The Great Depression For a historian, there is a lot that’s great about the Great Depression. We love change over time, and what’s better than the Republican Party going from 58% of the vote in the presidential election to less than 40% in 1932? We love connecting religion to the moment, and what better examples…
Another Man Nobody Knows There’s another man that nobody knows about – like William Dean Howells – and I think I can make a case for why he should find a place in Major Problems. And that man is Bruce Barton. Betty Crocker ad, c. 1927 Barton gained widespread popularity in the mid 1920s for…
As I was reading the material from the 1920s and thinking about “what’s missing” in Hist and Major Problems it dawned on me that when we teach about technological advances, we typically ignore one gigantic field: medicine. Hist mentions some prior advances, like the introduction of aspirin. But while we pay a lot of attention to the…
The Roaring 20s This may be the easiest, but worst developed, lecture I have. The argument is simple: “tired of reforming the nation and world, Americans turned inward to affluence, entertainment, and religious and racial fundamentalisms.” Of course, this doesn’t apply to the NAACP; it doesn’t apply to Jane Addams and her followers; it doesn’t…
The Progressive Era I’m not sure why, but the progressives always seem so boring to me. I know they’re not. Theodore Roosevelt was a ball of energy; Jane Addams was smart and savvy; World War I was horrendous; Upton Sinclair was hilarious; W. E. B. Du Bois was a genius. So why does the era…
Writing Assignments I still remember my first paper as an undergraduate. I don’t recall the question or the topic (it was something in European history), but I remember getting it back from the TA. There was scribbling all over the sides. There were phrases I could not make out. The letters “PV” seemed everywhere. Then…
Gilded Age Discussion Statue of Liberty in Paris Our discussion of the Gilded Age was fantastic. I put students into groups of 4 to 6 and explained to them that they were a family coming to the United States (or moving within it) during the Gilded Age. Where would you decide to move? Each group…
Gilded Age Lecture My first historical love was the Gilded Age. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was because the names were familiar. As a child, I had heard of Carnegie and Rockefeller. We lived near New York City and Rockefeller Center was where you could ice skate. Carnegie Hall was where really good musicians…
While the Civil War gets all the glory of movies, celebrations, and heroics, Reconstruction is rendered a sad story. It’s a tragedy. It’s a travesty. Healing defeated justice. Dreams were deferred. It led to the “nadir” of black history. I hate sad stories, even though I often find myself writing or talking about them as…
<http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/jm/hb167n97jm/files/hb167n97jm-FID4.jpg> I just cracked open my “Reconstruction” PowerPoint and shook my head in disgust. The first slide starts with a lie: “Reconstruction: 1865-1877.” First off, even though my opening is from 1865 (the devastation of Charleston, SC) and the first song is “I’m a Good Ole Rebel,” (which is part of Major Problems) but some…
