Engaging History

The Nature of Historical Work and the Art of Teaching History: A Look at the Recent Changes to the AP U.S. History Exam and Framework

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I. AP U.S. HISTORY PAST AND PRESENT

Approximately 500,000 students take the AP U.S. History (or APUSH) exam each year.[1] The purpose of the exam is to give high-school students who have displayed a sophisticated level of knowledge in the subject the opportunity to earn college credit. For many years, however, teachers of APUSH complained about the wide-open style of the exam and the course’s framework. According to Trevor Packer, head of the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program, many teachers found it hard to resist the temptation of filling students’ head with every stray fact out of fear that it would be on the test. In response, Packer decided to initiate a review process of the exam and course guidelines with what he described as “an incredibly expensive and exhaustive effort that any business analyst would have deemed insane given the steady, healthy annual growth in AP participation.”[2]

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Divided, Middle, and Native Grounds: The Redskins Controversy and its Historical Implications

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By Terumi Rafferty-Osaki and Rebecca DeWolf, Ph.D.

On September 25, 2014 of the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, beat reporter Jason Jones interviewed fans of the Washington Redskins on one panel and a group of Native American activists on another. During the last few moments, Jones brought both panels together to create more of a dialogue. Long-time fan Maurice Hawkins, however, protested the move; he argued that he would not have worn his Redskins jacket had he known about the upcoming encounter.[1] This segment also came on the heals of the South Park episode, “Go Fund Yourself,” a satire that questioned the use of the Redskins name to promote a new start up company. During the episode, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone made light of the fact that the US Patent and Trademark Office canceled the Washington Redskins’ trademark registration this past June. These are only a few examples of the firestorm over the decades-long struggle to change the Redskins team name.

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Historical Perspectives on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

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In a recent American Historical Association (AHA) roundtable, historians Ruth Bloch, Naomi Lamoreaux, Alonzo Hamby, and John Fea offer insightful discussions on the historical implications of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores.

Ruth Bloch and Naomi Lamoreaux retrace the history of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on corporate personhood to argue that Justice Samuel A. Alito’s opinion breaks with a long line of decisions that treated for-profit companies as “persons’ under the Constitution only for the purpose of protecting property rights-not the liberties-of individual members.”

As well, Alonzo Hamby discusses the relationship between Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Hobby Lobby. He contends that Hobby Lobby reflects a growing cultural conflict that will continue to divide American society well into the foreseeable future.

John Fea reminds us that corporate personhood has a long history; to this point, he notes that in post-Civil War America the Supreme Court on several occasions affirmed that corporations (primarily railroads) were covered under the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet, he also encourages us to further reflect upon the extent to which a for-profit company can posses a soul and practice a religious conscience. As he puts it, “Religious liberty was an inherently Protestant concept. It stemmed from the belief that people could read the Bible for themselves and draw their own religious conclusions. It has always been a religious idea applied to individual human beings.”

Hobby Lobby also touches upon some of the themes that I examine in my own research. As discussed in other posts, my Ph.D. dissertation looks at the competing civic ideologies embedded in the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920-1963. Throughout the original ERA conflict, ERA supporters documented the numerous times the Supreme Court had restricted women’s standing under the Fourteenth Amendment (Bradwell v. Illinois 1872; Minor v. Happersett 1874; Mackenzie v. Hare 1915; Goesaert v. Cleary 1947, etc.). Put simply, the Court maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment did not guarantee equal treatment before the law for men and women citizens. For ERA proponents, such rulings denied women their full standing as “persons under the law.” Moreover, amendment proponents insisted that the ERA would remedy this problem by affirming complete constitutional sexual equality and ensuring the full constitutional incorporation of women into the sovereign power of the people.

~Rebecca DeWolf, Ph.D.

 

The Fight for Equality Continues: The Problems of Christina Hoff Sommers’s History of Feminism

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Recently Bill Frezza of Real Clear Radio Hour interviewed Christina Hoff Sommers about her new book, Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why it Matters Today.[1] Frezza also wrote a follow-up piece in the opinion section of Forbes magazine.[2] As Frezza describes it, Sommers’s book uncovers the hidden history of feminism and its implications for women today.

To start, Sommers identifies two major strands of feminism that have shaped the struggle for women’s rights: “egalitarian feminism” and “maternal feminism.” (For those familiar with Sommers’s earlier works, she previously labeled these competing strands as “gender feminism” and “equity feminism”).

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D-Day 70th Anniversary

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By the end of 1943, Allied forces had succeeded in stopping the Axis powers’ advancement both in Europe and in the Pacific. Over the next two years, Allied forces seized the offensive and launched a series of powerful drives that helped them defeat the Axis powers.

Early in 1944, United States and British bombers began attacking German industrial installations and other targets almost round the clock. These attacks hampered German production and transportation. In addition, the massive bombing campaigns of the Allied forces devastated German cities such as Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin. For example, a February 1945 incendiary raid on Dresden created an immense firestorm that destroyed three-fourths of the previously undamaged city. The Dresden bombing killed approximately 135,00 people, almost all civilians.

Almost two years before the Dresden bombing, an enormous invasion force had started to gather in England. This force consisted of almost 3 million troops and a great array of naval vessels and armaments. On June 6, 1944, D-Day, General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces, sent this vast armada into action. The invasion force included British, American, and Canadian troops and they landed not at the narrowest part of the English Channel, where the Germans had prepared for them, but along sixty miles of the Cotentin Peninsula on the Coast of Normandy.

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