Colonial+Unit



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An introductory lecture that explains the role of AP classes in the present educational system generally, and its role in this class particularly.

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This lecture shows the College Board's propaganda video about the Advanced Placement program and what it means to precocious high school students, and then we juxtapose it with Foothill student commentary; you can make up your own mind after seeing both sides of the argument. You will notice two distinctly different views on the Advanced Placement program of the College Board.

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An example from a baseball movie of the ability to quiet the frontal lobes of the brain and move into "the zone" -- blocking out all extraneous action from the brain as mind and body become one and focus 100% on an activity. This is where you want to be all year long in the American Experience class, especially in terms of assessments. You can train your brain to perform at optimum levels at critical moments.

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This is an introduction to the American identity, as examined in this class, and its place in the study of history of America and generally. Why is history important? Why American history? Around what themes is this class organized? In addition to the presentation about American literature, this gets things going and explains the path we shall take together - an important lecture.

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...the continuation of the Part I video.

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This lecture introduces the English colonization of North America at the Chesapeake at the beginning of the 17th century through Bacon's Rebellion, and ends with the stable and sophisticated Virginia plantation society based on African slave labor that produced such capable American leaders as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Washington, James Madison, etc. It also explores the idea of history as an interpretive process.

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England was not immune to the 16th century "wars of religion" between dissident Protestants and status quo Catholics.

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This lecture explains the larger Catholic against Protestant conflicts in 16th century Europe in general, and how that affected English politics and religion in particular during the reign of King Henry VIII - all leading up to a specific focus on the Puritan dissenters, their theology, and how and why many of them decided to leave the "Old World" for the "New World" in "New England."

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This lecture deals with the more worldly aspects of the Puritan migration to New England. Who, when, where, when - how did the pilgrims live in their nucleated townships, what was life like there, how did they govern themselves, relations with England, etc.

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This American tradition gospel ballade on sin and redemption, based on a belief in God's omnipotent justice, forms this music video produced in honor of Johnny Cash's death in 2003 by fellow entertainers.

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In almost his last public performance, the aging Johnny Cash re-does a cover from by Trent Reznor from the "Nine Inch Nails" that seems to comment on Cash's long and storied life from the point of its end: poor kid, youthful rebel, rock and roll star, drug addict, prisoner, born-again Christian, ordained minister, country music icon, aging celebrity... old man.

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Commentator Fareed Zakaria has a few opinions about the Puritans then and America (and the rest of the world) today. His mini-sermon is worth the listen.

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A movie re-enactment of religious rebel Nicholas Ridley and others being burned alive for their Protestant beliefs by Catholic Queen "Bloody" Mary on October 16, 1555 in Oxford, England. The 16th century was fully of such religious violence and unrest, and this led to the outflow of dissenters to the "New World."

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This lecture talks about the biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne and his profound ambivalence about his family history, in particular. We look briefly at scenes from the Custom House, and then we examine the "cat eyes" of Hawthorne, the strangeness of his art, and the similarity he has with the Spanish painter, "El Greco."

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First performed in Leipzig on October 27, 1726, this religious piece highlights the pious German Protestantism of JS Bach. In terms of tone and outlook the lyrics in German Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen ("Gladly shall I bear the cross") highlight the overriding importance and power of God's grace in enabling one's to live life to the very end with dignity, meaning, and forbearance. Even in bitterest agony or misfortune, God will never abandon us and will bring us home after death -- listen to this music in the background when reading in the textbook about the Puritans as they arrive to New England, encounter hardship, and endure in the name of their religion. As one Puritan at the time claimed, "We are not a people easily discouraged."

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After reading and UNDERSTANDING the speech, write a carefully reasoned essay in which you briefly paraphrase Lear's statement and then defend, challenge, or qualify his view of the relationship between wealth and justice.

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This lecture treats on the Middle Colonies as not as urban as New England nor as rural as the Chesapeake and Carolina, but as a place of great religious and ethnic diversity that bespoke to future trends in terms of political negotiations and consensus and alliance building in a tolerant and socially mobile communities: it assumes Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia as its representative citizen.

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This lecture speaks of the 'colony of a colony' nature of Carolina and its relationship with the colonial West Indies. The Yamasee War, the tidewater 'master class,' the large numbers of Angolan slaves, the Stono Rebellion, and its combination to make a unique 'deep South' plantation culture different than that found in the Chesapeake are all covered - as well as long term speculations on slavery, sectionalism, pride and honor, and the Civil War.

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Before we leave the colonial era of Puritans and Cavaliers behind us, I feel obliged to upload one more example of music emblematic of the late 17th century -- an epoch just coming to an end when religion was so paramount a force in Western Europe. Indeed, the sinner beseeches his creator in this anthem -- "Wilt Thou have mercy on my sinful self?"

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Another example of John Dowland's choral music from the Elizabethan Age sang by rock singer, Sting.

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An excellent example of the choral polyphony so common to the English music of the time, these singers do it live -- the only way anyone listened to music back in the 17th century. Enjoy!

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This lecture has to do with the huge move against secularization and over-intellectualism among clerics in 1730s and 1740s English-speaking colonial North America. It deals with the conflicts between "New Lights" and "Old Lights," and it connects this to larger conflicts and dialectics in the American (and human) conversation between differing perspectives and outlooks: emotion vs. intellect, secular vs. religious outlook, etc.

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If Benjamin Franklin prized innovation and a life made easier, longer, and less painful by science and improved social organization (and away from religion and religious disputation), the Amish seemed to have taken a different tack.

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This video is an experiment whereupon cellist Yo Yo Ma plays the prelude of Bach's Second Cello Suite while digitally interposed into sketches of a grim 17th century prison conjured up in the imagination of Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi. This is all about the importance of the imagination in transcending time and place in the study of the past and its application to the present.

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The “sarabande” is a stately and slow dance, as you will notice the sharp edges of the prelude rounded out in this later movement from Bach’s 2nd Cello Concerto. Yet it still has that same austere “feel,” and it still seems appropriate for Pirandesi’s gothic prison, no?