HI 460 Cross-Cultural Encounters

For our discussion of George Packer’s The Unwinding on Tuesday Sept 23, please prepare by reading all the “year” pages, and the chapters covering your assigned main character (Dean Price, Jeff Connaughton, or Tammy Thomas), and then your assigned other profile (celebrity or place). Think about how the thesis posed so elegantly in the prologue plays out in these assigned sections. Pay attention not only to content but to form – i.e. not just what the story is, but how Packer tells it by what he says – and does not say. Be ready to provide a short capsule summary of your assigned sections, and to explain what we learn about the recent past from studying these places or people.

Thursday, Sept 25
Reading: Brown & Kaiser, “Opening Archives on the Recent American Past,” in Doing Recent History, 59-82.
Writing: please write a 600-700 word research journal post based on one of the “documents” or sources listed on the Documents from Now page, above.
Class Discussion Preparation: We will work with these documents in class on Thursday, so prepare to discuss your findings and propose original uses, alternative suggestions, or methodological problems.
What to Bring: Potter/Romano book + laptops

Relevant links:
Southern History Collection at UNC
Society of American Archivists