The Mythology of the 1960s
Course Prep Take a few minutes to read the course guidelines, all posted on the front page of the course website: Roadmap, Course Philosophy, Why 1960s America, and Semester Grading.
Reading HW Read David Farber, Preface and Chapter 1 from The Age of Great Dreams
If you’re new to the class, you’ll need the username&password for the coursedocs site. Email me for details.
Write a short ¶ in response to each of the following questions. Paste your response in the comment field below, using two ¶s to separate your ¶s:
- Farber opens Chapter One with an account of how three leaders from the period spent New Years Eve in 1959, at the dawn of the new decade. Why those particular individuals? Who are they, and what larger trend do they each represent?
- The rest of Chapter One provides a baseline for the start of the 60s, mostly by reference to events of the prior decade. List three things you learned from this account—preferably not just dull facts but stuff that surprised you, that challenged your preconceptions about this era.
In class—bring your laptop to class!
- Choose Topics for Unit One
- Discuss Farber
- Introduce Fragments of the Past
- Tertiary vs. Secondary sources. Using Tertiary sources (Wikipedia and the like) to learn the basics of a topic. How is the topic organized? Concept of the “parents”, “children” and “siblings” of a topic. What is Wikipedia good for? Where / how can you use it in college-level research?
- Demo of good summary.