1. Connecting with Past Studies: The Nation's Beginnings
1.1. What are the key tenets of American democracy?
1.1.1. How have American freedom and slavery coexisted in the nation's past?
1.2. How did the country change because of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the nineteenth century?
2. Industrialization, Urbanization, Immigration, and Progressive Reform
2.1. How did America’s economy, industries, and population grow after the Civil War?
2.1.1. How were farmers affected by industrialization? How did they respond to industrialization?
2.2. How did the federal government impact the country’s growth in the years following the Civil War?
2.3. Who came to the United States at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century? Why did they come? What was their experience like when they arrived?
2.4. Why did women want the right to vote, and how did they convince men to grant it to them?
3. The Rise of the United States as a World Power
3.1. How did America’s role in the world change between the 1870s and 1910s?
3.2. Did the United States become an imperial power? Why or why not?
3.3. How did America change because of World War I?
3.4. Why were the 1920s filled with political, social, and economic extremes?
3.5. Were the 1920s a “return to normalcy?” Why or why not?
4. The Great Depression and the New Deal
4.1. Why was there a Great Depression?
4.1.1. ACTIVITY: Anticipating the New Deal: Students will watch FDR's 1933 Inaugural Address. They will also be provided with a full text of the address for reference. Using their knowledge from the previous lesson on the Great Depression and Hoover's response, students will divide into small groups of three to four. Each group will make predictions about FDR's plans to address the Great Depression. An anticipation guide may be used to prompt discussion: what were FDR's main concerns? What might he propose? How might the American public have reacted to the speech? After a five to ten minute discussion, the class will reconvene to share each group's predictions.
4.2. How did the New Deal attempt to remedy problems from the Great Depression?
4.2.1. ACTIVITY (in-class): "Gallery Walk": After being introduced to the Great Depression via lecture and readings, students will now engage with primary sources directly to draw their own interpretations. Students will view this gallery of Dorothea Lange's iconic photography from the Great Depression: Dorothea Lange | MoMA. Students will be asked to select one photo and answer the following questions in short responses (3-4 sentences): Why did you select this photo? What kind of message do you think Lange was trying to convey with this photo and why? What does this source say about life during the Great Depression (support this with a citation from the text)? After writing their responses, students will discuss their answers with a partner.
4.3. How did ordinary people respond to the Great Depression?
4.3.1. ACTIVITY (in-class): Role-play Narratives: Students are randomly given a basic description of an American living through the Great Depression to serve as a character to role-play: e.g., a migrant worker in CA, a working class New Yorker, a farmer facing foreclosure, an elderly person, etc. Students will then add to these basic details using facts they have learned about how these groups were impacted by the Great Depression in order to weave a brief, historically-accurate narrative. For instance, a student playing as an elderly person could describe how the Social Security Administration helped them survive, a student playing a migrant worker might discuss being displaced, or a factory worker might talk about changes in working conditions after the introduction of the National Labor Relations Act. They will then share their narratives in groups of four or five to solidify their understanding of how a variety of Americans experienced the Depression.
5. America’s Participation in World War II
5.1. Why did Americans not want to join World War II before the bombing at Pearl Harbor?
5.2. How did the American government change because of World War II?
5.3. How was the war mobilized and fought differently in the Atlantic versus the Pacific?
5.4. How did America win the war in the Pacific?
5.5. How did World War II serve to advance movements for equality at home and abroad?
6. Postwar America
6.1. Cold War Struggles Abroad
6.1.1. What was Containment? How was it employed?
6.1.2. How did American foreign policy shift after World War II?
6.1.3. Why was the period between 1946 and 1990 known as the Cold War?
6.1.4. How did anti-communism drive foreign policy?
6.2. Cold War Struggles at Home
6.2.1. How was the Cold War fought domestically?
6.2.2. How did the government work to combat the perceived threat of communism domestically?
6.2.3. How were American politics shaped by the Cold War?
6.2.4. nnHow did the Cold War affect ordinary Americans?
6.3. Movements for Equality
6.3.1. Why was there a Civil Rights Movement?
6.3.2. What does “equal rights” mean?
6.3.3. What were the goals and strategies of the Civil Rights Movement?
6.3.4. How did various movements for equality build upon one another?
6.3.5. Did the Civil Rights Movement succeed?
6.3.6. How was the government involved in the Civil Rights Movement?
6.3.7. How was the war in Vietnam similar to and different from other Cold War struggles?
6.3.8. How did the war in Vietnam affect movements for equality at home?
6.4. Contemporary American Society
6.4.1. How has the role of the federal government (and especially the presidency) changed from the 1970s through more recent times?
6.4.2. How did the Cold War end, and what foreign policy developments resulted?
6.4.3. What does globalization mean, and how has it affected the United States?
6.4.4. Why is the United States more diverse now than it was in the middle of the twentieth century?
6.4.5. In what ways have issues such as education; civil rights for people of color, immigrants, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans, and disabled Americans; economic policy; recognition of economic, social and cultural rights; the environment; and the status of women remained unchanged over time? In what ways have they changed?