You will be required
to offer argument and interpretation, rather than simply a recitation of facts. In the period
leading up to the final exam.
for each question, write them separately they are short essays. I will attach a textbook and reader to this but do not cite straight up quotes from either one, or outside sources.
1. What basic issues and circumstances caused the United States, in the late 1940s, get into a
Cold War in Europe with the Soviet Union? How did experiences prior to World War II, in
both the domestic and the international spheres, influence the U.S. government’s actions in
this area?
2. Consider African Americans’ quest for civil rights from the early 1940s to the mid1960s. What were the main achievements of that struggle, and what obstacles did civil
rights activists have to overcome? What general transformations in American life in this
period, and what particular protest strategies, were most conducive to achieving those
gains?
3. Discuss the reemergence and spread of feminist movements in the 1960s and 1970s.
What general conditions in American life made such movements possible? What
circumstances made the movements seem necessary to those who created them? What
were some of the most important issues that feminist movements of this era placed on the
national agenda?
4. In the second writing assignment for this course, you doubtless uncovered numerous
ways in which growing numbers of Americans lost faith in the national government from
1965 to 1980. To what extent, in the years since 1980, has the U.S. government acted in
ways that merit the renewed support of the American public? To what extent has it
shown itself to be undeserving of such support?
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