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American
Studies
Barnard College, Columbia
University
AMS 3002y, Readings
1. The Course "Text" --
Nina Baym et al., The Norton Anthology of American
Literature, 4th Edition, Volume I (Norton, 1994)
2. Recommended for Separate Purchase --
David Hall, ed., Witch Hunting in 17thC. NE
Hannah Foster, The Coquette
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Herman Melville, Moby Dick [1851]
(Delbanco ed., Penguin)
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February 23 -- Franklin and Edwards: Provincial Biographies
February 25 -- Imperial Bonds; The Case of King's College\
March 2: Colonial Arts and Material Culture
March 4th to March 12th -- Revolutionary Doings
March 23 -- Faction Taming at Philadelphia
March 25 -- T Jefferson and the Fateful Turn Westward
April 1 -- Emerson, Thoreau, and Frederick Douglass
April 15 --
April 20 -- Transcendental Landscapes. Luminous Seascapes
April 22 -- Whales, Whaling and Moby Dick
April 27 -- Moby Dick Redux
April 29 -- Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Varieties of Anti-Slavery
May 4 -- Abraham Lincolm and the End of Early America
Readings and Lookings for January 21 to January 30:
Required Readings:
Dispatches From the New World
Pilgrims' Passage
Visual Materials
Useful Web Sites
University of Georgia Map Collection -- http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett
Jamestown Settlement -- http:/www.apva.org/history/index.html
Plymouth [Old Plymouth Plantation] -- http://www.plymouth.org
Useful Secondary Sources:
Samuel E. Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, 500-1600 (Oxford, 1972)
D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, I: Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (Yale, 1987)
Readings for February 2 : Theological Givens, Social Departures in 17thC New England or Besides Catching Fish: Keeping and Breaking Covenant in New England
Required Readings:
John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity (1630), in Norton Anthology, pp. 169-180.
John Winthrop, July 3, 1645 entry from The Journal of John Winthrop, in Norton Anthology, pp. 185-187.
Photograph of the first page of Winthrop's Journal.
This class meeting will present an overview of Puritan theology, with particular attention to Puritan beliefs about the multiple covenants that governed their religious, political, and family lives. A covenant is a mutual agreement and commitment requiring the consent of both parties. New England Puritans believed that multiple covenants governed their lives: covenants between married people, covenants between people and their elected or appointed officials, covenants of church members, covenants between the God and the church, covenants between God and the colony as a whole, covenants between God and biblical personages, and even covenants among the persons of the Trinity (the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit). As you read these texts, pay particular attention to the relationships among the various covenants Winthrop describes. In class, we'll talk in more detail about these various covenants, and consider the implications of their interrelatedness.
Readings for February 9 -- The Chesapeake: Tobacco and the Resort to Slavery
John Smith, General History, Ch. 2, "What Happened Until the First Supply" in Baym, Norton Anthology, 104-112
William Byrd, From The Secret Diary and History of the Dividing Line, N/A, 362-378
Thomas Jefferson, "Queries V, VI, XVII, XIX " from Notes on the State of Virginia, N/A, 733-743; plus excerpt from Query XIV (on Virginia laws and the possible emancipation of slaves)
Olaudah Equiano, From An Interesting Narrative... N/A, 764-796
Recommended Secondary Readings:
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (Norton, 1975)
T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes, "Myne Owne Ground" Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (Oxford,1980)
Readings for February 11: Apologies to the Pequots
If you have difficulty accessing or reading the electronic version of this text, let me know. There are additional copies of Mason's narrative in Charles Orr, A History of the Pequot War, on reserve at the Barnard library.
Attack on the Pequot Village at Mystic, Connecticut
Map of Pequot War Battle Sites
Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center
Maps of Seventeenth-century Native American Settlements
Readings for February 16: On New York as a Resource/Repository for Early American Studies
General Methodological Inquiries:
John A. Kouwenhoven, "American Culture: Words or Things?" in Kouwenhoven, Half a Truth Is Better Than None (University of Chicago, 1982) pp. 11-29.
James Deetz, "Recalling Things Forgotten: Archaeology and the American Artifact," in Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archeology of Early American Life ( Doubleday, 1980), pp. 2-25.
Henry Glassie, Excerpt from Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts ( ), pp. 3-12.
Useful Local (i.e., NYC) Studies:
I. Anson Phelps Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan, 1498-1909. 6 Volumes (1915-1928)
John A. Kouwenhoven, The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York (Doubleday, 1953)
Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (Yale UP, 1995)
Barbaralee Diamonstein, The Landmarks of New York (Harry Abrams, 1993)
Some Barnard Authorities on Early New York City:
Nan A. Rothschild, New York City Neighborhoods: The 18th Century (Academic Press, 1990)
Randall Balmer, A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Culture in the American Middle Colonies (Oxford UP, 1986)
Assignment:
David D. Hall, Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History:
In addition, I recommend that you look at Boyer and Nissenbaum's study of Salem in Salem Posessed. There are at least 14 copies of this text in the Columbia library system. There's also an article-length version of their study in Stanley N. Katz and John M. Murrin, Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development, of which there are multiple copies in the Columbia Library System.
Related web sites:
There are many sites out there of variable quality. See what you find and let us know.
Readings for February 23: Provincial Biographies: Frankin and Edwards
Read, in Baym, American Literature, the following:
By Benjamin Franklin --
"The Way to Wealth" (1737) pp. 442-448
The Autobiography (1771,1788) pp. 486-600 [1757 excerpt on ships and lighthouses]
"My Religion" (1790) pp. 486-487
By Jonathan Edwards --
"Personal Narrative" (1740) pp. 381-391
Sarah Pierrpont (1723) pp. 391-392
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741) pp.
412-423
"Images or Shadows of Divine Things" (not published by
JE) pp. 436-440
Letter to the Trustees of the College of
New Jersey, October 19, 1757
Useful secondary accounts in
Barbara B. Oberg and Harry S. Stout, eds, Benjamin Franklin,
Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American
Culture (Oxford University Press, 1993)
See, also the following websites:
Readings for February 25: Imperial Bonds: The Case of King's College
Principal sources:
David C. Humphrey, From King's College to Columbia, 1746-1800 (Columbia University Press, 1976)
Milton Klein, ed., The Independent Reflector (Harvard University Press, 1964)
Timeline of King's College, 1624-1776
Reading:
John A. Kouwenhoven, "American Culture: Words or Things?" in Kouwenhoven, Half a Truth Is Better Than None (University of Chicago, 1982) pp. 11-29.
James Deetz, "Recalling Things Forgotten: Archaeology and the American Artifact," in Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archeology of Early American Life ( Doubleday, 1980), pp. 2-25.
In addition, if you come across websites with interesting objects to consider, post the URLs to the newsgroup and/or bring them to class.
Readings for March 4, 9, and 11:
From Baym, American Literature, Volume I:
Hannah Foster, The Coquette
For March 9, read Crevecouer, Paine and Jefferson, and bring your Norton Anthology to class.
For March 11, read Foster's The Coquette and the John and Abigail Adams correspondence.
Secondary Sources:
Bernard Bailyn, "Political Experience and Enlightenment
Ideas in eighteenth-Century America," The American
Historical Review, LXVII (January 1962), pp. 339-351
Jesse Lemisch, "Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America," William and Mary Quarterly
Optionally, for fuller treatments:
Bernard Bailyn, The Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Harvard UP, 1965) and The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard UP, 1967)
Gary B. Nash, Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard UP, 1976)
Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Knopf, 1993)
Electronic, Web-Based Resources
For searchable electronic versions of some of the
principal revolutionary and constitutional documents, including The
Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the
United States and The Federalist Papers:
*** The Yale Law School Avalon Project -- http://elsinore.cis.yale.edu/lawweb/lawschool/webtfp.htm
Emory Law School Page -- http://www.law.emory.edu/Federal
Oklahoma Law School Page -- http://www.law.uoknor.edu/hist/
Docments from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention in American Memory -- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/bdsds/bdsdhome.html
For an excellent bibliography of published accounts and
interpretations of the Revolutionary Era, 1760-1790:
Mighigan State,PBS and OIEAHC --http://revolution.h-net.msu.edu/
For some maps of the Revolutionary Era, see the University of
Georgia's Hargrett Collection:
http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/revamer.html
March 23: The Constitution, Federalist #10 and the Dispersion of Faction
Reading:
James Madison, "Federalist # 10," in Baym, American
Literature, pp. 759-763
Recommended:
Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the
Constitution (1913)
Bernard Bailyn, ed. Debates on the Constitution, 1781-1789.
2 volumes(Library of America. 1993)
March 25: T. Jefferson and the Fateful Turn Westward
Reading (xerox-distributed):
Frederick Jackson Turner, 'The Significance of the Frontier in
American History," [1894]
Relevant websites:
The Lewis & Clark Expedition as Viewed from Jefferson's
Monticello:
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/lewis_clark/home.html
Track of Lewis & Clark Expedition, 1804-1806
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/united_states/Exploration_1800.jpg
U.Georgia maps on 1800-1850 expansion, including maps of
Indian territories
http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/expand.html
U. Texas map collection
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/histus.html
Especially US territory, 1810:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/united_states/US_Terr_1810.jpg
For US Census data, 1790-1860
http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~census/
Readings for April 1-- Emerson, Thoreau and Frederick Douglass
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Baym, American
Literature:
"Nature [1836]," "The American Scholar
[1837]" and 'The Divinity School Address [1838]";
"Other Slaves to Free [1852]"; "On Thoreau
[1862]'l
Akso, RWE, "Experience," esp. pp. 1088-1090
Frederick Douglass in Baym, American
literature:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass [1845], pp.
1930-1995
"On the Fourth of July [1852]" pp. 1995-2013
