17 September: Choose one event which took place between 1877 and 1914 and look into its history. Then write a summary of the event and its broader significance to the US during this period.

24 September: By now, you have read three chapters of Nell Irvin Painter's book, Standing at Armageddon. By examining the contents of those chapters as well as the Introduction to her book, identify in a brief essay what you believe are Painter's assumptions about the period from 1877 to 1914.

1 October: Considering Michael Kazin's book, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era, explain Kazin's assessment of how unions in San Francisco derived power. What was it about the era and conditions that gained them support? How did they exercise power once they had it? What made them lose the power that they had gained?

8 October: Tell me what artifact you have chosen, and provide a list of the resources (archival and secondary) that you will use to complete the essay about it.

22 October: No assignment because of Columbus Day.

29 October: Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a variety of utopian novel. Usually, utopian novels provide a critique of the author's culture by constructing an ideal society which has none of the problems that the author finds vexing in his or her own culture. Identify the problems against which Twain wrote. What did he feel was most "wrong" about the Gilded Age? How did he fix this problem or group of problems in his utopia?

5 November: No assignment because I said so.

12 November: No assignment just because.

19 November: Considering Neil McMillen's Dark Journey, reflect on the fact that the racial politics called "Jim Crow" took place throughout the period of American history which historians usually call the "Progressive Era" and the "Gilded Age." Does knowing about Jim Crow from reading McMillen's history of it change your historical view of those two definitions of American history? If so, why? If not, why not?

26 November: Using comparisons between Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, examine what it is about Gilman's utopia that makes Herland a feminist utopia.

3 December: No writing assignment because you will be completing the final projects (the artifact assignments).

10 December: No writing assignment because you have survived the semester; final projects due.