American History at Glasgow

Society, Culture, Politics and Power in North America, From First Contact to the Present

Required readings for Seminars

Recommended primary sources for seminars and essays

Recommended secondary readings

On-Line Discussion Group

Computer Support Information and Lab Timetable

Mail Tutor

SOCIETY, CULTURE, POLITICS AND POWER IN NORTH AMERICA, FROM FIRST CONTACT TO THE PRESENT

Course syllabus, 2000  

The American History Level 2 course will concentrate on several fundamentally significant eras and themes in the history of the portion of North America that became the United States, covering the period between first contact between Native Americans and Europeans in 1492 and the present. These  themes include: The political history of the United States, the social and cultural history of North America, broadly defined, and the rise of the United States as a global power.

Admission and Pathways Onwards (General & Honours)

You will be admitted into this module provided you have completed any Level 1 module in History OR Economic and Social History at Band D or better, and meet other Faculty requirements for Admission to Level 2 This module is a qualifying course for entry into any Honours combination in History, as follows: The requirement for entry into Single Honours in History is a minimum of five modules in History and/or Economic & Social History. Two of these must be the Level 1 core courses History 1A and 1B, and two more must be at Level 2. You must be awarded at least a Band D in each qualifying module, and must acquire a minimum of 1440 grade points over the five qualifying modules, i.e. achieve an overall average of Band C or better. The requirement for entry into Joint Honours in History is at least four modules in History and/or Economic & Social History, of which at least one must be at Level 2. You must be awarded at least a Band D in each qualifying module, and must acquire a minimum of 1080 grade points over the four qualifying modules, i.e. achieve an overall average of Band C or better. Grade points are worked out as follows. All level 1 modules are worth 20 credits, and all level 2 modules are worth 30 credits. To calculate your total grade points for each module, you multiply its credit rating by 16 if you obtained Band A, by 14 if you obtained Band B, by 12 if you obtained Band C, by 10 if you obtained Band D, by 8 if you obtained Band E, by 6 if you obtained Band F, and by 2 if you obtained Band G. Other candidates may be considered for admission at the discretion of the Head of the Department of History. All students should note that they must also meet the Faculty requirements for Honours (see Calendar).

Teaching Aims

• To give you an understanding of significant eras and themes in the history of the portion of North America that became the United States, covering the period between the first contact of Native Americans and Europeans in 1492 and the present day.
• To improve your critical and evaluative skills in the handling of a variety of primary and secondary sources, enabling you to proceed with confidence to Honours.
• To enhance your independence of judgement in dealing with conflicting interpretations of major issues.
• To improve your presentational and analytical skills through assessed seminar reports and discussion.

Learning Objectives

On completion of this module you will be expected:

• To demonstrate an understanding of the development of the English and British colonies in North America, their path to independence, and the nature of the American republic:
• To be able to discuss the development of the United States from a relatively weak nation into a superpower:
• To be able to analyse the role of race in American history, encompassing relations between whites and native Americans, the development of slavery, the move towards civil rights, and the place of other racial groups such as Hispanic Americans:
• To be able to interrogate a variety of source materials, explain the problems and advantages of working with each and their role in the process of historical explanation:
• To be able to distinguish narrative from interpretation, and to appreciate the function of each:
• To demonstrate critical and analytical skills in the handling of both primary and secondary sources; and discriminating skills in deploying such sources in order to sustain clear and valid arguments both in writing and discussion.

Class Hour and Location

The American History Level 2 module will meet Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 4:00 PM. Lectures will be held in Lecture Theatre 2, Boyd Orr Building , while seminars will be held in the rooms arranged by the various seminar leaders. Students should keep the class hour 4pm - 5pm free, Monday - Friday.

Teaching Team

Members of staff involved in teaching the American History Level 2 module include: Dr. Simon Ball; Dr. Marina Moskowitz (convenor Candlemas term); Dr. Simon Newman; Dr. Phillips O’Brien (convenor Martinmas term); Dr Richard Samuelson. The Course Secretary is Mrs. Alison Peden, Modern History, 2^nd floor, 2 University Gardens, telephone 330-4509, e-mail a.peden@modhist.arts.gla.ac.uk. Course technical support is provided by Ann Gow, e-mail A.Gow@hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk

You will be allocated to a seminar group at the start of the module, and this group will meet with a tutor six times during the course of the module. The first meeting will be introductory, with the following five covering a broadly defined theme or subject area. Seminars are not lectures and attendance is required. It is essential both that you come well prepared AND that you take an active part in the discussions.

 Each student will write one essay of no more than 1,500 words, to be handed in on one of three due-dates, to be arranged by your tutor in your Introductory Seminar. Essay questions will be given to the students on a series of Seminar worksheets. Essays must be word processed and two copies must be provided.There will be an individual tutorial on the essay once it has been marked. Essays are designed to allow you to explore in greater depth particular areas of your own choice, using a wide range of background reading. Each student will be assigned one of three dates for the submission of their essay.

You must attend the seminar meetings of the group to which you will be allocated. You will be required to do some background reading for each seminar. Each student will be required to present one seminar paper of 800 words (two copies, word-processed). This seminar paper will account for 10% of your final mark. Also, at the end of the seminar series you will be given a mark reflecting your participation and contribution to the group. This mark will account for 10% of your total for the module. Your essay will account for 20% of your final mark for the module. There will be a one-and-a-half hour exam at the end of the module, which will account for the remaining 60% of your final mark for the module. In the exam, you will be required to answer two questions. The minimum requirement for the award of credits for this module (except in certified special circumstances) is: attendance at all seminars, completion of all course work within the time-scale specified, and attendance at the examination. If you are ill, or otherwise unable to complete your work, contact either your tutor or the Departmental office as soon as possible. Late submission of work without good cause will result in a penalty, and the mark of 0 may be given for work that is not handed in by a specified time.

FACULTY MARKS SCALE

All assessed work will be marked according to this scale:  Band A, Excellent;  Band B, Very good;  Band C, Good; Band D, Satisfactory; Band E, Fair; Band F, Poor; Band G, Very poor;  no credit.

Lectures

Michaelmas Term

Week 1 Contact, Conquest, and Colonisation

• Oct. 09 Introduction to the course

• Oct. 10 O Brave New World: First Societies and First Contact (Samuelson)

• Oct. 12 & Oct. 13 Introductory Seminars

Week 2 Birth of the United States

• Oct. 16 The Colonisation of Mainland North America (Moskowitz)

• Oct. 17 Revel, Riot and Rebellion: The American Revolution (Samuelson)

• Oct. 19 The Constitution and New National Government (O’Brien)

Week 3 The New Republic

• Oct. 23 The Political Culture of the New Nation (Samuelson)

• Oct. 24 The Experiment Comes of Age: Jacksonian America (Moskowitz)

• Oct. 26 & Oct. 27 SEMINAR—Revolution and Constitution

Week 4 A Nation Divided

• Oct. 30 Slavery and Culture in the American South (Samuelson)

• Oct. 31 The North and Free Labour (O’Brien)

• Nov. 2 Geography and Geometry: The Antebellum West (Moskowitz)

• Nov. 3 The Origins  of the Civil War (Samuelson)

Week 5 A Nation Reborn

• Nov. 6 The Civil War (O’Brien)

• Nov. 7 Reconstruction and the New South (O’Brien)

• Nov. 8 & Nov. 10 SEMINAR—Slavery and the Civil War

Week 6 New Frontiers

• Nov. 13 The West and the End of the Frontier (Samuelson)

• Nov. 14 The Gilded Age (Moskowitz)

• Nov. 16 The U.S. and the Outside World to 1898 (Samuelson)

• Nov. 17 Progressive America (O’Brien)

Nov. 15: Essay Submission Date One (essays to be handed in to Mrs. Peden, Modern History Office, by 4pm)

Week 7 Jazz Age America

• Nov. 20 The First World War and American Society (Moskowitz)

• Nov. 21 The Car in American Culture (Moskowitz)

• Nov. 23 The Jazz Age: America in the 1920s (O'Brien)

Week 8 Boom, Bust and War

• Nov. 27 The Great Depression and the New Deal (Moskowitz)

• Nov. 28 American Society and Culture During World War II (Moskowitz)

• Nov 30 & Dec. 1 SEMINAR—America in the 1930s and 1940s

Week 9 America as World Power

• Dec. 4 America and the Outside World, 1898-1941 (Ball)

• Dec. 5 America and the Outside World, 1942-63 (Ball)

• Dec. 7 The Vietnam War (O'Brien)

• Dec. 8 America in the 1950's (Moskowitz)

Week 10 America as World Power

• Dec. 11 & Dec. 12 SEMINAR--America as World Power

Week 11 Struggles for Equality

• Jan. 8 The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (Newman)

• Jan. 9 From Civil Rights to Black Power (Newman)
• Jan. 11 The USA and the End of the Cold War (Samuelson)

Week 12 America Today

• Jan. 15 American Society, Culture and Politics, 1960-75 (Samuelson)

• Jan. 16 American Society, Culture and Politics, 1975-today (Newman)

• Jan. 18 & Jan. 19 SEMINAR—The 1960s

Week 13 Revision and Examination

Plagiarism

The University's degrees and other academic awards are given in recognition of the candidate's personal achievement. Plagiarism is therefore considered as an act of academic fraudulence and as an offence against University discipline. Plagiarism is defined as the submission or presentation of work, in any form, which is not one's own, without acknowledgement of the sources. (In practice, you should acknowledge general ideas and points by listing in your bibliography the works you have used; and, if you quote directly from any text, acknowledge that by using quotation marks and providing a reference in brackets or in a footnote).

Student Welfare

Though your Adviser of Studies will be your principal pastoral guide at the University, your natural first contact in the department will be your tutor. It is usually easier for tutors to help if you let them know as soon as possible of any problem you may be facing with your work. Staff will normally be available for consultation without appointment at set times in the week (advertised on their doors); graduate tutorial assistants are best contacted via the departmental office. You should also feel free to contact the course conveners, Dr. O’Brien or Dr Moskowitz either at the advertised contact hour or by arrangement (if necessary through the departmental secretaries).

Staff-Student Committee

You will be asked to comment on the modules through questionnaires issued in class. However, should you wish to make more formal - or more immediate - representations or observations, the best way of doing so is through the elected Staff-Student Committee, chaired by a senior student. There will be elected representatives from this course on the Committee, and elections will be held early during the session.

Back to Contents

Required readings for seminars

Seminar: Revolution and Constitution

• Charters of Freedom: The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights
• The Federalist Papers
• William Maclay's Journal, 1789-1791

Seminar: Slavery and the Civil War

• John C. Calhoun, "Slavery a Positive Good" (1837)
• Address of John Brown to the Virginia Court, When About to Receive the Sentence of Death" (1859)
• WPA Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology
• Abraham Lincoln, "The Gettysburg Address" (1863)
• Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865)
• Photographs of the Civil War

America in the 1930s and 1940s

• Franklin Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (1935)
• A New Deal for the Arts: WPA Art Work
• Thomas and Doris Reed, "The Republican Opposition" (1940)
• Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II
• Women in Industry During World War II (only available locally in the Arts Faculty at Glasgow University)

America as a World Power

• The Great Powers and the Division of Europe (only available locally in the Arts Faculty at Glasgow University)
• Albert Beveridge, "The March of the Flag" (1898)
• William Jennings Bryan, "Imperialism" (1900)
• John Dewey, "Imperialism is Easy" (1927)
• Woodrow Wilson, 14 Points (1918)
• Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, "The Atlantic Charter" (1941)
• Harry Truman, "Address Before Congress" (1947)

The 1960s

• Excerpts from Brown v. Board of Education (1954); John Lewis, Address at the March on Washington (1963); Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, "Black Power" (1967)
• Excerpts from John Kennedy, Inaugural Address (1961); Students For A Democratic Society, Port Huron Statement (1962)
• Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have A Dream" (1963)
• Audio Excerpts from "I Have a Dream" (1963) (Note: you have to use headphones to hear these clips. These will
  only be available in Assisted Lab sessions. Choose the Wave file for Microsoft Windows.)
• Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Time to Break Silence" (1967)
• Lyndon Johnson, Address to the Nation (1968)
• Richard Nixon, "Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam" (1969)

Back to Contents

Recommended primary sources for seminars and essays

Slavery and the Civil War

• The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War. An extensive site, maintained by the University of Virginia, containing all manner of primary source materials relating to one northern and one southern community during the Civil War.
• Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War. A selection of primary source documents from this volume.
• Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. A selection of primary source documents from this volume.
• Images of African Americans for the 19th Century. A collection of photographic and other images maintained by the New York Public Library.

America in the 1930s and 1940s

• American Life Histories: Manuscripts From the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940. Documents from a New Deal programme, under which writers recorded the experiences of a large number of ordinary Americans, maintained by the Library of Congress.
• Color Photographs For the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information, 1938-1944. An extensive collection of photographs of rural America during the Depression, and of Americans at work during World War II, maintained by the Library of Congress.
• A People At War. Images and documents of Americans during World War II, maintained by the National Archives.

The 1960s

• Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" (1963).
• The San Francisco Diggers (1966-1968). A collection of primary sources relating to one of the more famous radical groups of the 1960s, who took their name from the revolutionary Diggers of mid-17th century England.
• From Wounded Knee to Capitol Hill: A History of the American Indian Movement. A full and interested, but rather partisan account of the American Indian Movement
  
  Back to Contents

Recommended secondary readings

The following list includes the more recent books and articles relevant to the module. You are naturally not expected to have read all the items it contains by the end of the course. However, it is important that you should supplement the lectures with additional reading. You should refer to this list frequently as the lecture course progresses, and you should make a point of devoting a little time at regular intervals to following up the arguments and opinions expressed in the lecture by consulting some of the works listed here. The titles of books and the names of periodicals have been italicised. Books are listed in the G.H.L. computerised catalogue by author and title; in the case of periodicals, you need to consult the appropriate volume of the periodical (identified by a volume number and the year of publication) to find the article you need.

I. General Textbooks

Course Book Recommended for Purchase

• George Brown Tindal and David Emory Shi, America: A Narrative History (brief fifth edition)

Surveys Covering America, and Reference Works

• Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
• Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America
• Colin McEvedy, The Penguin Atlas of North American History

First Contact, Early Settlement and The Colonial Era

• Friederich Katz, The Ancient American Civilizations, translated K.M. Lois Simpson
• Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction
• Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea
• Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness
• Kenneth Lockridge, A New England Town, The First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636-1736
• David Hackett Fischer, Four English Folkways in America: The Origins of Regional Cultures in the New World
• Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
• William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
• Robert Gough, "The Myth of the ‘Middle Colonies’: An Analysis of Regionalization in Early America," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107 (1983), 393-419
• Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800
• Gary Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania 1681-1726
• Mary Maples Dunn, "Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period," American Quarterly 30 (1978), 582-601
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Images and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750

The American Revolution and The New National Government

• Edward Countryman, The American Revolution
• Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution
• Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
• Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
• Alfred F. Young, ed. The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of Radicalism
• John McCusker and Russell Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789
• Edmund and Helen Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution
• Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
• Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution
• Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815
• Robert Gross, The Minutemen and their World
• Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character
• Richard Beeman, ed., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity
• William Freehling, "The Founding Fathers and Slavery" American Historical Review 77 (1972), 81-93
• Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution

The Early Republic

• Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s
• Richard K. Matthews, The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson: A Revisionist View
• Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol
• J.C.A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783-1830
• Arthur Sclesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson
• Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millenium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837
• Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865
• Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: ‘Women’s Sphere’ in New England, 1780-1835
• Ramon Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846
• Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800

North and South: Sectionalism in The New Nation

• Robert Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
• Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
• Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made
• James Oakes, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South
• Bruce Laurie, Artisans Into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth Century America

Native Americans and Tthe West

• Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism
• Ray Allan Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830-1860
• Frederick Jackson Turner, Frontier and Section
• Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
• John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail
• Philip Weeks, Farewell, My Nation: The American Indian and the United States, 1820-1890
• Robert M. Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890
• David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico
• Leonard A. Carlson, Indians, Bureaucrats, and Land
• Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West
• Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmer’s Frontier, 1865-1900
• Mark Wyman, Hard Rock Epic: Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution, 1860-1910

The Civil War and Reconstruction

• Michael Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s
• James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
• Bruce Catton, The Penguin Book of the American Civil War
• D. T. Carter, When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self Reconstruction in the South
• Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution

Populism and Progressivism

• J.M. Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest
• A.S. Link and R.L. McCormick, Progressivism
• Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920

America Between The World Wars

• Anthony Badger, The New Deal
• E.W. Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American people and their Institutions, 1917-1933
• William Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932
• William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940
• A.U. Romasco, The Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt’s New Deal
• Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933

America After World War II

• P. Collier and D. Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts about the Sixties
• S. Fraser and G. Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980
• A. Hamby, Liberalism and its Challengers: FDR to Reagan
• .J. Matusow, The Unravelling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s
• D. McKay, Domestic Policy and Ideology: Presidents and the American State, 1964-1987
• M. Wattenberg, The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1980
• Irwin Unger, The Movement: A History of the American New Left, 1959-1972

America as a World Power

• R. Dallek, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs
• W. Lafeber, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad
• R. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States at Vietnam, 1941-1975
• R. Tucker, The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy
• D. White, The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States as a World Power

Race and Civil Rights

• Cornel West, Race Matters
• Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
• David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
• James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case That Shocked 1930s America and Revived the Struggle for Equality
• Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality
• David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• Howell Raines, My Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered
• Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality
• Fred Powledge, Free at Last? The Civil Rights Movement and the People Who Made It
• James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare
• Mario Garcia, A History of Mexican Americans: 1930-1960 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians

Women and Gender in Modern America

• Linda Kerber, ed., Women’s America: Refocusing the Past (4th edition)
• Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience
• Miriam Frank, et. al., The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter: The Story of Three Million Working Women During World War II
• Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
• Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975
• Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left
• George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940
• Martin Duberman, Stonewall
• Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America
• Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community

Back to Contents

Computer Support and Lab Timetable

DISH Lab B  is booked for YOU on the following days. You have priority in the lab at this time and can ask another student to leave if you require access to the computers.