Hist. 80010 Literature of American History l GC: R, 2:00-4:00 p.m., 5 credits Prof. David Waldstreicher Office Hrs: Thursdays 1-2pm, 4-5pm, Room 5114.09 ext. 8450
This course introduces Ph.D. students to the historiography of the U.S. through the Civil War and is intended to prepare students for the First Written Examination.
One of our primary concerns will be periodization. To what extent should the colonial period be considered a prologue to U.S. history? And on the other side of the nationhood divide, are there analyses that suggest a coherence or continuity to U.S. history beyond the peculiarities of the early republic or Civil War periods? What is the status of the Revolution and the Civil War, and the political history that drives or used to drive the narrative of U.S. history, amid transformations that might otherwise be seen as social, cultural, economic? Are there explanations that that cut across centuries, or stories that hold up in our time? What are the most important achievements of recent US historians, and what are the trends in the field now?
The books and articles we shall discuss include prizewinning narratives, monographs born as dissertations, and historiographical essays. An important part of what we will be doing is attempting to read these in light of each other. Be forewarned: the reading is extensive, in recognition of the five credits this course carries and its status as required preparation for qualifying examinations. My goal is to prepare you for the exam, of course, but also to prepare you to teach this period at the college level and to lay a substantial foundation for future research and teaching in any period of U.S. history.
Instead of a seminar paper or historiographical essay, your written work for the course will consist of weekly short (2-3 page) responses to the readings. Each week I will provide prompting questions that will help us work toward the kinds of writing and analysis the faculty will expect for the examination in December. These short essays, while relatively informal, will be due Thursday mornings at 10am, will be shared with the seminar, and may serve as jumping off points for our Thursday discussions.
Aug. 28 Introduction
9/4 American History in 1948, 1998 and beyond: Origins, Celebration, Criticism, and the Big Story
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men who Made It (1948), introduction and ch. 1-5 (pp. v-163) Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (1998), Introduction and Chapters 1-5 (pp. xiii-113). Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, “Introduction,” Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (1999), xi-xxiv. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Prologue” and Introduction,” The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (2001), 3-40 Fred Anderson and Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Introduction: A View In Winter,” The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (2005), ix-xxiv. Thomas Bender, “Introduction,” A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History (2006), 3-14. Jill Lepore, “Introduction,” The Story of America: Essays on Origins (2012) 1-14
9/11 Revisions, I: America’s Virginian (and Atlantic, and European, and Enslaved) Origins Staughton Lynd, “On Turner, Beard and Slavery,” Journal of Negro History 48 (Oct. 1963), 235-50. David Brion Davis, “The Historical Problem: Slavery and the Meaning of America,” ch. 1 of The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1967), 3-28 Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975) Nathan Irvin Huggins, “The Deforming Mirror of Truth” (1990) in his Revelations: American History, American Myths (1995), 252-83. Barbara Fields, “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America” in New Left Review 181 (May-June, 1990), 95-118 or in B. Fields and Karen Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (2012), 111-48 Alden T. Vaughan, “The Origins Debate: Slavery and Racism in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” Roots of American Racism (1995), 136-75. Thomas Bender, “The Ocean World and the Beginnings of American History,” A Nation Among Nations, ch. 1, pp. 3-60
9/18 War, Land, Ideas, and Empires J. H. Elliott, “Britain and Spain in America: Colonists and Colonized” (1994) in Elliott, Spain, Europe, and the Wider World, 1500-1800 (2009), 149-72. Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fred Anderson, “Champlain’s Dream” and “Penn’s Bargain,” The Dominion of War, ch. 1-2, pp. 1-103. Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (2004) Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700 (2006) Eliga H. Gould, "Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery," American Historical Review 112 (June 2007), 764-86; Jorge Canizares- Esguerra, "Entangled Histories: Borderlands Historiographies in New Clothes?," Ibid. 787-99 and responses in AHR, Dec. 2007.
[9/25 no class – Rosh Hashanah]
10/2 Colonization on the Ground in New England: Still the Exception or Still the Rule? Perry Miller, “Errand into the Wilderness,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 10 (Jan. 1953), 3-19. Kenneth Lockridge, “Land, Population, and the Evolution of New England Society, 1630-1790,” Past and Present 39 (1968), 62-80 Ulrich, The Age of Homepsun, chapters 1-3 (pp. 41-141) David D. Hall, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (2011) Barry Levy, Town Born: The Political Economy of New England from its Founding to the Revolution (2009) Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects Unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (2005)
10/9 Zooming In on Colonial Development: Commerce and People in New York Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, ch. 1-12 (pp. 3-190) Simon Middleton, From Privileges to Rights: Work and Politics in Colonial New York City (2006) Serena Zabin, Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York (2009)
10/16 Zooming Out: From Revision to Synthesis Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, ch. 1-12 (pp. 3-190) Daniel Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts
10/23 The American Revolution: liberation from what and for whom ? (inspiration from where?) Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution: Revisions In Need of Revising” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Ser. 14 (Jan. 1957), 3-15 Bernard Bailyn, “The Central Themes of the American Revolution” in Stephen Kurtz and James Hutson eds., Essays on the American Revolution (1973), 3-31. Barbara Clark Smith, The Freedoms We Lost: Consent and Resistance in Revolutionary America (2010) Ulrich, The Age of Homespun, chapters 4-6 (pp. 142-247) Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, ch. 13-19 (pp. 191-298) Cayton and Anderson, “Washington’s Apprenticeship” and “Washington’s Mission,” The Dominion of War, ch 3-4 (pp. 104-206) T. Bender, “The ‘Great War’ and the American Revolution,” A Nation Among Nations, ch. 2 (pp. 61-115). William W. Freehling, “The Founding Fathers, Conditional Antislavery, and the Nonradicalism of the American Revolution,” The Reintegration of American History (1994), 12-33. Staughton Lynd and David Waldstreicher, “Free Trade, Sovereignty, and Slavery: Toward An Economic Interpretation of American Independence,” William and Mary Quarterly,3rd Ser. 68 (Oct. 2011), 597-630, and responses, 631-56.
10/30 The Early Republic and the Public: Democracy, Nationalism, Postcolonialism, Empire? Sean Wilentz , The Rise of American Democracy, Part I (pp. xi-178) Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, ch. 20-26 (299-408) Andrew W. Robertson, “’Look on This Picture. . . And on This!’: Nationalism, Localism, and Partisan Images of Otherness in the United States, 1787-1820,” American Historical Review 106 (Oct. 2001): 1263-80. Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Cheese and the Words: Popular Political Culture and Participatory Democracy in the Early American Republic” in Pasley, Robertson and Waldstreicher eds., Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic (2004), 31-56. Rosemarie Zagarri “The Significance of the Global Turn for the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (Spring 2011), 1-37. Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (2012) “Interchange: The War of 1812,” Journal of American History 99 (Sept. 2012), 520-55.
11/6 The Early Republic at home: women and governance Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (2008) Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun, ch. 7-12 (pp. 248-417) Laura Edwards, “Enslaved Women and the Law: The Paradoxes of Subordination in the Post-Revolutionary Carolinas,” Slavery & Abolition 26 (August 2005), 305-323.
11/13 Capitalism Revisited, Slavery Revisited Edward E. Baptist, The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014) Rosanne Currarino, “Toward a History of Cultural Economy,” Journal of the Civil War Era 2 (December 2012), 564-585 Seth Rockman, “What is Newsworthy about the History of Capitalism?” Journal of the Early Republic, forthcoming Dec. 2014
11/20 The West, the Frontier: Colonization and Empire 19th Century Style? Pekka Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire (2009) Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations and Families: A New History of the American West, 1800-1860 (2011)
[11/27 no class – Thanksgiving]
12/4 1815-1848: Was it “Jacksonian”? Was it “Democracy”? Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, ch. 6-20 (pp. 181-632) Daniel Walker Howe, What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of the United States, 1815-1848 (2007) Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, chapters 27-45 (pp. 429-820) Cayton and Anderson, “Jackson’s Vision,” The Dominion of War, ch. 5 (pp. 207-46)
12/11 “Antebellum America” and The Coming and Fighting of the Civil War: A field taking stock William W. Freehling, The Reintegration of American History (1994), chapters 6-12 (pp. 105-274) Edward Ayers, “Worrying About the Civil War” (1998) in Ayers, What Caused the Civil War? (2005), 103-30. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, ch. 46-50 (pp. 821-905) Cayton and Anderson, “Grant’s Duty,” ch. 6 of The Dominion of War, pp. 274-316 Thomas Bender, “Freedom in the Age of Nation-Making,” A Nation Among Nations, ch. 3 (116-81). Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, ch. 21-25 (pp. 633-796) James Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (2014)
Read your choice of the following: Amy Dru Stanley, “Instead of Waiting of the Thirteenth Amendment: The War Power, Slave Marriage, and Inviolate Human Rights,” American Historical Review 115 (June 2010), 732-66. Edward B. Rugemer, “Slave Rebels and Abolitionists: The Black Atlantic and the Coming of the Civil War,” Journal of the Civil War Era 1 (June 2012) 179-202. Frank Towers, “Partisans, New Histories, and Modernization: A Historiography of the Civil War’s Causes,” Journal of the Civil War Era 1 (2011), 237-64. Michael E. Woods, “What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature,” Journal of American History (Sept. 2012), 415-39. “Interchange: Nationalism and Internationalism in the Era of the Civil War,” Journal of American History 99 (Sept. 2011), 455-89. Stephen Berry et al., “The Future of Civil War Era Studies: Predictions,” http://journalofthecivilwarera.com/forum-the-future-ofcivil-war-era-studies Yael A. Sternhell “Revisionism Reinvented?: The Antiwar Turn in Civil War Scholarship,” Journal of the Civil War Era 3 (June 2013), 239-256 John Craig Hammond, “Slavery, Sovereignty, and Empires: North American Borderlands and the American Civil War, 1660–1860,” Journal of the Civil War Era 4 (June 2014), 264-298