Instructor: Todd M. Kerstetter
Office: 308B Reed Hall
Office Hours: W: 1:30-2:30 p.m.
R: 2:00-3:00 p.m. and by appointment
Telephone: (817)257-6736
E-mail: T.Kerstetter@tcu.edu
Note: This electronic syllabus is designed to save paper and is a living document. It will be available online for the duration of the term and students will receive notification via email of any changes.
Objectives:
This class has three main objectives:
Description:
Classes will consist mostly of discussions, which will allow students to interact with colleagues, raise questions, and practice communicating your interpretations and synthesis of scholarship.
Requirements:
Each student will lead one session's discussion and write a 1000- to 1500-word synthesis essay due on the discussion date. This essay should briefly review the selected book and place it in historiographical context by comparing it to two or three other books, an appropriate number of journal articles, or a combination of books and articles to be determined in consultation with the instructor. The discussion leader may use the course blog to post discussion questions or otherwise prepare the class for discussion.
Each week a student leads discussion two other students will serve as deputy discussion leaders. These students will prepare a 500-word review of a supplemental book or several journal articles to be determined in conference with the instructor. Each week all students serve as discussion leaders, each student will submit a 500-word review of a supplemental work. These reviews must be posted to the course blog in the appropriate place by Monday of the discussion week at 1 p.m.
During finals week students will take a final exam that mimics a Ph.D. comprehensive exam question.
Each student will query two print journal book review editors for review assignments. This assignment carries no grade but must be completed by all students. Students must submit drafts of their query letters in class on Sept.1.
Grades will be determined as follows:
Participation (discussion leadership, deputy work, regular participation) 60%
Synthesis essay 20%
Final exam 20%
Course policies
Students should behave courteously. Please refrain from distracting activities such as reading newspapers and talking out of turn. Disable electronic devices before class.
Academic dishonesty
Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Examples of academic dishonesty include, but are not limited to, the following:
Students found guilty of academic dishonesty will be penalized to the fullest extent possible, which may include failing the course.
Each student has the responsibility to know and understand University and College rules and regulations.
Grading
A (93+%): Outstanding. Work includes elegant writing, insightful and sophisticated written and oral analysis, and mastery or near mastery of professional skills.
A- (90-92%) Excellent. Work reflects polish and sophistication.
B+ (88-89%) Very good. Work exceeds competence and shows command of material, but lacks polish or sophistication of top-level performance.
B: (80-87%) Good. Work displays competence in written and oral communication, solid command of material, and shows student’s promise for graduate study and a career as a professional historian.
C: Unacceptable. Work does not meet standards for graduate study.
Texas Christian University complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 regarding students with disabilities. Eligible students seeking accommodations should contact the Coordinator for Students with Disabilities in the Center for Academic Services, located in Sadler Hall 11. Accommodations are not retroactive, therefore, students should contact the Coordinator as soon as possible in the academic term for which they are seeking accommodations. Further information can be obtained from the Center for Academic Services, TCU Box 297710, Fort Worth, TX 76129, or at 817-257-7486.
Adequate time must be allowed to arrange accommodations and accommodations are not retroactive; there, studetns should contact the Coordinator as soon as possible in the academic term for which they are seeking accommodations. Each eligible student is responsible for presenting relevant, verifiable, professional documentation and/or assessment reports to the Coordinator. Guidelines for documentation may be found at www.acs.tcu.edu/DISABILITY.HTM.
Students with emergency medical information or needing special arrangements in case a building must be evacuated should discuss this information with their instructor/professor as soon as possible.
1. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” available online at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/TURNER/chapter1.html.
2. Jon Lauck, “The Old Roots of the New West: Howard Lamar and the Intellectual Origins of Dakota Territory,” Western Historical Quarterly 39(Autumn 2008): 261-281.
1. Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West.
2. Patricia Nelson Limerick, “Introduction,” Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West.
3. Submit book review query list and draft letter.
4. All students serve as deputy discussion leaders. Supplemental assignments will come from the following list: Gary Clayton Anderson and Kathleen P. Chamberlain, Power and Promise: The Changing American West; Ray Allen Billington and Martin Ridge, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (any edition); Richard W. Etulain, Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West; Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, TheAmerican West: A New Interpretive History (any edition); Earl Pomeroy, The American Far West in the 20th Century; and, Richard White,"`It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own': A New History of the American West. Note: All except Anderson & Chamberlain are available in the TCU library.
Carl Abbott, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America.
All students serve as discussion leaders. No supplemental reading this week.
William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West.
Eric Sandweiss, St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape.
Suggested supplement: Bryan M. Jack, The St. Louis African American Community and the Exodusters (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007).
Robert R. Dykstra, The Cattle Towns.
Mark R. Ellis, Law and Order in Buffalo Bill’s Country: Legal Culture and Community on the Great Plains, 1867-1910.
Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin.
Mari Sandoz, Capital City.
All students serve as discussion leaders and all discussion online at the blog. No supplemental reading this week.
Michael F. Logan, Desert Cities: The Environmental History of Phoenix and Tucson.
Alicia Barber, Reno’s Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City.
Suggested supplement: Laura Hernandez-Ehrisman, Inventing the Fiesta City: Heritage and Carnival in San Antonio (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008).
John M. Findlay, Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940.