Email: kdierks@indiana.edu

Office hours: Ballantine 734, Tuesdays, 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., or by appointment

Office phone: 855-6288

Course description:

This course spans what has been traditionally divided into three periods of American history -- the “Colonial,” the “Revolutionary,” and the “Early Republic” -- and situates them in the context of new conceptual frameworks of the “Atlantic world” and “the global.”  After briefly examining the changing history of Early American history writing, the course readings will focus on recent historiography, within more comprehensive bibliographical coverage.  The three main themes for this course will be:  the “geographic turn,” race, and intimacy and power.  Treating Early American history both as an energetic field of historical inquiry, and as a substantive history to be taught to undergraduates, this course aims to help prepare graduate students both for qualifying exams and for teaching.

Course requirements:

CLASS PARTICIPATION.  Because this course is an intensive seminar, its success depends on your regular attendance and your active participation.  You are required to submit a written response to each week's readings, always mindful that you are reading for argument, not content.

READING ASSIGNMENTS.  Weekly reading will involve mostly recent and some canonical monographs, syntheses, and articles on Early American history in an Atlantic and a global context.

There are several course books to be purchased (as listed below).  All of the books are on reserve in the Wells Library.  In the case of book excerpts and some articles and book reviews, pdf files will be available on this course website.  Other articles and book reviews are available online via the university library website.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS.  There will be 13 weekly response papers (1-2 single-spaced pages), one short book review (500 words) in the manner of the Journal of American History, and one long book review (4,000 words) in the manner of Reviews in American History.

You will be evaluated based on your participation in discussion, your weekly response papers, and the two book reviews.

ASSISTANCE.  If at any time during the semester you have questions about the course website, reading material, writing assignments, or your performance in this class, please feel free to speak to me before or after class, during office hours, via email, or via telephone to make an appointment.

Course books: (available via online booksellers, and on reserve at the Wells Library)

Foner, Eric.  The Story of American Freedom.  New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.

Taylor, Alan.  American Colonies.  New York: Viking, 2001.

Richter, Daniel K.  Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Silver, Peter.  Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America.  New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.

Berlin, Ira.  Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Eltis, David.  The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Brown, Vincent.  The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Brown, Kathleen M.  Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Nugent, Walter.  Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

Elliott, John Huxtable.  Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe.  The Americas: A Hemispheric History.  New York: Modern Library, 2003.

Course syllabus:

September 2	WEEK 1 Course Introduction Narratives of American Exceptionalism
	RESPONSE PAPER #1 DUE Readings: Morgan, Jennifer L.  “Why I Write.”  In Why We Write: The Politics and Practice of Writing for Social Change.  Jim Downs, ed.  New York: Routledge, 2006.  39-45. * PN145.W46  → link to excerpt (pp. 39-45) Butler, Jon.  Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. * E188.B97  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-7 (Introduction) Appleby, Joyce Oldham.  Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans.  Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2000. * E301.A65  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-25 (Introduction) Foner, Eric.  The Story of American Freedom.  New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. * E179.F69
September 9	WEEK 2 Beyond American Exceptionalism
	RESPONSE PAPER #2 DUE Readings: Foner, Eric.  “American Freedom in a Global Age.”  AHR 106 (2001): 1‑16. Adas, Michael.  “From Settler Colony to Global Hegemon: Integrating the Exceptionalist Narrative of the American Experience into World History.”  AHR 106 (2001): 1692-1720. Taylor, Alan.  American Colonies.  New York: Viking, 2001. * E188.T35 Bender, Thomas.  A Nation among Nations: America’s Place in World History.  New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. * E178.B428 Trevor Burnard, “A Passion for Places: The Geographic Turn in Early American History.”  www.common-place.org 8:4 (Jul. 2008).
September 16	WEEK 3 The American Revolution: An Event-Driven Narrative
	RESPONSE PAPER #3 DUE  Wood, Gordon S.  The Radicalism of the American Revolution.  New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992, 1991. * E209.W65  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 3-8 (Introduction) Nash, Gary B.  The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America.  New York: Viking, 2005. * E208.N33  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. xv-xxix (Introduction), 453-455 (Epilogue) Bouton, Terry.  Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. * F153.B75  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. x-y (Introduction) Holton, Woody.  Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution.  New York: Hill and Wang, 2007. * KF4541.H58  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. x-y (Introduction) McDonnell, Michael A.  The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. * E263.V8 M39  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. x-y (Introduction)
September 23	WEEK 4 Native America
	RESPONSE PAPER #4 DUE Readings: Richter, Daniel K.  Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. * E98.F39 R53 White, Richard.  The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.* E99.A35 W48  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. ix-xv (Introduction) Taylor, Alan.  The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. * E99.I7 T299  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 3-11 (Introduction) DuVal, Kathleen.  The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. * E78.A8 D88  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-12 (Introduction) Silver, Peter.  Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America.  New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. * E77.S273
September 30	WEEK 5 Narratives of Slavery
	RESPONSE PAPER #5 DUE Readings: Berlin, Ira.  Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. * E446.B49 Eltis, David.  The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. * HT1048.E47
October 2	SPECIAL SESSION:  Oscar Kenshur Book Prize Roundtable sponsored by the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University, 5:00-6:30 p.m., Student Building 150 Loughran, Trish.  The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770‑1870.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. * Z473.L826
October 7	WEEK 6 Accounts of Slavery
	RESPONSE PAPER #6 DUE Readings: Brown, Vincent.  The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. * HQ1073.5.J26 B76 Morgan, Philip D.  Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. * F232.C43 M67  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. xv-xxiv (Introduction) Rediker, Marcus.  The Slave Ship: A Human History.  New York: Viking, 2007. * HT1322.R42  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-13 (Introduction), 343-355 (Epilogue) Smallwood, Stephanie E.  Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. * E441.S65  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-8 (Introduction)
October 14	WEEK 7 Rise and Fall of Slavery
	RESPONSE PAPER #7 DUE Readings: Amussen, Susan Dwyer.  Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. * HT1165.A68  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 5-14 (Introduction), 227-236 (Epilogue) Baucom, Ian.  Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. * HT1162.B38  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 3-34 (Chapter 1), 35-64 (Chapter 2) Brown, Christopher Leslie.  Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. * HT1163.B76  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-30 (Introduction), 451-462 (Epilogue) Sidbury, James.  Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic, 1760-1830.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. * E185.18 S53  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 3-15 (Introduction)
October 21	WEEK 8 Race and Class (Without and With Gender)
	WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1 DUE RESPONSE PAPER #8 DUE Readings: Morgan, Edmund Sears.  American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.  New York: Norton, 1975. * E445.V8 M84  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 295-315 (Chapter 15), 316-337 (Chapter 16), 363-387 (Chapter 18) Brown, Kathleen M.  Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. * F229.B8783
October 28	WEEK 9 Origins of American Imperialism and American Capitalism
	RESPONSE PAPER #9 DUE Nugent, Walter.  Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. * E179.5 N84 Kamensky, Jane.  The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse.  New York: Penguin Books, 2008. * HN54.K36 Mihm, Stephen.  A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. * HG336.U5 M54  → link to excerpt:  Prologue (pp. 1-19), Epilogue (pp. 360-374)
October 30	SPECIAL SESSION:  College Arts and Humanities Institute: Meet the Author: Matthew Guterl, 5:00-6:30 p.m., 1211 East Atwater Avenue Guterl, Matthew Pratt.  American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. * E449.G98
November 4	WEEK 10 Geographic Turn (Comparative History; Atlantic World)
	RESPONSE PAPER #10 DUE Readings: Wolfe, Patrick.  “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race.”  AHR 106 (2001): 866-905.  Weaver, John C.  The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900.  Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. * JV105.W42  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 3-7 (Introduction), 11-31 (Chapter 1), 348-360 (Epilogue) Elliott, John Huxtable.  Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. * E18.82 E44
November 11	WEEK 11 Geographic Turn (Spanish Modernity; American Southwest; Pacific World)
	RESPONSE PAPER #11 DUE Readings: Silverblatt, Irene.  Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. * BX1740.P5 S55  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 3-27 (Prologue), 217-226 (Afterword) Hijiya, James A.  “Why the West Is Lost.”  WMQ Ser. 3, 51 (1994): 276-292. “Forum: ‘Why the West Is Lost’: Comments and Response.”  WMQ Ser. 3, 5 (1994): 717-754. Brooks, James.  Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. * F790.A1 B76  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-40 (Chapter 1) Hackel, Steven W.  Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. * E78.C15 H23  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-12 (Introduction) Edward G. Gray and Alan Taylor, “Introduction: Toward a Pacific World.” www.common-place.org 5:2 (Jan. 2005).
November 18	WEEK 12 Geographic Turn (Caribbean World; Muslim World)
	RESPONSE PAPER #12 DUE Readings: Fischer, Sibylle.  Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. * F1923.F57  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. vii-xiii (Preface), 1-38 (Introduction), 273-274 (Conclusion) Makdisi, Ussama.  Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. * BV3210.L4 M35  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-15 (Introduction), 214-220 (Epilogue)
November 25	WEEK 13 Thanksgiving -- no class
December 2	WEEK 14 Geographic Turn (Globalized Histories of Divergence)
	RESPONSE PAPER #13 DUE Readings: Bayly, C.A.  The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons.  Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. * D295.B28  → link to excerpt:  title page, contents page, pp. 1-21 (Introduction), 27-48 (Chapter 1), 49-83 (Chapter 2) Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe.  The Americas: A Hemispheric History.  New York: Modern Library, 2003. * E18.F39 Clunas, Craig.  “Modernity Global and Local: Consumption and the Rise of the West.”  AHR 104 (1999): 1497‑1511. Pomeranz, Kenneth.  “Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global Conjuncture.”  AHR 107 (2002): 425-446. Wong, R. Bin.  “The Search for European Differences and Domination in the Early Modern World: A View from Asia.”  AHR 107 (2002): 447-469. Stokes, Gale.  “The Fates of Human Societies: A Review of Recent Macrohistories.”  AHR 106 (2001): 508-525.
December 9	WEEK 15 no class
December 16	WEEK 16 Course Conclusion
	WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2 DUE