midterm

Online - Midterm Exam

75 points

Identifications (10 points each) – Total 40 points.

Instructions: Choose FOUR of the following persons, concepts, or events to identify. Identify the person or event with relevant contextual information, and state why he/she/it was important to the history of crime and the themes we have discussed in the course. If you do more than five identifications, I will grade only the first four. 

 

1. Montesquieu  6. 13th Amendment

2. Black Codes 7. Double Character

3. Auburn   8. Maleficium

4. Confidence Man  9. Caning of Charles Sumner

5. Honor Culture  10. The Watch System

 

Short Answer Questions (35 points) 

Instructions: Answer ONE of the following questions. Short answers should be 2-3 paragraphs long (Avoid going over 3 paragraphs). Answers should consist of complete sentences, and they should not be written in bullet point format. The best answers will draw in specific examples from course readings.

 

1. Give three examples of the ways in which the ideological trends of the Enlightenment era changed how Americans thought about crime, criminals, and/or punishment. Be sure to reference at least one of the readings in your answer. (Note: This answer should be three paragraphs long, one for each example.) 

2. Historians disagree on whether the West was actually wild. From what you learned in class and the readings, was the West wild? This is not an opinion question. You must use specific examples and evidence from readings to argue your point. It does not matter what position you take, but you must back up your argument with specific evidence.

Now, for extra information. Part 1 is identifications. For the most part, students do very well on the short answer (think of it as a mini-essay - no more than 1000 words (or 1 page double spaced), but struggle with the IDs. So please, look at what the directions state. There are two parts to the ID question. Here is an example of what a 10/10 answer looks like on the Midterm: 

John Haviland –

A nineteenth-century architect who had a distinguished career as a prison designer. Haviland designed the Tombs in New York, but he is most known for designing Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Haviland reflected the Enlightenment idea that environment could affect people’s behavior. He designed Eastern State to be imposing, so there was no question of what kind of building it was and used a medieval castle as the model. It was so imposing that when English novelist Charles Dickens visited the prison, he was struck by the architecture and said that, “it left no doubt to what kind of person was in there.” The importance of Haviland is that his design of Eastern State Penitentiary showed the increasing institutionalizing of civic governments, for example: schools, prisons, and asylums. He represents the nineteenth-century idea that buildings and the environment could shape or reform a person’s behavior. (Hence why each cell in Eastern State held only one prisoner and kept them isolated from everyone.) Although the United States did not adopt the Eastern State Prison system, it was important to the idea that prisons should reform the criminal.

Notice the BOLDED part of the answer. In the directions, I specifically ask for the importance of the term. You may absolutely word it like I did in this example. It's totally fine to write, the importance of (term) is that . . . 

Okay, let me or your TA know if you have any questions, the logistics. Because it's an exam we will not read a draft beforehand nor give you specific answers to a question. 

Now, for the Midterm questions. There has been some confusion regarding the IDs. First, everything you need can be found in the course materials, especially the lectures (power point presentations). You do not need other sources - so in other words, don't google the terms. For the most part, everything you need is in the power point lectures. The actual definition per se. You just have to figure out what that term is and what lesson that was (this is why I told you all to take notes as you went through the slides and VoiceThreads). If you google a term, let's say, "Confidence Man" you're going to get a lot of general information, some results will talk about other countries or recent financial schemes. I don't want you to use that. I want you to use the information I gave you on the power point lecture. It's all there, all you need to do is put it into your words and in sentence form. This is what historians do. They read primary and secondary sources and state them in their own words. Now, let's take the 13th Amendment - this is one that I guess you could google and be okay with it, but remember, what everyone concentrates on with this one is the abolishing slavery....but look back at that week's lesson (I'm specifically not telling you which week we covered these terms, this is part of the exam). What else did the 13th Amendment state that relates to the History of Crime? I want you to concentrate on that too! So if you googled 13th Amendment you'd get the actual amendment, which I guess could help with reading the actual language, but I also want you to relate it to what we studied in this class. 

I hope that helps clarify things with the IDs. The same can be said with the short answer, but in this one your readings will also help you answer the questions. You'll still need the Power Point lectures, but I want you to relate to the readings also. And remember, only pick ONE short answer to answer. So if you choose short answer 1 - you will look at the lecture for the Enlightenment and that will give you the overview of the period, and then look at the following slides and lessons to pick 3 ideological changes in the criminal justice system. Then go back and use a reading for each one. I don't need or want a summary of the reading (many of you did so on the paper #1). I want you to use the reading to back up your argument. So for instance you could say, "in this reading (list author), he/she argues that . . . and we can see this in . . . "(give example). You may use parenthetical citations if you quote (you don't really need to quote though). I just want you to refer to the readings and the argument of the author. This is a short answer, so please don't turn in 3 pages. A paragraph should be around 5-8 sentences long. If you go a little over that's fine. Do not, for any reason, use bulleted points. You must write in sentence/paragraph form. And this is an exam, first person is fine.