HIS 102
Special Projects
 
 
Video review (50 points). Watch one of the videos listed below and write a review of the movie as if you were a critic.  Explain how the movie was (or was not) historically accurate.  You can suggest a different movie.
 
Peter Hunt, 1776 (1972); Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon (1975); Milos Forman, Amadeus (1984); Nicholas Hytner, The Madness of King George (1994); Abel Gance, Napoléon (1927); Andrzej Wajda, Danton (1983); Hans Christian Anderson
Bernard Rose, Immortal Beloved (1994); D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation (1915); John Ford, The Searchers (1956); The Bounty; The Charge of the Light Brigade; The Inspector General; Les Miserables (1935)
Gandhi (1982); Night to Remember; Papillon; Passage to India; William Wellman, Beau Geste (1939); Cy Endfield, Zulu (1963); Bruce Beresford, Breaker Morant (1979); Sydney Pollack, Out of Africa (1985)
Sergei Eisenstein, Bronenosets Potëmkin (Battleship Potëmkin, 1925)
Lewis Milestone, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); John Guillermin, The Blue Max (1966); Jean Renoir, La Grande Illusion (1937); Peter Weir, Gallipoli (1981); David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia (1962); Frank Borzage, A Farewell to Arms (1932); Stanley Kubrick, Paths of Glory (1957); David Lean, Dr. Zhivago (1965); Franklin Schaffner, Nicholas and Alexandra (1971); Warren Beatty, Reds (1981); Pudovkin, End of St. Petersburg (1929); Sergeant York
Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935); Bob Fosse, Cabaret (1972); John Ford, Grapes of Wrath (1940); Caspar Wrede, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1971); Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator (1940)
Richard Fleischer, Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970); Steven Spielberg, Schindler's List (1993); Night and Fog; Hiroshima, Mon amour; David Lean, Bridge on the River Kwai (1957); Wolfgang Petersen, Das Boot (The Boat, 1981); John Ford, They Were Expendable (1945); Sam Peckinpah, Cross of Iron (1977); Joseph Vilsmaier, Stalingrad (1992); Andrew Marton, The Longest Day (1962); Samuel Fuller, The Big Red One (1980); Franklin J. Schaffner, Patton (1970); Grigori Chukhrai, Ballada o soldate (Ballad of a Soldier, 1959); Roland Joffe, Fat Man and Little Boy (1989); Judgment at Nuremberg (1961); Schindler's List
Lewis Milestone, Pork Chop Hill (1959); Richard Attenborough, Gandhi (1982); Bernardo Bertolucci, The Last Emperor (1987) ; Cinda Firestone, Attica (1973); Guilty by Suspicion; Alan Parker, Mississippi Burning (1988); Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove (1964); D. A. Pennebaker, Monterey Pop (1968); Apollo 13; Michael Cimino, The Deer Hunter (1978); Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (1979); Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket (1987); Roland Joffé, The Killing Fields (1984)
 
 
Book review (50 points). Write a review of the book. Do not just summarize the book's contents but also examine its strengths and weaknesses and place the book in its proper historical context.  You can suggest a different book.
 
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; John Locke, Second Treatise of Government; Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws; Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations; Voltaire, Candide; Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France; Charles Darwin, On the Origins of the Species; Karl Marx, Capital; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty; Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations or Oliver Twist; Feodor Dostoevskii, Crime and Punishment or The Idiot or Brothers Karamazov; Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Nikolai Gogol, The Inspector General; Victor Hugo, Les Miserables; Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks; Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; Stendhal, The Red and the Black; Lev Tolstoi, War and Peace or Anna Karenina; Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; James Joyce, Ulysses; Franz Kafka, The Trial; Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms; John Reed, Ten Days That Shock the World; Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago; Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf; Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon; Otto Spengler, The Decline of the West; John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath; Arthur Toynbee, A Study of History; The Diary of Anne Frank; Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five; Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Albert Camus, The Plague; Nicholas Gage, Eleni; Günter Grass, The Tin Drum; Norman Mailer, From Here to Eternity; George Orwell, 1984; Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
 
 
Vacation (50 points). If, during this course, you vacation in some place that has significant historical importance (after 1600 ce), write and submit a short, two-page report, along with some pictures, in digital form if possible, about that place.  Consult your instructor for approval of your selection before proceeding.
 
 
Classical music concert (75 points). Attend a classical symphony, chamber concert or opera and submit a short, two-page report explaining what you heard, who the composer was and how his music fit into the classical era.  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
Corcoran Gallery of Art (75 points). Visit the paintings of the American modernists in the Corcoran Gallery of Art and submit a brief, two-page essay explaining how certain, specific paintings illustrate some of the diverse characteristics of American modernism.  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
Dumbarton Oaks (75 points). Visit Dumbarton Oaks at 1703 32nd St., NW, and describe what you saw. Also include a brief, two-page report of the founding of the United Nations (part of which took place at 1944 meetings at Dumbarton Oaks) and its development.  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
Hillwood Museum & Gardens (75 points).  Visit the beautiful collections of the Hillwood Museum & Gardens and submit a brief essay describing the work of Fabergé's Russian workshop (Cite some specific examples.).  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia (75 points).  Visit the beautiful collections of the Mueum and submit a brief essay describing the work of Fabergé's Russian workshop which produced the elaborate Fabergé'sfor the Russian imperial family.  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
Holocaust Museum (75 points). Visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC and write a short, two-page report describing the Holocaust and its impact on the Western World.  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
National Air and Space Museum (75 points). Visit the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall and write a short, two-page report that describes the exhibits and how they fit into the space race.  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
National Gallery of Art (75 points). Visit the collection of the Impressionists at the National Gallery of Art and submit a brief, two-page essay explaining how certain, specific paintings illustrate some of the characteristics of Impressionism.  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
The Phillips Collection (75 points). Visit the paintings of the Impressionists in the Phillips Collection and submit a brief, two-page essay explaining how certain, specific paintings illustrate some of the characteristics of Impressionism.  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
Vietnam Memorial (75 points). Visit the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. and submit a two-page essay on one of the following themes:  (1) explain how the monument was characteristic of the artistic movement known as "Minimalism" (after defining Minimalism); (2) explain how, first, France and, then, the United States became involved in Vietnam and what the outcome was.
 
 
Walters Art Museum (75 points).  Visit the manuscript and rare book collections at the Walters Art Museum and submit a brief essay explaining the development of the book from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries (Cite some specific examples.)  Please send a brochure or ticket (will not be returned) as evidence of your visit to:
Extended Learning Institute
ATTN:  HIS 102 (Put your instructor's name here)
Northern Virginia Community College
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003-3796
 
 
Interview project (100 points). Interview and record the views of at least five people who lived through, or participated in, one of the following:  the Great Depression, World War I, World War II, the postwar Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War or the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.  Using the information in the textbook and the quotations of the people interviewed, write a short, organized three-page paper about the impact of that event on the lives of people in the world.
 
 
Note that if you have any other proposals for a project, such as a visit to an out-of-town museum like any of those located in New York, please contact your instructor for approval and point value before you begin, for example, a trip to the Art Institute of Chicago.
 
 

This page is copyright © 2006, C.T. Evans
For information contact cevans@nvcc.edu