HISTORY 6101/7101: Readings in Early American History
Fall 2009

Dr. Jim Williams
Todd Hall 128
Office hours: Frequent at the Gore Center; call or email in advance to make sure I'm in
Office phone with voicemail: 898-2633
E-mail: jhwillia AT mtsu DOT edu
Web page: www.mtsu.edu/~jhwillia

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is a graduate reading seminar that explores the colonial era of North American history, with the further intent of placing North American colonies in the context of the wider Atlantic world. Through intensive readings on selected topics, members of the seminar will gain familiarity with major themes and interpretations in the recent historiography of the exploration and colonization of North America, with particular attention to the interactions between Americans, Africans, and Europeans and the societies that developed as a result. Secondarily, some attention will be paid to how early America is interpreted through films, museums, historic sites, literature, and national mythology.

REQUIRED READINGS

The following books are required reading. Seminar members should make arrangements to have access to the book by whatever means and via whatever format they choose. It is preferable to have a copy to bring to class. Books are listed in the order in which they appear in the course schedule, below.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

The seminar leader will judge how well you accomplish the course goals and tasks in these categories:

I. Seminar discussion (50%). The heart of the seminar experience is the opportunity to meet with peers in a small group to explore ideas and to critique the work of others. Therefore, full participation in seminar discussions, whether in class or on the course listserv, is tantamount to success in the seminar as a whole.

II. Book reviews and short essays (25%). Good historians are able to digest the work of others, to place it in the context of a field of study, and to offer constructive criticism of it. The reviews you write will demonstrate your ability to do these essential historical tasks.

III. Final essay (25%). Your mastery of a body of literature is not really complete until you wrestle with a topic yourself by exploring primary sources and interpretations in the secondary literature. The final essay gives you an opportunity to show that you have mastered the literature of colonial America at the graduate level, and that you have the skills necessary to write publishable essays, to produce effective museum exhibits or documentary films, or to develop interpretive programs at historic sites.

Grades will be assigned according to the typical scale (A 90-100, B 80-89, C 70-79, D 60-69), with minus grades being in the lower two points of a decile and plus grades being in the upper two points of a decile.

STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY AND ACADEMIC DISHONESTY

It is the seminar member's responsibility to inform the instructor of problems, to notify the instructor of circumstances that may interfere with the member's completion of work, or otherwise to seek assistance in order to finish the course successfully. Problems should be addressed promptly.

Academic dishonesty of any sort will not be tolerated in this course. Dishonest actions include plagiarism, cheating, sabotaging another member's work, and submitting work other than your own. It is the member's responsibility to understand what constitutes a dishonest act and to ask the instructor for advice when the member is not certain whether an act is appropriate. Plagiarism is the borrowing of another's words and ideas without proper acknowledgment. Any form of academic dishonesty in this course, whether intentional or not, will result in the offender's failure in the course. The instructor will also notify the dean of judicial affairs, who may apply additional sanctions (probation, expulsion, etc.) according to university policy. If you have questions about academic dishonesty and university policy, please consult your student handbook, the student affairs web site, or the instructor.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

If you have a disability that may require assistance or accommodation, or you have questions related to any accommodations for testing, note takers, readers, etc., please speak with the instructor as soon as possible. Students may also contact the Office of Disabled Student Services (898-2783) with questions about such services.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC RESOURCES

Be aware of David L. Ammerman and Philip D. Morgan, comps., Books about Early America: 2001 Titles (Williamsburg, Va., 1989), which is getting out of date but is still immensely useful through its date of publication. Also refer to the cumulative indexes to the William and Mary Quarterly, the last one covering 1974-1988. For books and articles published after 1988, refer to more recent specialized bibliographies, annual indexes, America: History and Life,, online databases through the MTSU library web page, etc. You may wish to explore the online journal Common-Place, at www.common-place.org.

WEEKLY PROCEDURE

We will focus each meeting on a discussion of the reading for that week. Two seminar members will be assigned as leaders for each week. They should collaborate before the meeting to decide what course of action they wish to pursue in the meeting. It is their responsibility to guide the members through the reading and to get at the heart of the matter in each book.

In your reading and writing for this course, you may find the following handouts useful:

Some weeks the schedule indicates a book review is expected from each member for that week's book. If so, the review is due in class that week.

Book review guidelines: Book reviews should be a maximum of two single-spaced, typed pages in length. Reviews should be written in essay style (as one finds in historical journals) and should include, though not necessarily in this order, the following information:
1. Heading: Author, title, publication details, number of pages (use WMQ reviews as a guide). Omit ISBN and prices.
2. Identification of author and his or her background (use clues in the book, the AHA Guide to Departments of History, the Directory of American Scholars, or the World Wide Web). Keep this information brief and focus on its relevance to placing the book in context.
3. Subject of book (period, type of history, scope).
4. Thesis and major themes. Use the advice in "How to Read a Book."
5. Point of view or assumptions (about history, human nature, economic forces, the task of the historian; working definitions; significant methodological patterns and apparent attitudes toward other methods). Try to place the work in its historiographical context.
6. Structure of the argument. This is very important!
7. Major types of sources used and skill in doing so.
8. Summary of at least two major reviews from WMQ, JAH, AHR, NEQ, J.Soc.H., J.Sou.H., or Reviews in American History. As you mention a review, use an abbreviated journal title and a short date [eg., (WMQ, 1/95).]

In other weeks, short interpretive essays are due. These will be assigned in class, as will the final essay as the time comes.

COURSE SCHEDULE

The readings listing below with an asterisk are supplemental and can be taken as a reading list for examinations in this field.

Unless otherwise noted, seminarians are expected to find copies of the readings on their own. There are no course reserves.

Readings listed with a plus sign should be read by those seminarians in the Ph.D. program.

Thursday, Sept. 3: Introduction to research in and dramatization of early American history

Thursday, Sept. 10: Early missions to the Indians, or, Ward Churchill goes to Hollywood

  • James Axtell, "Black Robe," in Mark C. Carnes et al., eds., Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies (New York, 1995), 78-81. [handout]
  • Ward Churchill, "And They Did It Like Dogs in the Dirt . . . An Indigenist Analysis of Black Robe," in Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians (San Francisco, 1998), 225-38. [handout]
  • Takao Abi, "What Determined the Content of Missionary Reports? The Jesuit Relations Compared with the Iberian Jesuit Accounts," French Colonial History, 3 (2003), 69-83. [handout]
  • *Allan Greer, "Colonial Saints: Gender, Race, and Hagiography in New France," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 57:2 (April 2000): 323-48.

    Thursday, Sept. 17: Conceptualizations of early modern America

  • Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, "The Problem of Authority in the Writing of Early American History," WMQ, 3d Ser., 66:3 (July 2009): 467-94.
  • Christopher Grasso and Karin Wulf, "Nothing Says 'Democracy' Like a Visit from the Queen: Reflections on Empire and Nation in Early American Histories," Journal of American History 95:3 (December 2008): 764-81.
  • Jack P. Greene, "Colonial History and National History: Reflections on a Continuing Problem," WMQ, 3d Ser., 64:2 (April 2007): 235-50.
  • David Armitage, "From Colonial History to Postcolonial History: A Turn Too Far?" WMQ, 3d Ser., 64:2 (April 2007): 251-54.
  • Joyce E. Chaplin, "Expansion and Exceptionalism in Early American History," Journal of American History, 89:4 (March 2003): 1431-55.
  • Gordon S. Wood, "A Century of Writing Early American History: Then and Now Compared; Or How Henry Adams Got It Wrong," American Historical Review, 100:3 (June 1995): 678-96.
  • Alison Games, "Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities," American Historical Review 111:3 (June 2006): 741-57.
  • Philip D. Morgan and Jack P. Greene, "Introduction: The Present State of Atlantic History," 3-33, in Greene and Morgan, eds., Atlantic History: A Critical Reappraisal (New York, 2009).
  • *Saul Cornell, "Early American History in a Postmodern Age," WMQ, 3d Ser., 50:2 (April 1993): 329-41.
  • *David Armitage, "Greater Britain: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?" American Historical Review 104:2 (April 1999): 427-45.
  • *Joyce Appleby, "A Different Kind of Independence: The Postwar Restructuring of the Historical Study of Early America," WMQ, 3d Ser., 50:2 (April 1993): 244-67.
  • *Jack P. Greene, "Beyond Power: Paradigm Subversion and Reformulation and the Re-Creation of the Early Modern Atlantic World," in Interpreting Early America: Historiographical Essays (Charlottesville, Va., 1996), 17-42.

    Thursday, Sept. 24: The most recent synthesis: What's new?

  • Short essay from last week's readings due in class.
  • Alan Taylor, American Colonies, The Penguin History of the United States, vol. 1 (New York, 2001).

    Thursday, Oct. 1: New work on Jamestown

  • Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Project (Cambridge, Mass., 2007). Book review due.
  • *William M. Kelso, Jamestown: The Buried Truth (Charlottesville, 2006).
  • *James C. Kelly and Barbara Clark Smith, Jamestown, Québec, Santa Fe: Three North American Beginnings (Washington, 2007).
  • *April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia, 2004).
  • *David Hackett Fischer, Champlain's Dream: The European Founding of North America (New York, 2008).

    Thursday, Oct. 8: The Pilgrims, interpretation and documents

  • Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York, 2006). Short essay on both books due in class.
  • Nathaniel Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick, eds., The Mayflower Papers: Selected Writings of Colonial New England (New York, 2007).
  • *William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983).
  • *Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, 2004).

    Thursday, Oct. 15: Indians and Europeans--Invasions and Saints
    Choose one of the following (Ph.D. students read both):

  • James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York, 1985).
  • Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (New York, 2006).
  • Book review due for ONE of the books (same for Ph.D. students).
  • *Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America, (Ithaca, 2000).
  • *Cynthia J. Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580-1660 (New York, 2008).
  • *James Axtell, The Indians' New South: Cultural Change in the Colonial Southeast (Baton Rouge, 1997).
  • *James H. Merrell, The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (Chapel Hill, 1989).
  • *Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York, 1991).
  • *James Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York, 1999).
  • *Jane Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763 (Chapel Hill, 2003).

    Thursday, Oct. 22: Africa and the Slave Trade

  • John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, 2d ed. (New York, 1998).
  • The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database at www.slavevoyages.org. Evaluation of database due in class.

    Thursday, Oct. 29: Slavery in the Americas

  • Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998). Book review due in class.
  • James H. Sweet, "Mistaken Identities? Olaudah Equiano, Domingos Álvares, and the Methodological Challenges of Studying the African Diaspora," American Historical Review 114:2 (April 2009): 279-306.
  • Rex Ellis, "Re: Living History: Bringing Slavery into Play," American Visions 7 (1993), 22-25. [handout]
  • *+David Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David Richardson, "Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution to Rice Cultivation in the Americas," American Historical Review 112:5 (Dec. 2007): 1329-58.
  • *David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (New York, 2000).
  • *Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, 1998).
  • *Douglas R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (New York, 2009).
  • *Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, 2006).
  • *Gregory E. O'Malley, "Beyond the Middle Passage: Slave Migration from the Caribbean to North America, 1619-1807," WMQ, 3d Ser., 66:1 (Jan. 2009): 125-72.
  • *Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972), chap. 7.
  • *Christy S. Matthews, "Where Do We Go from Here? Researching and Interpreting the African-American Experience," Historical Archaeology 31 (1997), 107-13.

    Thursday, Nov. 5: Gender in Early America

  • Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1996). Book review due in class.
  • Toby L. Ditz, "The New Men's History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early American Gender History," Gender and History 16:1 (April 2004): 1-35.
  • *+Sharon Block and Kathleen M. Brown, "Clio in Search of Eros: Redefining Sexualities in Early America," WMQ, 3d Ser., 60:1 (Jan. 2003): 5-12.
  • *Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York, 1996).
  • *Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800, new edition (Ithaca, 1996).
  • *Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (New York, 1980).
  • *Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York, 1990).

    Thursday, Nov. 12: The Spanish in North America

  • David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, brief ed. (New Haven, 2009). Book review due in class.
  • François Furstenberg, "The Significance of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier in Atlantic History," American Historical Review 113:3 (June 2008): 647-77.
  • *James F. Brooks, Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill, 2002).
  • *Julianna Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill, 2007).
  • *Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, 1991).

    Thursday, Nov. 19: Interpreting and Performing Colonial America

  • Stephen E. Snow, Performing the Pilgrims: A Study of Ethnohistorical Role-Playing at Plimoth Plantation (Jackson, Miss., 1993).
  • Terry MacLean, "The Making of Public History: A Comparative Study of Skansen Open Air Museum, Sweden; Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia; and the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site, Nova Scotia," Material History Review 47 (1998), 21-32. [handout]
  • *Richard Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg (Durham, N.C., 1997).
  • *Carroll Van West and Mary S. Hoffschwelle, "Slumbering on Its Old Foundations': Interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg," South Atlantic Quarterly 83 (1984): 157-75.
  • *Camille Wells, "Interior Designs: Room Furnishings and Historical Interpretations at Colonial Williamsburg," Southern Quarterly 31 (1993): 88-111.
  • *Christopher D. Geist, "Living-History Villages as Popular Entertainments," New England Journal of History 51 (1994): 57-66.
  • *John D. Krugler, "Stepping Outside the Classroom: History and the Outdoor Museum," Journal of American Culture 12 (1989): 79-85.

    Thursday, Nov. 26: THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

  • Short essay from last week's readings due by Wed., Nov. 25. Send via email as a Word file.

    Thursday, Dec. 3: Imperial and Atlantic History

  • J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven, 2006).
  • Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500-1640," American Historical Review 112:5 (Dec. 2007): 1359-85.
  • Eliga H. Gould, "Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery," American Historical Review 112:3 (June 2007): 764-786.
  • *Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660 (New York, 2008).
  • *Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700 (Stanford, 2006).
  • *Claudio Saunt, "Go West: Mapping Early American Historiography," WMQ, 3d Ser., 65:4 (Oct. 2008): 745-78.

    Other topics for future reading in the field

    Migration

  • Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (Cambridge, Mass., 1999).
  • Oliver A. Rink, "The People of New Netherland: Notes on Non-English Immigration to New York in the Seventeenth Century," New York History 62 (1981), 5-42.
  • James Horn, "To Parts Beyond the Seas': Free Emigration to the Chesapeake in the 17th Century," in Ida Altman and James Horn, eds., "To Make America": European Emigration in the Early Modern Period (Berkeley, Calif., 1991), 85-130.
  • Trevor Burnard, "European Migration to Jamaica, 1655-1780," WMQ, 3d Ser., 53 (1996), 769-96.

    The Dutch Atlantic

  • Wim Klooster, The Dutch in the Americas, 1600-1800: A Narrative History with the Catalogue of an Exhibition of Rare Prints, Maps, and Illustrated Books from the John Carter Brown Library (Providence, R.I., 1997).
  • Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden, 2005).
  • James Homer Williams, "An Atlantic Perspective on the Jewish Struggle for Rights and Opportunities in Brazil, New Netherland, and New York," 369-393, in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering, eds., Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450 to 1800 (New York, 2001).
  • Martha Dickinson Shattuck, ed., Explorers, Fortunes, and Love Letters: A Window on New Netherland (Albany, 2009).
  • Simon Middleton, "'How It Came to Be that the Bakers Bake No Bread': A Struggle for Trade Privileges in Seventeenth-Century New Amsterdam," WMQ, 3d Ser., 58:2 (April 2001): 347-72.

    Military History

  • Fred Anderson, The Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (New York, 2000).
  • Fred Anderson, The People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years' War (Chapel Hill, 1984).
  • Patrick M. Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians (Baltimore, 1993).
  • Guy Chet, Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northeast (Amherst, Mass., 2003).
  • Stephen Saunders Webb, 1676, the End of American Independence (New York, 1984).
  • Michael McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, 2007).

    Religion

  • Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
  • Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, adn Politics in Colonial America, updated ed. (New York, 2003).
  • Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York, 2002).
  • John Putnam Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England, updated ed. (New York, 2004).
  • John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York, 1994).
  • David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, 1989).
  • Eve LaPlante, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans (San Francisco, 2004).

    Classics Worth Reading

  • Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975).
  • Peter S. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974).
  • Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).
  • Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia: Community, Religion, and Authority, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill, 1982).
  • Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992).
  • Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969).

    Final papers are due no later than Thursday, December 17, at 6 p.m. Turn in papers to Dr. Williams in his office or to his mailbox in Peck Hall anytime before the deadline.

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