H601
Fall 2004
Prof. Cathy Matson
For appointments and comments: cmatson@udel.edu
This is a reading seminar that will introduce
you to major theories and methodologies of historical writing about
the
The required readings may be purchased at the UD bookstore, found at used bookstores in the area, or checked out of the area's libraries. Articles assigned from week to week are mostly available to you for free downloading or reading online in UD’s JSTOR. In addition, each week I will put extra readings on reserve in the Graduate Resource Room; please feel free to copy them or read them there, but since we will be sharing these readings among a large group of people, do not take them out of that room.
Each week I will also pass out extra bibliographies and reading lists that include the major works under review. I have many additional bibliographies and reading lists on topics we will be covering this semester, as well as others we will not have time to cover. If you should need, or want, more of this sustenance to feed your intellectual appetites, don't hesitate to ask.
Issues to consider as you read and write in U.S. Historiography
1. What are the origins
of historical writing in
2. How did the profession of historical writing and academic training emerge? What kinds of rules, traditions, customs, etc. guide its development?
3. How do we define "historiography?"
4. What is historicism? presentism? empiricism?
5. What is a historical source, and how do we identify them in historical writing?
6. What is teleological thinking; what is determinist writing?
7. What are the major "schools" of historical writing, and their periodization? What is the controversy over "grand theory" all about? Is “schools a valid form of organization?
Points to Prepare for
Class for Each
1. What is the argument of the book or article? How original is it, or how much does it corroborate existing arguments?
2. What are the major sources used to shape the argument; what is the role of evidence in giving the argument?
3. What are the main arguments or historical "schools" of writing being represented; and which ones are being refuted, even if indirectly? What "niche" does the book or article fill?
4. How convincing is the argument? What is left unsaid, or uninvestigated?
5. What is the difference
between argument and methodology? What is the
methodological approach of your assigned reading? How
dependent is it on sources? on
the work of other historians? On the initial questions
framed for investigation?
A Few Concepts We Will Discuss (Others to be Added as We Go!)
Ideas – ideology and its uses
Events – facts and causation
Voice, structure
Method, argument
Arena, agency
Sources
Narrative
Method/Methodology
Linguistic turn
Argument
Community
Microhistory
Culture
Capitalism, conflict, class
The State
Identity
Atlantic World, Global studies
“Revolutions:” Market, Consumer, Industrial/industrious
Sep. 1 Introductions, syllabus, requirements, sign-ups, snacks.
Handouts: questions to address during the semester
What is historiography? -- and What is a concept, a methodology, a theory? See the list of terms attached.
The Spectrum of Historical Writing: The Imperial Historians, oldest New History, From Narrative History through Relativism, through Progresssives, on to New History -- Is it literature? Is it a science?
The ideas of objectivism, relativism, enlightenment, science, empiricism, positivism -- to start with.
Read: Selections
in the Grad Resource Room (GRR) from: Simon Schama,
Dead Uncertainties; Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe; William
Cronon, A Place for Stories;" and Carl Becker, "Everyman His Own Historian"
Selections from online UD Journals, JSTOR, by: Thomas Bender, "Strategies
of Narrative Synthesis" Journal of American History, (2002); or Thomas
Bender, "The Practice of History," (2003), Journal of American History.
Recommended: Peter Novick, That Noble Dream, (in GRR); Forum,
"Interchange: The Practice of History," Journal of American History, (2003)
at JSTOR
Sep. 8 Microhistory Meets the Atlantic World
New History and the Problems
of Writing about Community: new source bases, new
questions, new methodologies.
Read essays
in GRR on community studies and nature of New History and "microhistory":
Review essays by Richard Dunn and Jack Greene; articles by articles by
Dorothy Ross, "New History and Social Theory," and Gordon Wood, "Relevance
and Irrelevance" in GRR.
Read from JSTOR: Jill Lepore, "Historians Who Love too Much," Journal
of American History, Vol. 88, #1, June 2001 (at History Cooperative); the
original articles by James Henretta and James Lemon on doing community
studies from the William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 1, Jan. 1978,
3-32; and ibid., vol. 37, no. 4, Oct. 1980, 688-700, on "Families and Farms:
Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America" JSTOR);
Buy and read: K. Lockridge, A New England Town.
Sep. 15 Atlantic History's Recent Challenges -- race, class,
labor, custom and law
Read: Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker,
The Many-Headed Hydra chaps 1-6;
Read: Alison Games essay, "What is Atlantic
History?" in GRR; Nicholas Canny, Writing Atlantic History; or, Reconfiguring
the History of Colonial British America, Journal of American
History, Dec. 1999, in JSTOR.
Theories influencing: class vs. culture
Sep. 22 Atlantic
History continued -- creolization, dependency, peripheries, comparative
empires
Read: Christine Daniels, ed., Negotiated Empires;
Read: David Hancock, The British Atlantic World
. . . from Itinerario, 1999, copy in GRR; David Armitage, "Three Concepts
of Atlantic History" from The British Atlantic World, 2002,
in GRR.
Theories influencing: core-periphery, dependency, cultural meanings, negotiation and blending -- we will define and discuss
in class.
Recommended: selections from Allen Kulikoff and Marc Egnal, in GRR;
selection from Ann Smart Martin, in GRR.
Oct. 6 Memory and Identity -- Whose Constructs? How Constructed? “New History” and Social History and the American Revolution.
Read: Alfred
Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, Part I; Young, "The
Transforming Hand of Revolution," in GRR; and selections in GRR that are
TBA.
Oct. 13 Do We Do What We Say We Intend to Do For The Reasons We Give? Shifing Explanations of Interests, Causation, Intention, Ideology -- Ideology vs. Praxis – Republicanism. The American Revolution as a Case Study.
Read: Selections
from Charles Beard and his critics in GRR;
Bernard Bailyn,Ideological Origins of the American Revolution;
Selections on the repubicanism and liberalism by Joyce Appleby, E. Morgan, G. Wood, R. Shalhope, E. Countryman, J. Greene; and others in AHR forum on Revolution (JSTOR) -- we will decide which ones to assign subgroups of class.
Recommended: Novick, That Noble Dream, Part II -- in GRR; Joyce Appleby, "One Good Turn Deserves Another" on the linguistic turn, in GRR.
Oct. 20 The Early and Later Republics: Political Culture? National Identity? Hodgepodge of Change? What is Capitalism? Who Created it, how, for whom, and why? What Directions for the Early Republic?
Selections
from the following will be assigned to various people in class:
Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution; OR David Waldstreicher,
In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes
Essays on the political history of the early republic and the culture
of national identity in GRR.
Allen Kulikoff, "The Transition to Capitalism;" and Gordon
Wood, "The Significance of the
Naomi Lamoreaux, "Rethinking the Transitin to Capitalism in the Early
American Northeast," Journal of American History, Sept. 2003, in JSTOR.
Recommended: Gregory Nobles, two articles on nature of the "transition"
and capitalism, in GRR
Oct.27 The Gendered Republic?
Also: The Uses of Evidence --
How and When Does Evidence Shape the Interpretation?
How and When May Historians Argue from the Silences?
Also: The Role of Material Culture for the Early Republic
Read: Laurel Ulrich, Age of Homespun (chapters will be assigned in previous week)
Symposium
of essays by Ross, Kornblith, Lasser about gender and labor in Journal
of the Early Republic, in GRR, and also on JSTOR;
Articles by Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood" in GRR;
and by Jeanne Boydston, "The Woman Who Wasn't There," in Wages of
Nov. 3 The Middle
Passage: Age of
Read: Charles
Sellers, The Market Revolution, chaps 1-6, 8-9. 11-13; Journal
of the Early Republic symposium on Sellers, 1992, pp. 445-476 (JSTOR);
look up at least two reviews of Sellers' book;
"Limits of Political Engagement in Antebellum America," by Glenn Altschuler
and Stuart Blumin, Journal of American History, Dec. 1997 (JSTOR);
"Striving for Democracy," by Sean Wilentz, in Wilson Quarterly, 1999 (JSTOR,
or Expanded Academic ASAP);
look at Harry Watson, Liberty and Power (1990), in GRR, and find two or
more reviews of it;
Extras for the hardy:
Review essays on political culture by Cole, Feller, Kruman,
et al. in GRR;
essays by Christopher Clark and Jonathan
Prude in Paul Gilje, ed.,Wages
of Independence, also in GRR;
Sean Wilentz article on market revolution in GRR;
George Fredrickson, article on the nineteenth century, in GRR;
Richard Ellis, The Coming of Capitalism, Jacksonian
Read: E. Genovese, Political Economy of Slavery;
Find at least two review essays or longist journal reviews of at least two of the following: Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross;
Stanley Elkins, Slavery; James Oakes, The Ruling Race; John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic; Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds; Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters.
To find good reviews, look especially in Reviews in American History, H-net
backlogs, and the prominent journals that publish work on southern and slave
history, such as Journal of Southern History, and Journal of American History.
Of course, you can google the author's name, or the title of the book.
Extra for the ambitious: Natalie Davis, Slaves on Screen, Film and Historical Vision; binder of materials about historical memory and the Amistad
Nov.17 Myth and Metaphore: The Turner Thesis
Read: George
Rogers Taylor, ed., The Frontier in American History;
Symposium in the Journal of the Early Republic, 1993 (JSTOR);
Review article by Johnny Mack Farragher, in American Historical
Review, 1993 (JSTOR)
Recommended: Essays in GRR by Patricia Limerick, W. Cronon, R. Welter,
W. Sussman.
Dec. 1 Are We STILL Writing About Populists and Progressives? Entering the Industrial Era: capitalists, farmers, and industrial workers; class, race, ethnicity, and the state.
Read: Selections
from John D. Hicks, Lawrence Goodwyn, Richard Hofstadter, Age of Reform,
pp. 1-301, in GRR;
Review essays by Collins, Rodgers, Singall, Brinkley, in GRR;
Alan Dawley,
Struggles for Justice, chapters 1-8.
recommended: Michael McGerr,
A Fierce Discontent (2003)
We will review alternative perspectives in labor history, industrialization
and technology history, new work on the state and class, etc.
Recommended: Kloppenberg retrospective on Louis Hartz in Reviews in American History, 2001 (JSTOR);
Also recommended: James Patterson
essay on the early 20th century, in GRR;
Helpful work in GRR by: Gutman, Rodgers,
Dec. 8 Fruits of Cultural History – and Pitfalls
Read: Christine Stansell, American Moderns: Bohemian