We are still in the Gilded Age, but politics and culture are already responding to major shifts in ideology. If you are still confused with the differences between Social Darwinism and Reform Darwinism, go back and review last week's lesson. We aren't done with this. Also, Nativism isn't limited to history. Here's an article from The New Yorker in 2007 referencing nativism in McCain's campaign, although I'd argue nativism never left. We'll get to the Japanese Internment shortly. Here's a more recent article, appearing in Slate in 2017, discussing President Trump and the "Muslim Ban." I realize both of those articles are coming from a liberal-leaning source, but nativism isn't only a liberal term. Here's another, for balance, from Fox News . This article discusses two terms we talked about yesterday, nativism and isolationism. Many issues we face today carry similar themes as the ones we are reading about in history. Let...
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Hi Class, I will be traveling to Albuquerque for an academic conference this week and may not be able to respond quickly. It will be best to reach me through email through Sunday. Your assignment this week is to finish reading The Great Gatsby and write the Great Gatsby paper. You can use the prompts I handed out in class or you can come up with your own. What I do not want is a summary. Make it an argument. Tell me about the symbolism or the theme or how you think Daisy and Gatsby are portrayed. Tell me how this novel reinforces or rejects Marxism. Connect this novel to another idea. The Gilded Age: •The period from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the twentieth century was an era noted for the widening social and economic gap between the powerful and the powerless, the “haves and the have-nots.” •Name given by Mark Twain for its greed and vulgarity, marked by conspicuous consumption by the newly rich as they flaunted their enormous personal wealth…the same ...
Our last class focused on Westward Expansion. Here are some main points for you to keep in mind. Like the South, the West has always been a region wrapped in myths and stereotypes. Manifest Destiny is the belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was justified and inevitable. Between 1870 and 1900, Americans settled more land in the West than in the centuries before 1870. Much of this expansion and mythology stems from American landscape artists, like Bierstadt and Russell. In order to attract more women to the West, some states allowed women to vote and hold office. Wyoming was first, then Utah, Colorado, and Idaho soon followed. As settlers spread across the continent, some 25,000 Native Americans, many originally from East of the Mississippi, were forced into what was supposed to be their last refuge. The fighting between the Native Americans and the Americans continued, as Americans repeate...
Dear Parents and Students, I’m sure many of your students came home today discussing a final project I assigned today in class. I want to fill you in on this. Essentially, I have asked your students to pick a project they are either passionate about or really want to accomplish. They will spend the last 20 minutes of each class working on these projects with their peers and with me. The rest of the work will need to be worked on during the week. I will have weekly check-in passes for each student that meets the week’s goals to make sure they are adequately budgeting their time. So why am I doing this? I have a couple of reasons. In today’s business world, we need innovative thinkers who have a passionate drive to solve some incredibly complex problems. Forward-thinking companies know the value of encouraging workers to pursue personally meaningful projects as they exercise their critical thinking skills and create exciting new products to improve life (and the bottom line). At 3M,...