AP/HIST2600 6.0 A: United States History
Offered by: HIST
Session
Fall 2024
Term
Y
Format
ONLN (Fully Online)
Instructor
Calendar Description / Prerequisite / Co-Requisite
An overview of the United States from pre-colonization to the present. First term examines Native/European encounters, American Revolution, slavery, westward expansion, and Civil War. Second term traces the rise of the US. as an economic and military superpower, and the struggle for civil rights. Themes include race, immigration, religion, federal power, gender and the impact of social movements. PRIOR TO FALL 2014: Course credit exclusion: GL/HIST 2570 6.00.
Course Start Up
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cothran@yorku.ca
In this course, we explore the history of the United States from North America’s pre-colonial times to the present through the stories of individual lives.
To tell that story, we will examine how the actions of ordinary people from many backgrounds as well as those of national leaders together shaped and influenced the history of the United States. Throughout this course, you will learn broad themes in the history of the United States including race and ethnicity, migration, social and political reform, mobility and population growth, contested meanings of freedom, industrialization, cycles of prosperity and recession, popular culture, modernity, rights movements, and globalization.
You will also develop ways of thinking historically through: critical analysis of primary and secondary sources; setting events, documents, and people in their historical context; and crafting interpretations & historical narratives from the raw material of the past. In this course, you should expect to do much more than memorize facts or dates – you will be busy actively doing history, not passively learning about history.
Our story begins long before Europeans arrived, when North America’s Indigenous peoples already were busy establishing their own institutions, and developing their own hybrid cultures, religions, and marketplaces.
*TENTATIVE*
The American Yawp: A Free and Online, Collaboratively Built American History Textbook, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019).
The American Yawp Reader: A Documentary Companion to the American Yawp, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019).
*TENTATIVE Grade Breakdown*
Exams (50% - 12.5% each) We will have 5 exams, your lowest exam is dropped.
Weekly Primary Source Assignments (30% - 3% each)
History of a Day Research Paper (20%)
UNIT ONE: FROM COLONY TO REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICA
UNIT TWO: “WHAT THEN IS AMERICA?”: FROM COLONY TO NATION TO REPUBLIC
UNIT THREE: THE WORLD THE CIVIL WAR MADE
UNIT FOUR: THE MAKING OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICA
- Students will evaluate key questions in American history.
- Students will analyze the effects of historical, social, political, economic, cultural, and global forces on the history of the United States.
- Students will analyze and interpret primary and secondary sources and create an original historical argument based on primary sources.
- Academic Honesty
- Student Rights and Responsibilities
- Religious Observance
- Grading Scheme and Feedback
- 20% Rule
No examinations or tests collectively worth more than 20% of the final grade in a course will be given during the final 14 calendar days of classes in a term. The exceptions to the rule are classes which regularly meet Friday evenings or on Saturday and/or Sunday at any time, and courses offered in the compressed summer terms. - Academic Accommodation for Students with Disabilities
