Writing Homework Help

For Discussion Board #4 you will have the opportunity to discuss your favorite films, TV shows, documentaries and literary works from Early American History, your favorite historical site, an unsung hero from Early American History, or your views on the American republic’s longevity. 

1. Provide recommendations on various historical feature films, television series or documentaries to your classmates pertaining to early American history (pre-Columbian-1865).  What is worth viewing for deepening one’s knowledge of a historical person, place of event in early American history? For features films and television series, provide a very brief plot synopsis and then describe the essence of what makes the show great.  Same approach to a documentary – what is covered and the qualities of the documentary making the experience worth viewing.  You may also respond to other students’ recommendations, either to support or disagree (always politely of course).
2. Provide a summary and reasons for your favorite American literary work pertaining to early American history (colonial times-1865).  Is it a novel by James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, etc.?  Poetry by Phyllis Wheatley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman?  Or essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau?  Short stories by Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe?  Any major American literary work may be discussed.  You may also respond to other students’ recommendations, either to support or disagree (always politely of course).
3. Recommend for your classmates a historic museum, exhibition, town, battlefield or historic site that they should visit.  What is important, reflective, or even awe-inspiring about this place?  What aspects of Early American History (stay before the year 1865) is honored and memorialized here? Explain what you will see, what the setting is like, and comment on your experiences there.
4. What historical figure in Early American History do you believe is an unsung hero?  In other words, someone who is not a major historical figure but should be recognized and appreciated for his or her accomplishment.  What vital role did this figure play in American history from colonial times to 1865?  You may select a man, woman, African-American, Native American, Hispanic, Asian, European, etc. 
5. Aware that republics are short-lived, offer ideas or reasons how the American republic has survived for over 230 years. In other words, why do you believe as a republic, the American experiment has endured for so long?  What is because of the strength and structure of the Constitution?  Brilliant leadership in the formative years?  Economic growth, opportunity and capitalism?  Specific freedoms?  The character of the American people?  Favorable geography – land and frontier?  Few enemies?  Ability to expand and conquer?  Knowing how to expand democracy?  There could be a multitude of explanations, but focus on what you believe to be a dominant one and support and argue this viewpoint.  In addition, you can write about some current concerns or worries if the American republic appears in jeopardy.