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New Exam Format

During the 2004-2005 session there was a substantial change in the format of the Final Examination for History 2AM: Society, Culture and Politics in North America, From First Contact to the Present. In the past, the Final Examination lasted one-and-a-half hours, and consisted of ten essay questions: candidates answered two of these questions, and each exam essay was worth 50% of the Final Examination mark.

The new Final Examination will last one-and-a-half hours, and will consist of three sections.

• Section A will consist of ten essay questions, and candidates will answer one of these questions: Section A will be worth 50% of the Final Examination mark. Students should spend approximately 50 minutes on this portion of the exam.

• Section B will consist of five extracts or images from the required readings for seminars. Students will be required to write an explanatory commentary on one extract from this section. Section B will be worth 25% of the Final Examination mark. Students should spend approximately 20 minutes on this portion of the exam.
  

• Section C will consist of five extracts or images from the required readings for seminars. Students will be required to write an explanatory commentary on one extract from this section. Section C will be worth 25% of the Final Examination mark. Students should spend approximately 20 minutes on this portion of the exam.

Sections B and C are known as Examination Gobbets. A Gobbet is a short documentary extract, image or other historical source that has been selected to illustrate a particular theme. Writing a Gobbet answer involves providing a commentary that is concise, precise and focused. It is not a mere paraphrase of the document or a translation into your own words, which adds nothing to the reader's understanding of the source. Nor is it the starting point for an essay.

A successful Gobbet answer:

1. Describes the general significance of the source.
2. Discusses the context of the source, providing commentary on the nature of the source (originally published, unpublished, limited circulation or secret, and text, illustration, statistical or other) and on its origins and dating.
3. Describes the authorship of the source, the status or background of the author(s), and the role or significance of the author(s) in the social, political, diplomatic, cultural or intellectual context of the time concerned.
4. Discusses the content of the source, paying particular attention to meanings of terms, words or symbols, language used, and the content of the immediate extract.
5. Discusses the arguments, bias, subjectivity or views of the source, whether explicit or implicit.
6. Discusses the intended audience of the source.
7. Discusses the usefulness of the source for the historian, in terms of its utility as a source of information and data, in terms of its reliability, accuracy, comprehensiveness or partiality, and in terms of what it reveals concerning contemporary ideas, prejudices, mores, opinions, attitudes, state of knowledge, or discourses at the time it was written or produced.
8. Is written in good English, but does not include footnotes/endnotes or a bibliography.

A sample examination is included below.

(SAMPLE EXAMINATION FOR AMERICAN HISTORY LEVEL 2)

DEGREE OF MA: MODERN HISTORY LEVEL 2 EXAM

SOCIETY, CULTURE, POLITICS AND POWER IN NORTH AMERICA,
FROM FIRST CONTACT TO THE PRESENT

One and a half hours

Candidates should answer ONE question from Section A, write an explanatory commentary on ONE extract from Section B, and write an explanatory commentary on ONE extract from Section C.

[Section A is weighted at 50% of the total marks, Section B at 25%, and Section C at 25%]

SECTION A (50%)

1. 'The sectional conflicts of the nineteenth century were rooted in the differences in colonial settlement.' Discuss.
2. Why was the reservation system put into effect for American Indians, and what were its effects?
3. The United States began as a relatively small nation of thirteen states along the Atlantic coastline. How and why did the nation expand to its current size?
4. 'From the earliest days of slavery through to the present, African Americans have employed a wide variety of strategies in order to achieve some measure of liberty.' Discuss.
5. Why did it take almost a century after the American Civil War for African Americans to gain enforcement of Civil Rights legal and constitutional rights?
6. How do you account for America's increasing role in world affairs during the twentieth century?
7. Why were Americans able to remain united during the Second World War but then became bitterly divided during the Vietnam War?
8. How was FDR able to construct a Democratic coalition of white Southerners and African Americans that lasted until the 1960s?
9. How and with what effects have war and international conflict affected American society and politics at home over the past century?
10. Which president has had the most impact on American history, and why?

SECTION B (25%)

1. But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into kings and subjects. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind…
(Thomas Pain, Common Sense, 1776)

2. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
(First Amendment, Bill of Rights, 1791)

3. Every plantation is a little community, with the master at its head, who concentrates in himself the united interests; of capital and labor, of which he is the common representative. These small communities aggregated make the State in all, whose action, labor, and capital is equally represented and perfectly harmonized. Hence the harmony, the union, and stability of that section, which is rarely disturbed through the action of this Government.
(John C. Calhoun, Speech in U.S. Senate, 1837)

4. We was scart of Solomon [the overseer] and his whip, though, and he didn't like frolickin'. He didn't like for us niggers to pray, either. We never heared of no church, but us have prayin' in the cabins. We'd set on the floor and pray with our heads down low and sing low, but if Solomon heared he'd come and beat on the wall with the stock of his whip. He'd say, I'll come in there and tear the hide off you backs.' But some the old niggers tell us we got to pray to Gawd that he don't think different of the blacks and the whites. I know that Solomon is burnin' in hell today, and it pleasures me to know it.
(Mary Reynolds, WPA Slave Narrative)

5. I saw a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that "All things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them." It teaches me further, to "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavoured to act up to that instruction.
(Address of John Brown before his sentencing, 1859)

SECTION C (25%)

1.

(US Government poster, World War II)

2. History will vindicate the position taken by the United States in the war with Spain. In saying this I assume that the principles which were invoked in the inauguration of the war will be observed in its prosecution and conclusion. If, however, a contest undertaken for the sake of humanity degenerates into a war of conquest, we shall find it difficult to meet the charge of having added hypocrisy to greed. Is our national character so weak that we cannot withstand the temptation to appropriate the first piece of land that comes within our reach?
(William Jennings Bryan, Speech, 1898)

3. The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive. The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world – and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
(President Truman, Address to Congress, 1947)

4. Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and Negro schools may be equal.
(Brown v. Board of Education decision, 1954)

5. We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
(President Kennedy's Inaugural Address, 1961)