Description

  • This is an examination of your understanding of Geography 72AC: The Bay Area course materials (lectures, readings, and perhaps videos). No “outside” research or sources may be included in your answers.
  • Write your answers on a separate document and upload your document on our Geography 72AC: The Bay Area bCourse site in .docx or .pdf format. You are responsible for successfully uploading your exam on bCourse, so be sure to double-check your submission.
  • Write your name on your document.
  • Your text must be double-spaced with one-inch margins and written in a 12-point font.
  • Your answers should be written in paragraph form (no bullet points), proofread, and free of grammatical errors and typos.
  • Please do not rewrite the exam question in your answer but write the number of the question as it appears on the exam.
  • Cite assigned readings with the author’s last name and either the title or the publication date within the text or parenthetically. Direct quotes, which are not mandatory, require a page number. No need to cite lectures or to include a bibliography.
  • Include the numerical word count (e.g., “348 words”) at the end of each question. The graders will stop reading at the word limit and you will not earn credit for any additional content.

Part I. Short Answer Question (25 points each)

Your answer to each question may not exceed 350 words. Be sure to craft an explicit argument (assertively answer the question), address each facet of the question, briefly define terms, and provide examples from lectures and assigned readings. That is, demonstrate your understanding of course material.

Answer ONE of the following two questions:

  1. Shellmounds. Your job is to write the text for a plaque that will commemorate an East Bay shellmound site. Your text should (1) explain the formative but overlooked influence of Ohlone people on Bay Area ecologies before European contact and (2) provide one reason why this pre-contact Ohlone history is significant today. (Note: in “real life” we would certainly defer to Ohlone people for the creation of such a plaque and any other memorialization).
  2. Plunder. Using an example of industrialized mining, describe San Francisco’s contado. Describe one or two environmental consequences of industrialized mining that harmed the Bay Area.

Answer ONE of the following three questions:

  1. Gendered Landscapes. How did department stores seek to ease “cultural anxiety” concerning the emergence of women in downtown San Francisco at the turn of the century? How did the experienced landscape subvert these prevailing notions of femininity?
  2. Institutionalization. Drawing on either the Mission system, the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, or People v Hall, explain how the subordinate racial status of a group was institutionalized. How did this institutionalization benefit people who possessed the “power to name”?
  3. Suburban whiteness. How did “suburban” homeownership in East Oakland help define whiteness? How did the concerns of these homeowners relate to the political rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s?

Part II. Essay Question (50 points)
Your essay should be between 650 and 750 words. These questions are somewhat open-ended and may therefore be answered in several ways. Nevertheless, you are required to craft an explicit argument, directly address each facet of the question, define key terms, and provide specific examples from lectures and assigned readings. Please do not rewrite the exam question in your answer but write the number of the question as it appears on the exam.

Answer ONE of the following three questions (either 6a-c, 7a-c, or 8a-c):

  1. Race & Space. Analyze processes of racialization (or “race-making”) in the Bay Area based on the following prompts.
    1. (a) Explain how representations of specific places constructed categories of race based on either promotions for the Santa Clara Valley, or tourist literature about San Francisco Chinatown, or graphic depictions of San Francisco Chinatown, or the description of San Francisco Japantown in “Lessons in Home Building.”
    2. (b) Considering either agricultural labor in the Santa Clara Valley, the credit ticket system, or speculative real estate development in Presidio Terrace, explain how the subordinate racial status of Chinese or Japanese people provided economic advantages or opportunities for certain white people.
    3. (c) Describe one way in which a specific group of Chinese or Japanese people in the Bay Area resisted oppression and exerted their own agency or autonomy.
  2. Erasure. Explain processes of the genocide of Bay Region Indians based on the following questions:

(a) Scholars typically assume disease was the primary cause of the atrocious decimation of the Indigenous population in the Bay Area during Spanish rule. This focus on germs, however, may remove culpability from the colonizers. Considering not only disease but also mass incarceration, penal servitude, or living conditions in the missions, did Spanish (Franciscan) treatment of Indigenous people constitute genocide?

(b) Beyond mass killing, why did Euro-Americans’ treatment of Native Californians between the late-1840s and early-1870s constitute genocide? Why did Euro- Americans commit these atrocities?

(c) Describe one type of reparations the State of California should make to Indigenous survivors of genocide. Your answer to this prompt (7c) should stem from course materials as much as possible.

8. Metropolitan Expansion. Pretend you own a small tract of land in the East Bay in 1885. Your property encompasses 5 square-miles of bayshore and flatlands. Your goal is to create the Bay Area’s first industrial suburb and, in doing so, reap fortunes from speculative property development. Using specific examples from lectures and course readings, describe your strategies for industrialization based on the following prompts. Be sure to focus on course material.

  1. (a) Considering the Bay Area’s contado, which specific industries, or industrial sectors, will you seek to attract?
  2. (b) How will you facilitate industrial suburbanization from San Francisco and/or create a booming industrial cluster?
  3. (c) In terms of residential real estate development, described the barriers you will face to to creating an inclusive and diverse working-class neighborhood.

You may thoughtfully write your answer in the first person narrative, if you like. Or you can answer in a more “formal” academic style. Either way, you are required to follow the essay directions stated above.