University of Manchester
American Studies Programme
Autumn 2003

AM 1211: Introduction to American Studies II
Course Unit Director: Dr Natalie Zacek

Aims

Objectives
By the conclusion of the course, the student will have demonstrated:

Content
This course examines a selection of key historical events, forces, and ideas of the period between 1600 and 1900. It introduces students to the significant events, ideas, and individuals who shaped the United States prior to the twentieth century, and analyses the patterns of national social, cultural, political, and economic development from the beginnings of Anglo-American settlement through the American Revolution and Civil War and into the renegotiation of private and public life during the late nineteenth century. The course addresses such issues as the ideology and practice of republicanism and democracy, the development of industry, and the expansion of Anglo-American political control across and beyond the North American continent, and investigates the role of race, class, gender, religion, and other elements of individual and group identity in the creation of the American nation.

Readings
The basic textbook for the course is the American Social History Project’s Who Built America?: Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, vol. 1 (to 1877). It is available for purchase at Blackwell's bookstore in the Precinct Centre or from Amazon.

Teaching method
Two fifty-minute lectures in each week of the autumn term.

Contacting me
My office is located in Room N.2.8 of the Arts Faculty Building, and my office hours are posted on the door. You can also contact me by phone at 275-7073, by e-mail at natalie.a.zacek@man.ac.uk, or by leaving a notice in my pigeonhole in the American Studies office.

Assessment One essay of 1500 to 2000 words and one two-hour examination.

Course Plan

Week Topic
Week 1 Introductions (Who Built America?, ch. 1)
Lecture 1: Organisational meeting
Lecture 2: A new world
Week 2 Puritans and adventurers: the beginnings of Anglo-American settlement (chs. 1,2)
Lecture 1: Set fair for Virginia
Lecture 2: A holy experiment
Week 3 The rising generation of America: towards revolution (chs. 3, 4)
Lecture 1: American awakenings
Lecture 2: The Seven Years War and after
Week 4 A people numerous and armed: the American Revolution (ch. 5)
Lecture 1: Winning the war
Lecture 2: Winning the peace
Week 5 Whither the new nation? (chs. 6, 7)
Lecture 1: Our manifest destiny: moving west
Lecture 2: Aristocracy or democracy?: the age of Jackson
Week 6 READING WEEK
Week 7 Urbanising America (chs. 7, 8)
Lecture 1: The machine in the garden: the Industrial Revolution
Lecture 2: Coming together, coming apart: city life
Week 8 Slavery and race (chs. 9, 10)
Lecture 1: Time on the cross: the experience of slavery
Lecture 2: Slavery attacked and defended
Week 9 The Civil War (chs. 11, 12)
Lecture 1: Johnny Reb and Billy Yank
Lecture 2: The vacant chair: the home front
Week 10 A cynical age (ch. 12)
Lecture 1: An unfinished revolution?: Reconstruction
Lecture 2: A gilded or a cynical age?
Week 11 The changing lives of American women
Lecture 1: Women of privilege
Lecture 2: Women of struggle
Week 12 Populists and Progressives
Lecture 1: Agrarian reform: the Populists
Lecture 2: Urban reform: the Progressives

Suggested Readings: A Starting Point

The following books have been placed in the Short Loan Collection at the JRUL, and will be useful to you in researching your essay and preparing for the examination. Please keep in mind that these books represent only a brief selection of sources, and that the JRUL’s collection includes many other books, journals, and other materials which will be equally useful for these purposes.

I. Colonial America
AXTELL, James. The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America
BAILYN, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction
BREEN, T.H., and Stephen Innes. Myne Owne Ground: Race and Slavery on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640-1676
CRESSY, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century
CRONON, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
DEMOS, John Putnam. A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony
DIAMOND, Sigmund. "From Organization to Society: Virginia in the Seventeenth Century," in Stanley N. Katz, ed., Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development
EMERSON, E.H. Puritanism in America, 1620-1750
GREENE, Jack P. Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture
GREENE, Jack P., and J.R. Pole. Colonial British America
HALL, David. "Understanding the Puritans," in Katz, Colonial America (see Diamond)
HEIMERT, Alan, ed. The Puritans in America: A Narrative Anthology
HORN, James. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake
KUPPERMAN, Karen Ordahl. Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America
McCUSKER, John, and Russell Menard, eds.. The Economy of British America, 1607-1789
MORGAN, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
RUTMAN, Darrett B. and Anita S.. A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650-1750
ULRICH, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England
ZIFF, Larzer. Puritanism in America: A New Culture in a New World

II. The American Revolution and the Constitution
BAILYN, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
BOTEIN, Stephen, et al., eds. Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity
COUNTRYMAN, Edward. What Did the Constitution Mean to Early Americans?
DAVIS, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823
FLIEGELMAN, Jay. Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority
FONER, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America
FREY, Sylvia. Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age
GREENE, Jack P., ed.. The American Revolution: Its Character and Limits
GROSS, Robert A. The Minutemen and their World
HOFSTADTER, Richard. The American Political Tradition
KERBER, Linda. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
KURTZ, Stephen G. Essays on the American Revolution
LEVY, Leonard W. Essays on the Making of the Constitution
MAIER, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Political Lives in the Age of Sam Adams
MORGAN, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89
NASH, Gary B. Race and Revolution
NASH, Gary B. The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution
RAKOVE, Jack N. The Beginnings of National Politics
WOOD, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
WOOD, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution
YOUNG, Alfred F., ed. The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism

III. Jacksonian America
BILLINGTON, Ray Allen. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier
FARAGHER, John Mack. Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie
FARAGHER, John Mack. Women and Men on the Overland Trail
FREEHLING, William. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Crisis in South Carolina, 1816-1836
HALTTUNEN, Karen. Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870
JOHNSON, Paul E. A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815- 1837
KAESTLE, Carl E. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860
PESSEN, Edward. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics
REMINI, Robert. Andrew Jackson and the Bank War
REMINI, Robert. The Legacy of Andrew Jackson
RYAN, Mary. Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865
SATZ, R.N. American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era
SCHLESINGER, Arthur M. The Age of Jackson
WALTERS, R.G. American Reformers, 1815-1860
WILENTZ, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850
WYATT-BROWN, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South

IV. Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction
BROCK, William J. Conflict and Transformation
CHESNUT, Mary. A Diary from Dixie
CLINTON, Catherine, and Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War
COOPER, William J. Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860
DONALD, David Herbert. Lincoln
FILLER, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860
FONER, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
FONER, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution
FOX-GENOVESE, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South
FRANKLIN, John Hope, and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation
GENOVESE, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
McPHERSON, James. Battle Cry of Freedom
McPHERSON, James. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
McPHERSON, James. The Negro's Civil War
McPHERSON, James. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction
MITCHELL, Reid. The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home
OAKES, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders
POTTER, David. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861
STAMPP, Kenneth M. The Era of Reconstruction
STAMPP, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution
WHITE, Deborah Gray. Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South

V. Women in Nineteenth-Century America
ADDAMS, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House
BANTA, Martha. Imaging American Women: Ideas and Ideals in Cultural History
CHESLER, Ellen. Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America
COTT, Nancy F. The Bonds of Womanhood: ‘Woman’s Sphere’ in New England, 1780-1835
COTT, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modern Feminism
COTT, Nancy F., and Elizabeth Pleck. A Heritage of Her Own
DEGLER, Carl N. At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present
DINER, Hasia R. Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century
DUBLIN, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860
EVANS, Sara M. Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America
FREEDMAN, Estelle, and John D'Emilio. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
HIGGINBOTHAM, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920
JEFFREY, J.R. Frontier Women
JONES, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the From Slavery to the Present
KERBER, Linda K., and Jane Sherron DeHart, eds., Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, 4th ed.
LEBSOCK, Suzanne. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860
MUNCY, Robyn. Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935
RYAN, Mary P. Womanhood in America
SMITH-ROSENBERG, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America
STANSELL, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860
WEINBERG, Sydney Stahl. The World of Our Mothers: The Lives of Jewish Immigrant Women

VI. Populism and Progressivism
ARGERSINGER, Peter H. The Limits of Agrarian Radicalism: Western Populism and American Politics
CARTER, Paul. The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age
CHAMBERS, John Whiteclay. The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era DuBOIS, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk
GOODWYN, Lawrence. Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America
HOFSTADTER, Richard. The Age of Reform
LINK, Arthur S., and Richard L. McCormick. Progressivism
McMATH, Robert C. American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898
McMATH, Robert C. Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance
MORGAN, H. Wayne, ed. The Gilded Age
POLLACK, Norman. The Populist Response to Industrial America
ROSS, Dorothy. The Origins of American Social Science
STARR, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine
TRACHTENBERG, Alan. The Incorporation of America
WIEBE, Robert H. The Search for Order, 1877-1920
WOODWARD, C. Vann. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel

[AM1211 Assessed Essay]


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