Course Goals

Some takeaways that I want you to leave the class with:

• The Civil War was not just a fight over slavery and rights, but about citizenship and belonging in a growing nation predicated on racial inequality and Indigenous dispossession.

• The home front and battle front should not be separate, but seen as interconnected spaces that share insights into the Civil War experience.

• There’s still so much to learn about the Civil War era, especially as we still see the ramifications of the war and its aftermath in our contemporary lives.

Undergraduate Section:

1.To foster an appreciation for Civil War era history beyond the military battles.

2.To promote valuable critical thinking and writing skills.

3.To understand the Civil War as not just a flashpoint in US history, but something that had deep implications in the past and ramifications into our present lives.

4.To help understand the value in primary source and secondary source analysis.

5. To create a useful tool kit to engage with or analyze history in our everyday lives, like films, TV, news.

Graduate Section:

1. Knowing important books, ideas, and conversations about the Civil War era.

2. Understanding how historians study and explain historical events.

3. Being able to read carefully and understand how authors make their arguments, use evidence, and connect with other texts in the field.

4. Being able to evaluate history books by looking at how they were written, how evidence was used, and what the impact of the book is.

5. Being able to write good essays that explain what you think about historical books.

Collective Course Objectives:

• Demonstrate familiarity with the major chronology of Civil War era or United States history during the nineteenth century.

• Demonstrate the ability to narrate and explain long-term changes and continuities in United States and Civil War era history.

• Identify, evaluate, and appropriately cite online and print resources.

• Develop multiple historical literacies by analyzing primary sources of various kinds (texts, images, music) and using these sources as evidence to support interpretation of historical events.

• Communicate effectively— through speech, writing, and use of digital media—their understanding of patterns, process, and themes in the history of the Civil War or of the United States.