Writer’s choice

(Social & Cultural Changes, Economics & Slavery, Secession Military Strategies, War on the home front, Gettysburg&the surrendering, Reconstruction & Legacy)
Research Paper Instruction:
The topics of race, economics, labor, partisan politics, and social structures are consistent themes throughout this course. Using all of the assigned books and articles, students are required to write a 20 pages research paper that evaluates two of those themes and explains how perceptions of those themes change between the 1830 and 1880. Additional secondary sources can be used, but should not be used more than the assigned books and articles. Papers that do not address two of the designated themes will not be accepted.

Assigned Books:
1. Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf & Co., 2008.
2. Richardson, Heather Cox. West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
3. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. (chapters eight through the epilogue required)
4. Varon, Elizabeth R. Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
5. Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. New York: Harvard University Press,1999.

Assigned Primary Documents( I may send these articles to the writer later)
Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Daniel Webster’s 1850 Speech to the Senate (“Seventh of March”)
Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”
14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution

Writer’s choice

1. Compare this novel to the hard-boiled novel. The hard-boiled detective is a no-nonsense, cynical, loner. The values associated with the hard-boiled genre are individualism, little to no reliance on others, strong association of dysfunction and the source of evil with the family, women as “femme fatales” linking sex with death. How does Stephanie compare with the traditional hard-boiled detective and how are the values in this novel different?
2. In this discussion question I’d like you to think about the way gender roles are approached in the novel, and specifically what is represented by Ranger and Morelli for Stephanie, and the way in which what they represent comes up in other ways in the novel.

Writer’s choice

1. Compare this novel to the hard-boiled novel. The hard-boiled detective is a no-nonsense, cynical, loner. The values associated with the hard-boiled genre are individualism, little to no reliance on others, strong association of dysfunction and the source of evil with the family, women as “femme fatales” linking sex with death. How does Stephanie compare with the traditional hard-boiled detective and how are the values in this novel different?
2. In this discussion question I’d like you to think about the way gender roles are approached in the novel, and specifically what is represented by Ranger and Morelli for Stephanie, and the way in which what they represent comes up in other ways in the novel.