Jenkintown High School
AP American History
Mr. T. Cunningham, Instructor


AP American History is an opportunity for the motivated and talented Social Studies student to grapple with the ideas that brought rise to our nation and the issues that it faces in its fourth century. Rather than merely absorbing facts, students will actually learn to do history: to use the methods historians use to bring insight and analysis to events in our nation’s past. AP American History will help to prepare students to take the AP United States History exam in May 2004.

Syllabus (Adobe PDF)

AP Exam Content Outline (Adobe PDF)

AP American History information from the College Board

Real World Assignment Instructions

*Prepare for the AP Exam*

Course of Study (click unit name for Adobe PDF review sheet)

Unit 1: Foundations of American Democracy (Review of Chapters 1-6)

Ch. 1: New World Beginnings
Ch. 2: The Planting of English America
Ch. 3: Settling the Northern Colonies
Ch. 4: American Life in the Seventeenth Century
Ch. 5: Colonial Society on the Eve of the Revolution
Ch. 6: The Duel for North America

Unit 2: Independence

Ch. 7: The Road to Revolution
Ch. 8: America Secedes From the Empire

Primary Sources on Loyalists & the American Revolution

Unit 3: Defining Democracy

Ch. 9: The Confederation and the Constitution

Ch. 10: Launching the New Ship of State

Unit 4: Jeffersonian Democracy

Ch. 11: The Triumph of Jeffersonian Democracy

Lewis and Clark: Ken Burns' PBS documentary

Ch. 12: James Madison and the Second War for Independence

Ch. 13: The Postwar Upsurge of Nationalism

Unit 5: The Rise of Mass Democracy/American Life: the first 70 years

Ch. 13: The Rise of Mass Democracy

Ch. 14: Forging the National Economy

Ch. 15: The Ferment of Reform and Culture

Unit 6: Slavery & Sectionalism 1

Ch. 16: The South and the Slavery Controversy

Ch. 17: Manifest Destiny & Its Legacy, 1841-48

Unit 7: Slavery & Sectionalism 2

Ch. 18: Renewing the Sectional Struggle, 1848-1854

Ch. 19: Drifting Toward Disunion, 1854-1861

Unit 8: The Furnace of Civil War

Ch. 20: Girding for War: The North and the South, 1861-65

Ch. 21: The Furnace of Civil War

Unit 9: Politics of Reconstruction & the Gilded Age

Ch. 22: The Ordeal of Reconstruction

Ch. 23: Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869-1899

Unit 10: The Industrial Revolution in America

Ch. 24: Industry Comes of Age, 1865-1900

Ch. 25: America Moves to the City, 1865-1900

Ch. 26: The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution

Unit 11: American Imperialism

Ch. 27: The Path of Empire

Ch. 28: America on the World Stage, 1899-1909

Unit 12: The Progressive Era

Ch. 29: Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt

parts of Ch. 30: Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad

Unit 13: The Great War and Its Aftermath

parts of Ch. 30: Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad

Ch. 31: The War to End War, 1917-1918

Ch. 32: American Life in the "Roaring Twenties"

Unit 14: The Great Depression & The New Deal

Ch. 33: The Politics of Boom and Bust, 1920-1932

Ch. 34: The Great Depression and the New Deal

Unit 15: World War II

Ch. 35: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Shadow of War

Ch. 36: America in World War II

Unit 16: Postwar America

Ch. 37: The Cold War Begins

Ch. 38: The Eisenhower Era, 1953-1960

Unit 17: The 1960s and 1970s

Ch. 39: The Stormy Sixties

Ch. 40: The Stalemated Seventies

Unit 18: The 1980s to the Millennium

Ch. 41: The Resurgence of Conservatism

Ch. 42: The American People Face a New Century

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