Teacher's Guide for Cobblestone: Americans Abroad

EDITOR'S NOTE (page 2)

1. What are some of the reasons people have come to America?
2. What do we call people who give up their American citizenship?
3. Why have wars caused some people to leave America?
4. Why did some African Americans leave the United States after World War II?

1. Why did Benjamin West have to go to Europe to practice art the way he wanted?
2. What was John Singleton Copley's opinion of American art?
3. What subject was James Abbott McNeill Whistler drawn to paint? What is his most famous work?
4. What was the dream of artists in the mid-1800s?
5. With what painters did Mary Cassatt associate in France?
6. Write a paragraph in which you argue that Cassatt should be considered more a European painter than an American painter.
7. In what ways was John Singer Sargent an American? In what ways was he not?

1. How do we know that Benjamin Franklin felt at home in London?
2. What was Franklin's position on the Stamp Act? What action did he urge Americans to take?
3. What was Governor Thomas Hutchinson's opinion of the American colonists?
4. To what country did the Continental Congress send Franklin as ambassador?
5. What was Charles Francis Adams's assignment during the Civil War?
6. What trade did the British want to make with the Confederacy?

1. Where can you get a passport application?
2. What kind of copy of your birth certificate is needed?
3. How long does it usually take to get a passport?

1. Who were the American Loyalists? What happened to Loyalists after the Revolutionary War?
2. How many Loyalists left the United States? Where did they go?
3. Why did many Confederates leave the United States after the Civil War?
4. How many southerners moved to Mexico, British Honduras, Venezuela, and Brazil between 1865 and 1870?
5. What did the Confederados do in Brazil?

1. Which church groups will not allow members to fight in wars?
2. What was the reaction in 1863 when the draft was announced?
3. Why did socialists object to the draft in World War I?
4. What kind of work were "conscientious objectors" assigned to do? What happened to them if they refused this work?
5. Why were there antiwar feelings in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s?
6. What offers were made by President Gerald Ford and President Jimmy Carter to expatriates? Discuss whether you think people who refuse to fight for the United States should be allowed to live in this country.

1. Why did Sylvia Beach start her shop in Paris?
2. What was unusual about her bookshop?
3. Why did she think Shakespeare would have liked the idea of her shop?
4. What kind of social relationships were encouraged at Beach's shop?
5. Why did Beach close the shop during World War II? What has taken its place?

1. What does avant-garde mean?
2. Who were some of the American writers in Paris in the 1920s?
3. What did Gertrude Stein think she and her friends were going to create?
4. Even though Ernest Hemingway didn't have much money, what kind of lifestyle did he lead in Paris in the 1920s?
5. How did Hemingway use his experiences abroad?
6. What kind of lifestyle did F. Scott Fitzgerald lead and write about?
7. In their first few years in Paris, what kind of a relationship did Hemingway and Fitzgerald have?

1. Why did James Baldwin leave the United States?
2. Why did African Americans go to Paris after World War II?
3. How was life in France different from life in the United States for African Americans?
4. What did Senator Joseph McCarthy do?
5. Why didn't Richard Wright want to come back to the United States?
6. What mixed feelings did Chester Himes have about Paris?
7. What was the price many African Americans paid for living in Paris?
8. Why did James Baldwin feel guilty for leaving the United States?
9. What questions were raised for many African Americans by their experiences abroad?

1. What kind of treatment did Baker receive in Paris that surprised her?
2. Where had she grown up? What kind of treatment did she receive there?
3. When Baker came back to America in 1935 to star in the Ziegfeld Follies, how was she treated?
4. Do you think she was right to give up her American citizenship?
5. What did Baker do during World War II?
6. How did she demonstrate her philosophy of life by the children she adopted?

1. Where was Jeremy Cox born? What is his citizenship?
2. Why has he grown up outside the United States?
3. What did he like about international school? How does he study now?
4. What does he like doing when he visits the United States?
5. How does he get along with the Yemeni children?
6. Why does he like celebrating Eid?
7. Write a paragraph about what you would miss most if you lived outside the United States.

Do some library research on Josephine Baker. Write an in-depth paper about her life.

The Jazz Sensation (October 1983),
Polish Americans (May 1995).

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Updated: 5/24/13 11:53 am
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