Syllabus - HIS 571 - Colonial and Revolutionary America

Graduate Course		Dr. Jeff Littlejohn
3 hrs credit - Spring 2009		Office: AB4 472
Sam Houston State University		Phone: 936.294.4438
http://www.studythepast.com		Email: littlejohn@shsu.edu

Course Description

HIS 571 is a three-hour graduate readings course that examines the issues, peoples, and perspectives that shaped Early America. Class members will study the pre-contact, colonial, and revolutionary periods of American history. Throughout the course, class members will be encouraged to hone their traditional historical skills, while they explore new interdisciplinary scholarship, from archaeology and ethnohistory to anthropology and public history.

Course Objectives

1. Class members will explore the deep roots of American history by: (a) studying recent interdisciplinary scholarship on global history and the spread of human culture; (b) analyzing current archeological debates on the peopling of the Americas; and (c) examining the pre-contact Amerindian societies of North and South America.

2. Class members will examine the Contact experience by: (a) studying recent scholarship on Christopher Columbus's intellectual and religious worldview; (b) analyzing current research on the impact that European peoples, plants, animals, and diseases had on Amerindian populations; (c) examining recent findings on the resilience of Amerindian cultures that were facing a dramatic population implosion; and (d) exploring the Spanish colonial system and one of its unintended consequence -- the promotion of competing imperial systems.

3. Class members will analyze the seventeenth century British colonial world by: (a) studying the establishment of the four principal colonial societies -- Virginia , Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and the backcountry; (b) examining the religious, social, economic, political, and intellectual maturation of the colonies; and (c) exploring the evolutionary development of a racial system of slavery in the colonies.

4. Class members will examine the eighteenth century British colonial world by: (a) exploring the general patterns of everyday life in the era; (b) analyzing the colonial contribution to the Great War for the Empire; (c) studying the causes and course of the American Revolution; and (d) analyzing the ideas and identities that shaped the American Constitution.

Required Books to Purchase

Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

Alan Taylor. American Colonies: The Settling of North America.

Edmund Morgan. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.

David Hackett Fischer. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America.

John Butler. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People.

Gordon Wood. The Radicalism of the American Revolution.

Assignments

1) thoughtful, informed participation in class discussions every week

2) one precis, 300-500 words, on each of four books: Holton, Maier, McDonald, plus one of your own choosing, due the day the book in question is discussed in class. This should be a concise, thoughtful statement of the book's major point, with an assessment of how the author supports the point.

3) two oral reports, fifteen minutes each, one on an assigned text, the other on an approved book of your choice. All outside books must be approved by January 31.

4) two essays, roughly 750 words each, presenting the same points as the oral report, due the same day as the oral report.

5) final historiographical project to be shared with other students in the course in preparation for comprehensive exams. This project will include a historiographical essay, roughly 1,500 words, to be posted online with supporting materials, including links to primary sources, book reviews, and other relevant media. The final project is due on May 5 and will be presented in class on May 8.

Grading

1) Each precis: 20 points
2) First essay/oral report: 30 points
3) Second essay/oral report: 40 points
4) Final project: 50 points
5) Participation: 50 points

Total Points: 250

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