And it should not

he would google it, and engage you on the topic, if not add it to his curriculum.

But don't hold your breath.

It's not too hard to have gaps in knowledge, especially in survey classes that cover such a broad time period. And labor history is particularly ignored these days. As you say, it's not even in the book. Let us know what he thinks of the Wobblies.

-- Mal

The Wobblies are in there, so we'll be talking about them later apparently. But now I have the syllabus, and none of the topics we can choose from for our terms papers have to do with labor history; so I won't get to write about Blair Mountain. *grumble grumble*

It's mentioned

The prof really has no business restricting your paper in that fashion. Unless his excuse is that he's not competent to judge. But in evaluating an historical paper he should be more interested in how you present the topic and how thorough your research is.

-- Mal

and a lot of survey. I joke, in a not too funny way, about a survey course being akin to a space shuttle trip around the globe, looking down at the planet - because that's about as much detail as you can cram into it.

Rather than grumbling about a perceived lack, why don't you ask your instructor is it would be okay for you to write your paper on the topic. Marshal your argument as to why you believe it is important and stress your particular interest in the history of the labor movement; having a monograph or primary source reference ready to discuss (as in "I've been reading "XXX" book on the topic" or "I found "XXX" primary source material and would love to be able to use it in a paper&quot is always helpful.

I suspect that your instructor will let you write on the topic - we all prefer that our student's be interested in the subject they research.

Give it a shot.

I went back to school. My 100 level history class had several textbooks; one of them had a section on the Middle East, in which a picture of a pentagram was labeled in the caption as "a Star of David". . .