H601

Fall 2004

Prof. Cathy Matson

For appointments and comments:  cmatson@udel.edu

 

 

 

                                                    Topics in U.S. Historiography

 

This is a reading seminar that will introduce you to major theories and methodologies of historical writing about the United States.  There are many ways that such a course can be organized; this course will combine both a chronological approach to themes across time; a methodological approach that highlights a particular methodology or theory each week; and an interpretive approach that evaluates the enduring contributions of particular historians as well as recent reinterpretations of their work, in relation to each other as individuals and as members of "schools."  Primary emphasis will be upon reading, discussing, and mastering the contours of some of the most important fields of scholarship in American historiography.  This means that each person must do all of the assigned reading for each week, and come prepared to discuss actively.  In addition, each class member will write three interpretive papers during the semester -- there will be a sign-up sheet for this during our first class -- which will involve the assigned readings for that week as well as a few review essays and additional articles.  

 

            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 America; when did we first have a national history, if ever.

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 Reading

 

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


 Materials that will be in the GRR during the semester as needed

Peter Novick, That Noble Dream -- this book will be left in the room for you during the semester
all articles and chapters from books that you are not asked to obtain from JSTOR or History Cooperative
please note that not all assigned readings will be made available this way -- also note that you are not always reading the entirety of books assigned, but rather will be given particular assignments in them; we will also be making a division of labor within the class during some weeks.
K. Lockridge, A New England Town
Rediker and Linbaugh, Many-Headed Hydra
Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Kennedy and Daniels, eds., Negotiated Empires
Young, Shoemaker and the Tea Party
Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution
Waldstreicher, Perpetual Fetes
McCoy, The Elusive Republic
Gilje, ed., Wages of Independence selections
Watson, Liberty and Power
Sellers, Market Revolution
Genovese, Political Economy of Slavery
Taylor, The Frontier in American History
Hofstadter, The Age of Reform
Dawley, Struggles for Justice
Cohen, Making a New Deal

 

 

 

                                                                   Course Outline

 

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.   And, Gordon Wood, "Then and Now," in GRR.


NOTE:  As a student at UD, you have full access to JSTOR articles.  To get there, go to the UD Library resources site, then to "full databases," and to JSTOR.  In JSTOR, search for the article you need by arthor or short title.

If an article is not at JSTOR, use the alternative site with current journal articles called History Cooperative, which can be accessed by searching in Google for this site.  It contains full texts of current and recent articles in American History journals.

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.



 Sep. 29                Agency and Consumption -- Discovering How Goods Change the Course of History
                              Read:  T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution; Jack Crowley, "The Sensibility of Comfort," AHR, June 1999 (JSTOR); and Jan de Vries, "The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution," JEcH, 1994 (JSTOR.


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.

                        Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic;

                        Allen Kulikoff, "The Transition to Capitalism;" and Gordon Wood, "The Significance of the Early Republic;" both in GRR;
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 Independence.



Nov. 3              The Middle Passage:  Age of Jackson, or Market Revolution?  Changing frames of reference

                        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 e
ssays 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 America, 1815-1840  -- good review of political history overlapping market revolution scholarship


Nov. 10           Slavery in the Early Republic

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, Montgomery, Scranton, Blewett, Brody, Kazin, Milkman, M. Ryan; Liz Cohen, Making a New Deal

 

Dec. 8              Fruits of Cultural History – and Pitfalls

                         Read:  Christine Stansell, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creations of  New Century

 

                         Recommended:  Liz Cohen, A Consumer's Republic, 2003, and reviews.