The mid-term exam will take place on Wednesday, October 18, between 12:30 and 1:20 PM in SH 324. Bluebooks will be provided. Please bring a reliable pen. You will not be permitted to refer to your books or notes.

The exam will be based on the readings, lectures, and discussions from the first half of the course. Chronologically, this means that the exam will cover US history between about 1900 and the mid-1950s. The exam is in two parts.
 

Part I - Identification

You will be given a list of 15 terms and asked to identify 10 of them in approximately one sentence or series of phrases, explaining what the term means and briefly indicating its importance. These terms will include persons, events, laws, and concepts that we have discussed in the first half of the course.

EXAMPLE:

Term: "Franklin Delano Roosevelt"

Identification: US president between 1933 and 1945; initiated New Deal; president during World War II.

This section should take about 20 minutes and will be worth 40 percent of your grade.
 

Part II ó Essay

You will be given two questions and asked to answer one of them in essay format. These questions will primarily be designed to test your understanding of course material; in contrast to paper assignments, they will emphasize explanation rather than interpretation.

This section should take about 30 minutes and will be worth 60 percent of your grade. Keep in mind that this section is worth more than the identification section and that you should budget your time and energy accordingly.

The following suggestions should give you a sense of what you should study.

1)    Be prepared to write about the changing role of the federal government in the American economy and society between 1900 and the 1950s. How did the role of the government change? What prompted these changes?

2)    Thinking about the role of government and the dynamics of reform, you should be prepared to compare and contrast the reform movements of the Progressive era and the New Deal.

3)    We have discussed wars primarily in terms of how they affected the home front, not in terms of military history. Be prepared to write about how World War I and World War II impacted American society. How did they affect business? Labor? Women? Racial issues? How did the impacts of the two world wars compare?

4)    Likewise, the Cold War also impacted American society insignificant ways. You should be prepared to write about the Cold War shaped American society and culture in the post-World War II years. You should also be aware of the issue of anti-communism, and be prepared to make comparisons between the "Big Red Scare" of the late 1910s / early 1920s and the more famous "McCarthyism" of the late 1940s and 1950s.

5)    In all cases, the American experience varied by race, class, gender, and geographical location. You may not get a question that addresses these topics directly, but any essay would certainly be stronger if it demonstrated an awareness of how race, class, gender, and geographical location affected the issues you are discussing.