US History II Extra Credit Options

You may earn up to 10 extra credit points in this course. Extra credit points will be counted just like exam points at the end of the semester in determining your class average. Each extra credit assignment is worth up to 10 points, depending on the work's quality.  A thoughtful, substantial assignment involving at least a page of writing could earn the full five points; lesser efforts would receive fewer points. Extra credit papers must meet the following criteria:

1. They must be typed, edited, and spell-checked.
2. If you use any reference material in writing the paper, you must site the source of the information. Failure to credit any written work you consulted is plagiarism. Plagiarism is intellectual theft. It is a serious academic crime that will result in your failing this course.
3. Extra credit must be turned in by the deadline listed on your course schedule.

Extra Credit Options:

1.  Film as History

Watch an approved film and write approximately pages, double-spaced, TNR font, 12 point, normal margins, in which you:

1.     Summarize what you saw.

2.     Discuss how the film relates to what you are learning in our class.

If there's a documentary or narrative film you'd like to watch that's not listed here, please feel free to ask if it would work for the assignment.

Choose from:   

A Century of Women A lively look at women's history which includes great archival footage and interviews.  A gathering of women--fictional friends and family-ponders their experiences, and the narrator places their dilemmas with work, child raising, and identity in the context of American women's history.

Choose one of the three parts:

#1.  "Work and the Family"

#2.  "Sexuality and Social Justice"

#3.  "Image and Popular Culture"

Eyes on the Prize An award winning, moving, amazing look at the African American civil rights movement.  Eye-popping video from the movement and interviews with the activists who made the movement-those who lived, that is.

            Choose from:

            #1.  "Awakenings"

            #2.  "Fighting Back"

            #4.  "No Easy Walk"

            #5.  "Mississippi:  Is This America?"

            #6.  "Bridge to Freedom"

The Great Depression Documentary footage, music, and interviews combine to tell the story of how Americans survived when the economy was tanking.  Fascinating, human, poignant.

Choose from:

#2.   "The Road to Rock Bottom"

#3.  "New Deal, New York"

#4.  "We Have a Plan"

#5.  "To Be Somebody" 

Last Stand at Little Bighorn  Explores Gilded Age westward expansion and the impact of "reservation or extermination" policy on the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota who confronted Custer in the mythic "Last Stand."

Other videos

Cradle Will Rock

Contemporary film, set in the 1930s, about the production by the Federal Theater Project of a controversial, left-leaning play.  A funny, smart film featuring Jack Black and lots of other actors you'll know.

The Fog of War

Robert McNamara muses on US involvement in Vietnam.

Four Little Girls

Spike Lee's look at the 1963 bombing of the Sixth Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

The Grapes of Wrath

Classic film version of John Steinbeck's expose of ordinary Americans' struggles in the Great Depression.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (MUST be the 19106 black & white version, not the 1980s remake).

Classic example of Cold War paranoia, with alien invasion threatening a small town.  Don't expect cutting edge special effects; do expect film noir-style psychological elements.

Malcolm X

Spike Lee's biofilm of the Black Power movement's most charismatic leader and eloquent spokesman.

The Manchurian Candidate (MUST be the 1962 original, not the 2004 remake)

Frequently funny, often smart dry satire of brainwashing, espionage, McCarthyism, and other Cold War concerns. 

Mississippi Burning

Explores the violence faced by civil rights workers in the deep South.

Norma Rae

A Southern textile worker struggles to organize a union.

Ragtime

A brilliant film follows the intertwined destines of African Americans, Anglo Americans, and immigrants in the 1910s.  A great glimpse at the culture of the early 20^th century.

Reds

Fascinating look at the left-leaning Americans who supported the Russian Revolution and built the American Communist Party in the 1910s.  Focuses on John Reed and Louise Bryant, rebels, bohemians, and lovers.

Rosewood

Fictionalized retelling of an actual event-the destruction of an African American town in a race riot.

There Will Be Blood

Based on the novel by Upton Sinclair-author of The Jungle.  Greed and corruption in the early 20^th-century oil business.

Thirteen Days

Dramatization of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world hovered on the brink of nuclear war between the US and the USSR.