History 389

 

Oral History Assignment

 

 

In class on Tuesday, April 8th we will meet and interview women from the UMass Class of 1958.  This is a great opportunity to learn about womenÕs experience and their perceptions of history over the last fifty years.  Good oral history, however, requires research and preparation.  Your assignment is to use an assigned source to research and create an interview question for the Class of 1958.

 

Good oral history questions should encourage your subject to  speak and help them remember specific events.   One form of question asks them to remember specific events.  Another form of question asks them to explain events, such as ÒWhy did event X happen?Ó  You could also ask your subject to compare two events, to describe an important event, or explain a photograph of an event.  The key to these questions, however, is having done the background research to create informed and meaningful questions.

 

This assignment has two components: (1) an interview question, and (2) a brief report on your question.

 

(1)  Your interview question should be based on your historical research beginning with class material.

Your Interview question is due on TUESDAY, APRIL 1st in class.

 

(2) Your report for this assignment should include (a)  your interview question, (b) an explanation of what you expected to learn from your question, why you chose it, what you learned from the process of researching the question, and how you would extend your line of questioning (remember to cite your sources), and (c) a bibliography of the sources you consulted during your research.  Your report should be 2-4 pages in length, typed and doubled spaced.

Your report is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, APRIL 8th

 

SOURCES

DuBois Library

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian [microform]    Microfilm A 334 

Life      Per AP2.L547

Index  (UMass Yearbook)  LD3234 .M25 +

Better Homes and Gardens   Per NA7100.B45

Historical New York Times   (available online via the UMass Library website; linked from http://www.library.umass.edu/ndl/view/subject/americanhistory)

 

Jones Library (Amity St, Amherst)

Newsweek, Life, New England Quarterly, Saturday Review

 

The Libraries at Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Amherst Colleges also have a good selection of sources for this project.

TIMELINE

1929                Great Depression Begins

1932                 Bonus Army March on Washington

1932                FDR launches the New Deal

1932-37           Neutrality Acts block sale of munitions to bellierent nations

1939                WWII  begins in Europe, Germany invades Poland

1941                Lend-Lease Program, Germany invades USSR

March on Washington planned to protest exclusion of African Americans

from War Work; Results in FEPC

                        Pearl Harbor attacked

1942                 Executive Order 9066 established Japanese internment camps

1943                Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles

1944                GI Bill of Rights

1945                FDR dies, Harry Truman becomes President

                        Atomic Bombs dropped on Japan

WWII ends

1946                Dr. Spock Publishes The Common Book of Baby and Child Care

1947                Ferdinand Lundberg  & Marynia Farnham publish Modern Woman: The Lost Sex attributing the Ôsuper-jittery age in which we liveÕ to womenÕs abandonment of the home to pursue careers

1949                Soviet Union tests atomic bomb

                        Communists take power in China led by Mao Zedong

1950                Korean War begins

                        Senator Joseph McCarthy begins Communist Òwitch huntÓ

1951                Color TV introduced

1952                Dwight D. Eisenhower elected President; Richard Nixon Vice-President

1953                Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Executed for Espionage

                        Armistice ends Korean War

                        Alfred Kinsey publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Female

1954                Brown v. Board of Education decision declares segregated schools unequal

                        US explodes first Hydrogen bomb

1955                Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up Her Seat on a Montgomery Bus

                        Polio vaccine invented by Jonas Salk

1956                Elvis gyrates on Ed Sullivan's Show

Eisenhower re-elected

                        Federal highway Act authorizes Interstate Highway System

                        Autherine Lucy attempts to integrate Univ. of Alabama graduate school

1957                Soviet Satellite Sputnik Launches Space Age

Eisenhower sends in troops t o protect students integrating Little Rock, Arkansas high school

1958                National Defense Education Act authorizes student loans

1959                Fidel Castro Becomes Dictator of Cuba

                        Kitchen Debate Between Nixon and Khrushchev

1960                John F. Kennedy elected President

                        Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founded

1961                Berlin Wall Built

1962                Cuban Missile Crisis bring world to brink of war

                        Rachel Carson Publishes Silent Spring revealing harm from pesticides

1963                Betty Friedan Publishes The Feminine Mystique

JFK Assassinated

Martin Luther King Jr. Makes His "I Have a Dream" Speech