History
You can use reliable outside sources for your essay but you must paraphrase them (that is, not use them word-for-word) and you must cite them (that is, identify your source). Do not plagiarize.
Write two one-half page essays (300-400 words) and two one page essays (500-600 words). You will submit all 4 essays together as one document. Use Times New Roman, Font 12, one-inch margins. Write your essays in a Word document or similar program. If using Word please eliminate the space between paragraphs by going to Home to Paragraph (click on little arrow at the bottom right of the Paragraph tab) and check “Don’t add space between paragraphs.”
Put your name and the title “Exam I” on the top line. In your text, do not repeat the question at the beginning of the essay, simply put Question A1 or Question A2, etc.
Question A. Select one of the following two topics and write a one-half page (300-400 words), single-spaced, font 12, one inch margin essay.
1. Describe Congressional Reconstruction and the role blacks and religion played in it, and the white Southern Democratic response to it. How would you have participated in Reconstruction in the South?
2. How did literature and philosophy reflect the social and political problems facing Americans before 1890? What reform(s) would you have supported during the Gilded Age and why?
Question B. Select one of the following two topics and write a one-half page (300-400 words), single-spaced, font 12, one inch margin essay.
1. Compare and contrast the new technologies and consumer choices of the Gilded age 1865-1896 to the new technologies and consumer choices of the 1920s. How did people use these things to express their values?
2. Describe and compare the ministries of Walter Rauschenbusch (Progressive Era) and Dwight Moody (Gilded Age). How does each man reflect his era? Which minister do you best identify with and why?
Question C. Select one of the following two topics and write a one-page (500-600 words), single-spaced, font 12, one inch margin essay.
1. Compare and contrast the beliefs and lives of African Americans living in the South before World War I to the beliefs and lives of working class Catholic immigrants living in the big cities of the North before World War I. Whom would you have rather been, an African American in the South or a Catholic immigrant in the North? Explain.
2. Describe and compare the beliefs and accomplishments of Florence Kelley, Frances Willard, and Ida Tarbell. Judging from the lives of these women, give a critique, positive or negative, of what you’ve been taught in school or in the media about what Victorian women could do and accomplish.
Question D. Select one of the following two topics and write a one-page (500-600 words), single-spaced, font 12, one inch margin essay.
1. Compare and contrast Victorianism (pre World War I) and Modernism (Post World War I). Name a representative historical figure from each era whom you have not mentioned in this exam so far (for example Frances Willard and H.L. Mencken), and explain in what way each one of these two represents his or her era. Which era would you want to live in and why?
2. Compare and contrast the lives of Billy Sunday and George ‘Babe’ Ruth. How do these two represent the contest or contrast between traditional American values and new immigrant values? Which one of these two do you best identify with and why?
