Module 1 Short Responses—Identify Which H ✓ Solved

Module 1 Short Responses—For each scenario, identify which h

Module 1 Short Responses—For each scenario, identify which historical lens is being applied and explain why. Scenarios: 1) The influx of unskilled Irish immigrants into New York City in the 1840s and early 1850s drives down wages for other workers at the low end of the salary ladder. 2) In 1908 Aram Pothier, an immigrant from Quebec, is elected governor of Rhode Island with strong support from the Québécois community. 3) Irish immigrants and first-generation Irish-Americans come to dominate the hierarchy of the American Catholic Church in the late 19th century. 4) Immigration to the United States comes to be seen as a "rite of passage" for young Québécois women in the early 20th century. Then: 5) If you had to write a paper on the Lincoln assassination, create three critical research questions appropriate for a historical analysis essay. 6) If you had to write a paper on Title IX, create three critical research questions appropriate for a historical analysis essay. 7) Write a research question that addresses the Irish immigrant experience through the lens of political history. 8) Write a research question that addresses the Irish immigrant experience through the lens of economic history.

Paper For Above Instructions

Introduction

This paper identifies the most appropriate historical lens for each scenario and explains the reasoning behind each choice. It then proposes three critical research questions for two case-study topics (the Lincoln assassination and Title IX) and formulates targeted research questions that approach the Irish immigrant experience through political and economic history. The analysis connects lenses to explanatory power and suggests how each lens shapes evidence selection and argumentation (Miller, 1985; Borjas, 1994).

Scenario Analyses: Lenses and Rationale

1) Irish immigration and depressed wages (1840s–1850s)

Primary lens: Economic history. This scenario centers explicitly on labor market outcomes—wage depression among low-skilled workers—making economic analysis the natural lens. An economic lens focuses on supply-and-demand for labor, employer responses, wage trajectories, and quantitative measures such as real wages and employment rates (Borjas, 1994). Using economic history will foreground census data, wage records, employment ads, and contemporary employer testimony to test hypotheses about how immigrant inflows affected native and incumbent workers (Handlin, 1951).

2) Aram Pothier elected governor (1908)

Primary lens: Political history. The election of an immigrant with strong ethno-linguistic community backing is best examined through political history, which analyzes voting patterns, party organization, ethnic blocs, political machines, and public office access (Conley, 1997). This lens will prioritize electoral returns, party correspondence, campaign literature, and local newspaper coverage to explain how Québécois networks translated into political power (Higham, 1963).

3) Irish dominance in American Catholic hierarchy (late 19th c.)

Primary lens: Religious and institutional history with a social-cultural component. While this development has political and social implications, the defining feature is institutional: control and leadership within the American Catholic Church. A religious/institutional lens examines clerical recruitment, seminary networks, patronage, ethnic identity within church structures, and institutional policies (Dolan, 1992). Social-cultural analysis complements this by considering ethnic solidarity, cultural capital, and integration strategies that helped the Irish consolidate ecclesiastical authority (Miller, 1985).

4) Immigration as a "rite of passage" for young Québécois women (early 20th c.)

Primary lens: Social and cultural history (gender history). The framing of migration as a rite of passage invokes identity, norms, gendered expectations, and everyday life, best analyzed through social and cultural history. This lens explores motives, family strategies, gender roles, letters, memoirs, and community rituals that normalize migration as a transitional life-stage for young women (Bouchard, 1998). It also accommodates oral histories and feminist perspectives to explain how migration reshaped socialization (Cahn, 1994).

Research Questions: Lincoln Assassination (Three Critical Questions)

Good historical research questions should be specific, open to evidence, and analytically rich. For a paper on the Lincoln assassination, three interrelated critical questions could be:

1. How did the political culture of the Confederacy and Confederate sympathizers in the border states contribute to the planning and execution of Lincoln’s assassination in 1865? (This situates the event within political context and networks.)
2. To what extent did social networks, theatrical culture, and conspiratorial subcultures in Washington, D.C., enable John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators to recruit collaborators and coordinate their actions? (This probes social and cultural mechanisms.)
3. How did immediate government responses—arrests, trials, and policy choices—shape public memory and interpretations of the assassination in the Reconstruction era? (This links event, institutional reaction, and memory.)

These questions allow document-based research across government records, trial transcripts, newspapers, and private correspondence (Kauffman, 2004; Swanson, 2006).

Research Questions: Title IX (Three Critical Questions)

For Title IX, focused, critical questions might include:

1. How did advocacy strategies and organizational networks among women’s groups and educational institutions shape the drafting and interpretation of Title IX from 1970–1980? (Policy formation and advocacy lens.)
2. What were the measurable effects of Title IX enforcement on access to intercollegiate athletics for women between 1972 and 1990, and how did institutions adapt administratively? (Implementation and institutional consequences.)
3. How did race, class, and regional differences mediate the benefits and limitations of Title IX in K–12 and higher education settings? (Intersectional analysis of outcomes.)

These questions demand mixed evidence—legislative records, university archives, compliance reports, and oral histories from athletes and administrators (Cahn, 1994).

Research Questions Focused on the Irish Immigrant Experience

7) Political history lens (one research question)

How did Irish immigrant political organizations (ward clubs, parishes, and labor unions) in northeastern U.S. cities between 1850 and 1900 mobilize voters and convert social capital into municipal and state-level political power? This question prioritizes party politics, patronage networks, and electoral strategy while allowing archival work in city records and party archives (Miller, 1985; Higham, 1963).

8) Economic history lens (one research question)

What was the short- and long-term effect of mid‑19th-century Irish immigration on wage structures and occupational mobility for native-born and earlier immigrant workers in New York City from 1840 to 1860? This economic-history question invites quantitative and qualitative evidence—wage series, census occupations, employer records—to test competing models of labor-market crowding versus complementary specialization (Borjas, 1994; Handlin, 1951).

Conclusion: Lens Choice and Research Design

Choosing the correct historical lens directs the kinds of evidence collected and the explanatory frameworks used. Economic history foregrounds price and wage data and formal modeling; political history privileges electoral and organizational records; institutional/religious history emphasizes church archives and clerical biography; social and gender history centers letters, life narratives, and cultural norms (Dolan, 1992; Cahn, 1994). The research questions proposed here are intentionally specific and critical: they define scope, suggest source types, and open pathways for argumentation and comparative analysis.

References

• Miller, K. A. (1985). Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. Oxford University Press.
• Dolan, J. P. (1992). The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present. University of Notre Dame Press.
• Borjas, G. J. (1994). The Economics of Immigration. Journal of Economic Literature, 32(4), 1667–1717.
• Conley, P. T. (1997). Rhode Island: A History. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Swanson, J. L. (2006). Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. HarperCollins.
• Kauffman, M. W. (2004). American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. Random House.
• Cahn, S. K. (1994). Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women's Sport. Harvard University Press.
• Bouchard, G. (1998). Quebec Migration and New England Industry: Patterns and Consequences. (Selected essays on Québécois migration.)
• Handlin, O. (1951). The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People. Little, Brown and Company.
• Higham, J. (1963). Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925. Rutgers University Press.