The final paper is pretty much the same as the two previous ones, except that you should use at least eight primary sources. So the paper can be a little longer than five pages, if necessary. As for what to write about, it can be anything from the 1940s to the present. A very wide range of material!
Actually, if you like, you can also write about the entire content of what we’ve studied this semester. For instance, you could argue either for or against a statement that Noam Chomsky makes in the movie Requiem for the American Dream: “The history of the United States is a constant struggle between these two tendencies: pressure for more freedom and democracy coming from below and efforts at elite control and domination coming from above.” Is that a simplistic/misleading thesis or do you think, based on what we’ve read, that it’s essentially true? Is it a useful way of understanding American history? You could give examples for or against.
If you don’t want to examine the broad sweep of what we’ve covered the whole semester, there are innumerable other possibilities. For instance, you could evaluate, say, the Black Panther Party, or the New Left, or the Great Society. Do you think contemporary activists can learn any useful lessons from the ideas, the practices, the successes and failures of the Black Panthers?
What do you think were the main causes of the rise of conservatism in the 1970s and ’80s?
Or, turning to the very recent past, why was a demagogue like Donald Trump elected president? What were the conditions that led millions of Americans to vote for him, and/or how are these conditions related to the “neoliberalism” of the last 40 years?
Why has class inequality increased so much in the last 30 or 40 years? (Even in years of prosperity, like the late 1990s, inequality has continued to rise.)
Anyway, there are plenty of questions in the relevant chapters to choose from. As usual, I encourage you not to rely too much on non-scholarly websites like Wikipedia or History.com or KhanAcademy; if you want to use some secondary sources, it’s best to use scholarly articles (like on JSTOR) or books (in addition to the textbook). And don’t forget to proofread carefully for grammar, punctuation, and argumentative coherence.
