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Teaching U.S. History with an Eye to the World


Laura Emerson Talamante
California State University, Dominguez Hills, Carson, California

PREPARING TO TEACH a course outside one's field of specialty or even continental comfort zone provides a unique if somewhat daunting opportunity. With Western Civilization classes as my teaching experience for entry-level college courses, I approached teaching "The United States Since Reconstruction" with some trepidation. However, after spending time talking with my colleagues in U.S. history and reminding myself of my general teaching and research interests in gender, class, and race/ethnicity, I dug into choosing my texts and carving out my big-picture analysis.1 1
      Through the advice of several seasoned colleagues, I chose a well-known textbook on U.S. history and a primary source reader that allowed my students some breadth in following their own interests in course themes. One colleague, who had just changed his specialty from British to U.S. History, also suggested I try a text that would open up the context of major events beyond national borders. In addition, searching the Internet for other items of interest brought me more ideas for teaching U.S. history with an eye to the world. Armed with A People and a Nation; For the Record: A Documentary History of America; History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History; and Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic: College Students Explore Their Roots, I began the task of shaping my course.2 2
      The textbook and primary sources helped identify some of the major themes of the class that explored U.S. political, social, economic, and cultural history through the lens of race, class, and gender. Using film, music, advertising, political propaganda, and poetry examples to accentuate lecture and discussion points, I had the basics of the course set. However, I also included international perspectives, which I am convinced pulled the course together in new and interesting ways for my students. As young adults in a global age beyond political alliances, students benefit from these perspectives in a variety of ways. In regards to teaching U.S. history, I also believe that students came away from the course with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of national history and the complexities of what it means to be an American citizen. 3
      To this end, I use History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History, which covers major moments in American history that often overlapped with other nations and developing countries.3 The book covers the breadth of the history of the United States, beginning with New World explorations and encounters, to colonialism, through recent history that even today challenges U.S. and international political leaders, such as North Korea as a potential nuclear power. To incorporate this text into the course, I chose nine themes for a ten-week class, and students organized themselves into groups based on the available topics. Each group prepared a presentation comparing how U.S. and foreign textbooks each covered a chosen topic.4 After presenting, groups analyzed how the project had contributed to their understanding of the topic and course themes to date. Each student was also required to provide an individual analysis on five of the nine presentations in terms of how they added to their understanding of the topic at hand and course themes to date. 4
      The goal was for students to evaluate U.S. history from a broader perspective that allowed them to make links between various periods and events that we had studied. Thus, students needed to think about how to make connections between the lectures, the textbook, and the primary sources throughout the course. One of the most enduring impressions for students was the realization that history is not just a series of names, dates, and important events—or facts—but an integral part of how humans come to understand their place in their society and the world. Such understandings, they soon realized, differ from country to country based upon political, social, economic, and cultural perspectives—which are also influenced by the consequences of peoples or countries interacting with those considered foreigners. Time and again, students wrote of how much better they understood the specific historical events we studied due to the larger context of world history, and this was achieved without having the time and opportunity to delve deeply into the histories of the various countries encountered in History Lessons. However, in an introductory course to U.S. history, students achieved a deeper understanding of the complex nature of any national history and its larger global connections.5 5
      As a foundation for this project, the course begins with the promises and problems of Reconstruction after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. I combine this with an exceptional film for introducing students to the long-term effects of slavery and racism, Marlon Riggs' Ethnic Notions: Black People in White Minds.6 Western expansion follows, including the political, social, economic, and cultural clash of American expansionists and Native Americans, where students encounter such concepts as Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism. Students learn how the West quickly became a multicultural region built upon the near decimation of one society and the rising strength and power of a developing American society, which was experiencing a dramatic increase in immigrant labor, especially from southern and eastern Europe, China, and Mexico. The information on labor brings about another realization for students—discrimination against foreigners included groups from Europe that most students typically think of as white. Also studied is how Western expansion helped fast forward U.S. industrial growth. Class struggles, students soon discover, could also be explained, in part, by the elites' application of the principles of Social Darwinism to lower-class economic, social, and political issues. Within these topics, we also look at the use of gender stereotypes for limiting women's political, social, and economic rights. Thus, the course begins by evaluating the end of the nineteenth century through the lens of citizenship rights—including their promises and limitations—and the concepts of democracy and freedom. 6
      An example of how History Lessons works with such larger course themes follows these initial forays into U.S. history. The first group presentation explores Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War. As we shift from Industrialism to Imperialism, the group presentations also shift to the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. Students note how the same racist and paternalistic beliefs systems that created discrimination against blacks, Native Americans, and various immigrant groups were applied to Filipinos, who were judged insufficiently civilized to govern themselves. Thus, the presentations and the differing perspectives on these wars work in tandem with students' prior knowledge and builds upon established concepts. They make further connections between the political, economic, social, and cultural ideologies of Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, and Roosevelt Corollary and the growing international importance of Industrialism, Nationalism, and Imperialism. Many students link U.S. support for Cuban independence to American democratic principles and understand how Cubans, Filipinos, and American anti-Imperialists, such as Mark Twain, criticized U.S. policies that interfered with Cuban and Filipino independence. Although this may seem like a depressing way to begin U.S. history, these topics and their international importance shed light on how democracy and freedom, even when functioning for some, provided the basis for others to fight for their right to these same liberties in the U.S. and abroad. 7
      World War II provides another good example of the pedagogical effectiveness of teaching U.S. history through the broader context of world history. My lectures focus on two aspects of this watershed event: the confluence of factors that led to the war and the use of hyper-racialized propaganda to promote the war. Group presentations center on three additional aspects of WWII: D-Day, the Resistance Movement, and the Pacific Theater of the war. Once again, students see links between previous course themes and the topic at hand. Industrialism, Nationalism, and Imperialism continued to influence world events as Germany, Japan, and Italy became Ultra-Nationalist in the post-World War I period, when support declined for new imperialist growth as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and the (albeit failing) League of Nations. 8
      Based upon a group presentation that underlines the countries' various interests and perceptions of the outcome of the Treaty of Versailles, students already understand that both Germany and Italy felt cheated by the United States, Great Britain, and France. The international reverberations of the Depression and American isolationism along with British and French appeasement give students the international background to comprehend how Hitler could amass so much support using ultra-nationalistic and racial propaganda as a means of returning Germany to glory. Additionally, students also come to understand that Japan, too, used ultra-nationalism and anti-imperialistic propaganda against the U.S. to promote their industrial and imperialistic ambitions in the Pacific Rim, justified with concepts of Japanese racial superiority. Each of these elements adds nuance to my own discussion of the use of hyper-racialized propaganda by both Germany and the United States in their support of entering and winning the war. 9
      Using this background, students better understand, but also find themselves conflicted by the realization that the United States also had its own concentration camps, which came to be known as Japanese Internment Camps or Relocation Centers. Rabbit in the Moon, the film memoir/documentary by Emiko Omori, gives students first-hand accounts of the experiences of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during WWII in America.7 I ask students to write a brief reaction to the film based on the experiences of the Issei, Nisei, and Kibei.8 The Issei were the first-generation Japanese immigrants, who could never become citizens at the time. The Nisei were their children, born on American soil, who were full American citizens. The Kibei were also the children of Issei with full American citizenship, but since they had been educated in Japan, American authorities were even more suspicious that they might be enemy spies. The film details how the traditional roles and family structures of the three groups were under constant stress. All were bereft of their rights and property, yet still under U.S. authority in livable but harsh camp conditions where two and three families often lived in one room. However, in terms of leadership within camps, the U.S. ignored the older Issei generation and granted some power to cooperative Nisei, who became members of the Japanese American Citizens League. Before the war's end, internees were asked to answer a loyalty questionnaire that created confusion and division within the camps. No one knew how the questionnaire would effect an individual's or a family's status. The testimony of the filmmaker's sister, Chizuko Omori, complicates the issue further for students in terms of U.S. and international perspectives, nationalism, racism, and citizenship rights:

If you took a questionnaire of this type and just gave it to everybody in the country ... Let's take the Italians and the Germans who were the Axis forces in World War II. And I bet, if you had taken a questionnaire like this and forced them all to answer it, you would find they had huge families back in Italy. They had people in the Italian and German armies who were relatives and such. And these people often lived in enclaves, where German was still the spoken language. And in fact, there were fascist organized groups of Italians and Germans in this country. And yet, they weren't even touched.9
Once again students are asked to consider the various promises and limitations of citizenship, democracy, and freedom.		 10
      A complimentary aspect of the course also analyzed U.S. history through immigration, providing another global context for the course. Becoming American Becoming Ethnic: College Students Explore Their Roots is a collection of essays submitted over an eighteen-year period in Thomas Dublin's college courses at State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of California at San Diego.10 Dublin has organized these essays both chronologically and thematically into three sections that explore immigrant and ethnic roots in America: (1) Family Traditions, (2) Our Parents, Ourselves, and (3) Ethnicity in Our Lives. Part I examines the struggle to adapt to life in a new linguistic and cultural setting, the establishment of immigrant communities, keeping ethnic, religious, and family traditions alive, and the resulting stresses between first and second-generation Americans as related to students by their grandparents and parents. Part II continues to explore such issues, but in relationship to students' own experiences with their parents, moving the narrative further into the twentieth century and dealing with such issues as Japanese Internment and its long-term legacy. Part III brings the reader closer to the end of the twentieth century and addresses balancing ethnic, multi-ethnic, biracial, and American identity.11 11
      These essays form the basis of two long-term assignments designed to help students understand U.S. history through the lens of citizenship and immigration. After some experimentation with having students read these essays as an introduction to the history of immigration, assimilation and its challenges, and the practice of oral history as preparation for their research project on family roots, I began requiring a journal assignment.12 As students read the essays throughout the quarter, they write journal entries reflecting on the experiences they are reading about. Part of the goal is to get students thinking about what questions they need to ask regarding their family roots. Journals must additionally engage the essays and broader themes of the course, especially race/ethnicity, class, and gender. 12
      The combination of the Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic essays and corresponding journal assignment puts students on the path to their American Roots Oral History Project. Students must interview family members and are asked to include members beyond their nuclear family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for their matrilineal and patrilineal lines of descent. While they are often unaware of their family history, I remind them that talking to as broad a range of family members as possible will help them to better understand their family roots in America and abroad. Many students express concern that they will not be able to include immigrant experiences because of the generations of distance from earlier immigrant ancestors. I have adapted Thomas Dublin's American roots project to ask students to think more broadly about their roots and what it means to be an American. Therefore, I require students to explore their family roots by discussing geographic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. I give a detailed explanation of how to think about their roots more broadly and to realize that they all have interesting and important family roots to explore. My goal is to complicate how they think about U.S. history and what it means to be an American. Students make a personal connection by comparing their family histories to the essays in Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic and by analyzing how their family histories relate to course themes. 13
      Whether or not individual students have experienced immigration, the Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic Journal and accompanying American Roots Oral History Project push students to think about the long-term history of American citizenship and its connection to world history, especially in terms of the push and pull factors of immigration. These projects also give concrete testimony, using oral history, of the centrality of immigration to the historical development of the United States. 14
      Throughout the course, the class shifts back and forth between U.S. perspectives and experiences and their relationship to the larger context of world history. The History Lessons group presentations and the Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic oral history projects provide students with exposure to other viewpoints and a deeper context for the history we are studying without the need to try and cover any given country outside the U.S. holistically. World history, thus, serves as a framework for U.S. history rather than a goal within itself, allowing a rich pedagogical source for the classroom that is served rather than hindered by its vastness. 15


Notes

1.  My research interests center on women and the possibilities and limitations of citizenship practices during the French Revolution. My work in Marseille demonstrates how, despite their exclusion from holding political office or voting, women navigated the spaces between public and private, political and domestic during the French Revolution as a means of exercising power within society. My research informs my teaching goals; my students explore how gender, class, and race influenced historical access to power. Historical study allows students to see that political, social, and cultural ideals shape our interactions and access to power; and yet, we are an important force for challenging the limitations of these ideals.

2.  This class was designed to fulfill Cal Poly Pomona's U.S. History and Institutions requirement for graduation. See Mary Beth Norton, et al., A People and a Nation, Volume 2: Since 1865, Brief Sixth Edition, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003); David E. Shi and Holly A. Mayer, For the Record: A Documentary History of America, Volume Two: From Reconstruction through Contemporary Times, Second Edition, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004); Thomas Dublin, ed., Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic: College Students Explore Their Roots, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996); Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward, ed., History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History, (New York: The New Press, 2004). I owe special thanks to Steven Wardinski for his suggestion to use History Lessons.

3.  Several book reviews analyze the strengths and weaknesses of History Lessons. While the authors have chosen events from colonial history through the present that correspond well to U.S. history textbooks, it is true that very little analysis and context appears alongside the chosen excerpts from foreign textbooks. In some ways, this works well for asking students to provide their own analysis of why countries that experienced the same event have different conclusions regarding the causes, outcomes, and long-term impact of these events. See for example, James F. Adomanis, review of History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History, by Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward, ed., The History Teacher 38, no. 4 (2005) <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/38.4/br_8.html> (14 January 2008); Brett Berliner, review of History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History, by Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward, ed., Education Review: A Journal of Book Reviews, (18 August 2004) <http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev295.htm> (14 January 2008); Marilyn K. Parr, review of History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History, by Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward, ed., History: Reviews of New Books 33, no. 3 (2005): 122.

4.  In addition to our course textbook, I provided six additional U.S. textbooks on reserve to help student analyses. Students also did some research using print and Internet sources.

5.  Such an approach to U.S. History is not new to the debates of the discipline. David Thelen discusses the subject of the internationalization of U.S. History and its benefits to the discipline in "Of Audiences, Borderlands, and Comparisons: Toward the Internationalization of American History," The Journal of American History 79,2 (September 1992): 432–462. His article appears as part of this issue's main feature, Toward the Internationalization of American History: A Round Table. Contributors explored world perspectives on U.S. historical events and historical interpretations, offering alternative frameworks for a discipline that some argued had become narrow and overspecialized.

6. Ethnic Notions: Black People in White Minds, prod. Marlon Riggs, 56 minutes, California Newsreel, 1987, videocassette. Ethnic Notions uses an amalgam of American cultural artifacts. For example, the film begins with a simple introduction to primary school readers, which used degrading, stereotypical black images to teach the letters of the alphabet. California newsreel promotes the films importance for understanding how such cultural artifacts shaped U.S. history and race relations: "Ethnic Notions is Marlon Riggs' Emmy-winning documentary that takes viewers on a disturbing voyage through American history, tracing for the first time the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice. Through these images we can begin to understand the evolution of racial consciousness in America. Loyal Toms, carefree Sambos, faithful Mammies, grinning Coons, savage Brutes, and wide-eyed Pickaninnies roll across the screen in cartoons, feature films, popular songs, minstrel shows, advertisements, folklore, household artifacts, even children's rhymes. These dehumanizing caricatures permeated popular culture from the 1820s to the Civil Rights period and implanted themselves deep in the American psyche. Narration by Esther Rolle and commentary by respected scholars shed light on the origins and devastating consequences of this 150 yearlong parade of bigotry. Ethnic Notions situates each stereotype historically in white society's shifting needs to justify racist oppression from slavery to the present day. The insidious images exacted a devastating toll on black Americans and continue to undermine race relations" <http://newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0026> (14 January 2008). See also, Nancy Grant, review of Ethnic Notions, prod. Marlon Riggs, The Journal of American History 74, no. 3 (December 1987): 1107–9; Sharon R. Sherman, "Double-Edged Power: Historical Records of Gender and Race," review of Ethnic Notions, prod. Marlon Riggs and Hearts and Minds, prod. Pat Ferrero, Western Folklore 47, no. 3 (July 1988): 217–23; E. Lewis, review of Ethnic Notions, prod. Marlon Riggs, The Oral History Review 16 (Fall 1988): 128–30. My sincerest thanks to Brendesha Tynes for sharing her success with using this video in her various college courses.

7. Rabbit in the Moon, prod. Emiko Omori and Chizuko Omori, 85 minutes, Wabi-Sabi Productions, 1999, videocassette. Students hear in the words of Rabbit in the Moon filmmaker Emiko Omori, winner of the Sundance Film Festival award for Best Documentary Cinematography, how the Japanese themselves could not bring themselves to refer to these complexes as concentration camps after the war. While acknowledging that they had in fact been concentration camps according to President Roosevelt, Omori explains how the Japanese felt guilty using the term concentration camp since in comparison to Nazi concentration camp internees, the Japanese in America "had not suffered enough." See also, Betsy Sherman, review of Rabbit in the Moon, Art New England 20, no. 4 (1999). PBS has created an interactive teaching site to accompany this film that provides additional pedagogical opportunities to explore: <http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov1999/rabbitinthemoon/index.html> (14 January 2008). The Smithsonian National Museum of American History has an excellent online site regarding the Japanese experience that explores the links between nationalism, racism, and citizenship issues during this period of U.S. history: <http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/resources/curator.html> (14 January 2008).

8.  Students are asked to write two paragraphs on how Rabbit in the Moon helped them to understand the difficulties that WWII posed for Japanese American citizens and their families in the U.S.

9.  As quoted from Rabbit in the Moon on the PBS website teaching aides dealing with questions 27 and 28 of the loyalty questionnaire <http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov1999/rabbitinthemoon/loyalty/index.html> (14 January 2008). See pages 1 and 2 of this section, which explore question 27 ("Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?") and question 28 ("Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attack by foreign and domestic forces, and forswear any allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other government, power or organization?"). The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco also provides an exceptional online site for this topic, including primary sources, such as the "Enemy Alien Curfew Friday" article by the United Press in 1942, which details restrictions on Japanese Americans and those classified as enemy aliens: German, Japanese, and Italian immigrants <http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/intern1.html> (14 January 2008).

10.  Mary Geraghty, "Helping Students Understand Their Roots," review of Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic: College Students Explore Their Roots, Thomas Dublin, ed., The Chronicle of Higher Education 43, no. 4 (20 September 1996): A9.

11.  Dublin discusses his experiences in the classroom and the benefits of these students' projects that link academic readings to personal experiences in "Drawing on the Personal: 'Roots' Papers in the Teaching of American History," Social Studies, Vol. 88, 1997.

12.  I have adapted my journal assignment from Jan Decher's Academic Journal assignment for the Biology 217 Mammalogy course at the University of Vermont <http://www.uvm.edu/~jdecher/AcadJourn.html> (14 January 2008). Professor Decher adapted his journal assignment from T. Fulwiler, Teaching with Writing, (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1986).


Appendix I

Group Project Exploring History Lessons:
How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History

Objective: For this project, each group will be responsible for teaching their classmates about particular moments in U.S. History as depicted in foreign textbooks. U.S. history, as we will all discuss, has been influenced by and has influenced major historical developments around the world.

Organization of the Presentation: Each group will have approximately 25–30 minutes to present their topic to the class. Members of the group should divide the preparation and presentation of the historical subjects they are covering equally among themselves. Groups are welcome to use any format they desire for presenting their materials. Let me encourage you to think creatively. You may present this material as a newscast, history conference, re-enactment of historical debates, etc. The more creative your presentation, the more engaged your audience will be!

If you use a PowerPoint presentation, you must limit the number of slides to no more than 6 slides of historical context. You may add additional slides for maps or important images that you plan to discuss with the class. Each slide should also limit the amount of material presented in order not to overwhelm the viewer. Your slide should only help the viewer to identify main points that you will elaborate on. Pace yourself and remember what it is like to be the one taking notes and trying to listen to the presenters.

What to cover: Groups will need to compare and contrast how foreign textbooks and U.S. textbooks cover the same events. Your job is to get the class to think about how the similarities and differences can be explained. What were the different issues involved, and the goals and consequences for the various countries?

DO NOT give your classmates a play-by-play recitation of the historical events. Instead, each group should pick out some key points and give enough historical context so that the group's analysis of foreign and U.S. perspectives make sense. I will be putting additional U.S. textbooks on reserve in the library to aid your research for this assignment.

Individual Evaluation of the Group Project: Finally, in order to receive full credit for this assignment, EACH member of the group must turn in an individual evaluation within ONE week of their presentation.
  1. This evaluation must cover what a student's contribution was to their group's preparation and execution of the presentation entailed. (~1 paragraph)
  2. More importantly, each member must reflect upon how the project contributed to his or her understanding of U.S. history. You will need to do more than tell me that the project gave you a deeper understanding of U.S. history. Please use specific historical context to explain what you have learned from this project. Address your group's project in its entirety, not just the material that you researched. The best evaluation will engage course lectures and readings as part of your analysis of the group project and U.S. history.
Grades: Individual grades for the project will be assigned according to the overall group presentation (50 points) and the individual evaluation (50 points). I will be evaluating how well your group has met the objective of the assignment, followed directions, and organized the presentation beforehand. For individual evaluations, I will be evaluating your contribution to the presentation and your intellectual engagement with your group project and the course readings and lectures. (46–50 = Excellent; 40–45 = Above Average; 35–39 = Average; Under 35 = Below Average)


Appendix II

Student Reflections on History Lessons:
How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History

Assignment: Students will reflect upon the historical perspectives of the United States and other countries for the topics presented by student groups. Assignment must be typed and adhere to the standard rules of grammar and punctuation.

What to cover: Students should start by identifying the subject area of the presentation. What is the time frame in U.S. history? What were some of the comparisons made by the group presentation between how foreign textbooks and U.S. textbooks cover the same events? How did the group presentation help you to understand these events from both U.S. and foreign perspectives? How can you relate the presentation to our course lectures and readings to date?

NOTE: It is not enough to write that the presentation related to the lectures and readings on the same topic. You must analyze how the presentation specifically related to our course themes, using examples from the lectures, the textbook and the primary sources.

Grades: Each reflection will be worth 20 points (5 reflections = 100 points possible). I will be evaluating how well your reflection has met the objectives of the assignment. Have students addressed all of the assigned questions? Does the student bring in specific examples from the group presentation, lectures and assigned readings? How well has the student employed critical analysis in the reflection? (19–20 = Excellent; 17–18 = Above Average; 14–16 = Average; Under 14 = Below Average)


Appendix III

Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic Journal

What is a journal? A journal is a place to practice writing and thinking. It differs from a diary in that it should not be merely a personal recording of the day's events. It differs from your class notebook in that it should not be merely an objective recording of academic data. Think of your journal rather as a personal record of your reactions to the personal reflections on being or becoming an American as presented in the essays in Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic: College Students Explore Their Roots.

What to write: Make notes to yourself about your reactions to the essays you read in Becoming American. Record your thoughts, feelings, moods, and experiences as you learn about the history of the diverse population of Americans in the United States. Use your journal to reflect upon how others' experiences engage you in thinking about the history of the United States that we are studying. Use your journal to begin considering how your experiences and those of your family members compare and contrast to those you are reading about.

Be sure to include the connections you make in your journal between your family roots and individual experiences with those in Becoming American in your American Roots paper.

When to write: Try to write in your journal weekly, at least twice each week when there are assigned readings in Becoming American. It is important to develop the habit of using your journal even when you are not in an academic environment. Good ideas and questions do not always wait for convenient times for you to record them.

How to write: You should write however you feel like writing. The point is to think on paper without worrying about the mechanics of writing. The quantity you write is as important as the quality. Use language that expresses your personal voice—language that comes naturally to you.

Technical Requirements for the Journal:
  1. Please use an 8 1/2 × 11-inch notebook that can be placed in a three-ring binder when turning in the entire project. Computers are not recommended. If you do use a computer, be sure that you keep a back-up copy and a printed copy of everything that you write. Loss of your journal through a computer error (such as a defective disk) is your responsibility—as is loss of a notebook, of course.
  2. Start each new entry on a new sheet of paper. Date each entry.
  3. Write long entries and develop your thoughts as fully as possible.
  4. Include both academic and personal entries.


Appendix IV

American Roots Oral History Project

Research Questions: Students will conduct research on their American roots by conducting interviews with family members. Students will trace their family roots through both paternal and maternal forbearers. Students will investigate their family roots through geographic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds.
  1. What has been your family's geographic background within/outside the United States?
    1. What reasons have motivated migration within U.S. boundaries?
    2. How has this affected your family or your individual experiences as Americans?
    3. If immigration is part of the family history, students should also discuss issues such as family background prior to entering the United States.
      1. What were the motivations for immigration to the United States?
      2. What types of transitions to American society did family members experience?
  2. What ethnic traditions has your family kept/lost over time? (Think culturally in terms of language, foods, artistic traditions, etc.)
  3. Have religious traditions served as a basis for family traditions or unity?
  4. How have all of these factors shaped your family and individual experiences in being or becoming an American?
Analysis: Students must compare and contrast their family/individual experiences to those found in Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic: College Students Explore Their Roots and reflect upon how this project has shaped their understanding of their identity as an American.
  1. Therefore, students should also do research to help situate their family and individual experiences within the historical context of our class readings and lectures.
  2. Research beyond class sources may be helpful in understanding one's own family's journey as Americans.
Organization: The most effective organization will combine the discussion of your research questions with your analysis of how your family experiences compare and contrast to course lectures, group presentations, discussions, readings, and films.
  1. Use your entries in the Becoming American Journal to help integrate the connections you have been making during the quarter.
  2. Use class notes and readings to enhance your discussion and analysis of your family history and your experiences, especially how you have come to think of your identity as an American as a result of this project.
  3. Please include images when possible, especially of family members, to help bring your project to life!
Technical Requirements for the American Roots Oral History Project:
  1. Paper must be 5–7 pages in length, double-spaced, with 12-point font and 1-inch margins.
  2. Include a title page, and on subsequent pages include headers/footers with your name and page number.
  3. Footnotes must be used to cite ALL sources referenced (for both direct quotes and paraphrased ideas, including family interviews). No parenthetical references. Please consult the Chicago Manual of Style or Student's Guide for Writing College Papers by Kate Turabian for proper formatting. Additionally, ask me if you have questions on footnoting sources; points will be deducted for ignoring this requirement.
  4. Plagiarism will result in an automatic "F" for the paper and referral to the dean. Please ask if you are unsure of what constitutes plagiarism.
  5. AN ELECTRONIC VERSION OF YOUR ORAL HISTORY PAPER MUST BE TURNED IN WITH THE FINAL PROJECT. You may send the electronic version as an email attachment in MSWord.
  6. Make a Table of Contents for the entire project that includes page numbers for all parts of the project, including titles for all journal entries.
    1. At the end of the quarter please organize the journal and the essay into three parts:

      Part I: American Roots Essay

      Part II: Becoming American, Becoming Ethnic Journal

      Part III: Bibliography — NOTE: The bibliography should include all sources referenced for the project, including family members interviewed.

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