Overview
Take-Home Midterm Exam (due Oct 27 by midnight). If you turn it in late, your grade will be lowered. It is easy for me to catch plagiarism or use of chatgpt so don’t do that. If you do, you will receive a zero on the midterm which will make it almost impossible to pass this course.
Write two essays based on the two questions below.
- They must be submitted on blackboard (ideally as in one document because it makes it easier for me to read and grade).
- Each essay should be about 1,000 words (that’s about 3 pages double-spaced I think)
- You should not do any additional research or reading (i.e. your notes of class lectures/discussions and the assigned readings, documentaries, and articles in the “Readings for the Semester” folder should be sufficient in terms of sources).
- I will be looking to see that you have a good mastery of important historical information, critical historical themes, and how the city changed over a long period of time (1620s-1890s).
- In each of your essays you must cite and use four different readings (you could also use documentaries or podcasts as sources) that have been assigned for the class to back up/illustrate points you are trying to make I will be putting up my power point lectures on blackboard. Feel free to use your homework as part of your essays.
- By citation, you don’t have to provide a bibliography (though feel free to do so if you wish). I just mean that when you make a point, you mention the source in the text or quote it and it should be clear to me to which sources you are referring. For example, you could write something like this “As Wallace points out in his essay on the Erie Canal, ___________________.”
Essay Questions
- One way of thinking about NYC history is seeing it as a city where there is lot of conflict, disagreement, and tension. Why do you think there is so much of those things? What are the main sources and some examples of these tensions/conflicts/disagreements in the period from 1620s through the 1890s. Do you think that these sorts of conflicts and tensions still exist in NYC and if so how? Be sure in your essay to cover the entire time period (i.e don’t only write about the 1600s and 1700s) and discuss four different sources of these tensions/conflicts (things like race, class, land use, immigration, whether different parts of the city should merge, and religion) and to give specific examples of each of the four.
- Like all cities, New York City is defined to some degree by its economy. In your essay, describe New York City’s economy from the Dutch period (1620s-1660s) through to the 1890s. How has the city’s economy changed over this long period? What different sorts and sources of labor were critical to the city’s economy at different points? Did key infrastructure projects play a role in the development of the city’s economy? If so, how? What were some key moments when the city’s economy accelerated or slowed down and if so why? In what way did the city’s economy fit into a larger global and Atlantic world economies? Did all New Yorkers share the same vision for the city’s economy? If not, what were those different visions? Be sure to discuss then entire time period (1620s through the 1890s) in your essay and not just one part of that period.