HSTA 501: Readings in Early American History
Instructor: Kyle G. Volk
Office: LA 260
Office Hours: Tuesdays 3-5, immediately after class, and by appointment
Email:
Phone: (406) 243-2989
Course Description:
This semester-length graduate colloquium explores classic and recent scholarship in American history from the opening of the Atlantic world to the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as vital theoretical/conceptual works. The chief goals of the course are to expose students to the major historiographical problems that have dominated the study of this period in American history and to investigate new scholarly trends.
Course Requirements:
Completion of assigned readings, faithful attendance in class, and consistent active participation are essential for success in this course. Students will be required to lead discussion (in pairs) twice during the semester. They will also be required to give two in-class presentations on recommended texts. Presentations should summarize the themes, arguments, sources, and contribution of a given work as well as relate that work to common course readings. Two short papers (3-4 pages) are required, each reviewing a particular assigned text (to be turned in the week we are reading that text). A longer paper (10-12 pages) is also required, analyzing a substantial primary source (selected in consultation with the instructor) in light of the assigned readings. This is due at the end of the semester.
Books Available for Purchase:
Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 [1972] (2003 ed.)
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975)
Jill Lepore, In the Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (1999)
Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (2007)
Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992)
Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (2007)
Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 (1992)
William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law & Regulation in 19th Century America (1996)
Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005)
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett (1999)
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (1999)
Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (2008)
Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (2010)
Eric Foner (and Joshua Brown), Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2005)
Course Schedule:
Week I - Introductions
Week II – The Opening of the Atlantic World & Environmental History
Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 [1972] (2003 ed.)
Week III – Colonial Virginia, the American Paradox, & Social History
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975)
Recommended:
Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (1968)
Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the East West Indies, 1624-1713 (1972)
Week IV – Puritans, Natives, & Cultural History
Jill Lepore, In the Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (1999)
Recommended:
Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (1956)
Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (2001)
Week V – The Atlantic Slave Trade, Merchant Capitalism, & Diasporic History
Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (2007)
Recommended:
John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (1992)
Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (1997)
Week VI – The American Revolution I
Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992)
Daniel T. Rodgers, “Republicanism: Career of a Concept,” JAH 79 (1992), 11-38.
Recommended:
Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967)
Week VII – The American Revolution II
Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (2007)
Recommended:
Charles Beard, The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
Jack Rakove, Original Meanings
Week VIII – A Market Revolution?: Socio-Economic Change in the Early Republic
Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 (1992)
Thomas Bender, “Wholes and Parts: The Need for Synthesis in American History,” JAH 73 (June 1986), 120-136.
Daniel Feller, “The Market Revolution Ate My Homework”
Recommended:
Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (1983)
Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (1984)
Week IX – Legal & Institutional History
William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law & Regulation in 19th Century America (1996)
Richard John, “Governmental Institutions as Agents of Change: Rethinking American Political Development in the Early Republic, 1787-1835,”Studies in American Political Development, 11 (Fall 1997): 347-380.
Recommended:
Morton Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (1979)
John Larson, Internal Improvements: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (2000)
Week X – Political History & Jacksonian America
Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005), Pts. 1 & 2
Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” AHR, 89 (June 1984).
Recommended:
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, The Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity (2010)
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007)
Week XI– Microhistory & Social/Cultural Transformations
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett (1999)
Recommended:
Karen Haltunnen, Confidence Men & Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (1986)
David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991)
Week XII – Antebellum Slavery & the Southern Market Revolution
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (1999)
Walter Johnson, “A Nettlesome Classic Turns Twenty-Five,” Commonplace (July 2001).
Recommended:
Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan Roll
Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (1996)
Week XIII– The Coming of the Civil War & American History, Trans-National
Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (2008)
Manisha Sinha, “Revolution or Counterrevolution?: The Political Ideology of Secession in Antebellum South Carolina,” (Sept. 2000), 205-226.
Recommended:
Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War (1992)
Michael F. Holt, The Fate of their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the American Civil War (2005)
Week XIV– Civil War
Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (2010)
Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” AHR, 91 (Dec. 1986), 1053-1075.
Drew Gilpin Faust, “The Civil War Soldier and the Art of Dying,” Journal of Southern History, 67 (Feb. 2001), 3-38.
Recommended
David Blight, Race & Reunion
Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (2007)
Week XV – The Age of Emancipation
Eric Foner (and Joshua Brown), Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2005)
Elliott West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly 34 (Spring 2003), 1-14.
Recommended:
Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North (2001)
Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, DC (2010)