Regional Studies USA Übung, Homework for Week 2

For homework, please:
Purchase Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (copies are available at the Witsch und Behrendt Unibuchhandlung, Am Hof 5A) and complete the following questions (bring both the text and your answers to these questions with you to class next week):

Answers to these questions may involve doing some research outside of reading the respective chapters in Zinn. Please use reliable sources in answering these questions (i.e. don't simply rely on Wikipedia). Page numbers from Zinn will be cited when relevant for answering questions that derive directly from his text.

Chapter One: Columbus, the Indians and Human Progress
1. What was the economic and political climate in the Germanic lands like when Columbus was planning his voyage to India?
2. How did the Spaniards communicate with the natives of Hispanola?
3. (From pg. 7) In your opinion, is it ever appropriate for schoolchildren to "celebrate" their history? If so, under what circumstances? And do these celebrations look like?
4. "Nations are not communities and never have been." (pg. 10) How do you respond to this statement? How does political rhetoric try to build communities out of nations?
5. (Pg. 14) How did the Puritans justify their settlement of Indian land?
6. Consider former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's statement in a 1996 60 Minutes interview that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of economic sanctions was "worth it". In light of Zinn's argument on pg. 17 and the Geneva Convention, are college students right in labelling Abright a war criminal? Defend your response with specific detail.

Chapter Two: Drawing the Color Line
1. (pg. 25) In what ways were the Virginians different from Columbus and his crew?
2. (pgs. 26-28) What makes slavery in the US unparalleled in human history?
3. (pg. 31) Name five examples of how the white/black dichotomy is enshrined in language and images (you do not need to restrict yourself to English or US contexts).
4. In what ways is the myth that the States are "a nation of immigrants" exclusionary and false? What repercussions does it have today?

The main website to draw cartoons from is: http://www.cagle.com/
Google Image searches for specific cartoons, the political humor pages of about.com (http://politicalhumor.about.com/), and http://www.usnews.com/cartoons are also excellent resources.