Part1: After watching the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAIxOuHnY0 , write a one-page essay answering this question: “What historical events formed the ideology of radical Islam? Mention at least four different countries in your answer.” Extra points will be awarded for essays that contrast the video’s explanation with that of the course textbook. (My personal judgment is that this is a weak area for the textbook, so the promise of extra points is meant to encourage as many of you as possible to watch the video!)

Part 2: Historians understand the years 1945-1990 through the framework of the Cold War; the central question of those years was whether communism or capitalism, authoritarianism or democracy, would prevail.
What is the central question of the years since 1990? How do you think future historians will structure their understanding of our time? Is there a single worldwide struggle going on? If so, what ways of organizing human society are in conflict with each other?

Discuss the overlap of the disciplines of anthropology and history. What can the various subdisciplines of anthropology contribute to our understanding of history?

1. What is Prohibition? When did it come into law and why was it difficult to enforce?
2. Describe the consumerism that developed in America during the early twentieth century, especially after World War I.
3. Explain the experiences of the nation that effectively put an end to the Progressive movement in America during the 1920s.
4. Describe the various kinds of leisure activities that became popular in America during the 1920s.
5. Explain the underlying causes of the depression, and evaluate President Hoover’s attempts to help the economy.
6. Describe the experiences of both urban and rural Americans during the depression, and explain ways in which the depression affected American politics.
7. Evaluate FDR’s actions designed to alleviate the effects of the depression, and discuss the opposition he faced.
8. Discuss the most significant long-term effects of the New Deal.
9. Explain America’s foreign policy that developed after World War I and that was in place at the beginning of World War II, and describe how that policy changed as the war progressed.
10. Describe and discuss the American home front during World War II, paying special attention to long-term societal changes.
11. Explain how World War II was brought to an end, both in Europe and in the Pacific, and discuss the immediate aftermath of the war both in America and around the world.

Please choose one of the following questions to answer for this week’s assignment. When you respond to your fellow classmates this week, please reply to the other questions that you did not initially post on. This will help you familiarize yourself with more of the material.
1. Leading up to WWII, Japan, Italy and Germany participated in particularly aggressive acts. How did these decisions create the conditions for the upcoming global war?

2. Other than the Holocaust and the dropping of the atomic bomb, what was the most important event of World War II, in your opinion? Why did you choose this one? Be sure to support your opinion with historical facts,

3. Both during World War II and its aftermath. As we have seen many times by now, history is a road of related events that lead us continuously onward, toward the next situation. In your opinion, was there anything that could have been done or handled differently to prevent the outbreak of the Cold War? If so, what, and how could it have been changed?

4. Life during the Cold War varied depending on the country in which an individual lived. Choose one Communist and one non-Communist nation and discuss the daily life of their citizens. How did people cope with the tense political situation on a day-to-day basis?

Compare the works Scales by Vallejo and The Death of 21 Years by Varallonos, and make an argument that addresses the question, “in what ways, if any, are these pieces similar or different from Northern European and Anglophone modernism?” Use the scholarship which has been uploaded and labeled as ‘supporting texts,’ refer to them by using in text citations, and include a bibliography. Please use other sources as needed. The argument should be supported by the evidence of the themes found in both (and other) texts outlined below. If you can, use the following statement as a basis for your argumentative thesis: ‘Although writers and artists from Spain, Portugal and Latin America experienced modernism in a way as acutely as their American, German, English, and French counterparts, the modernist movement and its defining characteristics do not vary between countries – that is, the modernist movement was an international phenomenon, and though Spanish and Portuguese speaking modernist artists produce work that is, in some ways, different than that of the European artists, the themes and methods used to convey the modernist values were generally similar.’