Browse:
Subject Area: Humanities
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- Abstract: In July 1839, captive West Africans rebelled and took over the Spanish slaveship Amistad . They ordered the owners to Africa but, instead, the Amistad was taken on a meandering course, finally waylaid by a U.S. Navy brig. The Africans were charged with the murder of the captain and jailed in New Haven, Connecticut. Abolitionists came to their support; ex-President John Quincy Adams represented them in court. After a long legal battle, the Supreme Court freed the "mutineers" in 1841. The following year they returned to Africa.
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- Abstract: On February 15, 1898, an explosion ripped through the American battleship Maine , anchored in Havana harbor, sinking the ship and killing 260 sailors. Americans responded with outrage, assuming that Spain, which controlled Cuba as a colony, had sunk the ship. Two months later, the slogan "Remember the Maine " carried the U.S. into war with Spain. In the midst of the hysteria, few Americans paid much attention to the report issued two weeks before the U.S. entry into the war by a Court of Inquiry appointed by President McKinley. The report stated that the committee could not definitively assign blame to Spain for the sinking of the Maine . Publishers such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer used their many newspapers to stir public opinion over the sinking of the Maine into a frenzy, hastenening U.S. entry into the conflict. This February 17, 1898, front page story from Pulitzer's New York World suggested, on the basis of little evidence, the hand of the enemy in the destruction of the Maine.
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- Abstract: In 1909, the predominantly immigrant and female workers in New York City's garment industry staged a series of job walkouts that led to a massive general strike involving more than 20,000 workers. Fifteen-year-old shirtwaist worker Clara Lemlich, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, emerged as a key organizer and speaker. An unprovoked attack on Lemlich and her fellow female strikers by anti-union thugs was recorded by New York Sun correspondent McAlister Coleman. He retold the story years later in his article, "All of Which I Saw," published in the Progressive in 1950.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Secondary, Post-secondary
- Collection:
Many Pasts (CHNM/ASHP)
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- Abstract: The 1883 adoption of four standard time zones did not come easily. Many Americans, particularly those who continued to mark the passage of time by the natural rhythms of the sun, resisted the efforts of railroad officials and scientists to impose standard time on the nation. William F. Allen, the first secretary of the railroad companies' General Time Convention (GTC), wrote and spoke tirelessly in his efforts to secure time standardization. To minimize opposition, the GTC's proposed new time zones deviated very little from existing norms: most changes were kept to half an hour or less. Sunday, November 18, 1883--known as the "day of two noons" because people were required to stop what they were doing and reset their clocks anywhere from two to thirty minutes--was remarkably orderly. This New York Times article described the scene in the nation's largest city. Local and state laws soon ratified the new standard, but as late as 1915, citizen challenges to the time standard were still being considered by the courts.
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- Abstract: Students will be introduced to the definition mode of writing. Students will learn to define a particular subject by responding in an editorial format. Students will first compose an editorial graphic organizer, which will aid in composing a completed editorial using the writing process.
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- Abstract: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, stunned virtually everyone in the United States military. Japan's carrier-launched bombers found Pearl Harbor totally unprepared. President Franklin Roosevelt quickly addressed Congress to ask for a declaration of war. In the wake of the attack and Roosevelt's speech, folklorists employed by the Library of Congress rushed out to the streets of Washington, D. C., to record public reaction. The selection of "man on the street" interviews showed a wide range of public responses to the attack and to FDR's speech. Young servicemen seemed most concerned about canceled furloughs, while a Polish immigrant swore his undying loyalty to the United States. African Americans in a poolhall insisted on their people's contribution to American history.
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- Abstract: In the early 20th century, new household technology was both accomplished and inspired by the tremendous increase in American industrial production. As in industry, mechanization and scientific management were part of a larger reorganization of work. And as in industry, efficient housekeeping was partially a response to labor unrest--both the "servant problem" and the growing disquiet of middle-class wives. A major proponent of the new housekeeping, Christine Frederick was consulting household editor for Ladies Home Journal from 1912 to 1919 and the author of numerous books and pamphlets on scientific management in the home. Frederick's pamphlet, You and Your Laundry (1922), instructed women in the daunting complexities of washing clothes--a process comprising fifteen different steps. You and Your Laundry also illustrated the close alliance between scientific housework and consumption. Written under the sponsorship of the Hurley Machine Company, Frederick's pamphlet frequently invoked its brand name and products. The pamphlet ended with a pitch for buying on installment, a payment plan that helped to spur consumption.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: At the end of this lesson you can, by means of the information on a Internet site, answer some questions about French in Belgium and Brussels.
- Subject:
Humanities
- Grade Level:
Secondary, Post-secondary
- Collection:
KlasCement
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: What does it mean to be an American? Far from being a fixed concept, over the past 150 years American identity has been constructed and reconstructed through the conflicts, interchanges, and negotiations between different ethnic, cultural, and religious groups. In this course, we will pay particular attention to two major transformations in American identity: the shift from a conception of citizenship grounded on race to one grounded on shared democratic ideals; and the development of the United States from a colonial backwater to a global superpower. Through a combination of lectures, readings, films and small discussion groups, we will examine the past as both a “foreign country” with its own customs, mores and rituals, and the source of deeply rooted patterns that continue to play out in contemporary society. Beyond covering just facts and figures, this course will focus on how the everyday lives of Americans looked, sounded, smelled, and felt. By the end of the semester, you will have a basic understanding of the major ideas, events, cultures, peoples, and personalities that have shaped the United States from the Civil War to the present day. Perhaps most importantly, through the required weekly discussion section meetings you will learn to question and evaluate historical sources and evidence, in the process becoming informed thinkers and critical readers, rather than passive recipients of conventional wisdom. You will also develop a sense of how historians analyze and interpret the past, and through the writing of a historical research paper, try your hand at the craft of history.
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- Abstract: An introduction to European history from around 1500 to the present. The central question that the course addresses is how and why Europe-- a small, relatively poor, and politically fragmented place-- became the motor of globalization and a world civilization in its won right. Put differently how did "western" become an adjective that, for better and often for worse, stands in place of "modern." Our approach will be broadly cultural, i.e. it approaches politics, economics, social life, religion and other arenas as interconnected arenas in which men and women give their world meaning. Chief topics: the Renaissance, the epochal expansion of Europe into the new world, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the formation of overseas empires and the coming of capitalism, the Scientific Revolution, the French Revolution, liberalism and the industrial revolution, socialism and the rise of labor, modern colonialism, the world wars, communism and capitalism, decolonization, and the Cold War and the European Union. There will be mini lectures on trains, witches, and campus architecture among other topics.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present - Fall 07. This course is a survey of Europe from the Renaissance to the present. An introduction to European history from around 1500 to the present. The central questions that it addresses are how and why Europe--a small, relatively poor, and politically fragmented place--became the motor of globalization and a world civilization in its own right. Put differently how did "western" become an adjective that, for better and often for worse, stands in place of "modern." Our approach will be broadly cultural, and we will consider politics, economics, society, religion, and other aspects of life as interconnected arenas in which men and women give their world meaning.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Organized temperance movements have been part of the American political landscape since the early 19th century. Reform groups, dominated at various times by clergy, social elites, workingmen, and clubwomen, tried alternately to convince individuals to take a pledge against drinking alcohol, to promote drinking only in moderation, and to enact laws prohibiting the production and sale of liquor. Prior to the ratification in 1919 of the 18th Amendment banning liquor nationwide, two-thirds of the states had passed similar legislation. After rampant noncompliance with the Amendment led to its repeal in 1933, anti-liquor advocates focused protests against liquor advertising on the radio. While the Federal Communications Commission did not have the authority to ban liquor ads, their threats to hold license renewal hearings for offending stations induced broadcasters to self-impose a ban. Similarly, in 1948, the television industry voluntarily decided to restrict alcoholic beverage advertising to beer and wine commercials. Congress, nevertheless, proposed legislation in the 1950s to prohibit all liquor ads from radio, TV, and in interstate commerce. In the following testimony, an attorney for an advertising association argued that a proposed House bill would interfere with the "right to sell," while a police sergeant and member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union contended in a Senate hearing that children should be protected from televised liquor ads in their homes. No legislation was enacted, and in November 1996 due to a sharp decrease in sales of hard liquor, the Distilled Spirits Council voted to allow advertising of its products on TV. In December 2001, NBC became the first network since 1948 to broadcast hard liquor ads.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Op het einde van deze les kun je uit de beluisterde conversatie afleiden welk huisdier het meest geschikt zou zijn.
- Subject:
Humanities
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
KlasCement
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Father Charles Coughlin occupied both a strange and a familiar place in American politics during the 1930s. Politically radical, a passionate democrat, he nevertheless was a bigot who freely vented angry, irrational charges and assertions. A Catholic priest, he broadcast weekly radio sermons that by 1930 drew as many as forty-five million listeners. By the mid-1930s, Coughlin's growing extremism, his increasing determination to cast political problems in terms of free-floating conspiracy, and his persistent attacks on a popular president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, made many of his fellow Catholics nervous. John Ryan, a fellow Catholic priest, had long been active as a social reformer and university educator. In a September 1936 radio speech, he denounced Coughlin for his attacks on FDR. Ryan's address provoked a host of letters; these three typical letters to Ryan reflected the character of Coughlin's devoted support and the capitulation to hatred that characterized Coughlin's movement in the late 1930s.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Op het einde van deze les kun je een korte tekst schrijven met de 100 woorden die gemiddeld het meest voorkomen in Engelse teksten.
- Subject:
Humanities
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
KlasCement
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: In 1927, responding to the seemingly overpowering claims of advertisers and mass marketers, engineer Frederick Schlink and economist Stuart Chase published Your Money's Worth, which argued for an "extension of the principle of buying goods according to impartial scientific tests rather than according to the fanfare and triumphs of higher salesmanship." Your Money's Worth became an instant best-seller, and the authors organized Consumers' Research, a testing bureau that provided information and published product tests in a new magazine, Consumers' Research Bulletin. The 1929 stock market crash heightened suspicion of consumer capitalism, and the magazine had 42,000 subscribers by 1932. In 1933, Schlink and Arthur Kallet (executive secretary of Consumers' Research) published 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics. The book struck a responsive chord in depression-era America--it went through thirteen printings in its first six months and became one of the best-selling books of the decade. The book's first chapter ("The Great American Guinea Pig"), gave a flavor of their vigorous arguments.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: The deadly lung disease silicosis is caused when miners, sandblasters, and foundry and tunnel workers inhale fine particles of silica dust--a mineral found in sand, quartz, and granite. In 1935, approximately 1,500 workers--largely African Americans who had come north to find work--were killed by exposure to silica dust while building a tunnel in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. Ordinarily, silicosis takes a several years to develop, but these West Virginia tunnel workers were falling ill in a matter of months because of exposure to unusually high concentrations of silica dust. The crisis over silicosis suddenly became a national issue, as seen in this article in the radical newspaper Peoples' Press . In 1936 congressional hearings on the Gauley Bridge disaster, it was revealed that company officials and engineers wore masks to protect themselves when they visited the tunnel, but they failed to provide masks for the tunnelers themselves, even when the workers requested them.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: In this lesson, students use a guided reading to look at a report on the status of education in North Carolina in 1869, and discuss the reasons given then for why the Governor and Legislature should support educating North Carolina's children. They are provided an opportunity to compare and contrast the 1869 document against their own ideas about the civic duty to attend school through age sixteen, and its relative value to the state and the country.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: A short six question quiz to see how much you know about 18th Century Ireland
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Primary, Secondary
- Collection:
Scoilnet
