History 70603 Seminar in U.S. History:
Readings in American History to 1877
Professor: Dr. Gregg
Cantrell
Office: 116 Reed Hall
Phone: 257-7035 (office)
email: g.cantrell@tcu.edu
Office Hours: Tues., 9:30-11:30,
and by appointment. I will be here many
other hours and will be happy to meet with you any time. However, it's always a good idea to call
first and make sure I'm in.
Statement of Purpose: The purpose of this is course is to introduce
students to a broad range of the scholarly literature on American history from
pre-Columbian times through Reconstruction.
Readings have been chosen because of their importance in shaping a major
historiographical school of thought on a given subject, or they stand as a
representative work of a major school, or they are otherwise important for
methodological reasons.
Grading: The semester grade will be determined as
follows:
Contribution to the class blog (35%): Before class each week (by 9 a.m. on the day
of the class) you must make two posts, roughly a paragraph or two each, to the
class blog. One entry discusses the most
important thing that you learned from this week’s reading. The other entry identifies your “muddiest
point,” that is, what you had the hardest time understanding, and why. During the week following each class, you are
to make at least two more blog entries.
These entries may be responses to your classmates’ or professor’s
entries (pre- or post-class), or they be follow-ups to things we discussed in
class. Your blog entries will be
evaluated according to my assessment of how much original thought and analysis
went into them, and how much they contribute to a lively and stimulating
exchange of ideas among the class members.
The blog is found at:
http://history70603.wordpress.com. You
will add your entries as a comment to each week’s post (marked
“Questions/Comments for Week X.”
Regular class attendance and
participation (35%).
The high percentage reflects how important it is that you are in class, with
the reading done, and ready to participate every week. During discussions, please keep in mind that
the goal is balanced participation. If
you find yourself hogging the floor, please yield it; if you find yourself
being a wallflower, please speak up. At
the midpoint of the semester I will give each student a written progress report
on how I think she or he is doing.
Final paper (30%),
historiographical in nature, about 15 pages, on a topic of your choosing but
okay’d by me. I want you to be thinking
about your topic from the start of the semester, so that you can be collecting
material for it as the semester progresses.
By the midpoint of the semester, you must make an appointment with me to
discuss your topic, which I must approve.
Weekly Schedule of Topics and
Readings
Week 1 Aug. 25 Course introduction and orientation.
To be read in advance of first class
meeting:
Grob, et al., “Introduction to U.S.
Historiography,” in Interpretations in American History (8th ed.), 2009.
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The
Significance of the Frontier in American History.”
Week 2, Sept. 1 Indians, the environtment, and the era of
exploration and colonization
William Cronon, Changes in the Land:
Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983)
Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics
as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America,” William and Mary
Quarterly, 1976.
John Brooke, “Ecology,” in Vickers
(ed.), Companion to Colonial America, 2003.
Chales C. Mann, “1491,” The Atlantic,
2002.
Katie Bacon, “The Pristine Myth”
(interview with Charles C. Mann), theatlantic.com, 2002.
W. George Lovell, et al., “1491: In
Search of Native America, Journal of the Southwest, 2004.
Week 3, Sept. 8 Puritans and the early colonial period
Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England
Town: The First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636-1737 (1970)
Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson,
excerpt from The Puritans (1938) in Grob, et al., Interpretations in American History
(8th ed.), 2009.
John M. Murrin, Review of Lockridge,
Greven, et al., Reviews in American History, 1972.
Rhys Isaac, Review of Lockridge, Greven,
et al, American Historical Review, 1971.
Darrett B. Rutman, “Assessing the Little
Communities of Early America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 1986.
Edmund S. Morgan, “Our Town,” New
York Review of Books, 1985.
Week 4, Sept. 15 Indians, whites, and the early frontier
Richard White, The Middle Ground:
Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (1991)
Ian K. Steele, “Exploding Colonial
American History: Amerindian, Atlantic, and Global Perspectives,” Reviews
in American History, 1998.
Philip J. Deloria, “Historiography,” in
Deloria and Salisbury (eds.), Companion to U.S. Indian History, 2003.
Week 5, Sept. 22 The colonial South, race, and slavery
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery,
American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975).
Rhys Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The
Nature of the Baptists' Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765 to
1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, 1974.
T. H. Breen, review of Rhys Isaac’s The
Transformation of Virginia, in William and Mary Quarterly, 1983.
John B. Boles, review of Rhys Isaac’s The
Transformation of Virginia, in William and Mary Quarterly, 1983.
David T. Courtwright, “Fifty Years of
American History: An Interview with Edmund S. Morgan,” William and Mary
Quarterly, 1987.
Week 6, Sept. 29 Origins of the American Revolution
Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins
of the American Revolution (1967)
Robert E. Shalhope, “Toward a Republican
Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American
Historiography, William and Mary Quarterly, 1972.
Joyce Appleby, “Republicanism and
Ideology,” American Quarterly, 1985.
Daniel T. Rogers, “Republicanism: The Career
of a Concept,” Journal of American History, 1992.
T. H. Breen, “Baubles of Britain,” Past
and Present, 1988.
Week 7, Oct. 6 The Revolution and its aftermath
Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the
American Revolution (1993)
Grob, et al., “The Constitution:
Conflict or Consensus?,” in Interpretations in American History (8th
ed.), 2009.
Lance Banning, “ Jeffersonian Ideology
Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic,” William
and Mary Quarterly, 1986.
Week 8, Oct. 13 Fall Break--no class.
Week 9, Oct. 20 Women and Gender in the early Republic
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s
Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1990)
Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True
Womanhood,” American Quarterly, 1966.
Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful
Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review, 1986.
Nancy Cott, et al., “Considering the
State of U.S. Women’s History,” Journal of Women’s History, 2003.
Week 10, Oct. 27 Jacksonian America
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God
Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007)
Grob, et al., “Jacksonian Democracy: How
Democratic?,” Interpretations in American History (8th ed.), 2009.
Daniel Feller, “The Market Revolution
Ate My Homework,” Reviews in American History, 1997.
Week 11, Nov. 3 Race, Class, and Gender in the Antebellum
South
Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of
Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (1985)
Walter Johnson, “On Agency,” Journal
of Social History, 2003.
Week 12, Nov. 10 The Peculiar Institution
Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life
Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (1999)
Peter Kolchin, "American Historians
and Antebellum Southern Slavery, 1959–1984," in A Master's Due: Essays
in Honor of David Herbert Donald, ed. William J. Cooper, Jr., Michael F.
Holt, and John McCardell, 1985.
Week 13, Nov. 17 Politics, ideology, and the Coming of the
Civil War
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor,
Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (1970)
Grob, et al., “The Civil War:
Repressible or Irrepressible?,” in Interpretations of American History
(8th ed.), 2009.
Week 14, Nov. 24 Race, ethnicity, and labor
David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness:
Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991).
Barbara J. Fields, “Ideology and Race in
American History,” in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of
C. Vann Woodward, 1982,
Peter Kolchin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History
of Race in America,” Journal of American History, 2002.
Daniel Wickberg, “Heterosexual White
Male: Some Recent Inversions in American Cultural History,” Journal
of American History, 2005.
Week 15, Dec. 1 Reconstruction
Laura F. Edwards, Gendered Strife and
Confusion: the Political Culture of Reconstruction (1997)
Eric Foner, “Reconstruction Revisited,” Reviews
in American History, 1982.
Week 16, Dec. 8 The Southwestern Borderlands
Pekka Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire
(2008)
Patricia Nelson Limerick, “Closing the
Frontier and Opening Western History” (excerpt from The Legacy of Conquest,
1987)
Daniel H. Usner, Jr.,
“Borderlands,” in Vickers (ed.), Companion
to Colonial America, 2003.
Special Accommodation Request Procedure: If you require accommodations for a
disability, please contact the Coordinator for Students with Disabilities,
Center for Academic Services, Sadler Hall 11, TCU Box 297710, 817-257-7486.
Once you have met with me to deliver and discuss an official accommodations
letter from TCU's Academic Services, I will be able to arrange for your
modifications related to this course. If you have emergency medical information
or need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please
discuss this with me as soon as possible.