the topics could be either period-specific (e.g. challenges faced by the settlers in Colonial America and the justification for continuing with the legacy of Elizabethan Poor Laws (EPL,1601); the difference between colonial America and 17th century England that dictated reexamination of EPL; cotton plantation pivoted on slavery in the South that generated a trajectory markedly different from the North; the American Independence that became a watershed moment replete with irony; expansion of public education, or compulsory education for children that questioned the effectiveness of institutionalization as a means of saving children from a vicious cycle of abandonment, abuse, and poverty; the transitory change in the role of women in the North until the immigrants depressed the wages and took over, as manufacturing redefined the mode of production, distribution, and consumption setting a new norm; the labor movement that ushering in an unprecedented change of status quo; the relevance of the know-nothing group in representing the majoritarian perspective etc.) or blurring the boundaries between the two periods (e.g. how certain groups of people were systematically oppressed, the emergence of womens movement as a potent force for social change, etc.)