AMH 3931-1584-L Baby Boom America

Syllabus

AMH 3931-1564, Fall 2016
Baby Boom America
Tuesday, 1:55-2:45, Thursday, 1:55-3:50
Keene-Flint 119
Dr. Jack E. Davis
273-3398
davisjac@ufl.edu
Ofc Hours: T 11:45-12:45; R 12:45-1:45
Keene-Flint 235

One of its principal goals in this course is to introduce students to a specific topic, in this case baby boom America. As such, the course emphasizes the execution of the skills reading comprehension, research, and writing that are central to the practice of history. In other words, the faculty in the department do not want to send you off into the cold, hard world after graduation unless you can compose a well-structured paragraph, seek and find obscure but important information in a library or archive, and explain the content of a scholarly book or article. To that end, you will be required to read several books in this course and undertake several short research and writing assignments. Your work will be shared with and scrutinized by not only the professor but with the entire class. And you will be required in turn to scrutinize the work of your classmates. Generally, we will use one week to discuss reading assignments, and an alternate week to discuss your writing assignments. We will do the latter by a rotation established in class at the beginning of the semester.

Class participation: 10% of the course grade

* You must attend class. Each absence after one freebie will result in a deduction from your class-participation grade. Do NOT bother with doctors notes; they will not excuse an absence. Alas, if youre sick and miss class, you lose participation credit.

Course Assignments:

(see assignment descriptions at the end of the syllabus; each assignment–except the Writing Mechanics Exercise–is worth 15% of the course grade) Late papers will not be accepted.

  • Defining the Baby Boom
  • Writing Mechanics Exercise
  • Time Magazine Paper
  • Key Events Paper 1
  • Key Events Paper 2
  • Who Was Lois Gibbs Paper
  • Book Review

Course Grading Scale (see the UF grading scale at the end of syllabus):

  • A+ =97-100
  • A =94-96
  • A- =90-93
  • B+ =87-89
  • B =84-86
  • B- =80-83
  • C+ =77-79
  • C =74-76
  • C- =70-73
  • D =65-69

Assignments not completed earn a 0

Plagiarized assignment (see plagiarism section below) earn a 0

Assignments not turned in before or by stated due date will not be accepted. All assignments must be made available in hard copy. Emailed assignments cannot be accepted.

Required Books:

  • Mark S. Foster, A Nation on Wheels: The Automobile Culture in America Since 1945
  • Archie Loss, Pop Dreams: Music, Movies, and the Media in the 1960s
  • Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
  • Stephen Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War
  • Lawrence Wright, In the New World: Growing Up with American from the Sixties to the Eighties
  • Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

Course Schedule:

Week I (Aug 23 & 25):

Week II (Aug 30 & Sept 1):

  • Defining the Baby Boom Paper due
  • Writing Mechanics Exercise due

Week III (Sept 6 & 8):

  • Reading for discussion: Foster, A Nation on Wheels, 46-140

Week IV (Sept 13 & 15):

  • Time Magazine Paper due

Week V (Sept 20 & 22):

  • Reading for Discussion: Yates, Revolutionary Road

Week VI (Sept 27 & 29):

  • Key Events Paper 1 due

Week VII (Oct 4 & 6):

  • Reading for Discussion: Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, introduction-chapter 4

Week VIII (Oct 11 & 13):

  • Reading for Discussion: Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War, chapters 1-6

Week IX (Oct 18 & 20):

  • Key Events Paper 2 due

Week X (Oct 25 & 27):

  • Reading for discussion: Wright, In the New World

Week XI (Nov 1 & 3):

  • Reading for Discussion: Loss, Pop Dreams

Week XII (Nov 8 & 10):

  • Who was Lois Gibbs Paper due

Week XIII (Nov 15 & 17):

  • Reading for Discussion: Foster, A Nation on Wheels, chapters 7-9

Week XIV (Nov 22): (Thanksgiving Nov 24)

  • Reading for Discussion: Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, chapters 5-10

Week XV (Nov 29 & Dec 1):

  • Book Review due

Week XVI (Dec 6)

  • No class

Writing Assignment Descriptions

All assignments must draw from printed materials. Do not use Internet sources, especially Wikipedia, unless they are Internet databases (such as Proquest or Jstor) from which you can access primary sources or scholarly materials. Newspaper on-line are also fine. For hard-copy sources, use original documents or published works. Restrict yourself to the page-length limit noted for each assignment. All papers should be double spaced, computer generated, using default margin and header and footer setting, and 12-point font. Comply with the rules outlined in the Writing Mechanics Exercise. Noncompliance will result in a lower grade for your assignment. Cite all your sources using the Chicago Manual of Style rules.

Defining the Baby Boom After consulting published sources, write a one-page paper defining the baby boom and baby boomers (what was it and who are they?) and what makes this generation significant or unique in American history. You must, first of all, define what a generation is, as in what in terms temporally makes a generation.

Writing Mechanics Exercise Find the link to the WME on my web site, print it out, and answer the twenty questions. The assignment will not receive a grade itself. The assignment instead should be used as a guide for writing your papers. Violating the rules outlined on the WME will earn a penalty on your writing assignments. Failure to complete the WME will result in an automatic 5-point deduction from each assignment (save the first) completed before turning in the WME.

Time Magazine Paper Find the issue of Time magazine, a weekly publication, closest to the birthday of one of your baby-boomer parents or grandparents. Write a two-page paper about the issues contents, the key events reported, the character of the advertisements, and the tone and tempo of the times suggested by the magazine.

Key Events Paper 1 Define the individual terms writing no more than three sentences for each. Identify the larger historical significance of the event and make a connection when possible to the Baby Boom. Cite your sources.

  1. 1948, presidential executive order 9981
  2. 1948 (Oct 30-31), Donora, Pennsylvania
  3. Dr. Benjamin Spock studies
  4. Albert Sabins polio vaccine
  5. 1958, National Defense Education Act

Key Events Paper 2 Define the individual terms writing no more than three sentences for each. Identify the larger historical significance of the event and make a connection when possible to the Baby Boom. Cite your sources.

  1. 1962, Silent Spring
  2. 1962, Port Huron Statement
  3. 1963, Abington Township School District v. Schempp
  4. 1964, Civil Rights Act
  5. 1969, Stonewall Rebellion

Who Was Lois Gibbs Write a one-page brief biography of Lois Gibbs, what she did to become a national figure and what shes doing now.

Book Review Write a 700-word book review of Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War (the entire book, not only the chapter we read for class discussion). Your Review should summarize the contents of the book, and identify the types of sources the author consulted, the central argument presented, and the books strengths and weaknesses.

Additional Business:

Plagiarism:

Keep in mind that your written assignments must represent original work. You cannot copy the work of anyone else or text from the Internet. Do not cobble together paragraphs or passages of separate texts and then try to claim that you have done original and legitimate work. You must write with your own ideas and in your own words. If you copy the words of someone else without putting those words in quotation marks, you are plagiarizing. Plagiarism is theft, and it is academic dishonesty. Plagiarism is grounds for an automatic failing grade in the course, a grade that is final and that cannot be made up. Please, if you have any questions about how you are citing or using sources, come to me for the answers.

Classroom Assistance:

Please do not hesitate to contact the instructor during the semester if you have any individual concerns or issues that need to be discussed. Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office {http://www.dso.ufl.edu/drp/}. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide that documentation to the instructor when requesting accommodation.

UF Grading Scale

This is the universitys grading scale, which gives the 4.0 ranking for the letter grade you earn in the class based on the courses numeric scale cited above.

  • A = 4.0
  • A- = 3.67
  • B+ = 3.33
  • B = 3.0
  • B- = 2.67
  • C+ = 2.33
  • C = 2.0
  • C- = 1.67
  • D+ = 1.33
  • D = 1.0
  • D- = 0.67
  • E = 0.0
  • E1 = 0.0 Stopped attending or participating prior to end of class
  • I (incomplete) = 0.0

Note: A grade of C− is not a qualifying grade for major, minor, Gen Ed, or College Basic distribution credit. For further information on UF’s Grading Policy, see:

http://www.registrar.ufl.edu/catalog/policies/regulationgrades.html

http://www.isis.ufl.edu/minusgrades.html

Course Evaluation:

Students are expected to provide feedback on the quality of instruction in this course. These evaluations are conducted online at https://evaluations.ufl.edu. Evaluations are typically open during the last two or three weeks of the semester, but students will be given specific times when they are open. Summary results of these assessments are available to students at https://evaluations.ufl.edu/results.