Humanities Homework Help

Write a 750-word response to the following prompt:

As we discussed in the journal for Module 12, historians sometimes distinguish between “history from the top down” and “history from the bottom up.” History from the top down focuses on leaders and elites: presidents, politicians, military officers, and the like. History from the bottom up discusses the experiences of common people: average citizens, racial minorities, immigrants, workers, and families.

Which approach offers a better path for understanding the history of the United States since 1945? Who exerted a greater influence on U.S. foreign and domestic affairs – elites or common people? Do you believe that political and military elites charted a course that the nation followed? Or have broad-based social movements made up of average people exerted more influence since 1945? If you were teaching a course on U.S. history since 1945, which approach would you be more likely to emphasize?

In formulating your answer, choose three different individuals/groups that we have discussed in the third section of this course (modules 11-14). How do the experiences of each individual/group reflect the top down/bottom up divide? What sort of historical agency – that is, influence – were your individuals/groups able to exert?

• GOOD: Southern African Americans had their own definition of freedom. “We claim freedom as our natural right,” black residents of Nashville stated in a petition, “and ask that in harmony and co-operation with the nation at large, you should cut up the roots the system of slavery.” As these petitioners noted, the work of freedom remained incomplete, even after emancipation.
• BAD: Southern African Americans had their own definition of freedom. “We claim freedom as our natural right, and ask that in harmony and co-operation with the nation at large, you should cut up the roots the system of slavery.”
  The second example is extraordinarily confusing for your reader. Who are you quoting? Are these your words? Introduce your quotes, and then explain them in your own words.

Cite the documents from Eric Foner’s Voices of Freedom as follows:

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Home Life,” in Eric Foner, ed. Voices of Freedom, Vol. 2, 6th Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020), 14-17.