Course syllabus

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Convener: Dr. Paul Taillon                                                      Lecturer: AP Jennifer Frost                                      

1-11 Short Street (Building 810), Rm 409, 923-7365            1-11 Short Street (Building 810), Rm 413, 923-8322

p.taillon@auckland.ac.nz                                                        j.frost@auckland.ac.nz

Office Hours: Monday, 1-3pm and by appointment              Thursday, 1-3pm and by appointment

 

Course Description

How can a nation founded in slavery and offering equality and opportunity for only some claim to be a land of freedom? Is the increasing gap between rich and poor a sign that the age of American power and prosperity is over? Approaching the history of the United States as one of triumph, tragedy, and, ultimately, paradox, this course tackles these and other questions as it explores how Americans have contended with one another over the meanings of freedom, equality, opportunity, and justice from the founding of their nation to the present.

Over the course of the semester we will examine critical periods—the revolutionary era; the antebellum expansion of democracy and slavery; the Civil War and Reconstruction; the era of industrialization and ‘progressive’ reform; the Great Depression, World War II and the age of “modern” liberalism; the 1960s and the rise of a new conservative era—during which Americans challenged and changed their ideas, cultures, practices, and institutions. We will seek to understand how Americans’ conflicts over freedom and struggles for justice shaped the building of a great but imperfect nation.

 

Course Objectives

(1) Learning and Doing U.S. History: In the course of engaging with these questions, we expect you to acquire a basic knowledge of the history of the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. You will also come away understanding that history is not merely concerned with discovering what happened but also explaining why and how things happened. In History 108, we will try to get you to think ‘historically’ by introducing you to the practice of history and the skills of the historian.

(2) Skills and the Practice of History: We are as concerned that you learn something of the historian’s craft as we are that you learn something of U.S. history. Thus, we wish you to develop a number of skills essential to the study of history involving the assimilation, assessment, and presentation of information. These include:

the ability to read effectively and critically;

the ability to take notes and organize information;

the ability to construct and present a well-reasoned argument, written in standard English;

and the ability to reference work in accurate footnotes and bibliographies.

The course will also introduce you to the practice of history through the use of primary historical documents to illustrate the kinds of evidence on which historians base their interpretations and explanations and by exposing you to some of the varying interpretations of, and manners of presenting, U.S. history.

 

Tutorial Program

Week 1: No Tutorial

  • Required: History 108 Course Guide.
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapter 1.

Week 2: Thinking like a Historian: Perspective and Evidence in the Social History of Early Virginia

  • Required: James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton West, ‘Serving Time in Virginia’, in Davidson and West, eds., After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection: Vol. I, 3rd, New York, 1992, pp. 1-19. ISBN 0-07-015610-7
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapters 2-8.

Week 3: Engaging with Primary Sources: Slavery, Resistance, and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative

  • Required: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, edited by David W. Blight, Palgrave, 2006, pp. 41-119.
  • Recommended: Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, pp. 1-26; Give Me Liberty!, chapters 9-11.

Week 4: Engaging with Primary Sources: Frederick Douglass’ Narrative as Antislavery Tract

  • Required: Frederick Douglass, ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’ in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, edited by David W. Blight, Palgrave, 2006, pp. 146-71.
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapters 12-13.

Week 5: Why did they fight the Civil War? Argument, Evidence, and Letters

Week 6: Reaching into the Gilded Age: Reading a historical synthesis

  • Required: Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the “Gilded Age,” 1865-1905, 2nd, New York, 2011, pp. 185-205. ISBN 978-0-19-537670-8
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapters 16-17.

Week 7: What in *#^@¡ was Progressivism? The History and Historiography of the Progressive Era

  • Required: Glenda Gilmore, ed., Who Were the Progressives? Boston, 2002, pp. 3-20. ISBN 0-312-18930-3
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapters 18-19.

Week 8: The New Deal, savior of the people or capitalism? Debating Conflicting Interpretations

  • Required: ‘The Depression, the New Deal, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’, in Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Jon Gjerde, eds., Major Problems in American History, Vol. II: Since 1865, Boston, 2002, pp. 228-44. ISBN 0618061347
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapters 20-21.

Week 9: Anticommunism and Desegregation: biography as history

  • Required: Ronald A. Smith, ‘The Paul Robeson-Jackie Robinson Saga: A Political Collision’, in Gary B. Nash and Ronald Schultz, eds., Retracing the Past: Readings in the History of the American People: Vol. II, Since 1865, 4th, New York, 2000, pp. 196-207. ISBN 0-321-04850-4
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapters 22-23.

Week 10: Affluence and Suburbia: putting primary sources and secondary sources together

  • Required: ‘Moving to Suburbia: Dreams and Discontents’, in Frederick M. Binder and David M. Reimers, eds., The Way We Lived: Essays and Documents in American Social History, 4th, New York, 2000, pp. 213-233. ISBN 0395959616
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapters 24-25.

Week 11: Is this history? Punk rock, skateboarding, and the 1970s

  • Required: Michale Nevin Willard, ‘Skate and Punk at the Far End of the American Century’, in Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds., America in the Seventies, Lawrence, KS, 2004, pp. 181-207. ISBN 0700613277
  • Recommended: Give Me Liberty!, chapters 26-27.

Week 12: Decline of the American Empire?

 

Recommended Text:

Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Brief Edition (recommended for purchase at The University Bookshop).

 

Coursework and Assessment:

Assessment in this course is divided between coursework (50%) and an examination (50%):

Essay #1                                             Due 1 April, 12:00pm, Arts1 Reception         25%

Essay #2                                             Due 27 May, 12:00pm, Arts1 Reception        25%

Exam, 2 hours                                     TBA                                                                 50%

 

Course summary:

Date Details Due