This course is founded on several fundamental principles:
- When it comes to the topical focus of our course (1960s America), the students are the primary teachers. Each of you is responsible for researching the topics you choose, and then for teaching that material to your fellow classmates. This is emphatically NOT a lecture course. 90% of material presented in the classroom should come from you, and only 10% from me.
- My function is to help you master research methods. And to do this I will lecture, encourage, criticize and exhort you to work harder. It’s easy to do half-baked research; my job is to push you to embrace the struggle of real research.
- Collectively, you form a scholarly community, something like a “Think Tank.” Scholars working on projects within larger communities tend to produce a higher quality of research, because their work is inspired and enlivened by the discoveries of others. You will share findings with others in two ways:
- Fragments of the Past: primary sources that help the past come alive, from advertisements to political speeches or even telling economic data. You’ll share these by adding a comment to any of the four broad topical headers in the “Fragments” menu at the top of each page on this site
- Research Findings: you will make your Written Report, Annotated Bibliography and Essay available for download by adding them as file uploads in comments added to pages dedicated to your narrow topic.