Weekly View Overview Assignments Computer Lab Links Reading Guide Exams

American Encounters: Peace or Conquest? Native Americans share a pipe with Lewis & Clark

Go to:  | Wednesday, September 4 | Wednesday, September 11 | Wednesday, September 18 | Wednesday, September 25 | Wednesday, October 2 & 9 |

Wednesday, September 4

In class, you learn how to use the Blackboard discussion forum.

Your first assignment on the discussion forum will be to take five minutes to tell us about yourself.

Your second assignment:

Introduction to the assignment.
When you hear the word history what comes to mind? Is your reaction positive? Negative? Do you love it? Hate it? Find it exciting? Boring? Relevant? Beside the point? All the above? None of the above? Why?

Your discussion assignment.
Step one: (Five minutes) Free write your reaction to the word "history."

Step two: (Ten minutes) You will be assigned a partner. Introduce yourselves. Then, on the discussion board, write a response to your partner's post. In four sentences or more comment on what you found most interesting about his/her free-write. (It might be something that got you to explore the subject more deeply; or something that you strongly agreed/disagreed with).

Step three: (Ten minutes) Read as many additional posts as possible. If you find something particulary interesting or eye opening, feel free to comment.

Step four: (Fifteen minutes) Face-to-face class discussion and sum-up.

Wednesday, September 11

Check out the You be the Historian site at the Smithsonian.  Click on Let's go.  Explore each of the clues.  Next, click on Conclude Your Investigation.   Examine the conclusions about the Springer family reached by historians.  

On blackboard go to discussion forum titled "household Evidence."  Write on the following:

Assume that one hundred years from now a historian discovers your home or apartment fairly well intact.  How would he or she determine the following (In other words, what evidence would they draw upon)?

1.      How you lived?  Your standard of living?

2.      How many people lived in the household?  Their relative ages?  Their relationship to and interaction with one another?

3.      What people in the household did (work, leisure, entertainment, hobbies, eating and hygiene habits, etc)?

After you have posted, look at the posts of classmates in your assigned group.  Write a comment on each post in your group.  In your response, consider (1) what you found enlightening and interesting  about the post and (2) what questions you might want to ask about the evidence presented.  Be constructive in your comments.

Wednesday, September 18

Go to and then read the two following documents on the web:

• Gottlieb Mittelberger on the Misfortune of Indentured Servants, 1754

• Alexander Falconbridge "The Men Negroes...Are...Fastened Together...By Handcuffs"
  

Working with your assigned group, compile a list of similarities and differences based on these two documents in the voyages of indentured servants and slaves.   Then, individually, post on the blackboard what you consider the most important similarity and the most important difference.  Quote from the documents to explain your answer.

Wednesday, September 25 and October 2

You will begin this assignment on Wednesday, September 25 and complete it on Wednesday, October 2

Step One.  Read the following:

• John Barbot, Prepossessed that Europeans are Fond of Their Flesh
• Olaudah Equiano, A Multitude of Black People Chained Together

Step Two.  As you read, think about these questions:

Who is Barbot?  Who is Equiano?  Are their accounts of the middle passage (Atlantic voyage) between Africa and the Americas similar?  Different?  Both?

Given who they are, do Barbot and Equiano bring different points of views and perspectives to their accounts of slavery, particularly the middle passage?

Barbot claims that he is “naturally compassionate” and that Europeans treated slaves much more humanely than Africans.  How would you evaluate this claim?  Does Barbot say anything that would contradict this claim?  Does Equiano say anything that would undercut Barbot's claim?  On what basis do you evaluate and judge the accounts of Barbot and Equiano.

Step Three.  Discuss the questions in step two with your assigned group.

Step Four. Go to the discussion board.  Post an answer to the following question (found under the heading "Barbot-Equiano.")

John Barbot claims that he is “naturally compassionate” and that Europeans treated slaves much more humanely than Africans.  How would you evaluate this claim based upon a close reading of both Barbot and Equiano?   Back your position with well-thought-out arguments and evidence from the documents.

Step Five.  As time permits, respond to a posting by a classmate that has a somewhat different position than yours.  Make your comments constructive.

Wednesday, October 2 and Wednesday, October 9

Go to the Africans in America (Public Broadcasting System) Website.  Click on the section entitled  “The Terrible Transformation, 1450-1750.”   Then go to the bottom of the Web page and click on “narrative.”  Read all of the sections of the narrative.

• Introduction
• Map: The British Colonies
• Europeans Come to Western Africa
• New World Exploration and English Ambition
• From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery
• The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage
• The Growth of Slavery in North America

As you go through each section, click and read as many of the documents and side excursions as possible.

When you finish reading, reflect for a few minutes.  What did you learn?  Was there any information that surprised you?  Did you learn anything that would deepen your understanding of the similarities and differences between slaves and indentured servants?

Go to the blackboard.   Post (under "Terrible Transformation") a response explaining how the information you found might help answer the take-home midterm paper.  Your response should be several paragraphs.