Harvard University • History and Literature 97: Sophomore Tutorial
Spring 2008 • Wednesdays, 2pm-5pm • 104 Boylston Hall
Liberties and Limits: Reading and Writing U.S. Experiences, 1776-1876
Robin Bernstein
rbernst@fas.harvard.edu
Boylston 031 • 495-9634
Office Hours: Weds 1-2pm
and by appointment
Katherine Stebbins McCaffrey
kstebbin@fas.harvard.edu
Barker 039 • 495-4029
Office Hours: Thurs 12:30-1:45pm
and by appointment
Course Description
This sophomore tutorial introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of the
history and literature of the United States. The course does not provide a survey. Instead,
we focus on developing foundational skills in close reading and analysis, writing the
argument-driven essay, thinking historically and critically, and locating and using
primary and secondary sources (including archival holdings and scholarly monographs).
In addition, students will have consistent opportunities to develop effective speaking
skills.
In order to address these goals, students will encounter diverse readings from and
about the first century of United States history. Each text addresses in its own way the
founding principle of liberty—and its limits. What is the meaning of freedom, and who
has access to it? This question has shaped American experiences in a variety of ways
from the founding of the nation (and well before) to the present day. In this course,
students will have the opportunity to think about the history and rhetoric of this key idea.
The theme of liberty and limits also informs the course’s approach to
interdisciplinary thought. What does it mean to do interdisciplinary research? Does
interdisciplinary work take liberties with the disciplines of literature and history? If so,
what are the limits of those liberties? How might we value those limits, and how might
we challenge them?
Required Books (available at the Harvard Coop and on reserve at Lamont Library)
The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, Theda Purdue and Michael
Green, editors, Bedford, 1995
Fanny Kemble’s Journals, edited by Catherine Clinton, Harvard University Press, 2000
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Beacon Press, 2004
Herman Melville, Typee, edited by Hershel Parker, Northwestern University Press, 2003
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Incidents in the Life
of a Slave Girl, Random House, 2004
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Bedford/St. Martins, 2006
All other texts will be available either online or as handouts in class.
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Recommended Reading
Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research.
Second Edition. The University of Chicago Press, 2003.
David Hackett Fischer. Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding
Ideas, Oxford, 2005.
James M. McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University
Press, 2003 (originally published 1988; Pulitzer Prize winner)
Daniel Walker Howe. What Hath God Wrought? The Transformation of America, 18151848. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Kate Turabian. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Revised
Edition. The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Expectations and Responsibilities
Attendance and Participation
Students will take collective responsibility for the success of every discussion.
This responsibility involves three components. First, students are required to arrive in
class each week having read and thought about all the reading. In other words, merely
gulping down the reading is inadequate. Students should come to class having chewed
and digested the material thoroughly. Students are expected to prepare thoughts,
opinions, and questions before each class. Second, students must listen actively to their
classmates. Contributions to discussion should productively engage with the ideas that
other students voice. Third, you must express your thoughts in a respectful manner that
advances our conversation. Practices that disrespect fellow classmates and disrupt the
flow of class—such as interrupting, hogging the floor, reading email, launching personal
attacks, and answering cell phones—are unacceptable.
Coursework and Grading
The sophomore tutorial is writing intensive. Students will complete several
writing and research projects, each of which will fall into one of the following three
categories: papers, research assignments, and the scholarly monograph précis.
Papers: In the first paper, called the “argument-driven essay,” you will develop a
thesis relating to one of the course texts, and will write an essay using textual evidence to
persuade the reader to agree with your point of view. The second paper (the Sophomore
Essay), due at the end of the semester, will be based on original research and present an
argument that is based on both primary and secondary sources. En route to the
completion of the sophomore essay, students will be responsible for handing in a
proposal, a bibliography, and a draft, and for meeting with the professors to discuss on
the draft.
Research Assignment: After completing a library workshop, students will embark
on a “treasure hunt” to locate information and materials at Harvard and Radcliffe. They
will present their findings orally in class.
Scholarly monograph précis. To build skills in reading scholarly writing and to
establish a deeper sense of what constitutes the disciplines of history and literature, each
student will read two monographs. A “monograph” is a scholarly book that forwards one
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coherent argument. On the first day of class, each student will select one monograph in
history and one in literature from the “monograph options” on this syllabus. On the day
that your monograph assignment is due, you will a) hand in a précis of the book (two
pages, double-spaced). The précis should summarize the book’s argument and describe
the book’s structure, evidence, and methodology. The précis should not comment on that
argument. You will then b) summarize the monograph orally for your classmates.
Finally, you will c) bring the monograph’s argument and evidence into the class
discussion on that day. Please note that it is the student’s responsibility to obtain the
monographs.
Please note that, except for the monograph précis, each writing assignment is
due on a Monday, not in class on Wednesday. Assignments should be passed in to the
Bernstein-Stebbins McCaffrey box in the History and Literature main office.
Orals list and oral exam: all sophomores must take an oral exam based on a list of
texts submitted in advance to his or her examiners. Oral exams conducted in conjunction
with this class will take place during the exam period.
Grades for the course will be determined as follows:
Classroom participation
History monograph précis (individual due dates)
Literature monograph précis (individual due dates)
Argument-driven essay (due February 25)
Prospectus (due March 10)
Treasure Hunt (due March 17)
Second Draft of Prospectus and Bibliography (due April 7)
Draft of final research paper (due April 21)
Orals list (due April 28)
Sophomore Essay (due May 2)
Oral exam (scheduled during reading week)
20%
5%
5%
15%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
20%
10%
The treasure hunt, prospectus, second draft of prospectus and bibliography, draft
of final paper, and orals list are all graded full credit/no credit.
Each paper or assignment should be labeled with your name, the date, and the
assignment name and/or a title. Separate title pages are not necessary. Please refer to
Turabian’s Manual for detailed information regarding how to prepare papers and cite
sources.
Academic Honesty
Harvard College’s policy on academic honesty (from the Handbook for Students, page
305) reads as follows:
All homework assignments, projects, lab reports, papers and examinations submitted to a
course are expected to be the student’s own work. Students should always take great
care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from
sources. The term “sources” includes not only published primary and secondary
material, but also information and opinions gained directly from other people.
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The responsibility for learning the proper forms of citation lies with the individual
student. Quotations must be placed properly within quotation marks and must be cited
fully. In addition, all paraphrased material must be acknowledged completely.
Whenever ideas or facts are derived from a student’s reading and research or from a
student’s own writings, the sources must be indicated.
Please do not hesitate to ask if you have questions about this policy or about proper
attribution at any point during the term.
Schedule of Assignments
January 30. What is History? What is Literature?
 E.H. Carr, “The Historian and His Facts” (1961)
 Terry Eagleton, “Introduction: What is Literature?” (1983)
 William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative” (1992)
The Journal of American History, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Mar., 1992), pp. 1347-1376
 David Hackett Fischer, “Introduction: A Conversation with Captain Preston,” in
Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas, Oxford,
2005
February 6. What is Liberty?
 Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/paine-common.html
 Phillis Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” “On Virtue,” “To
a Gentleman and a Lady…,” and Letter and Poem to George Washington
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81619
AND
http://www.jmu.edu/madison/center/main_pages/madison_archives/era/african/fre
e/wheatley/poems/wash.htm
 Thomas Jefferson, Queries 1-6, 8, 11, 14 from Notes of the State of Virginia, 1787
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefVirg.html
Monograph Options:
History: Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, updated and with a new
preface, Oxford, 2005 (originally published 1976)
History: Harvey Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, Hill & Wang, 2005
Literature: Elizabeth Barnes, States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the
American Novel, Columbia University Press, 1997
February 13. A Nation of Contrasts
 Royall Tyler, The Contrast, 1787
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/TylCont.html
 Susanna Rowson, Slaves in Algiers, or A Struggle for Freedom, 1794
 Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle,” 1819
http://www.islandmm.com/vbs/ripv/
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OR
http://www.online-literature.com/irving/2053/
Monograph Options:
History: E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from
the Revolution to the Modern Era, Basic, 1993
Literature: Caleb Crain, American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New
Nation, Yale University Press, 2001
February 20. Cherokee Removal
 The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, Theda Purdue and
Michael Green, editors, Bedford, 1995
 William Cullen Bryant, “The Indian Girl’s Lament” (1824), “An Indian at the
Burying-Place of His Fathers” (1824), “The Prairies” (1832), and “The Hunter of
the Prairies” (1836)
 Lydia Sigourney, “The Indian Summer,” “Cherokee Mother” (1831), and “Indian
Names” (1838)
 John Rollin Ridge, “A Scene Along the Rio de las Plumas”
Monograph Options
History: Michael D. Green, The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and
Society in Crisis, University of Nebraska Press, 1982
History: Theda Perdue, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540-1866,
University of Tennessee Press, 1979
History: Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835,
University of Nebraska Press, 1998
Literature: James W. Parins, John Rollin Ridge: His Life and Works, University of
Nebraska Press, 1991
Monday, February 25. Argument-Driven Essay due by 10 a.m.
February 27. Travels and Travelers in the U.S.
 Fanny Kemble, excerpts from the Journals, ed. Catherine Clinton
 Alexis de Tocqueville, Book I: Chapter 18; Book II: Chapter 13; Book III:
Chapter 5 and 8 from Democracy in America, 1835
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html
Monograph Options:
History: Lisa Merrill, When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle
of Female Spectators. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
History: John Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth
Century, University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.
Literature: John Cox, Traveling South: Travel Narratives and the Construction of
American Identity, University of Georgia Press, 2005.
Literature: Cheryl Fish, Black and White Women’s Travel Narratives: Antebellum
Explorations, University Press of Florida, 2004.
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March 5. Pacific Travels
 Herman Melville, Typee. 1846.
http://www.archive.org/details/typeepeep00melvrich
Monograph Options:
History: Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire.
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Literature: John Carlos Rowe, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism: From the
Revolution to World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Literature: Lee Wallace, Sexual Encounters: Pacific Texts, Modern Sexualities. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Monday, March 10. Prospectus due by 10 a.m.
March 12. Transcendentalism
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,” 1836
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/naturetext
.html
 Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1845
http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html
OR
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/205
 Robert A. Gross, “Culture and cultivation: agriculture and society in Thoreau’s
Concord,” in Material Life in America, 1600-1860, Robert Blair St. George, ed.,
Northeastern University Press, 1988
Monograph options:
History: Robert Gross, The Minutemen and their World, 25th anniversary edition, Hill and
Wang, 2001 (originally published 1976)
History: Sandra Harbet Petrulionis, To Set This World Right: The Antislavery Movement
in Thoreau's Concord, Cornell University Press, 2006
Literature: Albert J. von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in
Emerson’s Boston, Harvard University Press, 1998
Literature: Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture: From Revolution through
Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 1986
Literature: Lawrence Buell, Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the
American Renaissance. Cornell University Press, 1973
***Additional class scheduled this week for library tour and research workshop***
Monday, March 17. Treasure hunt due by 10 a.m.
March 19. The Production, Consumption, and Politics of Poetry
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “The Day is Done,” “The
Slave’s Dream,” and “The Slave in the Dismal Swamp”
 Phoebe Cary, “The Day is Done”
 Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven,” “For Annie,” and “Annabel Lee”
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
Frances Sargent Osgood, “Woman: A Fragment,” “To My Pen” and “Happy at
Home”
 John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Slave Ships” and “A Word for the Hour”
 George Moses Horton, “George Moses Horton, Myself,” “The Obstructions of
Genius,” and “Snaps for Dinner, Snaps for Breakfast, Snaps for Supper”
 Herman Melville, “The Portent,” “Misgivings,” “The March Into Virginia,” “An
Uninscribed Monument,” from Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War
 Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in a Dooryard Bloom’d” and “O Captain! My
Captain!”
Monograph Options:
History: Ronald Zboray, A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the
American Reading Public, Oxford, 1993
Art History/Material Culture: Kenneth Ames, Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales
of Victorian Culture, Temple University Press, 1992
Literature: David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive
Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville, Knopf, 1988
Literature: Eliza Richards, Gender and the Poetics of Reception in Poe’s Circle,
Cambridge University Press, 2004
March 26. NO CLASS! SPRING BREAK!
April 2. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave, 1845.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/
OR
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/abolitn/dougnarrhp.html
OR
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/menu.html
 Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” 1852 (online at
http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162)
Monograph options:
History: Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery
and Freedom. Chapel Hill, NC and London: The University of North Carolina
Press, 2005.
Literature: Paul Gilmore, The Genuine Article: Race, Mass Culture, and American
Literary Manhood. Durham, SC: Duke University Press, 2001.
Monday, April 7: Second Draft of Prospectus and Bibliography due by 10 a.m.
April 9. Abolition and Sentimental Culture
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852. Chapters 1-29
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/uncletom/uthp.html
 Jane Tompkins, “Introduction: The Cultural Work of American Fiction” and
“’But Is It Any Good?’: The Institutionalization of Literary Value,” from
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Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
Monograph options:
History: Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Literature: Marianne Noble, The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature.
Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 2000.
April 16. Manifest Domesticity
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852. Chapters 30-end
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/uncletom/uthp.html
 Amy Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity,” American Literature 70.3 (Sep. 1998), pp.
581-606. (access online through JSTOR)
 Sarah Josepha Hale, Liberia; or, Mr. Peyton’s Experiments, 1853, “Preface,”
“Liberia as It Is,” “Africa,” and “Appendix,” pp. iv-v, 202-280. (online at
<http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/proslav/halehp.html>)
History: Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in
Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Literature: Lora Romero, Home Fronts: Domesticity and Its Critics in the Antebellum
United States. Durham, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Monday April 21: Draft due by 10 a.m.
April 23. Sentimental Culture, Race, and Gender
 Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, 1861.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11030
OR
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/JACOBS/hj-site-index.htm
OR
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/menu.html
 Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American
Quarterly vol. 18, 2.1 (Summer 1966): 151-174 (access online through JSTOR)
Monograph options:
History: White, Deborah Gray. Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation
South. New York: W.W Norton and Company, 1985.
History: Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in
the American Civil War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press,
New Edition, 2004.
Literature: Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the AfroAmerican Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
***One-on-one conferences scheduled over this week and the next***
Monday April 28: Orals list due by 10 a.m.
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April 30. The Centennial
 Louisa May Alcott, Silver Pitchers and Independence, a Centennial Love Story,
1876
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=5m5obve7XUC&dq=alcott+silver+pitchers&printsec=frontcover&source=web&o
ts=auAntxZB4-&sig=WaIbHz9E3SXrh_sj1ND5sQ36k4g
OR
http://www.archive.org/details/silverpitchersin00alco
 Robert Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American
International Expositions, 1876-1916 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1984), chapter 1, pp. 9-37.
Monograph Options:
History: Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900,
University of North Carolina Press, 1993
History: Bruno Giberti, Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International
Exposition in Philadelphia, University Press of Kentucky, 2002
Literature: John Matteson, Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her
Father, Norton, 2007
Literature: Elizabeth Lennox Keyser, Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May
Alcott, University of Tennessee Press, 1993
FRIDAY, MAY 2, 10 am: SOPHOMORE ESSAY DUE!
Oral Exams to be scheduled during Reading Week.
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