Course module - American History to 1877

Code : AMER10211
Credit rating: 20
Semester : 1

Aims

To encourage students to understand, appreciate and critically engage with American history in the period from 1620 - 1900 by means of the examination of key periods focusing on specific as well as general historical texts;

Students will develop the primary reading, research and interdisciplinary skills needed for examining a selection of historical documents (eg. narrative chronology; critical analysis; biographical; public and constitutional);

To develop students' research skills and their ability to work independently (researching chosen topics for essay and examination assessment);

To promote skills of written and verbal expression, of critical and analytical thinking, and of deploying evidence that will form a coherent and lucid argument appropriate to Level 1.

Objectives (Learning Outcomes)

At the end of the course unit the successful student will have demonstrated:

A knowledge of American social and political history from 1620-1900, together with a basic comprehension of the cultural and literary influences that have shaped key stages of American development during that period;

An awareness of the interdisciplinary approach to American Studies;

An ability to explore the dominant themes of identity, expansion and renewal within the American experience, and the confidence to understand, compare and contrast the contested terrain that these themes have and continue to operate in;

Skills in written expression and in critical and analytical thinking appropriate to Level One.

Assessment

One 2,500-word essay (50%); one 2-hour unseen written examination (50%)

The use of dictionaries in the examination is prohibited. This rule applies to all categories of students, including all Visiting Students.

Information

THIS COURSE IS NOT AVAILABLE AS FREE CHOICE.

Course Content

This course will examine a selection of key historical periods between 1620 and 1900. Introducing students to the significant events that went on to shape 20th Century America, it will engage with influential historical, political and social works to present a pattern of national development leading from the Puritans through the formation of the Republic and the divisions caused by the Civil War, to the reform movements at the end of the 19th Century. The course will address theories of democracy, of state power, and will critically investigate arguments concerning race, gender and identity as a whole.

Course Materials

Tutor(s)

Zacek, Dr Natalie

Timetable

PROVISIONAL TIMETABLE FOR 2013-2014

Lecture: Tuesday, 11.00-1.00
Seminars: T B A

Teaching Methods

One 2-hour lecture and one 1-hour seminar per week.

Preliminary reading

The principal text which we will use in this course is Eric Foner's 'Give Me Liberty'. You will be able to purchase this text from Blackwell's Bookshop in Manchester upon arrival at the University, but you may wish to get it earlier by ordering a new or used copy from Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk). Be sure to order ONLY the paperback Seagull edition of 2006 (ISBN-10: 0393927822; ISBN 13: 978-0393927825); you will also use this in the spring in the second half of the required history survey course. If you intend to read only one book in preparation for the course, I recommend this. Below are suggested readings on the various topics we will study over the autumn term.

England on the eve of expansion to the 'New World':
Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction, particularly the essay titled 'Worlds in Motion'.

Puritans and adventurers: the beginnings of Anglo-American settlement:
David Hall, 'Understanding the Puritans', and Sigmund Diamond, 'From Organization to Society: Virginia in the Seventeenth Century', in Stanley N. Katz, ed., Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America

The rising generation: towards the Revolution:
Edmund Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89;
Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776;
Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America

Winning the war, winning the peace: The Constitution and the birth of the American political nation: Stephen Botein, et al., eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, particularly John Murrin's essay, 'A Roof Without Walls';
Edward Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean to Early Americans;
Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Native Americans and westward expansion:
John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie;
Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: North American Indian Struggles for Unity, 1745-1815; Greg O'Brien, 'The Conqueror Meets the Unconquered: Negotiating Boundaries on the Post-Revolutionary Southern Frontier', Journal of Southern History 67 (February 2001): 502-524

The rise of 'Jacksonian democracy':
Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America;
Daniel Feller, The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815-1840;
Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846

Gender and class in industrializing America:
Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865;
Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870;
Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850

The 'peculiar institution': American slavery:
Peter Kolchin, American Slavery;
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave;
David Brown and Clive Webb, Race in the American South: From Slavery to Civil Rights, chapter 5

The house dividing; sectional conflict:
Robert Cook, Civil War America: Making a Nation, 1848-1877;
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men;
Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s

The house divided: the American Civil War:
James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era;
Drew Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War;
Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War

The unfinished revolution: Reconstruction, 1865-1877:
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution:
C. Vann Woodward, The Origins of the New South;
William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879

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