Week of September 22nd

Tuesday, Sept. 24
  • Reading: none
  • Lecture: DBQ writing
  • Activity: in-class DBQ essay
  • Assigned: exam 1 review sheet
  • Due: Receipt for book orders
    • Return of Martin Guerre
    • The Great Cat Massacre
    • I, Pierre Reviere...
Thursday, Sept. 26
  • Class Trip
NOTE - our first exam will be given on Wednesday, Oct. 2nd

Week of September 15th

Monday
  • Reading: Palmer 1085-1099
  • Lecture: Social Change and Social Movements
  • Discussion: Joan Scott - overview of concepts
Wednesday
  • Reading: Palmer 1010-1021
  • Lecture: Europe & the Global Economy
  • Discussion: Joan Scott - Racism
Friday
  • Reading: Palmer 946-950, 959-961, 966-969
  • Lecture: Decolonization in French Africa
  • Discussion: Joan Scott - Secularism

Week of September 8

Tuesday, Sept 10

  • Read: NY Times Article
  • Lecture: Anatomy of a Controversy
  • Discussion: Joan Scott's argument
  • Assignment: notebooks
Thursday, Sept 12
  • Read: Palmer 1099-1114
  • Lecture: Europe in the 21st Century
  • Discussion: Joan Scott, cont.
  • Due: reading notes

Back to School Post

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a fun, relaxing and/or adventurous summer, suited to your tastes. I have a lot that I can't wait to tell you about. For now, here is a basic plan for our first week of school.

Tuesday, 9/3
  • Presentation - Stegeman's Summer Slideshow
  • Assigned - distribute syllabus
Friday, 9/6
  • Review - course description
  • Activity - "How History is Like Broken Dishware"
  • Discuss - plans, expectations & how to be successful in Modern European History
  • Due - Summer Assignment

Summer Assignment



Over the summer, please read Joan Scott, The Politics of the Veil. This is a book about a recent political controversy in France, which arose after the government passed a law prohibiting schoolchildren from wearing “conspicuous signs of religious affiliation.” While this law expressly forbade symbols of any major religion, it was primarily targeted at Muslim girls who wore the hijab, or headscarf. Scott studies the controversy as a “political discourse,” by which she means a public conversation through which people struggle to give meaning to some phenomenon. The wearing of headscarves is a phenomenon that was given a variety of meanings, and is an issue that is simultaneously about national identity, post-colonial immigration, religious fundamentalism and feminist liberation. Those are all themes that constitute major components of European history in the modern era, and we will spend significant time on all of them in the coming months. I think this book will help us remember that those issues are very much alive in the present, and not simply relegated to the past.

To guide your reading of the book, please compose a two-three page essay that addresses some of the major questions posed by the book. You have three options as to how you go about this task: 1) you could write a description of the major issues and show how they are all bundled up together in the headscarf controversy, 2) you could write a historical piece, tracing the origins of one or more issue back through history (for example, showing how immigration from North Africa resulted from France’s colonization of that part of the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), or 3) you could write an opinion piece, agreeing or disagreeing with components of the issue or Scott’s interpretation of them.

Whatever response you choose, it will be very important that it be firmly grounded in a slow and careful reading of the book. This is a difficult text; please do not wait until September to begin it. Please note that the introduction is very important in that it establishes Scott’s approach and raises some of the central political and ideological tenets that her treatment of the subject is built upon. Read the introduction carefully. Read it more than once. Refer back to it as you work your way through.

Overall, I hope you enjoy the book and I anticipate it will inform some very lively discussion in the first weeks of the school year. Good luck and Godspeed!

Mr. Stegeman


Weeks of May 5th & 12th

Monday - 5/6
  • Read: PR Chap. 10
  • Lecture: The Tide Turns
  • Workshop: Essay Planning
Wednesday - 5/8
  • Read: PR Chap. 11
  • Lecture: Cold War Europe
  • Workshop: Essay Planning
  • Due: PR Chap 9 review
Friday - 5/10
  • Read: PR Chap. 12
  • Workshop: AP exam review
Tuesday - 5/14
  • Full practice Multiple Choice
Thursday - 5/16
  • end of year celebration
**note - AP exam is Wednesday May 15th at noon

Week of April 28th

Tuesday
  • Read: Palmer 828-829, 831-833; Princeton Review Chap 8
  • Lecture: Road to WWII
  • Workshop: Age of Expansion Multiple Choice
    • Quiz & analysis of questions
Thursday
  • Read: Palmer 842-843: PR Chap 9
  • Lecture: Axis Successes
  • Workshop: Enlightenment Review
  • Due: Chap 8 & 9 Review notes