Teaching the JAH
The JAH editors select two articles each year to be featured in the Teaching. The Teaching the JAH project creates online “teaching packages” that demonstrate how new JAH articles might be used in teaching U.S. history. Each package includes a targeted article, brief comments from the article’s author, and a set of annotated documents intended for classroom use. Depending on the targeted articles, the document sets might include exercises, illustrations, photographs, video clips, audio clips, and excerpts from other primary historical texts. The packages also include links to other history-related web sites that hold additional relevant materials.
December 2009 Installment
When the “Jungle” Met the Forest: Public Work, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California
After World War II, California’s forest labor camps offered prisoners unusual liberties and community respect in return for often dangerous public works labor. But the Golden State’s fast-changing urban and rural landscapes eventually soured residents on this popular prison rehabilitation experiment and turned the conservation camp program into a catalyst for today’s prison geography. draws on research in the correspondence of the California Department of Corrections to highlight the role of Cold War military culture in prison reform. Exploring the racial, urban-rural, and political conflicts sparked by the conservation camp program, Janssen argues that prisons and incarceration policies are central to understanding the connection between America’s urban crisis and law-and-order conservatism.
