U.S. History 2: The Noise of Democracy (Self-Paced)

This is a 1-semester course featuring the second of four parts in The Nomadic Professor’s American History survey program. This course, American History Part 2: The Noise of Democracy, was designed with two big goals in mind: (1) to help the student become a master of American history, from the Constitution through the Reconstruction period, and (2) to help the student become a master of source material, from primary historical sources to contemporary sources of all kinds—Internet articles, social media posts, political speeches, and everything between. 

Additionally, American History Part 2 is the course in our four-part series where students learn to write a research paper, from writing the question to publishing their final draft with a well-defended thesis, original research, coherent arguments, and meaningful ideas. Please note the required text for this course.

Students will learn the complex story of the American past, alongside the ability to think of history in terms of evidence and claims, more than black-and-white categories like “true” and “false.” They’ll be engaged by a college professor—The Nomadic Professor himself—bringing them on-location historical mini-lessons from all over the globe (featuring backdrops from Ecuador to Mississippi to Belgium to India, and dozens more!), while being guided through all the fascinating stories and their implications by an experienced high school teacher and Nomadic Professor co-founder, Nate Noorlander. 

In this course, students will write a full historical research paper alongside their study of the assigned period. As such, it will require more outside-class research and more teacher feedback than other courses. The course cost reflects these extra hours.

History is the place to go for nuance, context, epistemic humility, and concentrated, deliberate efforts to get things right. This course will try to achieve that compelling and engrossing version of the subject!

Course Structure

Students will be required to complete assigned for each week. This will include the weekly readings and on-locations videos, the end-of-unit document lessons, the developing research paper assignments, as well as the accompanying guided notes.

While assignment deadlines are flexible, students should pay close attention to the posted assignment windows—in order to stick together as a class as much as possible, and avoid getting behind and submitting a lot of rushed work at one time, each assignment will have about a 4-week window for submission. Once that window closes, students will not be able to submit work they missed. This is a self-paced class with loose boundaries designed to help partner flexibility with accountability. 

This is a 16-week course. Students should plan on approximately 1 hour of work per school day, and up to 1.5 hours a day for limited stretches of time depending on the reading and source material for a given week.

Who should enroll?

This class is designed for students following an Honors track in grades 9-12. While it is not required that students take US1 before taking this course (or US3 or US4 after this course), US1 teaches students how to work with primary and secondary sources, which is good preparation for the research paper work students will do in this course.

As an Honors course the work we do will push students to think deeply and carefully, and perhaps to engage with the material with the kind of insight that comes from being interested in a subject, rather than merely doing what’s required. Students do not need to be experts in history, experts in writing, or experts in source analysis to take this course, but to get the most out of it they should want to be here.

Technology Requirements

• High speed, broadband Internet
• Streaming video capabilities to watch recorded lectures
• PDF editing software that will allow you to type into and save a PDF form

Evaluation and Feedback

I will be available by email as well as prearranged video calls during available work hours M-F (my work hours are 8am-4pm MST, M-F). Video calls will be set for default 15-minute windows. While I will reach out where I see a need or a problem, students who are struggling should take the initiative to openly engage with me and their classmates. Usually a video call will need to be scheduled at least a day in advance.

Students will receive a rubric with comments in response to all written work. Quizzes will be electronically assessed with built-in feedback.

Communication