Course Description
Introduces secondary social studies education students to modern U.S. history, with emphasis on how to teach history content, concepts, and methods to students at the middle school, high school, and introductory college levels.
Athena Title
History for History Teachers
Non-Traditional Format
This course is restricted to undergraduate and graduate students in the secondary social studies education program or middle grades education program with an emphasis in social studies, and history graduate students. It is open to history majors with instructor approval.
Prerequisite
One HIST course
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course has two main goals: 1. Students will gain familiarity with a historical subject they may teach in the future. 2. Students will be introduced to the historian’s craft (how we approach the past, gather evidence, and write about the past), which will be useful in any history course they teach in the future.
Topical Outline
1. Approaches to history (introduction to historiography, methodological approaches, reading analytically). 2. Introduction to research methods (database searches, interpreting primary sources, rules of evidence, citations, bibliographies, effective note-taking). 3. Readings, discussions, and lectures on the topic of the course. 4. Reconstruction. 5. Yankee Leviathan and politics divided. 6. Immigrants, urbanization, and capitalism unbound. 7. Reform of all kinds. 8. Imperialism and world war. 9. Culture class and the roots of depression. 10. Yankee Leviathan and World War II. 11. Civil rights, anti-gay wrongs, and the Cold War. 12. Democratic Leviathan and politics divided. 13. Leviathan unmanned (feminism, the hostage crisis, and deindustrialization). Remaining classes will be devoted to exams and discussions of research projects. Assignments: In addition to participating in class discussion and exams, students will write short research papers.