Readings in American History Prof Phil Scranton
Course Syllabus – Section 2,
Tuesdays, 5-7:40 pm Fall 2006
This course represents the graduate level introduction to
recent scholarship and research initiatives in American History, covering the
centuries from the colonial era to the post-World War Two decades. We will meet
weekly for discussions focusing on historical interpretations, themes,
conceptualizations and significance, with special attention to sources,
argumentation, and methods employed in research and exposition.
It is of course expected that everyone will read all
assigned works with care and critical attention, coming to class ready to
engage in active discussion. In addition, you will be asked to write a short
(3-5 pp.) paper on eight of the course’s thirteen monographs. Attached to this
syllabus is a set of paper topics for weeks 2-5, four books. I will hand out
additional paper topics in October for other books.
In reading, it is valuable to seek out the book or
article’s key thesis (and to summarize it in a paragraph or two). As well you
should be alert to its structure and rhetoric, noting the claims made for
advances over previous studies (the “relationship to the literature” issue),
and you should try to identify the conceptual/theoretical stance adopted (seek
out “keywords” and the way(s) they are employed, for example). Finally you should assess the work’s
evidentiary base, the scope and scale of the study within the context of the issues
and events it address, together with its resonance to other elements of
American History as you understand them. To assist you in this work, I have
attached a set of Guidelines for Reading a Monograph; we will often use these
as a point of departure for our discussions, so it would be wise to prepare
your notes for class with the guidelines at hand. Substantial advance preparation informs
critical discussion and clear writing. Ideally you should each come to class
with a set of notes based on responding to the guidelines questions AND several
questions of your own – written out for us to address as a group. I will have a
sizable list of such questions as well, so we should have ample resources to
work from.
For those of you with ready access to the Rutgers Library
system, this process can be aided by familiarity with professional reviews of
the individual book you’re working on each week, most readily available in the
Journal of American History, American Historical Review, and Reviews in
American History, along with specialized journals: Journal of Social History,
Journal of the Early Republic, William and Mary Quarterly (colonial), Feminist
Studies, Journal of Women’s History, Journal of Southern History, etc. Online and hard copy indexes to journal
articles are available at Robeson Library – talk to the reference librarians
about the most effective ways to access these.
Librarian Julie Still is experienced at working with graduate history
students, and is consistently helpful, so you should seek her out for current
(and future) projects.
The structure of the course centers on a core book each
week, thirteen monographs in all. Each week we will spend the first two-thirds
of our time (roughly 5:00-6:45) critically evaluating the core study. Following
a 15 minute break for coffee, et al., we will resume for the final 40 minutes,
during which one student will present a second, supplementary work that relates
to the main book (ca. 20-25 minutes). Then we wil
We start Tuesday, September 5th with
introductions and the first book, Good Wives… by Kathleen Brown. There will be no second book that week. This
means that there will be 12 presentations in all, and this class is limited to
12 students. We will sort out the schedule of presentations on the first day of
class.
As there are 12 books after
our initial session and you are to prepare 8 papers for submission, you can
choose to take four “vacation days” during the term. On those days, just hand
in a slip of paper with your name and “vacation day” written on it, instead of
a paper. As noted, I will distribute suggested paper topics, but you have write
on a topic of your own devising if you wish. However, if you create your own
paper topic, it must not be in the form of a basic summary of the book, but
instead should be critical and/or comparative in some systematic way.
Unless some disaster
intervenes, I will return all papers at the class session following their
submission. If the initial version of your paper is in need of substantial work
to meet graduate level standards, I will return it to you with an “R” grade
(for “rewrite”), and will re-read and grade the revised version when it is
given to me the following week.
Grades for the course will be based 50% on your writing,
10% on your book presentation, and 40% on the quality of your contributions to
class discussions. Thus participation in discussions is crucial; if you do not
“step forward,” be assured that I wil
One bit of advice: Respect
for differing views in fundamental, but the basis for securing that respect
lies in advancing arguments that are based in and supported by evidence from
the texts at hand and collateral scholarly or primary sources. Your general
opinions on war, psychology, or governments are not relevant here, nor does it
much matter whether you liked or disliked a book – the challenge is to move
past initial reactions or background beliefs toward developing a professional
approach to historical studies.
My office is 318 Armitage Hall;
I’ll be there for certain each class day from 3:30 onwards and will arrange to
meet individuals by appointment if that time isn’t workable. My office phone is
856-225-2913, and there is a message service on that line – you can also leave
a message for me at my home phone: 215-843-0440 or can always reach me by
email: scranton@crab.rutgers.edu
. All the core books are paperbacks and all have been ordered through the
Rutgers Bookstore. As you likely know, they also can be sought out through
online booksellers, who will have used copies of many of these titles.
Our Schedule will be as
follows:
September 5 – Introduction
and Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs – READ FOR
FIRST CLASS, making reference to monograph guidelines attached. (No second book.)
September 12 – Rhys Isaac,
The Transformation of Virginia
2nd book – Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom
September 19 – no class, I’m
giving a research paper at a NASA conference.
September 26 – David Hackett
Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride
2nd book – David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery
and the American Revolution
October 3 – Robert Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious
Imagination
2nd book - Christine Heyrman,
Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt.
October 10 – Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots
2nd book – James M. O’Toole,
Passing for White: Race, Religion and the Healey Family, 1820-1920
October 17 – Scott Nelson,
Iron Confederacies: Souther Railroads, Klan Violence
and Reconstruction
2nd book – Charles Dew, Bond of
Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge
October 24 – Scott Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America
2nd book – Todd dePastino, Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness
Shaped America
October 31 – Howard Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American
Subculture.
2nd book – Joanne Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in
Chicago, 1880-1930
November 7 – Andrea Tone,
Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America
2nd book – Timothy Guilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution and
the Commercialization of Sex
November 14 – Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream
2nd book – Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance
November 21 – Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar
2nd book – Elizabeth Haiken, Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery
November 28 – John Dower,
War Without Mercy
2nd book - John Dower,
Embracing Defeat
December 5 – Gail O’Brien,
The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post-World War Two
South
2nd book – Emilye Crosby, A
Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County,
Mississippi
December 12 – End of term
overview discussion. Course evaluations.
Copies of the “2nd
books” are held by the Rutgers library system; you should secure yours as early
as possible so as to avoid problems if another individual has taken it
out. I also have copies of all but a few
of the “seconds” and can be called on in an emergency to loan one to you.
First four paper topics ---
For Rhys Issac
-
Read the “Discourse on Method”
closely. Where and in what ways are the concepts and approaches discussed there
utilized in the main body of the text, and particularly in the concluding chapter
(“Aftermath”)?
For David Hackett Fischer –
Examine closely the final three
paragraphs of the Historiography section (p. 344). In considering these closing
sentences, the whole Historiography discussion, and the book’s main narrative
lines:
1)
discuss what Fischer means by stressing the difference between “merely rewrit[ing]” versus “revis[ing]” and “refin[ing] our knowledge of the
past”
AND
2) analyze what he means by arguing that
Paul Revere’s “most important message for our time”
is that he is “an enduring symbol of an historical truth that, by changing,
grows deeper and yet more true.”
For Robert Abzug –
Issues of drama are central to Abzug’s portrayal of religiously-inspired reformism, from
the “cosmic drama” generally to specifics like the Moreau society’s “scenario”
of individual degradation through drunkenness (88). Go back to Isaac’s
anthropological discussion of dramaturgy and social theatre in colonial
Virginia and compare/contrast the roles and uses of dramatic metaphors and
images in these two studies.
For Iver
Bernstein –
Consider Bernstein’s portrait of
ethnically and political divided New York City in light of what we’ve learned
about Protestant (Anglo-Saxon) religion thus far this term. How did religion influence and resonate
through the riots and their aftermath?
How was religion (as belief and as institutions) bound up with the
racism of that time and place?
What is this book about,
most simply?
How is it organized
(structured)? How does the structure
relate to the author’s strategy for exposition?
What question or questions
does it intend to answer?
What central arguments are
presented? --- With whom, if anyone, is the author
arguing? About what?
To what extent are the author’s main
claims persuasive? Whyso (or not)?
What historical
literature(s) are presented as, so to speak, the “professiona
How are these communicated and how are
background works evaluated?
What advance over existing treatments is
promised? To what extent is this
Achieved?
What are the core concepts
(and/or theories) employed here?
How are they defined and used in relation
to historical sources?
What sorts of evidence are
referenced and to what purposes?
Where in the narrative does the author
bring forth evidence that might be crucial to his/her central arguments? Are there spots where the evidence seems
thin? Does this matter, and if so, why?
What models of society,
personality, institutions, et al. are implicit in this work?
What set of values and beliefs are
assumed by the author to be relevant?
Any indication of the author’s own
values/ideologica
Within what historical
setting is the argument developed?
(issue of boundaries)
How is this framework set out in terms of periodization, place, detail and depth?
For what audience is this
work intended? How do you know this?
Is it effective in reaching this
audience? Why or why not?
Overall, what strengths and
weaknesses would you identify in this study (issues of content, style, research
quality, etc)? Of what value is this
work, to whom, and why?
What lines of inquiry might
be extended out from it? What
implications for shifting current historical interpretations does it
suggest? Think specifically of topics,
concepts, materials, regions, periods.
How else could the phenomena under review be accounted for? What alternative theses might be advanced for consideration? Does the author do this?