TOPO

Handy topographic map of the Middle East. Feel free to search for your own if you'd like to gain detail on a particular region/would like to compare other swathes of the world.

Handy Links for Homework Wednesday April 29/Thursday April 30

Once you've read your selections in the textbook (on pages 822-31), check out the World Health Organization Global Health Atlas. You can jump right to the data query section – which will allow you to choose whatever search parameters you wish – or you can check out the WHO/AFRO country profiles page.

Monuments Where You Live

By popular request, some ideas for pt. 2 of the extra-action final project.

You might first want to check out official city and town websites for the town where you live, or the town you'd like to explore. Some, like Los Altos, even provide maps for historic walking tours under their visitor section. Explore the history section of these sites – perhaps they reference founders or original main streets. Maybe you've seen those names before – on street signs, on storefronts, on local newspapers. Often, these city hall sponsored sites also contain information for tourists, information that gives directions to parks, libraries, museums, schools, downtown districts. Almost all of these carry names: Lucie Stern Center and Mitchell, Juana Briones, and Heritage Parks (to name only a very few) in Palo Alto; Andrew Spinas, Dove Beeger, and Fleishman Parks in Redwood City. Some towns and counties have history or heritage museums.

You might also want to explore a larger memorial: the Golden Gate National Cemetery, which if you've ever taken 280 up to the city, you know is impossible to miss; the Father Serra statue, also on 280, just north of Woodside; UN Plaza in San Francisco; the Rosie the Riveter memorial in Richmond; Memorial Church at Stanford University; historic El Camino Real, which stretches the length of the Bay Area (and far beyond), marked always by curving, green bells. The entire city of Colma could be a study in itself; the town motto – "It's great to be alive in Colma" – is telling of the small city's primary function.

Think about anywhere that proper names appear – schools, streets, theaters – or places that retain old streetfronts – the Guild theater in Menlo Park, the La Honda Store up in the hills above Woodside and Portola Valley. All of these are places of history.

Take a walk; bring a journal. Write down the names, statues, plaques, and signs that you see. It might surprise you how many are out there.

FPT.

That would be Final Project Time, for those of you not up on the acronyms.

Remember that you will need to have chosen and begun research on your topic for part one by the time we return from break.

To help you in the selection process you might want to check out Wikipedia's category page on monuments and memorials. Not that it will make your selection process necessarily faster (there's just so much to look at!, but it will give you some out of the box ideas and, shocking I know, might just make this part of the project fun. There are some pretty wild monuments out there. (Don't believe me? Check out the animals category.)

There are obviously thousands more beyond the net of Wikipedia. The best way to navigate the cavernous opportunities presented you in this project is this: pick a country that you want to know more about, an event you want to study further, or a monument you've seen but never really analyzed. Start from an existing interest and your research will take you to much more interesting new places.

That said, some major monuments that might catch your eye:

• The Memorial to the Battle of Verdun, 1916, Verdun, France
• The War Memorial and Statue of Brothers, Seoul, South Korea
  
• Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany
• Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Black Hills, South Dakota, USA
• Tsitsernakaberd (and the Armenian Genocide Museum), Yerevan, Armenia
• Monument to the Vargas Swamp Lancers (site in Spanish), Boyacá, Columbia

And others, unlinked but alphabetical by country, and all very much worth tossing into Google:

• Buddha of Bamiyan, Bamiyan, Afghanistan
  
• Mother Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia
  
• ANZAC Square, Brisbane, Australia
  
• Judenplatz, Vienna, Austria
  
• Martyred Intellectuals Memorial, Dhaka, Bangladesh
  
• Shabash Bangladesh, Rajshahi, Bangladesh
  
• Ljzertoren, Diksmuide, Belgium
  
• Eternal Flame, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzergovina
  
• Srebrenica Genocide Memorial, Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  
• Pantheon of National Revival Heroes, Rousse, Bulgaria
  
• Monument to the People's Heroes, Beijing, China
  
• India Catalina, Cartagena, Columbia
  
• Jasenovac Monument, Jasenovac, Croatia
  
• José Martí Memorial, Havana, Cuba
  
• Memorial to the Victims of Communism, Prague, Czech Republic
• Monument to Stalin, Prague, Czech Republic
• The Louvre, Paris, France
• Center for the History of Immigration, Paris, France
  
• Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park), Berlin, Germany
• Soviet War Memorial (Tiergarten), Berlin, Germany
• German History Museum, Berlin, Germany
  
• Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany
• Siegessäule, Berlin, Germany
• Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany
  
• Statue Park, Budapest, Hungary
• Monument to Stalin, Budapest, Hungary
• The Vatican (including the Sistine Chapel and the Pièta), Rome, Italy
  
• Bab-e-Pakistan, Lahore, Pakistan
• Minar-e-Pakistan, Lahore, Pakistan
• National Monument, Islamabad, Pakistan
• The Motherland, Volgograd, Russia
  
• Peter the Great, Moscow, Russia
  
• Victory Park, Moscow, Russia
  
• Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, Moscow, Russia
  
• Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town, South Africa
• Freedom Park, Salvokop, South Africa
• Afrikaans Language Monument, Paarl, South Africa
• 1820s Settlers National Monument, Grahamstown, South Africa
• 228 Peace Memorial Park, Taipei, Taiwan
• Mother Motherland, Kiev, Ukraine
  
• Crazy Horse Memorial, Black Hills, South Dakota, United States
• Statue of Liberty, New York, New York, United States
  
• Tear of Grief, Bayonne Harbor, New Jersey, United States
  
• Livingstone Memorial, Bangweulu Swamps, Zambia
  

Good luck!

Homework due April 14th (post-KS, break, etc, etc)

1. Read Maus, vol. 2: And Here My Troubles Began. (Yes, all of it.) In your notebook, keep a list of all scenes, lines, panels, or images that you think are integral to the understanding of WWII and the Holocaust. Keep a second list of scenes, lines, panels, or images that you see as telling of the way we remember, retell, and translate history. There can (and very well may be) overlap between these two lists.

2. Read and comment on at least five posts on the blog.

3. Read the description of the fourth quarter project (posted above). Choose your subject for pt. 1 and begin research. You should have a solid understanding of what the monument is commemorating (the event or person/people) and know the basic facts of where it sits, when it was built, and what it looks like. Begin to think about what you will choose for pts. 2 and/or 3.

4. Using the Google Calendar set up a meeting with me during the first week back from break (April 14th-17th) to talk about your proposed topic and the preliminary research you’ve done.

5. Extra Credit Ops: Over break you’ll receive extra credit for every (relevant) post you make to the blog. If you come across an article or clip (or image or forum or cartoon or thought) that relates to our studies this year or the conversation already in place on the blog – about fascism and systems of rule, about propaganda, about civilian participation or death in war, about the role and teaching of history – put it on up. We want to know what you’re finding and thinking, even on vacation.

Homework, Tuesday March 24th/Wednesday March 25th

First read p. 701-702, 712-715 – this will finish up our reading of chapter 24, so make sure any gaps in your knowledge are filled up and to figure out what, if any, questions you have left about the events of WWII and the Holocaust.

Once you've finished the textbook reading, think back over the books you’ve read and movies you’ve watched in the last five years or so. Do any of them take place during WWII? Make a list and post it to the blog – with some quick descriptions, and links if you’re feeling fancy. The tag for this post will be your first name, PopWWII.

Then, go online or to the Menlo library and do some quick research on WACs, WAVEs, WASPs, or Rosie the Riveter. Using what you find, post a paragraph to the blog that investigates and takes a stand on the question of women’s roles during WWI and WWII – is the role of women essentially the same in both wars? Does the role of women tell us something about the nature of total war? If you find that the part women play in wartime has changed between 1914 and 1939, explain if and how it’s important to understand. The tag for this post will be your first name, American Women.

Homework, Monday, March 23rd/Tuesday, March 24th

First, read your assigned blog post (randomly selected from your peers) and, on the back, write the zoomed-out topic or theme, the zoomed-in topic or case, the argument, and the primary question raised (and left unanswered) by this piece.

Next, go to this site on WWII. Find your assigned number on the list and click through the link. Complete the assignment (note that these questions look quite similar to what you answer when writing an op-ed) and post it to the blog. Your answer need be no longer than a standard homework paragraph – but it should be complete and thoughtful. The tag for this post will be "your first name, home front."