Historianess

2009-05-15T17:49:00.001-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

I'm feeling very zen today. Mom rescued another kitty. He's living in the bathroom and I am pretending not to care.

2009-05-14T14:46:00.000-04:00

On Leave!

Schedule

15 June 2009
*finish proposal and table of contents

30 June 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Two (Converting Indians, Converting Europeans)

31 July 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Three (The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-Indian Christian Commonwealth)

31 August 2009
*finish research for the new Chapter One

30 September 2009
*rewrite of Chapter One incorporating new research (Title TBA)
*draft of historiographical piece buttressing more sensational claims in Chapter Eight

31 October 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Four (Faith in the Blood)

15 December 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Five (Baptism and the Birth of Race)

BREAK 15 December 2009-15 January 2010

15 February 2010
*rewrite of Chapter Six (title TBA)

15 March 2010
*complete research for new Chapter Seven

15 April 2010
*new draft of Chapter Seven (Becoming Christian, Becoming White)

1 June 2010
*rewrite of Chapter Eight (An Empire of Christian Slaves) and new draft of supporting historiographical article for separate publication

15 June 2010
*draft of Epilogue (Towards Christian Abolitionism and Scientific Racism)

15 June 2010-15 July 2010 BREAK

1 August 2010
*draft of introduction (Christians and Heathens in the Atlantic World)

=FULL DRAFT OF THE AMAZING MR BOOK (ROUND II)

2009-02-27T18:02:00.004-05:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

I make my triumphant return to Friday cat blogging with this portrait! Mom has a new digital camera to replace the old broken one. She told me she really needed the camera so she can take pictures of documents (she is going to someplace called England to look at these document things) but so far she has just been laying on the floor taking pictures of me. Aren't I cute?

2009-02-12T20:30:00.001-05:00

Happy 200th Birthday Mr. Charles Darwin!

And, Mr. Lincoln, too.

2009-01-23T23:01:00.003-05:00

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passes Senate, 61-36

Now, who are the thirty-six miserable Senators who think it is OK to pay women less than men for the same job? And how hard are we going to work to throw the bums out?

2009-01-16T17:58:00.002-05:00

Notes and observations from the course evaluation wars

One of the fun things about the first half of the survey is anticipating what sorts of things students will say on their evals at the end of the semester. It's always interesting to see what students understood the course was about. Case in point from Fall 2008's HIST 117:

Good, not outstanding because we talked way more about Indians than I would have expected for this class.

Clearly I must have failed to make the point that understanding why Indians did what they did is critical to understanding American history! I guess from this student's point of view, outstanding courses only focus on white Americans?

Another of my favorites:

There is no textbook and there are four to five novels to read.

Novels? Novels! At first I thought that perhaps my students are unaware of the difference between fiction and nonfiction, but one of my colleagues has suggested that many students use the words "book" and "novel" synonymously. Hilarious! This student went on to write:

Keeping up with the reading will greatly increase your chances of succeeding in this class.

At least I did manage to make that little fact clear!

In the odd comment category, I place this evaluation of my teaching:

I did not like the manner she spoke her lectures. She spoke them, rather than talked about them, and they were nonstop.

I find this one pretty puzzling. One doesn't generally "speak" lectures, one "gives" or "delivers" them. How does one "speak" a lecture, rather than "talk" about a lecture? Sigh. At least I am not at a public university in Texas, where my receipt of a bonus might be contingent on the things students write about my class.

2008-12-14T16:23:00.003-05:00

Whatever happened to "Mission Accomplished?"

I'm reading the hilarious coverage of Bush ducking to avoid shoes an irate Iraqi journalist chucked at him. Very funny.

At one point during his news conference, Bush declared, "The war is not over, it is decisively on its way to being won."

As my post title asks...

2008-12-05T15:29:00.003-05:00

Why do the scientists have all the fun?

The 2008 AAAS/Science dance your dissertation on YouTube awards are up here.

I particularly like the human hemoglobin dance.

I'm now wondering what my manuscript would look like if conveyed as an interpretive dance or as a musical. (Surely no one would tap-dance their way to spontaneous combustion a la Buffy.)

What about you? What would your dramatized manuscript look like?

2008-11-30T13:00:00.002-05:00

Sex, Lies, and Depositions!

Very few changes from this syllabus's previous iterations-I've had to change the end of the course to account for fewer instructional days in Rice's new calendar, and we're looking at a different county this time. Otherwise, this was such a success last time that it needed only a few tweaks.

Sex, Lies, and Depositions
(Microhistories of Virginia County Court Records)

Court records are fascinating sources for understanding the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of early Virginians. The surviving court records of Northampton County, Virginia are full of amazing stories of libel, slander, theft, attempted murder, fights, great escapes by servants and slaves, rape, and illicit sex. They are also full of the more mundane legalities of everyday Virginia life: petitions, suits for the collection of debt, probate of wills, and the registration of cattle brands. These seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century records are by far the best source for hearing the echoes of the voices of ordinary Virginians; nowhere else can historians find the words and experiences of planters, both wealthy and poor, indentured servants, African slaves, free blacks, and women, both married and unwed. In this course students will read in these records and produce a 20-25 page research paper based on a court case or set of court cases that they select, learning as they work the historians’ craft of researching and writing about the past.

Required Readings:

• Wayne C. Booth, et al. The Craft of Research (3rd Edition) (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
• John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia (Oxford University Press, 2003).
• William Kelleher Storey, Writing History: A Guide for Students (3rd Edition) (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Seventh Edition) (University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Expectations and Grading Scheme:

There are a number of writing assignments, both graded and ungraded. Every piece of writing you do in this class will help you write the final paper, so even though most writing assignments are “worth” only a small percentage of your grade, they make producing your final paper much easier. Therefore, I do not recommend skipping them. Additionally, you will have three individual conferences with me during the course of the semester. Although these are also ungraded, they are specifically designed to help you with the research and writing process. I do not recommend skipping those either.

* 1st short writing assignment 5%
* 2nd short writing assignment 5%
* annotated bibliography 5%
* proposal 5%
* narrative history assignment 5%
* comments on partner’s narrative 5%
* outline 5%
* first draft evaluation 5%
* comments on partner’s first draft 5%
* revision plan 5%
* First Draft 20%
* Final Draft 30%

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick or have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, please provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Week 1: Introduction
Tues 6 January: Course Introduction, What is Microhistory?
* handout: “What is Microhistory?/Reading Guide to Anne Orthwood’s Bastard”
Thurs 8 January: Primary and Secondary Sources
* Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, pps. 3-80.
* receive first short writing assignment (primary and secondary sources)
Week 2: What is Microhistory?
Tues 13 January: Argument and Interpretation in Microhistory
* read Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, 81-150
* first short writing assignment due
* receive second short writing assignment (writing about argument)
Thurs 15 January: What is Microhistory, all over again!
* Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “The Significance of Trivia” Journal of Mormon History vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 1993), 52-66. (in class handout)
* Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography” Journal of American History vol. 88, no.1 (June 2001), 129-144. (online through JSTOR)
* second short writing assignment due
* receive Northampton County Microfilm Assignments
* handout “Reading Virginia Court Hand”
* explore online resources for transcription assistance
Week 3: Defining a Topic
Tues 20 January: Library Scavenger Hunt (meet in our classroom)
* Storey, Chapter One (Getting Started)
* Turabian, Manual for Writers, 29-32.
* Booth, Craft of Research, 283-311.
* handout “Generating an Annotated Bibliography”
*Be wary of the web! Separating the useful from the useless.
Thurs 22 January: Topics‡Questions‡Problems
* Booth, Craft of Research, 35-82.
* receive county court record presentation assignment
Week 4: Solidifying your Sources
Tues 27 January: The Parts of a County Court Record
*bring a printout of your case(s), a preliminary transcription, and Anne Orthwood’s Bastard to class with you
*receive annotated bibliography assignment
*resource of the week: The Oxford English Dictionary Online, 3rd Edition
Thurs 29 January: County Court Record Presentations; Transcribing Helps/Hints
*schedule individual conferences with me (bibliographies)
Week 5: Interpretation, interpretation, interpretation
Tues 3 February: Source materials and inferences
* read Storey, Chapter Two (Interpreting Source Materials) and Chapter Four (Use Sources to Make Inferences)
* final court record selection due, bring a clean photocopy of the actual records and your transcription to class with you (note: this assignment is ungraded but still required!)
Thurs 5 February: Taking and organizing notes; Importance of Citing Properly
* read Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graf, The Modern Researcher, Chapter Two (The ABC of Technique) (Handout in class)
* Booth, Craft of Research, 84-101.
* bring Turabian, A Manual for Writers to class with you
* Warren Billings, “The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A Note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 30, no. 3 (July 1973), 467-474. (JSTOR)
Week 6: From research to writing, part I
Tues 10 February: arguments and proposals
*write three-five sentences that you think represent your argument to class with you (again, not graded, but crucial!)
* receive formal proposal assignment
Thurs 12 February: Formulating arguments
*Booth, Craft of Research, 108-170.
*reread Story, 63-67.
*be ready to think about what “warrants” mean to solid argumentation
*bring your revised three-five sentence argument to class with you
*annotated bibliography due
Week 7: From research to writing, part II
Tues 17 February: Formal Proposal Presentations
*3-5-page formal proposal due
Thurs 19 February: Writing narrative, or, what really happened?
* read Storey, Chapter Seven (Narrative Techniques for Historians)
* receive narrative history assignment
*Meet with me, Wed-Fri to discuss proposals
Week 8: From Nothing to Something: First Drafts
Mon 23 February: Exchange narrative assignments with your partners by 5pm
Tues 24 February: Uncertainty in historical narratives
* meet with your partner, discuss narrative history assignment
* bring a clean copy of your narrative history assignment, plus your comments on your partner’s work to class with you
Thurs 26 February: To outline or not to outline, that is the question
* Storey, Chapter Five (Get Writing!) and Chapter Six (Build an Argument)
* Booth, Craft of Research, 173-212.
* receive outline assignment

Week 9: SPRING BREAK! Work on your Outlines

Week 10: Outline ‡ Draft!
Mon 10 March: Exchange outlines by 5pm
Tues 11 March: Brainstorm your outlines in class
Thurs 13 March: no class; private meetings with me
Week 11: Research and Writing Problems
Tues 17 March: Troubleshooting in your Research (or, Solving the Unsolvable)
* bring a one-page description of a research or interpretation problem you’re having to class for discussion (note: this assignment is ungraded but still required!)
Thurs 19 March: Strategies for Writing a First Draft
* read Storey, Chapter Three (Writing History Faithfully), Chapter Eight (Writing Sentences in History), and Chapter Nine (Choose Precise Words)
* handout on free writing
Week 12: First drafts, continued….
Tues 24 March: Introductions and Conclusions
* Booth, Craft of Research, 232-248.
* receive first draft evaluation assignment
*receive First Draft FAQ
Thurs 26 March: no class, individual conferences with me
Week 13: First drafts, concluded
Mon 30 March: Exchange First Drafts by 5pm
Tues 31 March: First draft discussions in class
*bring your evaluation of your own paper and that of your partner to class
*receive revision assignment
Thurs 2 April: no class: Spring Recess
Week 14: Towards a Final Draft: Revising content
Tues 7 April: Writing a plan for revision
* Storey, Chapter Ten (Revising and Editing)
* bring a draft of your revision plan to class
Thurs 9 April: no class, individual conferences with me
*bring a clean copy of your revision plan to your meeting with me
Week 15: Towards a Final Draft: Revising Style
Tues 14 April: Style!
* Booth, Craft of Research, 249-269.
* Turabian, Manual for Writers, 119-128, 283-358.
* bring a problem paragraph to class with you
Thurs 16 April: The Perfect Word/Form over Function (just this once)
* Barzun and Graff, The Modern Researcher, 193-234 (in class handout).
* bring your partially revised draft to class with you
*look over your footnotes, especially.
* bring Turabian, A Manual for Writers to class with you.

ALL FINAL DRAFTS ARE DUE TO MY OFFICE ON WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL IN HARD COPY NO LATER THAN 5 P.M.

2008-11-24T20:34:00.002-05:00

Welcome to History 566

Otherwise known as Readings in North American History, 1500-1800. It is somewhat changed from the Spring 2007 syllabus. I eliminated the week on Gender and Culture and added, in its stead, a Borderlands week. I'm OK with this since there are several gender readings scattered throughout the semester under other themes. The other major change is since Rice now has a slightly shorter semester, I have smooshed the old Republican Politics and Republican Cultures weeks into one called. simply, Republic. Other than that, a few small changes from week to week, but the structure of the course remains otherwise unchanged. It has been fun over the last two years making notes for changes, and as always, it has served as an incentive to constantly keep up with emerging literature. This is becoming more difficult task every year, as the geographical boundaries of "early America" broaden.

***

This graduate readings seminar introduces recent problems and questions as well as enduring issues in early American history. It is arranged both thematically and chronologically. Students will be expected to explore three key elements of early American historiography: chronology (the basic timeline and narrative of historical development), major events and turning points (periodization), and they will be expected to engage in critical analysis of the major works and themes in the field. By the end of the course you should be familiar with broad themes and interpretations in early American history, in preparation for oral exams, research in early American history, and teaching the first half of the standard American history survey.

If you think you need a refresher course on background and basic chronology, you should consult Alan Taylor’s American Colonies (Viking, 2001), D.W. Meinig’s The Shaping of America, vol. I (Yale, 1986), and/or Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Empire and the Formation of American Culture (UNC, 1988). For a historiographical overview, you should read the relevant articles in Daniel Vickers, ed., A Companion to Colonial America (Blackwell, 2003). For the English background, you should consult the first two volumes of The Oxford History of the British Empire or Keith Wrightson’s English Society, 1580-1680 (London, 1982). For the Spanish in North America, see especially David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (Yale, 1992). For the French in North America, see especially W.J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1765 (Michigan State, 1998). These books are all on reserve at Fondren Library for you to consult.

Each student in the course will participate in weekly discussions, review one week’s readings, and write a historiographical essay, due at the end of the semester (in lieu of a final exam). All reading is required (with the exception of the section labeled “recommended.” These readings are not required, will not be discussed in class, and are for your interest and future reference only.) Students should take notes on individual readings as well as make synthetic notes on each week’s topic as a whole. As the semester progresses, your knowledge and familiarity of the field will increase, and I will expect you to make methodological and historiographical connections with earlier readings. For the week you select to write a review of the readings, you must also submit (by 8pm on Monday the evening before class) a set of concise questions for the seminar, distributed via email to me and to the whole class. Your review of one week’s readings will be 8-10 pages in length, and your final paper, on a topic of your choosing, will be 12-15 pages. You are expected to do additional reading for the final paper; you will consult with me to formulate a topic and I will make recommendations for additional readings. A prospectus and annotated bibliography for the final paper is due on our final class meeting, Friday, 17 April 2009. The final paper is due to my office by 12 noon on Monday, 11 May 2009. No late papers will be accepted and no extensions will be granted (except in the case of severe illness or other personal emergency—any excuses must be accompanied by appropriate documentation).

Your grade will be based on active participation in class discussion (30%), the 8-10 page review and pre-circulated questions (30%), and the final paper (40%).

I recommend that you purchase books that are assigned in full (using Amazon or some other site). All books are also on reserve at Fondren Library. All assigned articles are online and available via JSTOR, History Cooperative, Informaworld, or Synergy.

Tuesday 6 January: Introductions
For our first class, please read the following short articles, and prepare a 3-5 page essay answering the question “Why study early American history?” This essay won’t be graded, but I will read it and return it with comments. As you read and write, you should also consider some key thematic questions: what should be the geographical boundaries of early America? When should “early America” begin? Who were the early Americans? And, where has the historiography and methodology of early American history been, and where should it go next?
• James A. Hijiya, “Why the West is Lost” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 51, no. 2 (April 1994), 276-292. (JSTOR)
• Michael McGiffert, et al., “Forum: Why the West is Lost” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 51, no. 4 (October 1994), 717-754. (JSTOR)
• Claudio Saunt, “Mapping Early American Historiography,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 65, no. 4 (October 2008), 745-778. (History Cooperative)
• Juliana Barr, “How Do You Get from Jamestown to Santa Fe? A Colonial Sun Belt,” Journal of Southern History vol. 73, no. 3 (August 2007), 553-566. (available via History Cooperative)
• Philip Morgan, “Rethinking Early American Slavery,” in Pestana and Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America (Dartmouth, 1999), 239-266. (on reserve)
• James Taylor Carson, “American Historians and Indians,” Historical Journal vol. 49, no. 3 (October 2006), 921-933. (I will provide copies.)
• Elizabeth Mancke, “Another British America: A Canadian Model for the Early Modern British Empire,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History vol. 25, no.1 (January 1997), 1-36. (Informaworld.com)
• Joyce E. Chaplin, “Expansion and Exceptionalism in Early American History Journal of American History vol. 89, no.4 (March 2003), 1431-1456. (available via History Cooperative)

Tuesday 13 January: Native North America
• Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2001), entire.
• Neal Salisbury, “The Indians’ Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 53, no. 3 (July 1996), 435-458. (JSTOR)
• John F. Scarry, “The Late Prehistoric Southeast” in Hudson and Tesser, eds., The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704 (University of Georgia Press, 1994), 17-35. (on reserve)
• Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (University of North Carolina, 1992), 1-49. (on reserve)
Recommended:
• Patricia Galloway, Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700 (Nebraska, 1998), entire.

Tuesday 20 January: Encounters
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (Yale, 2006), xiii-xx, 3-28, 57-87.
• Joshua Piker, Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America (Harvard, 2004), entire.
• Nicholas P. Canny, “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 50, no. 3 (July 1973), 575-598. (JSTOR)
• Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 33, no. 2 (April 1976), 289-299. (JSTOR)
• Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Harvard, 2001), 1-3, 157-198. (on reserve)
Recommended:
• Karen Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Cornell, 2000), entire.
• Michael Leroy Oberg, The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand: Roanoke’s Forgotten Indians (Penn, 2008).

Tuesday 27 January: Migration
• Alexander X. Byrd, Migrants and Voyagers: Black Migrants Across the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World (LSU, 2008), entire.
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 29-56.
• Allan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto, 1997), 3-26. (on reserve)
• Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991), ix-xvi, 1-93.
• Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630-1640” New England Quarterly vol 58, no. 3 (September 1985), 339-383. (JSTOR)
Special Guest Star: Dr. Alexander Byrd.
Recommended:
• Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (Vintage, 1986), entire.
• James P.P. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (UNC, 1994), 1-120.

Tuesday 3 February: Profit
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 88-116.
• Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1-40, 256-355. (on reserve)
• Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern (Verso, 1997), 127-184, 217-276. (on reserve)
• Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (W.W. Norton, 1975), 3-212. (on reserve)
• Richard White, The Middle Ground, 94-141.

Tuesday 10 February: Work
• Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Pennsylvania, 2004), entire.
• Richard White, The Middle Ground, 94-141 (think about this in the context of work as well as profit).
• Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (Verso, 1997), 307-368, 457-508. (on reserve)
• Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 213-292. (on reserve)
• Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America, (University of North Carolina, 1988), 3-47. (on reserve)
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine,” in Ibid., 70-105. (on reserve)
• Philip D. Morgan, “Task and Gang Systems: The Organization of Labor on New World Plantations,” in Ibid., 189-220. (on reserve)
• Allan Greer, The People of New France, 27-42. (on reserve)
• Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (University of North Carolina, 2004), 37-68. (on reserve)
Recommended:
• Sharon B. Sundue, Industrious in Their Stations: Young People at Work in Urban America, 1720-1810 (UVA, 2008), entire.

Tuesday 17 February: Religion and Belief
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 184-218.
• Perry Miller, “Errand into the Wilderness” in Errand into the Wilderness (Harvard, 1956), 1-16, 48-98. (on reserve)
• David Hall, “On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 44, no. 2 (April 1987), 193-229. (JSTOR)
• Emma Anderson, The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert (Harvard, 2007), entire.
• Rhys Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists’ Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765-1775” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 31, no. 3 (July 1973), 345-368. (JSTOR)
Recommended:
• Jon E. Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Harvard, 2005), entire.
• Rebecca Larsen, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700-1775 (Knopf, 1999), entire.
• Mary Maples Dunn, “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period” American Quarterly vol. 30, no. 5 (Winter 1978), 582-601. (JSTOR)
• Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776 (Harvard, 2000), 185-224. (on reserve)
• E. Brooks Hollifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (Yale, 2003), entire.

Tuesday 24 February: Borderlands
• James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (UNC, 2002), entire.
• Juliana Barr, “A Diplomacy of Gender: Rituals of First Contact in the ‘Land of the Tejas’”, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 61, no. 3 (July 2004), 393-434. (available via History Cooperative)
• Steven W. Hackel, “The Staff of Leadership: Indian Authority in the Missions of Alta California,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 54, no. 2 (April 1997), 347-376. (JSTOR)
• David J. Weber, “Bourbons and Bárbaros: Center and Periphery in the Reshaping of Spanish Indian Policy,” in Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500-1820 (Routledge, 2002), 79-104. (on reserve)
• Forum on Richard White, The Middle Ground (articles by Susan Sleeper-Smith, Richard White, Philip J. Deloria, Heidi Bohaker, Brett Rushforth, and Catherine Desbarats), William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 63, no. 1 (January 2006), 1-96. (available via History Cooperative)

Tuesday 3 March: No Class, Spring Break

Tuesday 10 March: Politics, Authority, and Power
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 117-183.
• Holly Brewer, By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority (UNC, 2005), entire.
• Richard White, The Middle Ground, 142-268.
• Gary B. Nash, “The Transformation of Urban Politics, 1700-1764” Journal of American History vol. 60, no. 3 (December 1973), 605-632. (JSTOR)
• Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (UVA, 1994), 1-24. (on reserve)
• Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (Yale, 1992), 11-54, 195-236 (on reserve)
Recommended:
• Adrian Howe, “The Bayard Treason Trial: Dramatizing Anglo-Dutch Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century New York City” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 47, no. 1 (January 1990), 57-89. (JSTOR)
• Daniel Hulsebosch, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World (UNC, 2005), entire.
• Any of the other essays in Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (UVA, 1994).
• Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (UNC, 2006), entire.

Tuesday 17 March: Political Economy
• Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, 1997), entire.
• Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1944), chapters 3-5. (on reserve)
• Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, 307-400. (on reserve)
• J.E. Crowley, This Sheba, Self: The Conceptualization of Economic Life in Eighteenth-Century America (Johns Hopkins, 1974), prologue, chapters 1, 2, 4. (on reserve)
• Joyce O. Appleby, “Ideology and Theory: The Tension between Political and Economic Liberalism in Seventeenth-Century England,” American Historical Review vol. 81 (1976), 499-515. (JSTOR)

Tuesday 24 March: Material Culture
• James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (Anchor Books, 1996), entire.
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (Knopf, 2001), 41-74 (“An Indian Basket”) and 108-141 (“Hannah Barnard’s Cupboard”). (on reserve)
• Rodris Roth, “Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage,” in Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600-1860 (Northeastern University Press, 1988), 439-462. (on reserve)
• Laurier Turgeon, “The Tale of the Kettle: Odyssey of an Intercultural Object” Ethnohistory vol. 44, no. 1 (Winter 1997), 1-29. (JSTOR)
• T.H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776” Journal of British Studies vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1986), 467-499. (JSTOR)

Monday 2 April: Atlantic Worlds
• David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Palgrave, 2002), 11-30. (on reserve)
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 255-291.
• Vincent Brown, The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Harvard, 2008), entire.
• Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700 (Stanford, 2006), 1-34, 215-233. (on reserve)
• Joyce Chaplin, “Race” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, 154-172. (on reserve)
• “Forum: Beyond the Atlantic” (essays by Alison Games, Philip J. Stern, Paul W. Mapp, and Peter Coclanis) William and Mary Quarterly vol. 63, no. 4 (October 2006), 675-742. (History Cooperative)
Recommended:
• John Thornton, African and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, 2nd Edition (Cambridge, 1998), entire.

Tuesday 7 April: Revolution
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 292-368.
• Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard, 1967), entire.
• David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Harvard, 2007), 1-102.
• Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African-Americans in the Age of Revolution (Harvard, 2005), 1-68.
• Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 14, no. 1 (January 1957), 3-15. (JSTOR)
• T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising” Journal of American History vol. 84, no. 1 (June 1997), 13-39. (JSTOR)
• Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1968), 371-407. (JSTOR)
Recommended:
• Charles Royster, “Founding a Nation in Blood: Military Conflict and American Nationality” in Hoffman and Albert, eds., Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution (Virginia, 1984), 25-49.
• Benjamin L. Carp, Rebels Rising: Cities in the American Revolution (Oxford, 2007), entire.

Friday 17 April: Republic
• J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 369-411.
• Richard White, Middle Ground, 269-523.
• Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 69-170.
• Daniel T. Rodger, “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept” Journal of American History vol. 79, no. 1 (June 1992), 11-38. (JSTOR)
• Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Vintage, 1991), entire.
• “Forum: How Revolutionary was the Revolution? A Discussion of Gordon S. Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution (articles by Michael McGiffert, Joyce Appleby, Barbara Clark Smith, Michael Zuckerman, and Gordon S. Wood), William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4 (October 1994), 677-716.
• James T. Kloppenberg, “The Virtues of Liberalism: Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethics in Early American Political Discourse,” Journal of American History vol. 74, no. 1 (June 1987), 9-33. (JSTOR)
Recommended:
• Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, 1980), entire.
• Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (Hill and Wang, 2007), entire.
• Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (Knopf, 2006), entire.

2008-11-24T15:27:00.003-05:00

Ah, Monday!

I have learned, via a reliable informant, that the online Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving has approximately 25,000 entries. Good thing I don't have to read them all in order to finish my slavery think piece!

The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography is now online via JSTOR. Hurrah!

I just read a fantastic lit review in the March 2008 Slavery and Abolition by Sylvia Frey: "The Visible Church: HIstoriography of African American Religion since Raboteau." I highly recommend it.

I finally got my books for HIST 486: Sex, Lies, and Depositions ordered--despite the fact that the bookstore's ordering website refused to acknowledge that my class exists. Sigh.

2008-11-12T15:11:00.003-05:00

Quick post-election, non-Obama post

So I'm working on a think piece for the Journal of Southern History about where we are in the origins debate (slavery), including transatlantic origins, and the role culture and religion played in sustaining slavery. (I know! This is a lot for 15 double-spaced pages!)

I had thought it would be fun, and useful, to look through back issues of Slavery and Abolition, which includes a yearly bibliographical roundup of publications on slavery. This would be a way to gauge, in the first or second paragraph, the vastness of current scholarship on slavery generally, and then to show how large even a subset of slavery studies, say, the colonial south, is.

To my joy, I discovered S & A's annual bibliographical supplement is now online at http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/bibliographyofslavery. The bibliography is fully searchable, which is neat. Not so neat is the opening page, which states clearly the number of entries in the bibliography: "The database contains over XXXX bibliographical references from XXXX to XXXX."

Sigh.

2008-09-11T23:10:00.002-04:00

IKE-O-RAMA!

In response to the comment below, nope, not leaving, not ever, not nohow.

Seriously though, I live outside all the mandatory evac zones, and we are supposed to stay put for now to give those folks who really do have to leave (especially anyone and everyone in Galveston) the road. Things are quiet here as I poach a little wifi from my fabulous neighbors; the moon in shining and the air is peculiarly calm. I've hurricane-proofed the house; no projectiles here!

Since I live in the Houston Heights (elevation: 40 ft!) I won't flood. My house is set back from the street and is on a pier-and-beam foundation, so even if the streets flood (likely) my house will stay nice and dry.

Unless 115 mph winds tear off my roof and blow out my windows.

In which case, Pepper and I will retreat to the bedroom closet (the only windowless "room" in the house) and wait things out!

We'll be fine. We'll check in after the storm as soon as we are able.

2008-08-18T16:16:00.006-04:00

The Perils of the Academic Job Wiki

It was truly bewildering to follow our job search on the Academic Job Wiki last year. We advertised a tenure-track position in the long nineteenth century (United States). It generated a lot of discussion, none of which made sense to those of us in the department or on the committee.

The opening comment:

“the circles seem to inform that they want someone that has 20th century AFAM project/interests (9/11/07)”

Huh?

Another poster asked, sensibly:

"What's "AFAM"?”

Reply:

That would imply African American related.”

A request for another clarification:

“okay, what's a "circle"?”

Reply:

“questions questions, meaning I heard! i am sure we ALL know the academic circles run small and are well connected. Not much more to add.”

At this point, I’m pretty puzzled. Circles? I’m in the department and I can’t think where this might be coming from. I’m actually here and I’m not aware of any circles of any type emphasizing anything in particular. I can certainly categorically state that it would be insane for us to advertise a nineteenth-century position if what we wanted was twentieth-century African-American history.

Then:

I must be in a different circle. It's my understanding that there will be a second position advertised. If you look at the chronology of this search and then observe what conspicuous fields are *not* represented currently on Rice's faculty (think kepis, funny beards, and hardtack), that should serve as some clue. Then again, maybe both circles are right. It wouldn't be the first time that a department had two circles, both with stong [sic] opinions for the type of person the department wants.”

Again, Huh?

Luckily, another reader requested some clarification there:

“When thinking about the fields not represented, what does this mean: "think kepis, funny beards, and hardtack." I'm just not following”

Good, because I’m not either.

Reply:

“I'm not the OP [the person who made the original post], but I assume s/he meant Civil War”

So at this point, there are two rumors on the internet about our search: one that we want someone who does African-American history, and another that we want (or possibly don’t want? That wasn’t really clear) a Civil War historian. Neither of these two rumors are correct: we were looking for exactly what the ad said we were looking for: the long nineteenth century, subfield open. I was really bothered by this. It seemed to me that job seekers were on the wiki deliberately starting rumors about our search, possibly to limit the numbers or types of candidates. There was no such thing as the wiki a few short years ago when I was on the market; I used to think information was power, but the “information” being circulated here seems calculated to render competitors powerless.

OK, next:

“I received an email from someone on the search committee asking me to apply for the job before I had sent in my application. My specialty is not African American. They are running a second search for assoc./full professor in southern history”

Which prompts a crazy reply:

This comment could possible [sic] go below [under another topic heading], but I have to object to the practice of sending select invitations to apply. It creates the impression of cherry-picking a candidate under the guise of conducting a national search. That kind of thing smacks of old-boy club and the old guild. Thoughts?”

Reply:

“I guess it does smack of the OBC [Old Boy Club], but I think there are so many variables in a search that an invite does not mean slam dunk. As a grad student, we had a national search that we all thought was a dog and pony show for one candidate who had a well received book in the field of our specialized PHD program. She didn't even get an offer because department members didn't like her next project. Anyway if the dept. is a fossil of the dinosaur era and is full of Good Ole Boys, do you or I really want to work there anyway? Just a though[t].”

Letters to colleagues pointing out the existence of a position are fairly common. Most search committees want to widen their applicant pool, rather than narrow it. If you are a job seeker and you receive one of these letters asking you to apply for a job, pat yourself on the back and send in the application. If you don’t receive a letter, send in your app anyway. I also wondered here: was the poster suggesting that Rice's history department "is a fossil of the dinosaur era?" Or that it is full of Good Ol' Boys? Not amusing!

And, don’t overthink the wiki. There’s a lot of emotional angst out there during the job season, which I totally understand, but it doesn’t seem to me that the wiki is really good for the delicate psyches of graduate students. Nor does it seem to provide accurate information beyond the scheduling of AHA interviews, etc. that help clarify the timeline of a particular search.

2008-08-01T12:35:00.002-04:00

The Survey, Again

I'm teaching America to 1848 again this fall, and I'm glad to be doing it again so soon. This way lessons learned can be more quickly applied.

I've made several changes:

I've eliminated two sets of readings (one secondary and one primary) in favor of more dicussion on fewer readings. I've come to the conclusion that in the survey, less is more.

I've rethought the relationship between reading and writing assignments. There will be two papers, one towards the beginning of the semester that allows students to work on interpreting a primary document they have read closely and that they have read a secondary interpretation of, and another that teaches them to identify primary sources in an online database and to interpret them on their own, using two secondary sources. So, a little research paper. I'm thinking of these as units, and the first unit will also involve a draft process. I can get away with this since surveys at Rice are small.

I've kept the quiz structure, but regularized it (every Wednesday after the first week of class). I'd like to teach students to use these as a diagnostic tool for themselves.

I've decided we'll have a primary source every lecture, one that relates to the lecture, which we'll discuss in the final ten-fifteen minutes of class. This will mean shorter lectures, but more meaningful engagement with material presented in the lecture.

Though many people treat the survey as a content-driven class, this is fast becoming an experiment with making this a skills-based class: it is geared towards teaching freshmen basic skills they will need to function in a college environment: how to read effectively, how to interpret data (in this case, primary sources), how to listen to lectures and identify important points, how to study effectively for exams, how to write analytically, this list could go on. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with this; I do believe American History is important, and that every citizen of this country should have a basic grasp of our history. I'm afraid that a more skills-driven course might make more successful students but less engaged citizens. But, this is an ongoing experiment, and we'll see how it goes.

I'm sticking with my no-textbook policy. This was, I think, successful, and I think other teachers are having some luck with it (most recently Kevin Levin over at Civil War Memory).

Here's the syllabus:
HISTORY 117
America to 1848

This course examines the America’s colonial beginnings, the founding of the nation we now call the United States, and the early years of the Republic, as the United States sought to expand and cover the entire continent. The course will conclude at the end of the war between the United States and Mexico, and consider what it meant to be an American on the eve of the Civil War.

Grading:

Draft of First Paper……………...5%
First Paper…...…………………..10%
Final Paper Proposal…..………...10%
Final Paper………………………25%
Wednesday quizzes……………...10%
Midterm………………………….15%
Final Exam………………………25%

The first paper (5-7 pages) will deal with the first two books we read about Cabeza de Vaca. The final paper will be a research paper (8-10 pages) based upon either Rothman’s Slave Country or West’s Contested Plains. You will receive more detailed assignments for each paper later.

You’ll see in the syllabus that nine times in the semester we have a class period especially dedicated to “discussion.” In these sessions, you will be asked to participate in an in-depth analysis of our readings. Please come prepared: this means you must not only finish the reading but also spend some time thinking about it. Come to class ready to ask questions and make arguments!

There will be a quiz covering reading material and lectures every Wednesday starting September 3 and continuing through December 3, for a total of 14 quizzes. I will count the top 12 grades you earn. I do not give make-ups for these quizzes, so if you plan on being absent more that two Wednesdays, please see me immediately. Please note: there will be a quiz on November 26 (the day before Thanksgiving). Please plan any plane travel accordingly.

Required Readings:
• Alvar Nuñez Cabeva de Vaca, Castaways (California, 1993)
• Andrés Reséndez, A Land so Strange: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century (Basic Books, 2007)
• Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, Fifth Edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007)
• Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana (Hill and Wang, 2001)
• Adam Rothman, Slave Country (Harvard, 2005)
• Elliott West, The Contested Plains (Kansas, 1998)

A copy of each of these books is available on reserve, or you may purchase them in our bookstore (or online if you prefer—be sure you get the right editions). I will also be handing out various primary sources in class. Make sure you keep these—I suspect some might turn up on exams. J You’ve probably noticed that I don’t use a textbook. I generally think textbooks are a huge waste of students’ money, so I don’t assign them. However, I have put a standard American history textbook on reserve at the library. If you feel like you need a refresher course on names, dates, places, facts, and figures, feel free to check it out. Nothing from the textbook will be discussed in class or on exams.

Expectations:

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick, or if you have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, please provide appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You should come to my office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

As a matter of fairness, I do NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes go astray—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Week 1 Reading: Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, xv-xxx, 1-45; Rampolla 1-10
Monday August 25: Introduction
Wednesday August 27: Native North America
Friday August 29: The Columbian Exchange

Week 2 Reading: Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, 47-127.
Monday September 1: Labor Day (No Class)
Wednesday September 3: Three North American Beginnings
Friday September 5: Discussion: Castaways

Week 3 Reading: Resendez, A Land so Strange, 1-110; Rampolla, 14-16, 25-28.
Monday September 8: English North America
Wednesday September 10: Profits from the Wilderness
Friday September 12: Discussion: A Land so Strange

Week 4 Reading: Resendez, A Land so Strange, 111-225; Rampolla, 48-60, 88-94, 96-130.
Monday September 15: From Servitude to Slavery, part I
Wednesday September 17: From Servitude to Slavery, part II
Friday September 19: Discussion: A Land so Strange

Week 5 Reading: Fenn, Pox Americana, ix-91.
Monday September 22: Imperial Clashes
Wednesday September 24: The Empire Strikes Back
Draft of First Short Essay Due at the beginning of class (5% of your grade)
Friday September 26: Discussion of essays/please read Rampolla, 60-68.

Week 6 Reading: Fenn, Pox Americana, 92-184, Rampolla, 38-42.
Monday October 29: Declaring Independence
Wednesday October 1: Liberty & Tyranny, Part I
First Short Essay Due at the beginning of class (15% of your grade)
Friday October 3: Liberty & Tyranny, Part II

Week 7 Reading: Fenn, Pox Americana, 185-277.
Monday October 6: Republic
Wednesday October 8: Discussion: Pox Americana
Friday October 10: MIDTERM EXAM (Dr. Goetz in New Orleans)

Week 8 Reading: Rothman, Slave Country, ix-70.
Monday, October 13: Midterm Recess (no class)
Wednesday October 15: Politics in the New Republic
Friday October 17: NO CLASS (Dr. Goetz in Indianapolis)

Week 9 Reading: Rothman, Slave Country, 71-163.
Monday October 20: Jefferson and his United States
Wednesday October 22: Independence Confirmed
Friday October 24: The Cotton Frontier and the Prairie Frontier

Week 10 Reading: Rothman, Slave Country, 164-224.
Monday October 27: Discussion: Slave Country
Wednesday October 29: The United States, 1815-1848: Many Revolutions?
Friday October 31: Democratizing Politics

Week 11 Reading: Rampolla, 70-87.
Monday November 3: The Religious Republic
Wedneday November 5: From Awakening to Reform
Friday November 7: Meet in Fondren to learn how to use the America’s Historical Newspapers database

Week 12 Reading: West. The Contested Plains, xv-xxiv, 1-62.
Monday November 10: Slavery and Freedom in Jacksonian America
Wednesday November 12: Urbanization and Immigration
Friday November 14: A Market Revolution? An Industrial Revolution?

Week 13 Reading: West, The Contested Plains, 63-170.
Monday November 17: Technology and Communications (or: More Revolutions?
Wednesday November 19: Andrew Jackson and the Indians
Proposal for Final Paper Due at the beginning of class
Friday November 21: Discussion: The Contested Plains/Paper Proposals

Week 14 Reading: West, The Contested Plains, 171-271.
Monday November 24: Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion
Wednesday November 26: The Texas Revolution
Friday November 28: NO CLASS (Thanksgiving Recess)

Week 15 Reading: West, The Contested Plains, finish.
Monday December 1: War with Mexico
Wednesday December 3: Discussion: The Contested Plains
Friday December 5: The United States after 1848
Final Exam Information
Final paper due at the beginning of class, Friday, December 5

2008-07-22T19:01:00.003-04:00

When the Editor Won't Print Your Letter....

Those with blogs have the option of self-publishing! Hurrah for the blogs!

Scott Sowerby and Kevin Levin have written recently to ask if everything is all right...I'm perfectly fine! I just had a busy semester (what with the primary and all) and graduated from a busy spring to a busy summer. But, I return to the 'sphere now with my unprinted Letter to the Editor.

The Houston Chronicle reported a little over a month ago that our lovely Governor is contemplating linking professorial salaries to student evaluations. I find this to be a horrific idea, and here's why:

To the Editor:

The Chronicle reports that the University of Houston is contemplating adopting Governor Perry’s plan of linking bonuses for professors to student evaluations (see “UH regents receptive to state’s reform pitch,” 10 June 2008). This is a lazy and unworkable solution to perceived teaching problems in higher education.

Student evaluations are useful for many things. They help me gauge the effectiveness of my lectures, discussions, assignments, and exams. They also help me determine which reading materials worked, and they help me pinpoint concepts that students had difficulty grasping. I can then revise and improve my courses based in part upon student responses. But evaluations are not good indicators of a professor’s quality. Students tend to reward courses with little required effort or professors who grade generously with positive evaluations. I suspect implementing the Governor Perry’s plan of linking “performance” to pay would encourage professors to avoid teaching difficult or unpopular courses and would contribute to grade inflation. Additionally, this plan would discourage professors from teaching necessary introductory courses that attract large numbers of non-specialists and new college students. In my experience, these courses teach students to adapt to doing college-level work, but they tend to get fewer positive reviews. Eighteen-year-olds are often not appropriate judges of whether or not a classroom experience was good for them or not.

This does not mean that collegiate instructors should not be thinking about effective teaching and finding ways to evaluate it. I find that having conversations with colleagues about trouble spots in my teaching and asking them to attend my classes and give me feedback are far better ways of encouraging my improvement in the classroom. These kinds of interactions, though, should not be mandated by the state but discussed in individual departments and schools. Surely our government can find more workable and effective ways of improving collegiate teaching than rebranding our universities as consumer goods.

Rebecca A. Goetz
The writer is Assistant Professor of History at Rice University.

Now, I feel better! I can't believe this idea is getting serious attention, but there you have it.

2008-03-27T18:03:00.003-04:00

UNBELIEVABLE!

So Bill Clinton gets on the conference call, and announces that "Hillary is only 16 pledged delegates behind."

HUH?

Oh wait, that's only if you count states that had primaries (and presumably Michigan and Florida as well). "It's the caucuses that are killing her," he goes on to say.

It's Clinton logic, again. If caucuses don't work to our advantage, then don't count them.

The rest of the call was focused on remedying the nine-vote deficit Hillary has in caucus delegates in Texas. But since those are caucus votes and not primary votes, does that mean that picking up those votes would make Hillary 7 pledged delegates behind? Yes--because caucuses count when Hillary wins them.

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo's Election Central has the full story (and a better transcript than mine).

2008-03-27T17:50:00.001-04:00

And, update

There are 950 people on the conference call. I wonder how many are actually Obama supporters? Want to join?

Dial in: 1-800-214-0745
Participant password: 498616

2008-03-27T17:44:00.002-04:00

On the Clinton Conference Call

This is really entertaining. I've been mistaken for a Hillary supporter and I was invited to participate in a conference call with the Texas Hillary campaign and with Bill. It's like drinking Hillary kool-aid!

Gary Mauro "We're going to do better than expected in the county and state senate district conventions."

Yeah, right. If you're so disorganized you can't tell the difference between an Obama supporter and a Hillary supporter, you're in BAD SHAPE.

They are also reporting that they have never had such good turnout on a conference call. Well, I'm signing on just to cost ya'll money!

2008-03-18T15:55:00.002-04:00

This I have to read

From the Briefly Noted section of the New Yorker:

Johnny One-Eye, by Jerome Charyn (Norton, $25.95). Set on Manhattan Island during the Revolutionary War, this leisurely picaresque concerns the adventures of an orphan reared in a brothel who loses an eye when he follows Benedict Arnold into battle. Johnny is a man of both nations; he joins up with Arnold as a secret agent for the British, but his admiration for him [Arnold] is genuine. His feelings are further complicated by his discovery that George Washington--here gentle, intelligent, and tortured by love for the brothel's madam--may be his father, but ultimately his loyalty lies with his true love, an octoroon prostitute named Clara. Charyn skillfully breathes life into historical icons like Arnold, Washington, and Alexander Hamilton, and constructs a careful plot of shifting alliances, roving spies, and double-dealing.

I've long searched for a good historical novel of the American Revolution, but aside from Esther Forbes' classic Johnny Tremaine and Nelson's excellent Hornblower-esque novels of the Revolution at sea, I've never found something I could really embrace. Perhaps this will be the one?

2008-03-05T10:38:00.003-05:00

The Texas Two-Step, from the inside

I've been ridiculously busy these last few weeks as a Precinct Captain for Barack Obama. I'll say I'm disappointed in yesterday's results; I do not understand the appeal Hillary Clinton has for Democrats. Nevertheless, I've been out in force for the last two weeks working for Obama: making phone calls, canvassing, recruiting for my precinct convention at the primary location yesterday, and helping run my precinct's convention and its Obama caucus last night. It was a crazy evening. I do know that there were complaints aired on CNN last night by Clinton's people about irregularities at the conventions, so here's my tale of what went down last night.

I spent the afternoon at my precinct's polling place (oh joy, oh rapture, oh sunburn). My job was basically to hand out information to Obama supporters about the evening's conventions, and to provide some Obama visibility. I got one of the grad students to help out. We were also there to counterbalance the Hillary folks, who were also present. (It was during the afternoon that I learned that the state chairperson for NOW lives in my precinct.) There were representatives of other campaigns--state reps, constables, judges, etc., and some candidates even dropped by to shake hands and kiss babies. It was a friendly gathering of primary opponents--we were all excruciatingly polite to one another and I provided pizza around 5pm. (This was followed by a crazy interlude involving a drunk driver/domestic violence/car crash/assault of a police officer--it facilitated bonding and high blood pressure for everyone.)

At last another of my precinct's captains showed up, and we were able to start preparing for the convention. Two precincts voted in one tiny building, but luckily our convention was moved a few doors down to a Presbyterian church. Our first job, then, was to make sure all of our precinct's people went through the right door. I soon found, though, that some HIllary folks inside who were running the sign in began the sign in BEFORE the last person had voted in the primary. This was, of course, a violation of Texas Democratic Party rules. Though the polls closed at 7, those people waiting in line at 7 were entitled to vote and then take part in the convention, so the convention itself could not start until the last person voted. I sent two Obama supporters in to stop the process but they came back out and reported that they had been unsuccessful. So I stood in the doorway and yelled, "We cannot start the sign in until the last person has voted. We are in violation of Democratic Party rules!" There were other folks there, including Hillary supporters, who also knew the rules, which was lucky for me, because one particularly nasty Hillary supporter (who had already tried to engage me on the subject on Tony Resko) demanded to know my credentials. I responded that I was a registered Democrat, just like her, and that I had been trained in Democratic Party rules, and that she was welcome to call the Harris County party to confirm. She continued to harass me while I prevented the convention from starting. About five minutes later the election judge came to tell us that the last voted had cast a ballot and we could start.

The Clinton folks later asked me if I was going to lodge a protest, and I said no, that the sign in process had stopped, and that I was satisfied. "You're sure?" he asked. "You're not going to make the people who signed in early go to the end of the line?" Since the people who had signed in early had done so in good faith, mostly because someone told them to, I declined to pursue it. I've thought about this since: most of the people who signed in early were also elderly or disabled. In my most cynical heart of hearts, I wonder if the Clinton people wanted me to say yes, send them to the end of the line. This would have allowed them to then say that the Obama campaign hates little old ladies and folks in wheelchairs.

We signed in 257 people. It took almost two hours to accomplish that, so while people waited in line, I made name tags for Obama supporters and explained the convention system impartially to anyone who would listen. (I also talked to two people who claimed to be McCain supporters who had voted Democratic in order to attend a convention for Hillary. Dirty, dirty, dirty.) I was elected Convention secretary--a fun job involving filling out forms and assisting in the vote count. (Let me tell you, deciphering messy handwriting and counting lines on a ballot at ten at night is no picnic!) About halfway through the count a representative of the Hillary campaign turned up wanting to investigate claims that HIllary supporters were prevented from voting in the precinct convention. Someone apparently had called her campaign to complain (dare I suggest--I bet it was the Hillary supporter who questioned my competence and motives and who wanted to talk about Tony Resko). We had to briefly stop counting to inform him that everyone who wanted to vote had voted here without any trouble. The Hillary folks and the Obama folks agreed on that point, so finally he was persuaded to go away. I'm wondering, though, if the brief trouble at our precinct was one of the sources for the CNN stories that Obama supporters were preventing Clinton supporters from voting.

We wrapped things up around 11. I'm an Obama delegate for our precinct, and couldn't be more pleased to do so (although we lost the precinct by a small margin). I thought that overall the process was fair, fun, and interesting. I think the Democrats can be proud that so many people turned out around the state. I used to think that the convention system was antiquated and useless, but I now think it's great to see democracy in action.

Lastly, it seems that Clinton's victories last night made only the smallest of dents in Obama's lead. So, I am still convinced he will be our nominee. And, I couldn't be happier about that!

2008-02-15T15:46:00.001-05:00

New Identity!

I'm an Obamazon. (translation: a staunch woman supporter of Barack Obama.)

2007-12-27T22:23:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays!

The Historianess and HRH Prince Pepper the Crazy Cat wish all readers a happy and joyous holiday season!

Regular posting will resume in the New Year!

2007-12-14T14:32:00.000-05:00

Welcome to HIST 584

(The Early South, 1500-1800, a graduate research seminar.)

HIST 584 The Early South, 1500-1800
Prof. R. Goetz
HUMA 334
rgoetz@rice.edu
Ext. 2886
Office hour T 1-2.

In this research seminar, each student will complete an article-length essay (30-35 pages, including notes) based on original research, on a topic relating to some aspect of the early American South between 1500 and 1800. STUDENTS SHOULD COME WITH A TOPIC IN MIND THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS. (This topic may later change.) The paper should be appropriate for submission to a professional historical journal.

Our initial meetings will discuss some background literature and larger questions about the historiography of the early South—where was the South? Was the South distinctive prior to the American Revolution? If so, what made it distinctive from other North American geographic regions? Later sessions will focus on framing appropriate research topics, then on the research and writing of these topics. Students will later write a prospectus that will include a statement of a TOPIC, the PROBLEM the paper will solve or the QUESTION it will answer, a list of accessible PRIMARY SOURCES, a statement of the paper’s methodology, and a statement of the HISTORIOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE of the work. The prospectus is due in the sixth week of the class, after which the seminar will focus on shared discussions of independent research. Students will be responsible for oral and written critiques of one another’s work throughout the semester. Individual appointments with me will be scheduled throughout the semester. The final weeks of the course will be devoted to discussion of rough drafts and to revision.

No late written work will be accepted. Failure to turn in any written work on the due date will result in a ZERO. In the event of illness or personal emergency, please contact me. Computer and printer problems are not suitable excuses.

Your performance in the seminar will be evaluated on the basis of your paper (60%, with 10% for the prospectus), your other written work, including critiques (20%), and your overall participation in class (20%). All required books are available on reserve.

Monday 7 January: Introduction.
• The Early South—when and where?
• What are you interested in? Come with a topic!
• Library trip—source identification.

Monday 14 January: Topics and Problems in the History of the Early South.
• Discussion of the special issue of the Journal of Southern History, “Redefining and Reassessing the Colonial South” vol. 73, no. 3 (August 2007), 523-670.
• Complete a 2-3 page critique of one of the essays (your choice) but you must read them all.
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 37-74.

Monday 21 January: no class, MLK, Jr. Day.

Tuesday 22 January: Writing a Publishable Paper.
• Susan Scott Parish, “The Female Opossum and the Nature of the New World,” William and Mary Quarterly vol. 54, no. 3 (July 1997), 475-514. (JSTOR)
• Margot Minardi, “The Boston Inoculation Controversy of 1721-1722: An Incident in the History of Race,” William and Mary Quarterly vol. 61, no. 1 (January 2004), 47-76.
• Turn in a list of three possible topics, with an explanation and possible source base.
Each student should meet with me by the end of the week to discuss his research topic.

Monday 28 January: Sources, sources, sources.
• Prepare a 3-5 page report on the body/bodies of primary sources you will be using for your paper. Identify where they are, what they are, and how you will be using them. Give your report to your partner by 5pm Sunday evening, and be sure to email all of them to me.
• E.H. Carr, What is History? 3-35 (handout).

Monday 4 February: Arguments, arguments, arguments.
• Bring a thesis paragraph with you—what is your argument?
• How to write a proposal.
• E.H. Carr, What is History? 113-143.
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 109-182.

Monday 11 February: discussion of formal proposals.
• Oral presentations on proposals 8-10 minutes each.
• Give your proposal to your partner by 5pm Sunday evening, and be sure to email them to me.
• Prepare a 1-2 page critique of your partner’s proposal.

Monday 18 February: no class, meet with me.
• Revised proposals are due to me by Friday 22 February, 12 p.m.

Monday 25 February: From notes to thesis statements—think big, think small.
• Bring your revised thesis paragraph to class with you—make sure you have considered the significance of your argument!
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 183-207.
• Barzun and Graff, The Modern Researcher (6th edition), 101-148.

Monday 3 March: No class, midterm break.

Monday 10 March: Outlines, outlines, outlines.
• Circulate your detailed outlines to your partner and to the class by 5pm Sunday evening. Be sure to email them to me!
• Bring to class a 1-page critique of your partner’s outline.

Monday 17 March: Research Problems and Primary Sources.
• Bring to class one research problem you are having difficulty solving.
• Turn in to me an informal exploration of one of your key primary sources to me (2-3 pages).
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 208-240.

Monday 24 March: No class, meet with me.

Monday 31 March: No class, meetings with me are optional.

Wednesday 2 April: ROUGH DRAFTS ARE DUE IN HARD COPY TO MY OFFICE BY 12 NOON. PICK UP COPIES OF EVERYONE’S DRAFT BY 5pm.

Monday 7 April: Rough draft presentations (this will be a long session, probably from 2-7, with a pizza break)
• Read and prepare to comment on each student’s draft.
• Prepare a 1-2 page critique for your partner.

Monday 14 April: No class, individual meetings with me.

Monday 21 April: The Fine Art of Revising.
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 263-282.
• Barzun and Graff, The Modern Researcher, 6th Edition, 193-234, 257-274.
• The Chicago Manual of Style Common Errors handout.

Monday 5 May: FINAL PAPERS DUE TO MY OFFICE IN HARD COPY BY 5 PM.

2007-12-13T13:55:00.000-05:00

Welcome to HIST 265

I've taught this course--North America in the Age of Revolution--before. (I didn't blog that syllabus.) I've made quite a few changes to it, including eliminating one of the writing assignments. Though I generally don't approve of eliminating writing, this will allow me to put more emphasis on research process for the students' term papers, and hopefully they won't leave it until the end of the semester if they are less burdened with other writing assignments.

I've also added a test and made the midterm an in-class exam. The test is towards the beginning of the semester and will cover basic facts (names, dates, events) of the Revolution. I'm hoping students can get a handle on the who, what, and when so we can then spend the rest of the semester in close readings of several important secondary works (Bailyn, Fischer, Frey, and Countryman) and many important primary sources and shorter secondary readings. I haven't tried teaching a class quite in this manner before, so this is something of an experiment.

HIST 265 North America in the Age of Revolution, 1763-1804

Dr. R. Goetz
Office hour: T 1-2 and by appointment
HUMA 334
Ext. 2886
rgoetz@rice.edu

Required texts:

• Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard University Press reprint 1992)
• Edward Countryman, ed., What did the Constitution Mean to Early Americans? (Bedford/St. Martins, 1999)
• David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Sylvia R. Frey, Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton University Press, 1991)
• James Kirby Martin, ed., Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin (Brandywine Press, 1999)
• Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776 (Penguin Great Ideas, 2006)
• Gordon Wood, The American Revolution: A History (Modern Library, 2003)

A copy of each of these books is available on reserve, or you may purchase them in our bookstore (or online if you prefer—be sure you get the right editions). I will also be handing out various primary sources in class. Make sure you keep these—I suspect some might turn up on exams. J

Grading:
Test………………………10%
Short Paper………………15%
Midterm………………….15%
Term Paper Proposal…….10%
Term Paper………………25%
Final Exam………………25%

Expectations:

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick, or if you have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Computer and printer problems are not a suitable excuse for late papers. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave.

I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!). If you send me an emailed paper, that paper will receive a grade of ZERO.

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper. (You may of course study together for tests and exams.)

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Monday, January 7 Course introduction: What was the Revolution about?
W 1/9 Interpreting the American Revolution, Part I
*Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (1805), 3-16; Charles Beard, The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, xli-liii (1913); and Charles M. Andrews, “The American Revolution: An Interpretation” American Historical Review, vol. 31, no. 2 (January 1926), 219-232. (handouts)
F 1/11 Interpreting the American Revolution, Part II
*Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 14, no. 1 (January 1957), 3-15; Jesse Lemisch, “The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up” in Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History; and T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising” Journal of American History vol. 84, no. 1 (June 1997), 13-39. (handouts)
Monday January 14 Wood, American Revolution, 1-44
W 1/16 Wood, American Revolution, 46-109
F 1/18 Wood, American Revolution, 113-166
Monday January 21 NO CLASS (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day)
W 1/23 TEST
F 1/25 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, v-xvi, 1-54
Monday, January 28 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 55-159
W 1/30 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 160-198
Friday February 1 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 198-246
*Thomas Fitch, et al. Reasons Why the British Colonies in America Should Not Be Charged With Internal Taxes (1764) (handout)
Monday February 4 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 246-320
W 2/6 LIBRARY EXERCISE/FIRST PAPER DUE
F 2/8 Paine, Common Sense, 3-24
Monday February 11 Paine, Common Sense, 24-46
W 2/13 Paine, Common Sense, 46-78
F 2/15 COMMON SENSE DEBATE
Monday February 18 MIDTERM EXAM
W 2/20 Fischer, Washington’s Crossing, 1-65
F 2/22 Fischer, WC, 66-114, Joseph Plumb Martin, vii-xviii, 1-64
Monday February 25 Fischer, WC, 115-205, JPM, 65-121
W 2/27 Fischer, WC, 206-262, JPM, 123-145
F 2/29 Fischer, WC, 263-289, JPM, 145-168
LIST OF THREE POSSIBLE TOPICS DUE
March 1-March 9 SPRING BREAK, NO CLASS
Monday March 10 Fischer, Washington’s Crossing, 290-379
W 3/12 Who were the Loyalists?
*Robert M. Calhoun, “Civil, Revolutionary, or Partisan: The Loyalists and the Nature of the War for Independence,” in The Loyalist Perception and Other Essays (on reserve)
F 3/14 The Indians’ Revolution
*Colin Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, Chapter Three (Stockbridge: The New England Patriots); Chapter Nine (Cuscowilla: Seminole Loyalism and Seminole Genesis); Chapter Ten (The Peace That Brought no Peace)
Monday March 17 Frey, Water from the Rock, 3-80
W 3/19 Frey, Water from the Rock, 81-142
F 3/21 Frey, Water from the Rock, 142-205
Monday March 24 Frey, Water from the Rock, 205-332
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE
W 3/26 Visit from Dr. Byrd
F 3/28 State Constitutions
*The Pennsylvania and Massachusetts state constitutions (handout)
Monday March 31 The Articles of Confederation
PAPER PROPOSALS DUE
W April 2 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 69-88
*Alan Taylor, “Agrarian Resistance in Post-Revolutionary New England,” in Robert Gross, ed., In Debt to Shays (on reserve)
F 4/4 NO CLASS SPRING RECESS
Monday April 7 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 1-29
*Gary Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 69-122 (on reserve)
W 4/9 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 33-68
F 4/11 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 89-112
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 321-379
Monday April 14 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 113-140
Linda Kerber, Liberty’s Daughters, 256-299 (on reserve)
W 4/16 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 141-163
F 4/18 Federalists, 10, 84, and 85 (handout)
Monday April 21 The Haitian Revolution
W 4/23 What was the Revolution About?
FINAL PAPERS DUE