Spring 2007 Semester

Download the Spring 2007 Syllabus as PDF

This semester a significant portion of the required reading materials will be available only online. We have gathered a variety of primary and secondary source materials that individual TAs will assign for reading on a weekly basis. You can read these materials either online, or print them out for your convenience. As this section of our Web site is closed to the general public, your TA will provide you instructions to use in accessing these materials. For copyright legal purposes, we urge you to not share these instructions with individuals not enrolled in our course.

My office is 4106 Humanities (263-1814). Office hours will be 11-12 Tuesday, 11-12 Thursday, or by appointment if necessary. Students can best reach me through email. That address is: skschult@wisc.edu.

• James West Davidson, et al, Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative of the American Republic, 6th ed., vol. 2, Since 1865
• Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
• Primary and Secondary Documents (available only online). In discussion sections the Teaching Assistants will give you the proper URL for accessing the documents, as well as the precise assignments of what to read and by when.

Recommended for purchase (students will be required to read):

• Sinclair, Upton, The Jungle (also available online to registered students at 102 web site).

Course Meetings and Requirements: We require all students to attend two lectures (75 minute) and one (50 minute) discussion section each week.  Since the discussion sections are an integral and vital part of this course, Teaching Assistants will take attendance at the discussion section meetings.  Failure to attend sections faithfully will have a significant impact on a student’s final grade for the course.  All examinations will be in essay and short answer format.  There will be a mid-term (scheduled in class on October 24th), and a final examination, scheduled (by the College) on Friday, December 22nd, in a room to be announced later.

Writing Assignment: All students enrolled in the course will write at least one essay on a historical topic to be chosen after consultation either with a Teaching Assistant or the Instructor. All students registered for "Honors" credit in the course will work directly with Professor Schultz on this assignment. The nature of and requirements for the writing assignment(s) may vary among the different Teaching Assistants, but in no instance will the total quantity of writing vary from section to section.  Due date(s) will be announced in discussion sections.

Readings: We will give the specific order of reading assignments in discussion sections. Students should begin with reading the chapter on "Reconstruction" in the Davidson, et al textbook.

Grading Policies: We will evaluate your work in the course based on your quality of performance on:  the examinations; the writing assignment(s), and attendance at and participation in the required discussion sections.  Improvement in your quality of work over the semester always will result in a higher grade; in cases where a final grade hovers between two possibilities, the student whose work has shown improvement will receive the higher of the two possibilities.

 Electronic Communication:  History 102 has an award-winning homepage on the World Wide Web.  From the homepage, users can link to outlines and summary lecture notes (under the link “Student Web Notes”) of each lecture in the course.  We urge you to explore the variety of resources we have gathered for you under “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to American History.”  These have a wealth of useful and important reference materials relative to course content and keyed to specific events, persons, or places discussed in the lectures.  Given the volatility of the Internet, if you discover a site no longer active, please inform your TA as soon as possible.  If you discover useful sites we have not yet identified, please let us know about that also.  Our site also includes short biographies of nearly every individual mentioned in the lectures as well as a wealth of graphic materials indexed under a variety of subject headings.

 This Web site is an integral part of the course for communication among the instructor, the TAs, and students.  Through the homepage, users can send questions, comments, and suggestions to the instructor and/or to individual teaching assistants.  You should make regular use of these Web materials over the course of the semester.  The page works equally well for users of Netscape, Firefox, and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

 Available to you online is a major portion of the required reading materials.  We have gathered a variety of primary and secondary source materials that individual TAs will assign for reading on a weekly basis.  You can read these materials either online, or print them out for your convenience (your computer will need to have available the free download of the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader; download link is on the first “page” of our web site).  As the documents’ section of our Web site is closed to the general public, your TA will give you instructions of how to access these materials.  For copyright legal purposes, we urge you to not share these instructions with individuals not enrolled in our course.

 ·        The direct address of the History 102 homepage is:  http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102.

 ·        Users also can access the homepage by going first to the History Department’s Web site at http://www.wisc.edu/history/, and from there follow the link to the History 102 homepage.