History 505: Historiography of the United States through Reconstruction
Instructor: Deirdre Cooper Owens
Office: 307 Bishop Hall
Contact: dbowen@olemiss.edu/662-915-6976
Office Hours: Tuesday, 10 – 12 noon and by appointment
Fall 2012
Date: Tuesday 4:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Meeting: Bishop 333
Course Overview: The objective of this course is to introduce graduate students interested in
American history to many of the main themes, methodological approaches and techniques,
questions, and importantly, the historical interpretations of the place that became the United
States, focusing on the years from the first European contact through Reconstruction. The course
will provide students with an analytical vocabulary to carry on to more advanced work in
American history. In essence, students will acquire the skills to critique various research
methodologies and situate a text within its broader historiographies. Successful participation in
the course will give students a solid grounding in historiography and prepare them for more
specialized research in one or more of its subfields. Students will also have an enhanced
understanding of how to teach this material to undergraduate students in both general and topical
courses.
The following books comprise your required readings:
1. Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2005).
2. Daniel Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).
3. David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
4. Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
5. Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815 – 1846 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1994).
6. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York:
W.W. Norton Press, 2005)
7. Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)
8. Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation
Household (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
9. Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American
West (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987)
10. Stephanie McCurry, This Confederate Reckoning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2010)
11. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006)
Each class will center on books/articles that we will read in common. All books can be purchased
through either The University of Mississippi’s Bookstore or any reliable online bookseller’s site.
Additional readings will be available on Blackboard and/or JStor. The entire syllabus, assigned
readings, report readings, and all additional recommended readings, should strengthen your
knowledge of important US history texts based on the colonial-era and 19th century. These
readings will familiarize you with the broader American field that your written exams will
be based upon next year (for Ph.D. students).
Also, for those who feel that their background in early American history is weak, I would
recommend reading any number of good history texts on the colonial era and 19th century. Two
historiographic overviews of the profession are also well worth reading: John Higham’s
History: Professional Scholarship in America; and Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream: The
‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession.
Weekly Requirements:
Each student will be responsible for all of the following:
1. Regular attendance and class participation.
2. Everyone completes the required reading assignments.
3. Everyone must submit your group papers to me via e-mail at 9 p.m. the night prior. Included
in your e-mail should be at least four discussion questions your group feels are stimulating.
Bring a hardcopy to class.
4. Active participation means that you should come to class ready to raise thought-provoking
issues for discussion.
Weekly Expectations:
Each week you are to complete a close reading of the required text and articles, if applicable. A
close reading includes an identification and examination of each of the following: (a) the
overarching theoretical framework(s), (b) the core research methodologies, (c) the primary source
base, (d) the narrative techniques/structures, and (e) the author’s major historiographical
contribution(s). So rather than simply reading a text, you should be working with it to
understand, critique, and appreciate how the author deploys a particular constellation of sources,
frameworks, methodologies, and narrative structures to make an innovative and/or analytic claim
about the past. (Don’t worry – if you are unsure of how to do this, we will discuss techniques
during the first class meeting.)
Reading/Presentation Readings:
Each student enrolled in this course will be assigned membership in a group that will present a
chosen “Set of Readings” at least four times throughout the semester.
Each week the assigned group will: (1) Lead a portion of the class discussion; (2) Provide student
colleagues and the professor an annotated bibliography of at least three-four of the supplemental
readings that were not required readings [use Kate Turabian style - this reference manual is a
must for historians]; and (3) Each individual member of the Readings will submit a 2-page
historiographical essay on that week’s theme. I have grouped these books and articles, that
comprise the recommended readings, to allow you to examine one strand of the development of
an historical argument of an important aspect of both colonial, new national, and nineteenth
century histories. Your report should examine the historiographical framework within which you
situate critical discussions of the selected books (and the assigned book for that week as well if
you would like). This means that you should briefly indicate the analytical approach and basic
arguments of the selected books, but most important, you should assess the interpretive
developments that these combined texts represent for the historiographic thread of the larger
subject of that week.
Historiographical Paper (For Presentation):
Each student will submit a total of four 2-page historiographical papers this semester. The
historiographical papers should demonstrate familiarity with core questions, methods, and sources
within a subfield. There are several possible approaches that you can take. For example you
might examine the evolution of a sub-field, you could examine a thread of inquiry, a shared
framework, or a common problematic across texts within a subfield. These are only suggestions
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and you might take an entirely different approach.
Book/Article Reviews:
Complete a one-page (maximum) summary of the required text or articles for each week. Each
book review should identify the author’s major analytic and historiographical claims and
contributions. This assignment is due at the start of each class. These reviews are intended to
support and guide both you and members of your cohort as you each prepare for the written
comprehensive exam. Also, these summaries are meant to force you to organize your thoughts
about a particular piece for our discussion, to provide you with notes for future reference, and to
train you to get to the point quickly and cogently. In one page, you must explain: 1) what the
article is about (what is/are the central problem[s] the author addresses?; 2) identify the main
thesis and major contribution(s); and 3) if appropriate, evaluate either the use or misuse of
evidence. There are only two scores for these brief article reviews: “1” and “0” (credit/no
credit). Take care with your writing: sloppy writing will negatively affect your grade.
Review Essay:
In this 20-page long term paper, you will survey the literature (with an emphasis on recent works)
of a sub-field of American history. The review essay should address the contributions of several
landmark books and/or articles, assess trends in the literature (how did this sub-field emerge?),
what “schools” of thought have shaped it, and explore future directions (by identifying problems
and gaps). Due: November 30, 2012 by 5 p.m.
Annotated Syllabus:
Rewrite the History 505 syllabus. Choose your own sub-fields of early American history and
historiography. Provide a detailed reading list. Select and defend your rationale and assessment
devices. Due: 5pm on November 30, 2012.
Journal Abbreviations:
JAH - The Journal of American History
WMQ – William and Mary Quarterly
AHR – American Historical Review
JSH – Journal of Southern History
JER – Journal of Early Republic
Both the Journal of American History and the American Historical Review participate in a very
useful on-line database, in which all articles in these and other historical journals can be read.
These databases can be accessed through the University’s proxy server; however, I urge you
VERY STRONGLY to become a graduate student member of the American Historical
Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH). Professional
membership offers you a subscription to the American Historical Review and the Journal of
American History. Most professional historians of U.S. history read these journals regularly.
Grading:
Readings leadership of class discussion
Book/Article Reviews
Review Essay
Annotated Syllabus (due 11/30)
25% (includes 2-page historiographic papers)
15%
50%
10%
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Week One – (8/21) Introduction: The Practice of History
Required: Ann M. Little, “Modern Graduate Studies and the Value of Historiography,”
http://www.historiann.com/2009/01/06/modern-graduate-studies-and-the-value-of-historiography/
Peter Novick. That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical
Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), “Introduction: Nailing Jelly to the
Wall,” 1 – 17.
Faust, et al., “Interchange: The Practice of History,” JAH 90, No. 2 (September 2003), 576 –
611. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/90.2/
Week Two – (8/28) Atlantic History and Early American History
Required: Bailyn, Atlantic History
Recommended:
Readings 1
--Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, “The Problem of Authority in the Writing of Early
American History,” WMQ, 66 (2009), 467 – 494.
--Alan Taylor, Writing Early American History
--Joyce Chaplin, “Expansion and Exceptionalism in Early American History,” JAH 89 (2003),
1431 – 1455.
Readings 2
--Jack P. Green and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal
--Nicholas Canny, “Writing Atlantic History; or, Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British
America,” JAH (1999), 1093-1114.
--Wayne E. Lee, ed. Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and
Warfare in the Early Modern World.
Week Three – (9/4) Encounters - European Settlers and Native Americans:
Required: Richter, Facing East from Indian Country
Recommended:
Readings 1
--Ned Blackhawk, “Currents in North American Indian Historiography,” Western Historical
Quarterly, 50th Anniversary Special Issue, “The WHA at Fifty: Essays on the State of Western
History Scholarship,” 42 (Autumn 2011): 319-324
--Colin G. Calloway, ed., New Directions in American Indian History (1992) This is an e-book.
--Calvin Martin, ed., The American Indian and the Problem of History (1987)
Readings 2
--Fay Yarborough, Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty and the Nineteenth Century.
(2007)
--Tiya Miles, The Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and
Freedom (2006)
--James Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship and Community in the Southwest
Borderlands. (2002)
Readings 3
--Richard White, “American Environmental History: The Development of a New Historical
Field,” The Pacific Historical Review 54 (1985), 297-335.
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--J.R. McNeill, “Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History,” History and
Theory 42 (2003), 5-43.
--Ted Steinberg, “Down, Down, Down, No More: Environmental History Moves beyond
Declension,” JER 24 (2004), 260-266.
Week Four – (9/11) The Origins of Race, Racism, and the Rise of Black Slavery
Required: Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas
--Robert Beverley, “A Virginian Describes the Difference between Servants and Slaves in 1722,”
The History of Virginia in Four Parts (London, 1722)
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/59-bev.html
Recommended:
Readings 1
-- Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black (1968) (Read Part I “Genesis”)
--Barbara Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Kousser, J. Morgan and James M.
McPherson, eds., _Region, Race and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward,
Oxford, 1982: 143-177. http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/essays/fieldsideolandrace.html
--Alden Vaughn, Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colonial Experience. (1995,pp. 136174) This reading is on Blackboard.
Readings 2
--Oscar and Mary Handlin, “Origins of the Southern Labor System,” WMQ (1950)
-- Alden Vaughn, “The Origins Debate,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 97(July
1989), 311-354.
--Jacqueline Jones, “Labor and the Idea of Race in the American South,” JSH 75 (2009), 613626.
Week Five – (9/18) Women and Gender
Required: Morgan, Laboring Women
Recommended:
Readings 1
--Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” AHR 91 (1986), 1053 – 1075
--Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of
Race” in Signs, Volume 7, No. 2, (1992), 251-274.
--Amanda Vickery, “Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and
Chronology of English Women’s History,” Historical Journal 36 (1993), 383-414.
Readings 2
--Cornelia Hughes Dayton, “Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an EighteenthCentury New England Village” WMQ, 3d Ser. (1991), 19 – 49.
--Elizabeth Reis, “The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul in Puritan New England,” JAH, 82
(1995), 15-36.
--Jennifer Spear, “Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French Louisiana,” WMQ 60 (January
2003), 75–98.
Readings 3
--Mary Beth Norton, “The Evolution of White Women’s Experience in Early America,” AHR 89
(1984), 593-619.
--Ruth Bloch, “The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,” Signs 13 (1987),
37-58.
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--Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs (1996)
Week Six – (9/25) Changing Landscapes and the Market Revolution
Required: Sellers, The Market Revolution
Recommended:
Readings 1
--Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (1969)
--Robert E. Shalhope, "Republicanism and Early American Historiography," WMQ 39 (1982),
334-56.
--Daniel T. Rodgers, “Republicanism: the Career of a Concept,” JAH 79 (1992), 11-38.
Readings 2
--Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City & The Rise of the American Working Class,
1788-1850 (1984) This is an e-book.
--Mary H. Blewett, Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England
Shoe Industry, 1780 – 1910. (1990)
--Scott C. Martin, ed. Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1789-1860 (2004)
Week Seven – (10/2) Antebellum-Era Politics
Required: Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
Recommended:
Readings 1
--Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The Age of Jackson (1945), Chapters 1 -11
--Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (1948),
Chapter 3
--David Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought (2008)
Readings 2
Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790 – 1860 (1961)
--Kenneth Sokoloff, “Inventive Activity in Early Industrial America: Evidence from Patent
Records, 1790 – 1846,” Journal of Economic History 48 (Dec 1988), 813-830.
--Naomi Lamoreaux, “Rethinking the Transition to Capitalism in the Early American Northeast,”
JAH, 90.2 (2003) http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/90.2/lamoreaux.html
Readings 3
--Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York,
1815 – 1837 (1978)
--Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American
City, 1760 – 1900. (1989)
--Gregory Garvey, Creating the Culture of Reform in Antebellum America (2006)
Week Eight – (10/9) Early American Religious Thought
Required: Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross
Recommended:
Readings 1
--George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (Second Edition), New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006 (1980).
--Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (1989)
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--Daniel Walker Howe, “The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North During
the Second Party System,” JAH 77 (March 1991): 1216 - 1239
Readings 2
--James Davison Hunter, American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of
Modernity (1983)
--Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias (1995)
--Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, (2005)
Week Nine – (10/16) Antebellum Slavery and Post-Emancipation
Required: Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage
Recommended:
Readings 1
--Anne C. Loveland, “Evangelicalism and ‘Immediate Emancipation’ in American Antislavery
Thought,” JSH 32 (1966): 172 – 188
--John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race,
(2004)
--Thomas Bender, The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in
Historical Interpretation (1992), Part 2: The AHR Debate, Chapters 4 – 8 (This is an E-book)
Readings 2
--Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Women’s World in the Old South (1984)
--Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old
South (1988)
--Stephanie Camp, “The Pleasure of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the
Plantation South, 1830 – 1861” JSH 68 (2002): 533 – 572.
Week Ten – (10/23) The Flip Side of Race: Understanding Whiteness
Required:
--Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106 (June 1993), 1710 – 1791,
[Note: Give particular attention to Part I, “The Construction of Race and the Emergence of
Whiteness as Property,” pages 1715 – 1745.]
--“Scholarly Controversy: Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination,” International Labor and
Working-Class History (no. 60, Fall 2001), 1–92 (NOTE: Read the entire journal)
--Peter Kolchin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America,” JAH 89: June 2002
Recommended
Readings 1:
--Alexander Saxton, Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in
Nineteenth Century America (1995)
--David Roediger, Wages of Whitness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
(2007)
-- Nell Irvin Painter, “Why White People are Called Caucasian”
http://www.yale.edu/glc/events/race/Painter.pdf
Week Eleven – (10/30) The West and Expansion: From Frontier to Borderlands
Required: Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in AHA,
Annual Report, 1893
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Recommended:
Readings 1
Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and
the Peoples in Between in North American History,” AHR, 104 (June 199), 814 – 841. And
“Forum Essay: Responses: Borders and Borderlands,” AHR 104 (October 1999), 1221 – 1239.
--Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of
Industrialization, 1800 – 1890 (1998)
Readings 2
Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Chinese Movement in America
(1971)
--Albert L. Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (1988)
--William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), Prologue and Part
1
Readings 3
David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1992) (This is an E-book)
--Elliot West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Gold Seekers, and the Rush to Colorado (1998)
--Karl Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of
American Conservation (2001) (This is an E-book)
Week Twelve – (11/6) Civil War
Required: McCurry, This Confederate Reckoning
Recommended:
Readings 1
--Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War (2005)
--Gabor Boritt, ed., Why The Civil War Came (1996)
--Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of
the Civil War (2002)
Readings 2
--James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1998)
--Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American
Civil War (1996)
--DeAnne Blanton, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War (2002)
Readings 3
--David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001)
--John Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead (2005)
--Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering (2008)
Week Thirteen – (11/13) Reconstruction
Required:
--“Reconstruction” | Vol. 4 Number 1 Winter 1989 | OAH Magazine of History (Read the
following essays):
“Historiography:
The Continuing Evolution of Reconstruction Historiography” Eric Foner
“Reconstruction in the Southern United States: A Comparative Perspective” Thomas J. Pressly
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“What Did Freedom Mean? The Aftermath of Slavery as Seen by Former Slaves and Former
Masters in Three Societies” Dean C. Brink
“Ulysses S. Grant and Reconstruction” David L. Wilson
--Robert Scott Davis, “New Ideas from New Sources: Modern Research in Reconstruction, 1865–
1876,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 93 (Fall 2009), 291–306
Recommended:
Readings 1
W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860 -1880 (1935)
--Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863 – 1877 (2002), Read:
Preface, Chapters 1,4,6-7, 12, and Epilogue
Laura Edwards, Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction (1997),
Read: Introduction and Chapters 1, 4-5
Readings 2
Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age
of Slave Emancipation (1998)
--Moon-Ho Jung, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (2006)
(This is an E-book)
--John J. Beck, “Building the New South: A Revolution from Above in a Piedmont County,”
JSH 53 (1987): 441 – 470
Readings 3
Ira Berlin, “Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and its Meaning,” in Union and Emancipation:
Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era, eds. David W. Blight and Brooks R. Simpson
(1997) (This is an E-book)
--Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the South from Slavery to
the Great Migration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)
--Leslie A. Schwalm, “Overrun with Free Negroes: Emancipation and Wartime Migration in the
Upper Midwest,” Civil War History 50, 2 (June 2004): 145 – 174.
Week Fourteen – (November 19 – 23/No Class due to Thanksgiving Holiday)
Week Fifteen – (11/27) Challenge of U.S. Historiography: Rethinking National Histories
Required: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism
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