have low tolerance for Vietnam vets who blame everything that’s happened to them in the last thirty years on the twelve months they spent over there. The fact of the matter is that7108

ninety-five percent of vets are normal, functioning, completely well-adjusted people just like everybody else.7109

We also made a distinction between the ordinary solders who carried out orders and the policy makers who initiated the war.7181

wrote, but there was no way to know if he was still alive. In many cases people received letters saying everything was okay when, in fact, the writer had already been killed. So receiving a letter was a mixed blessing. At first you were so happy, but then you looked at the date it was written and started to worry all over again. I was separated from my husband for ten years and he was separated from our two children for thirteen.7187

Dissent was expressed from every quarter. Two hundred and fifty State Department employees signed a letter of protest and several of Kissinger’s top aides resigned in opposition to the policy.8220

xOver Here: The First World and American Society by David Kennedy (Progressive Era-WWI, Military & Foreign Policy, Politics)

Over Here: The First World War and American Society 

by David Kennedy

Progressive Era-WWI
Military & Foreign Policy
Politics

Thesis:

US involvement in WWI ultimately led to an end in the Progressive Era. Progressive rhetoric was used to build public support for the war but ultimately made the people feel manipulated. To fund the war, much of the advancements towards democratic power instituted by progressives were abandoned.

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary:
The author explores the internal American effects of World War I. Domestic changes were drastic during the war period.

Under the auspices of the Espionage Act of June 1917 (which allowed Postmaster-General Burleson to aggressively censor the mail) and the Sedition Act of 1918 (which prohibited "any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States"), outspoken members of the left (among them Eugene Debs) were arrested and locked away for voicing dissent.
After the war, Wilson's 14 points were given little attention or reflection in the Treaty of Versailles, calling an end to the war. A treaty that was never ratified by the US. In addition the League of Nations, created to avoid another World War and to force countries to disarm, pushed for by Wilson, was not joined by the US and ultimately fell apart.

What does this tell us about Military and Foreign Policy in the Progressive Era-WWI?
Up to the point of US involvement in WWI, the US was proudly avoiding the war. The US was spending resources on Progressive reform efforts and had no interest in spending it on a European War. In order to support the war efforts President Wilson instituted policies that decreased the free expression of the people. In an attempt to frame US involvement as a moral imperative, Wilson gave his speech on the 14 points. Establishing a list of actions that, he and his advisers believed would prevent another World War, these included disarming, and destroying alliances, giving colonies their independence, and free trade. Unfortunately the 14 points were not adopted in the Treaty of Versailles and the treaty was not ratified by the US Senate, by then largely controlled by big business who had an interest in tariffs. 

What does this tell us about Politics in the Progressive Era-WWI?

The moral evangelism of the Progressive era had to re-frame their rhetoric to fit the war. Wilson always felt the minds and the hearts of the people must be won, he created the Committee on Public Information to bombard the public with the justifications for America's entry into WWI. Additionally, Espionage and Sedition Acts were passed to silence opposing opinions on the war. The US public, including Progressives mostly bought into the propaganda but found themselves demoralized by the outcome. Big business got richer and the power of the people was greatly reduced.

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"Here now we have the first contemporary synthesis of work accomplished with regard to America's internal experience in World War I."

"Wilsonians' (and Americans' continuing) unwillingness to exercise power in any formal, straightforward, or forceful way-of their phobic refusal to carry out the rationing, taxing, requisitioning, and coercing that European governments had long since undertaken. Such a renunciation of authority had a second unfortunate effect as well, for it led of necessity to the Wilson administration's deliberate propagandizing and agitation of the public as a means of achieving needed discipline, whipping up a patriotic hysteria that would ultimately undermine progressive forces politically and help to undo the benefits that groups like workers, blacks, and women derived from the war."

"Kennedy also discusses the war's cultural dimension. From diaries and other literary material he evokes the overseas experience of Pershing's "doughboys" and also describes and interprets the cultural struggle over the war's meaning in both literary and popular culture in the 1920s. Kennedy suggests, moreover, that as a cultural phenomenon the war crisis reveals a number of core American social values, including a deeply rooted suspicion of concentrated public power and a bias toward voluntarism in the construction of social institutions."

"Among the book's many strengths are a first-rate synthesis of recent work on economic and financial mobilization; a critical evaluation of Wilsonian economic diplomacy; convenient summaries of the war's impact on various social groups, including liberal intellectuals, women, blacks, organized labor, and political radicals; and a useful commentary on congressional and national party politics based upon private manuscript collections"

My Highlighted Passages: 

""war had killed something precious and perhaps irretrievable in the hearts of thinking men and women, namely a faith in the reasonableness, plasticity, and fundamental decency of "the people." (92)

"the war thus demonstrated the distasteful truth that voluntarism has its perils. Reliance on sentiment rather than strengthened sovereignty to mobilize a people for total war compounded the problem of requiring all people to do what but few people wished. That kind of coercion, no less insidious for its indirection -- perhaps doubly objectionable on that count -- had deep roots in liberal democratic culture, and was to become a salient feature of twentieth-century American life." (143)

"In effect, writers such as Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Cummings use the way to "launch a second attack on the cultural authority of the Old Guard -- the Old Guard that had promoted American entry into the war, and employed the full force of its rhetorical power to describe the war in terms compatible with its ancient values...The postwar writers of disillusionment protested less against the war itself than against a way of seeing and describing the war."

x The Transplanted by John Bodnar (The Progressive Era and WWI, Immigration, Ethnicity and Race)

The Transplanted: A History of Immigration Urban America.

by John Bodnar 

The Progressive Era and WWI

Immigration
Ethnicity and Race

Thesis:

Immigrants to urban America maintained a dynamic relationship with both their past culture and the imperatives of their present environment by creating a mediating "culture of everyday life" most evident in the structure and function of the immigrant family.

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Despite that industrialization moved the work force out of the home, family remained central to labor as family and friends found jobs for one another. Wages were used to sustain the family unit. 

Summary:
Bodnar is attempting to correct the historic record of Progressive Era immigration to reflect the evidence that immigrants were not simply victims of circumstance, completely displaced, and alienated from any of the social cultural norms they were used to at home. In fact, their homeland had also changed dramatically and through their immigration the attempted recreate much of their society in this new environment.

What does this tell us about Immigration in the Progressive Era/WWI?

 Immigrants were often leaving their home that was experiencing profound change and disruption due to the new capitalist world order. While extreme upheaval to their lifestyle did occur, it was anticipated and much was done to attempt to reincorporate the social structures they were losing.

What does this tell us about Ethnicity and Race in the Progressive Era/WWI?

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"Emigration was a means for those who could afford it to sustain traditional family against the disruptions of the modern world. On the other hand, the immigrant family itself had to modernize. In either respect, immigrants were children of capitalism."

"Urban immigrant life was neither traumatized by modern capitalism nor fixed in primordial tradition but, rather, transformed by the dynamic between these forces."

My Highlighted Passages: 

xThe Sixties : Years of Hope, Days of Rage by Todd Gitlin (Post-War Era, Politics)

The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage 

by Todd Gitlin 

Post-War Era
Politics

Thesis:

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary:
The prologue lays out the main topics the author discusses throughout as the legacies/missed opportunities/accomplishments of the 60's...
1. Social Equality (Race, Gender, Sexuality)
2. Wide Open Lifestyles
3. Limitation of National Violence
4. Care of the Earth
5. Spread of Democratic Activity

What does this tell us about Politics in the Post War Era?

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Gitlin experiences this era first hand. His interpretations are largely personal in his efforts to explain why the SDS movement ultimately failed to move forward the New Left Agenda and make any permanent long lasting impact 

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"One of the most perplexing, yet historically important, phenomena of our era has been the rise and abrupt fall of the New Left during the 1960s."

"Gitlin is on home base when describing the early, heady days of the student movement; he is increasingly introspective about the later sixties when the "movement" splintered. As much as anything, this is a book that seeks to explain what went wrong—what decisions, influences, and intentional disruptions pushed the Left into its final spasms of self-destruction."

My Highlighted Passages: 

xFrom Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism by Darren Dochuk (The Post War Era, Religion)

From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism

by Darren Dochuk 

The Post War Era
Religion

Thesis:

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary:

From Bible Belt to Sun Belt tells the dramatic and largely unknown story of "plain-folk" religious migrants: hardworking men and women from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas who fled the Depression and came to California for military jobs during World War II. Investigating this fiercely pious community at a grassroots level, Darren Dochuk uses the stories of religious leaders, including Billy Graham, as well as many colorful, lesser-known figures to explain how evangelicals organized a powerful political machine. This machine made its mark with Barry Goldwater, inspired Richard Nixon's "Southern Solution," and achieved its greatest triumph with the victories of Ronald Reagan.

What does this tell us about Religion in the Post War Era?

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

 " the economic and cultural transformation of Southern California from the 1930s to the 1980s that led to the nationwide dissemination of the conservative views that influenced the rise of the Christian Right in American politics. As such, it is as much a regional history as it is a volume on religion and politics."

"George S. Benson (president of Harding University and instrumental in its National Education Program), John Brown (founder of several educational institutions in Arkansas and California as well as of a prominent evangelical radio station in Southern California), and George Pepperdine (founder of the Western Auto nationwide chain of automotive specialty stories and Pepperdine University) created a network of media outlets, educational institutions, and evangelical Christian organizations that proved to be the catalyst for the emergence of the Religious Right in national politics."

"The vast majority of evangelical Christians in Southern California adopted the premillennial view that individual salvation required personal commitment and constant vigilance against the creeping socialism of the liberal establishment and the threat of a worldwide communist takeover that would stamp out conservative Christian institutions."

"In Dochuk’s telling, we have here the roots of the Religious Right, and there is no question that the American Left has savaged those with religious commitments, to its own detriment. But the Left’s failure is not nearly enough to explain why American evangelicalism has been so easily captured by right-wing corporate capitalism, militaristic nationalism, and the prosperity gospel. That is to say, how do we get from antebellum evangelicalism, with its plethora of socially progressive reform efforts, to the contemporary and reactionary evangelicalism of Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and the Tea Party?"

"A pivotal point in Dochuk’s narrative comes in 1945–1946, when a peculiar old age welfare scheme ($30 scrip weekly to every unemployed Californian over age fifty) was resurrected. At this time California’s southern evangelical transplants were equally suspicious of “corporate capitalism and the bureaucratic state” (p. 80), and this “Ham and Eggs” proposal provided an alternative to “the industrial unionism and progressive liberalism that animated the Left, and the strident antistatism that energized the Right” (p. 92). The arrival of the rabidly anti-Semitic Gerald L. K. Smith in behalf of the Ham and Eggers helped convince Social Democrats that this proposal was the manifestation of reactionary, fundamentalist religion. The result was violent confrontations between the two groups and the defeat of Ham and Eggs. More importantly, this conflict ensured that southern evangelicals in California would choose the Right and its “united Christian, conservative front” over a Left that “sympathized with their economic plight but vilified their religion” (p. 101).

My Highlighted Passages: 

“Sunbelt evangelicals” were changing American politics, helping “win the governorship for Ronald Reagan in 1966, the South for Richard Nixon in 1972, and ultimately the country for Reagan’s Republican Party in 1980”

xArc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle (Roaring 20's-WWII, Ethnicity & Race, Law)

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

by Kevin Boyle 

Roaring 20's-WWII
Ethnicity & Race
Law

Thesis:

Segregation was illegally protected in Northern cities that struggled to find a place for the wave black migrants coming from the South as part of the Great Migration.
The story of Ossian Sweet's struggle to find a home in the Northern  city of Detroit after the Great Migration demonstrates the racism and illegal segregation that became common place in Northern cities. Despite the blatant illegality of mobs attempting to violently dispell someone from a community based on race, the court battle for Sweet was still highly contested. Police tried to cover up evidence but in the end the law could not deny the innocence of the Sweets and their friends/family.

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary:

Ossian Sweet

 During the 1920s, African Americans from the South poured into northern industrial cities such as Detroit. This migration triggered racial confrontations, as blacks began competing with whites over jobs, schooling, and housing. In 1925, one of those southern black migrants, Ossian Sweet, became a central figure in a confrontation that attracted national attention. Sweet, originally from Florida, was a doctor who sought to establish his practice in Detroit. After he moved into the home he had purchased in a white section of town, an organized mob stoned the house, and some members tried to break in. Anticipating trouble, Sweet had prevailed on friends to help defend his home. They were armed, shots were fired, and one white man was killed and another wounded. Police arrested Sweet, his wife, and nine other black men in the house. The trials that followed were ground breaking for legal challenge of segregation. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) raised money and recruited a legal team for the defendants. The Sweet case set a precedent for the NAACP’s subsequent strategy of using its new Legal Defense Fund to challenge segregation primarily through the courts.

What does this tell us about Ethnicity & Race in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?

What does this tell us about Law in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"The narrative ranges widely to capture the many dynamic forces that were reshaping the American city and its race relations. These include a rapidly rising black population in Detroit; the role of the real estate industry in building ghetto walls; the use of restrictive covenants to enforce the color line; the significance of local homeowners’ associations in maintaining white neighborhoods; the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, not just in asserting white power but as a major force in Detroit politics; and the agency of some African Americans in challenging residential restrictions despite the dangers in doing so."

My Highlighted Passages: