| *Syllabus - HIS 571 - Colonial and Revolutionary America |
| Graduate Course |
|
Dr. Jeff Littlejohn |
| 3 hrs credit - Summer Session I - 2009 |
|
Office: AB4 472 |
| Sam Houston State University |
|
Phone: 936.294.4438 |
| http://www.studythepast.com |
|
Email: littlejohn@shsu.edu |
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.
1. Students will examine recent scholarship on European imperialism and environmental history.
2. Students will explore colonial societies in Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and the backcountry.
3. Students will examine the new world that Amerindians shaped in the era after European invasion.
4. Students will explore the development of racial slavery in the colonies.
5. Students will study the causes and consequences of the American Revolution.
| *Schedule and Books to Purchase |
Please note: this course is abbreviated due to time constraints imposed by the university calendar. If you need additional time to complete the reading and writing assignments, then please email me. You may take an incomplete for summer session one. However, all work must be completed by July 21. No exceptions.
Topic 1: Ecological Imperialism
Purchase: Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986 or 2004).
Writing Prompt:
In his book, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Alfred Crosby challenges many of our long-held notions about European colonialism. What new insights does Crosby offer? And, how convincing are his arguments?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: June 10
Topic 2: European Invasion and Indian Relations
All readings provided online
Edmund Morgan, "Jamestown Fiasco" [ pdf ]
Gordon M. Sayre, "John Smith and Samuel de Champlain" [ pdf ]
James Axtell, "The White Indians of Colonial America" [ pdf ]
William Cronon, "That Wilderness Should Turn A Mart" [ html ]
James Merrell, "Indians' New World" [ pdf ]
Writing Prompt: Based on your reading of the essays listed above, what generalizations can you make about the early stages of European colonialism in North America? How did Europeans view Native Americans? How did leaders like John Smith and Samuel de Champlain depict their role in the contact experience? Who were the "White Indians" that James Axtell described? And what important transformation did William Cronon find in his examination of colonial New England?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: June 15
Topic 3: Four British Folkways in America
Purchase: David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 3-57 (skim 58-117), 117-34, 151-58, 174-205, 207-46, 253-64, 332-49, 365-68, (skim 382-409), 410-18, 419-70, 555-60, 566-77, 605-21, 783-827.
Writing Prompt: In his classic work, Albion's Seed, David Hackett Fischer described four colonial cultures that developed in British North America between 1607 and 1776. What were the four cultures that Fischer described and how were the different?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: June 20
Topic 4: The Rise of Racial Slavery
Purchase: Anthony S. Parent, Foul Means: The Formation of
a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Optional Reading:
Edmund Morgan, "Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox" [ pdf ]
Optional Reading: Ira Berlin, “Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 1 (Feb. 1980): 44-78 [ pdf ]
Writing Prompt: In his recent book, Foul Means, historian Anthony Parent challenges many of the fundamental assumptions that have characterized the study of colonial slavery for a generation. What is Parent's principal argument and how does he support it?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: June 26
Topic 5: The Indians' New World
Purchase: James Merrell, The Indians' New World: Catawbas and their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
Writing Prompt: The Indians' New World is James Merrell's study of the birth and evolution of the Catawba nation, a conglomeration of Souian-speaking Amerindians who joined together in the early eighteenth century after European colonization and disease had devastated the many native peoples in the highland region of South Carolina. What is Merrell's principal point with this book and how does he support it?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: July 2
Topic 6: The American Revolution
Purchase: Gordon Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992).
Writing Prompt: Gordon Wood portrays the American Revolution as "the most radical and most far-reaching event in American history"(8). According to Wood, what was so radical about the Revolution? How did it change American society and American history?
Response Statement due on discussion board by: July 7
1) Course Readings
Students will complete reading assignments as provided in the syllabus.
2) Response Statements
After each reading assignment, students will submit a 750-word response statement. All responses will be posted to the discussion board in blackboard, where other class members may view them.
Students will submit 6 response statements each worth 25 points.
Total Points: 150.
Grades will be based on a 10 point scale.
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