Classroom Materials: Social History

• Themes in the Social History of the United States: Migration and American Civilization, 1830s to 1960s

  Syllabus for a survey of social history, focusing upon the American experience. The course explores changes in the family, work, sex roles, mobility, migration, urbanization, and industrialization.

• Discovering American Social History on the Web

  Dan Kallgren developed several sample assignments for use in his undergraduate survey course "United States History Since the Civil War," in the spring of 2000. Assignments can be used inidividually or in series, as each is accompanied by suggested reading and primary sources.

• The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

  One of Dan Kallgren's assignments. Students read a section from "Out of Many; A History of the American People" by John Mack Faragher, et al., to contextualize primary source documents about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. After analyzing the sources, the students write a short report.

• The Anti-Saloon League

  One of Dan Kallgren's assignments. Students analyze digital primary sources in order to contextualize and understand the motivation of the Anti-Saloon League members.

• Mapping Suburbanization

  One of Dan Kallgren's assignments. Using topographical maps from the University of New Hampshire, students explore how the landscape surrounding a 1950s New Hampshire city changed over time. Students are asked to consider how sociopolitical factors such as the Cold War might have affected the development of the United States.

• Syllabus: United States History Since the Civil War

  Syllabus from Dan Kallgren's survey of American history since the end of the Civil War. The syllabus includes several digital primary source projects, all of which are hosted on separate pages as part of Kallgren's "Discovering America Social History on the Web" module.

• Paper Assignment: Encountering Commodities in the Atlantic and the Pacific Worlds

  This sample assignment requires students to use primary and secondary sources to connect American history with the Atlantic and Pacific worlds and write a paper that focuses on the circulation of commodities, peoples, and ideas throughout those worlds. This paper assignment has three major parts: a list of sources for students to read and study along with guiding questions on each reading; a mapping exercise; and the five page paper.

• Assignment: Social History of the Atlantic Slave Trade

  Shannon Bontrager not only incorporated global contexts into his survey, but he also used non-traditional and digital pedagogical tools to engage his students.

• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Extra Credit Assignment

  As part of her work in the Bridging Cultures program, Cheryll Cody designed a course assignment using the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. It requires students to answer a series of questions by looking at the database’s extensive collection of maps and charts.