Issues in Modern America                             Jeff Gundy Bluffton College

Links, Journals, and Class Plans--Spring 2003



Below are my daily plans for class during the Spring 2003 term, along with links to web sites and journal entries by students in the course. Correspondence between these plans and what actually occurred in class on that day is never perfect and sometimes quite inexact. In particular, these notes usually contain more than we actually managed to cover in class.

Day 2 On Howard Zinn, Jacob Needleman, "The American Ideology," and "The American Soul."

Day 3 On The Missing Peace, varieties of nonviolence, and the myth of redemptive violence.

Day 4 On the Revolutionary War and the abolition movement

Day 5 On the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Day 6 On industrialization and labor organizing, and gender issues.

Day 7 On Progressivism, Populism, WW I, WW II

Day 8 On the civil rights movement and the Cold War..

Day 9
On Platoon, the Cold War, and Vietnam.

Day 10 On "peace with the earth" and reflections on the course so far.

Day 11 Color Purple, introduction.

Day 12 Color Purple, cont.

Day 13 Color Purple, cont. "Womanist" theory and "Panentheism."

Day 14 Last day on Color Purple.

Day 16 War Memorials.

Day 17 War Memorials, part 2.

Day 18 War Memorials, part 3.

Day 19  Nickel and Dimed, part 1.

Day 20  Nickel and Dimed, part 2.

Day 21 Nickel and Dimed, part 3.

Day 22 On Roger and Me.

Days 23 and 24 were spent on poster presentations.

Day 25 What's in the News? Links and comments on current issues and how they're being reported.

Day 26

Special Note: Response from Radley Balko on "Tax the Poor"!

Day 27