Multicultural America
Fall 2004

English Composition
mcgray2@mail.uh.edu
 

The Women’s Pavilion at the Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, December 1876. Albumen photograph. Centennial Photographic Co. The pavilion housed examples of women’s achievements from painting to patented inventions.

Multimedia Assignment 3 – American Stories

For your third web project you will be asked to become the historian and tell one of America’s stories from the nineteenth century in our visual web format.  As we have seen, different historians, all looking at the same evidence, can make different choices regarding what to include and how to construct their narratives.  We have also seen how the continuing story of America creates emphasis and erasure, depending on point of view.

Your task will be to take one of the suggested topics and to craft, within our limited parameters, a narrative that explains your topic and informs your viewer.  You will have to do the work of any teacher or historian, deciding what to include, what to exclude, and how to tell the story.  You should see yourselves as contributors to the national narrative.

For your project consider the following:

• A brief overview of your topic.
• Primary source material.  The historian’s first job is to examine the evidence.  You have already done this in examining the slave ads and the paintings.  Think about what might be considered primary source material related to your topic.  Texts?  Photographs? Newspapers? Maps?
• A timeline in any format you choose, with at least 5 entries.
• Biographical sketches, if your project suggests these.
• An interpretation of how your topic fits into or affects the larger concerns of nineteenth century America.  Try here to make your own leap, from evidence to interpretation, and not to depend entirely on someone else’s view.
• Think about this assignment as a logical extension of your first two projects which included description, historical context, and interpretation.

You are free here to organize your material in any way you choose.  Think about how the story will logically flow, both textually and visually. Always keep in mind your audience, that is, someone intelligent and curious, who is not already familiar with the material, and who appreciates a clear, direct, and interesting presentation.

Checklist: 

• Original title
• Brief overview of topic
• Some primary source material (ask if you have trouble here)
• At least 3 sources, excluding your images
• A timeline in any format with at least 5 entries
• Interpretation
• Approximately 400 - 500 words of text
• In-text parenthetical citations for all material either quoted directly or paraphrased
• Acknowledgement of all your sources, both text and image, in MLA format

Tech check:

• Page name that reflects the project
• Links from your menu page to the project, and from your project back to the menu page
• At least 3 images
• Alt tags for your images
• Link to at least one external website, opening in a new window, giving your viewer more information
• Thumbnail of an image

Project due:  Saturday, November 20

Topics:

The Early Women's Rights Movement:

          Sojourner Truth

          The Seneca Falls Conference

          Amelia Jenks Bloomer

          Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony

          Julia Ward Howe & Lucy Stone

Utopian Communities:

          Brook Farm

          Oneida

          Fruitlands

Slavery:

          Slavery defended

          Slavery attacked

The Irish Immigrant Experience

American History through Film:

          Hollywood and the Alamo

          Hollywood and Slavery

          Hollywood and the Old South

          Hollywood and the Civil War

          Hollywood and 19th Century Indians

          Hollywood, Cowboys, and the Old West

          Heroes and Villains (e.g. Jesse James, Wyatt Earp)

Pre-Civil War American Popular Culture:

          P.T. Barnum

          The Minstrel Show

American History through Music:

          Stephen Foster and Race

Mexico and the Mexican American Experience:

          The Mexican War

          Mexican American Responses to Conquest

Who Freed the Slaves?

          John Brown: Hero or Terrorist?

          The Great Emancipator: Abraham Lincoln in Art and Memory

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

African Americans After the Civil War:

          African Americans in post-Civil War art, cartoons, and caricature

          Sharecropping

          Lynching

Science, Exploration & Nature:

          Asa Gray

          John James Audubon

          Major John Wesley Powell

          Charles Wilkes and The United States Exploring Expedition

          Colonel John C. Fremont

Political Cartoons:

          Thomas Nast

          Presidential elections depicted in cartoons

The West:    

          The Donner Party

          The Oregon Trail

          The Mormon Trail

          The Pony Express

          The California Gold Rush

          The Transcontinental Railroad

          The Colt .45         

Native Americans:

          The Trail of Tears

Asian Americans:

          Manjiro (This is one of those fascinating untold stories.)

          Chinese contributions to the Transcontinental Railroad

Medicine or something like it:

          mental health – nineteenth century

          Phrenology

          Spiritualism (The Fox Sisters)

          Mesmerism

          Lydia Pinkham (Ladies, you really should take a look at this.)

Literature:

          Emily Dickinson

          Walt Whitman

          Herman Melville

          Harriet Beecher Stowe

          Henry David Thoreau

          Ralph Waldo Emerson

          Frederick Douglass

          Louisa May Alcott

America through the Lens:

          Matthew Brady

          Timothy O’Sullivan

          Alexander Gardner

          William Henry Jackson

Image of Women’s Pavilion reproduced from:

Victorian Ideals of Gender.  The Library Company of Philadelphia.  23 October 2004. <http://www.librarycompany.org/HookBook/case3labels.htm>