What This Course Is About
Between June 24h and June 30th, 1916, the British army fired 1,500,000 high explosive shells at German forces dug in along the Somme front-roughly 120 shells per football field's worth. The next day, July 1, 1916, the artillery fired hundreds of thousands more shells to cover the advance of wave after wave of British troops against untouched German machine guns. By the time the fighting fizzled out for the winter, 419,654 British and almost 200,000 French soldiers were casualties; German casualties are still uncertain eighty years later. Throughout the pre-attack bombardment, Britons on the eastern coast of England could hear the dull rumble of the guns, and for the next months they listened day and night to the guns as they went about their daily chores, while hundreds of thousands of their children, brothers, husbands, lovers, and friends died.
Today, the First Battle of the Somme is history: a distant, boiled down, desiccated "event," a symbol of slaughter or military incompetence, just another item in a lumpen category labeled "old battles." The tonnages of shells fired and the numbers of men involved figure in scholarly discussions of the industrialization of war, in accounting-like exercises weighing German vs. Allied resources, and in postdicting the outcome of World War I as a conflict for hegemonic dominance.
Yet at the same time, the guns of the Somme echo through our lives still today. Just listen to the opening lines of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," which are set in the Somme trenches of spring, 1917, where the thawing of the frozen mud pushed forth the bones ("dull roots" and "dried tubers") of those killed the previous year:
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
More prosaically, the Somme and, by extension, World War I brought women into the industrial work force as never before (their skin stained bright yellow by the explosive in those millions of shells), made women's suffrage irresistible, and brought labor into party politics. Together, these echoes of the guns of the Somme-to say nothing of the consequences of the mass slaughter on those who survived it and those who merely heard it in process when the wind blew in off the English Channel-fundamentally changed gender relations and class relations in Great Briton, and so too the meaning of British citizenship.
In America, World War I-and before it the Spanish American War and the Indian Wars and the Civil War and the War of 1812 and the War of Independence-and after it World War II and the Korean War and the Vietnam War and the Gulf War-also fundamentally changed gender relations and class relations and the meaning of citizenship. Indeed, the world we live in today at the end of the 204' Century is incomprehensible without reference to the wars that we have made and that have made us. What would our economy and class structure be without the educational investment of the World War 11 GI Bill of Rights? What would race relations be without the Korean War integration of the armed forces? How different would our politics be without the disillusionment bred of the Vietnam War? How would the women's movement have developed differently without the experiences of the Vietnam anti-war movement to draw on? How much poorer would our lives be without The Naked and the Dead, The Bridges of Toko Ri, Paco's Story and In the Lake of the Woods? How much less colorful would our language be without "snafla," "catch-22," "wasted," "lit up," "let's crank" and "shit happens"? And where would we be without Country Joe and the Fish?
This course is about these, the consequences of war and, in particular, the consequences of World War 11, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf for America today. In any number of political science and history courses at Rutgers, you can learn about the causes of these specific wars or of war in general. This course will therefore largely ignore what these wars were "about" and concentrate instead on three related questions and one major theme: How have America's recent wars affected social mobility and changed class relations? How have they changed race relations? How have they changed gender relations? And, combining all these, how have they changed the basic meaning of citizenship in American and what it means to be an American?
How We Are Going To Answer Our Big Questions?
As important as what this course is about is how we are going to study it. Since this affects you perhaps even more that the subject matter itself, I suggest you read the following carefully. If this course-as is-appeals to you, please stay. If it doesn't-and I would be the first to admit that it isn't for everyone-please leave. There is no shame in transferring to another 395; the department offers lots. But if you do choose to stay, the following description of how we will precede, how the course will be organized and course requirements is the contract between us.
This is not a "normal" course. In my mind, a normal course has four critical characteristics: (1) each student must work alone on pain of expulsion; (2) the professor is an expert in the subject and has the final say; (3) the course begins from the general and abstract and only slowly, if ever, works down to the concrete; and (4) students' primary activities involve listening to what the professor has to say, reading what other experts have to say and, to the extent that they do research, compiling other people's answers to the questions the professor poses. This is not the kind of course I want to teach.
Consequences of War inverts these four defining characteristics of a normal course. First, I will require you to work together in groups. There will be a series of individual assignments ultimately worth 40% of your grade, but many of these will be about your group and the bulk of your grade-60%–will be a collective, group grade. Second, I am not an expert in the subject, and indeed intend to learn about it through your original research. Third, we will start-and perhaps finish-at the most concrete level, as from one end to the other, this course will involve the collection and analysis of the data from three New Brunswick families each of which was deeply involved in World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War. You will conduct oral history interviews, collect letters and photographs, trace these families moves from home to home, read high school yearbooks, listen to lots of "golden oldies," skim yellowing newspapers, watch old movies, etc., etc. Finally, the product of these efforts will be not a regurgitation of what others have said, but instead a data collection for other researchers to mine. Specifically, you will: (1) prepare a multimedia family history for the family you work with; and (2) create a multimedia website on the Internet on which you will post all your data (photos, letters, interview transcripts, video clips, music, etc.).
The CASE Component
This course is a CASE course offered as part of the Rutgers Citizenship and Service Education (CASE) Program. As a CASE course, Consequences of War can be taken only if you also register for 790:399:03 (Index no. 21054), a 1 -credit for community service add-on. For this one credit, you will be required to attend CASE orientation and do 40 hours of community service with an approved CASE Community Partner (e.g., the Vet Center, a VA hospital, the New Jersey Vietnam Era Educational Center). (Placement options will be discussed on the first day of class.) In addition to working at your site, you will have service-related writing assignments (see Organization, Requirements and Grading below) and, as you will see from the syllabus, many of our class sessions will be devoted to discussing your service experiences.
CASE courses are designed to teach you not only a subject, but the knowledge, skills and mental orientation to make you an engaged and effective citizen. Given that Consequences of War is about going to war-which many define as the ultimate requirement of citizenship-about how going to war has changed essential features of the American system and about the very meaning of citizenship itself, it is a natural CASE course.
CASE courses are also designed as "active learning" courses, that is, as courses in which you learn by doing, not merely reading. Again, Consequences of War is a natural CASE course, as you will see in the next section and in the following section: Rationale, Or Why Do I Bother With All This?
Organization, Requirements and Grading: The details of how the class as a whole will work, as well as what is expected of you-and why-will be spelled out in class. In brief, however, let me note the critical points here:
1. CASE Component: As a student in a CASE course, you are required to: (1) register for 790:399:03; (2) attend the mandatory 3 hour CASE orientation on Saturday September 13 at 8:30 AM or 12:30 PM; (3) complete and submit all required CASE paperwork (Student Information Sheet, Service-Learning Contract, etc.) on time; (4)complete at least 40 hours of service by November 24 and submit a time sheet signedby your site supervisor as proof (Pass/Fail, personal grade)
2. CASE Component: You will be required to keep a daily journal of your service work. Entries will in part respond to questions I pose for reflection and in part will recordyour own responses to your service site and experience. Journal entries will be handedin weekly on Wednesdays, beginning Wed. September 24. As soon as our courseWebsite is up, all journal entries will be posted no later than Wednesday on any given(10% of your final grade, personal grade)
4.Course Component: In the first few weeks of the semester, I will assign a series of"mini-essays" (500 words maximum) that will involve either reflection on big, philosophical questions or careful analysis of data I will supply (dates and subjects as-signed). (10% of your final grade, personal grade)
5. Course Component: The major "output" of this course will be three multimedia familyhistories and a Consequences of War Website on the Internet. For these purposes, youwill be divided arbitrarily into three groups. Each group, as a group, will be assignedto work with one family, will be responsible for creating a family history for that fam-ily, and for one third of the materials posted on the course Website. How you decidewho is responsible for doing what is up to you, but each group will submit just oneproject and all group members will receive exactly the same grade for it. (60% of yourfinal grade, group grade)
6.Course Component: Because group work is an essential part of this course, and a capacity to work in a team is an essential life skill that doesn't come naturally, you will have a series of short group dynamics assessments to complete during the semester (dates and exercises assigned). These are designed to teach you how to observe, analyze and improve group interaction. (10% of your final grade, personal grade)
7. Course Component: Your being a good group member (responsible, on time, hard working, creative) is essential to your group's success, and being a good member of a Community Partner's team (responsible, on time, hard working, polite, self-starting) is essential to your CP's ability to serve people in need. The quality of your participation in your group and at work will therefore be assessed by the other members of your group and by your site supervisor. (10% of your final grade, personal grade)
CASE orientation and hours (individual grade) P/F
CASE journal and CP evaluation (individual grade) 10%
Mini-essays (individual grade) 10%
Group dynamics assessments (individual grade) 10%
Participation (individual, assigned by rest of group
and CASE site supervisor) 10%
Final project (group grade) 60%
NB: Registration peculiarities aside, Consequences of War is, in effect, a single, 4-credit course and you will receive the same grade for both pieces, a grade that reflects your performance on all requirements. If you fail to attend orientation or to complete your hours, you will receive a T/F for both 395 and 399. Likewise, your site supervisor's evaluation of your service will figure in your final, combined grade for 395 and 399.
Rationale, Or Why Do I Bother With All This? It is no accident that I teach my course the way I do. In fact, I have worked long and hard to develop this particular organization. I will explain at length in class, but again, let me outline the basics here.
I believe that I have a responsibility to teach three distinct, but related things: knowledge, skills, and attitude. Specifically, in this course:
Knowledge: I want to make sure that at the end of the semester you know something about the consequences of war, about class, gender and race in America, and about the meaning of citizenship in this country at the end of the 20th century. Now, from a teaching point of view, the problem is that no one learns much sitting passively listening to lecture after lecture. Learning takes place only when you have to engage the material directly. This is why I have constructed this course this way. Rather than presenting you with theories and facts, neatly pre-blended, I want you to search out the facts, actually create data where there was ignorance, while at the same time exploring the available literature and picking it over for what is useful to you in your research.
Skills: I want to make sure that at the end of the semester you have improved your
critical thinking, writing, public speaking, team work, and Internet skills, all of which
will be essential when you venture forth into the "real world."
I . Thinking: Making good arguments is hard work; it requires learning how to assess your position and that of the other side, how to identify the grounds on which tocompare and contrast the two, how to weigh evidence, and how to construct acompelling case for your preferred position while fairly representing the alterna-tives. You can learn these skills only by exercising them-a lot-and this is whywe will spend much of the semester arguing with each other about what you thinkyou are finding and what you think it means.
2. Writing: Good writing also doesn't come naturally; it too requires a lot of practiceand often a lot of second effort. This is why I require lots of mini-essays andweekly journal submissions, to say nothing of multiple drafts of your final proj-ects-and why I not only permit but encourage rewrites. And while this will spoilmany a nice Saturday for me, it is a good thing for you because there is no way tolearn to write except to write and rewrite.
3. Speaking: Like it or not, you will all have to make public presentations in your professional lives-but like good thinking and good writing, good public speakingskills don't come naturally. They have to be learned, and they can be learned onlyby doing. This is why this course requires that you spend most of your time interviewing people of different backgrounds, working at your CASE placement and debating in class. It is also why I require everyone to participate, no exceptions. I wouldn't think of excusing one of you from writing papers, because you have to learn how to write, and I therefore wouldn't think of excusing one of you from interviewing or serving or participating in class, because you have to learn how to speak in public.
4. Team Work: An ability to collaborate with or even organize a work team is per-haps the single most important job skill we all need. But there is an irony here: while we do not teach you how to work together and call collaborative workcheating, business leaders tell us that our graduates' biggest weakness is that theydon't know how to work in teams. This is why I require you to work in arbitrarilyassigned groups. Working effectively in a group, especially in a group of strangers,is hard and can be learned only the hard way-by doing. I know how hard it is towork in these groups, to get along with some group members, to deal with freeriders, even to schedule group meetings. But while I sympathize with your frustrations, I also know how essential it is in my own life that I know how to handle allthese difficulties, because I must do so day in and day out, just as you will have to,day in and day out, in your own working lives.
5. Internet: Finally, folks, let's face it, the Internet is "where it's at," as we used to say in the 60s. But while everybody talks about it, and many of you in the MTV generation are fearless Internet surfers, few have any real experience in using theInternet either to conduct research or to share it. In this course, therefore, we will,together, learn a lot about the Internet, in part with instruction from experts at Al-exander Library, but largely by doing. And just to keep us all honest, I would re-mind you that our Consequences of War Website will be out there on the Net forthe whole world to see, warts and all!
6. Attitude: Knowledge and skills are fine, indeed essential, but insufficient. The most important thing I have to teach-and the hardest thing to teach-is attitude. And in this class, I want to concentrate on two attitudes in particular: an attitude toward yourself and an attitude toward others.
1. Sense of self: Although we surely don't intend to, too often at Rutgers (and at colleges across the country) we discount our students' potential and even actively discourage our students from taking daring, creative initiatives. Too often, the structure of our courses and the assignments we give not only assume that students can't be creative, but even bar creativity. I've decided to gamble on you, and to turn things around. I have therefore left this course and even the core project you will undertake largely unstructured and undefined. I can encourage you-and I will certainly push you-but I can't actually teach you this critical "can do" attitude, this essential belief that the only limit to your life is the limit of your imagination. But I have, to the best of my ability, set this course up to give you the chance to develop it on your own!
2. Citizenship: Without meaning to be cute, citizenship is a state of mind. Being a "good" citizen requires that you possess essential knowledge about your community and essential skills related to working effectively in and for your community. But the essence of citizenship is an attitude, a habit of the heart, a reflexive sense of connectedness to others. Too many Americans today, including us-you and me-haven't got enough of this critical feeling. Again, we can and will study citizenship, talk about citizenship, and write about citizenship, but the habits of the heart that are citizenship are only learned by doing. And therefore, in this class, I am going to send you out to do citizenship.
I know that this seems like a lot. I know that I expect a lot that other professors do not. But I also believe very strongly that you need to know all this stuff, and this is the most effective way I have figured out of teaching it. So again, if you do not agree, or would prefer a more traditional research seminar, unencumbered by all the CASE, writing, public speaking, Internet and group work requirements I impose, you should not take this course. If you elect to stay, however, you are signing up for the whole package, no exceptions.
Course Etiquette: Some simple rules of etiquette apply in all my classrooms and courses. First, each and every student in my classroom is owed a common respect. My classroom is a safe place in which every student may feel free to do their best without fear that he or she will be put down by anyone. Put differently, I will not abide by dis's, mockery, slurs or any such. Second, while I believe in vigorous debate and the highest possible intellectual standards, I also believe very strongly in fairness. As I will tell you over and over, I believe that the measure of your argument is how fairly you present-and then demolish opposing arguments.
Reading Assignments: There are very few assigned readings in this class, but all assigned readings are required. Readings must be prepared for the date assigned, as they will be the topic of discussion. Those marked with an (*) are available for purchase at the Douglass Cooperative Bookstore. All readings are on reserve at the Douglass Library.
Advising: I will do my best to keep an eye on you and to call you out if I think you look like you need help; but there are more of you than me. It is therefore up to you to come to me if you need help-on anything. I come to class early in order to be available to talk. I have regular office hours. If you have course conflicts, I can arrange alternative meeting times, just ask. And don't be shy. Advising is part of my job! I am happy to help you with course stuff, with planning your future, internships, picking a graduate school, and with navigating the Rutgers bureaucracy. Perhaps most important, I'm a good listener if you need someone safe to talk to, and I can help you find help if you need it.
Course Outline
September 3: Introduction: What this course is about, what you are going to produce and how. CASE and the CASE component. An opportunity for the disinclined to bail out.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
September 8: What's citizenship? Who is how much of a citizen? Why am I a citizen?
Readings: D. Michael Shafer, ed., The Vietnam War in the American Imagination chapters 1, 4, 6, 10 and 11.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
September 10: Workshop on Teamwork
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
September 15: Library Orientation 1: Review of basic library research techniques and resources, introduction to electronic data sources, databases, census data, etc.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
September 17: Project Planning Session: Brainstorming about the variety of materials and approaches to them.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
September 22: Library Orientation II: Introduction to Internet resources and to Rutgers' Special Collections.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
September 24: CASE reflection and first impressions of families
NB: First journal entries due.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
September 29: Introduction to Oral History
Readings: Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, entire.
James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, After the Fact: The
Art of Historical Detection Chapter 7.
Rutgers Oral History Archives: Interviews with Roland Winter and
William Bauer.
To be assigned in class.
October 1: Workshop on Teamwork
Journal entry due.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
October 6: Project Planning Session: Brainstorming about the variety of materials
and approaches to them.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
October 8: Project Planning Session: Brainstorming about the basic structure of
the final project in print and on the Web.
Journal entry due.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
October 13: Race: Seminar on war and race in America taught by the race group.
Readings: To be assigned by race group.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
October 15: Gender: Seminar on war and gender in America taught by gender group.
Journal entry due.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
Readings: To be assigned by gender group.
October 20: Creating Webpages I (Workshop):
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
October 22: Creating Webpages (Getting Started)
Journal entry due.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
October 27: Class: Seminar on war and class in America taught by class group.
Readings: To be assigned by class group.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
October 29: Mid-Term Assessment and Course Correction: Reports by each group about how things are going, where the projects are, what is and isn't realistic, etc.
N-B: First journal entries to be posed on Web.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
November 3: On demand feeding; working session.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
November 5: On demand feeding; working session; CASE reflection.
Journal entries posted on Web.
November 10: On demand feeding; working session.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
November 12: On demand feeding; working session; CASE reflection.
Journal entry posted on Web.
November 17: On demand feeding; working session
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
November 19: On demand feeding; working session; CASE reflection.
Journal entries posted on Web.
November 24: On demand feeding; working session.
Exercise: To be assigned in class.
November 26: No class. Friday Schedule.
Journal entries posted on Web.
December 1: Race Group Presentation
December 3: Gender Group Presentation
NB: Final, reflective and summarizing journal entry posted on Web.
December 8: Class Group Presentation
December 10: Conclusion
Commentary
Consequences of War
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