Neil D. Kamil

This course is a survey of 400 years of American history, from the Age of Exploration to the Civil War. It meets two times weekly for lectures. Your TAs will lead weekly discussions of required readings at the beginning of class on Thursdays.


Two of the three required readings are available for free as e-books on UTCAT. Print copies of the readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and (most) on PCL Reserve.

Grading:

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), brief, multiple choice Canvas quizzes (see below), and a 20-minute written quiz on one of the books. Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams only.

Exams will test specific knowledge of both lectures and readings. There will also be a series of 10 short quiz questions on Canvas. Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Quiz 10%, Canvas Quiz 20%.

Material culture is a term borrowed by a number of disciplines from archaeology that refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool; from architectural monuments to hedge rows—that are studied by historians in the hope of revealing their use as overlooked evidence of past lives that reach beyond the written text.

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution. We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas. We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of both the artisans (makers) and their societies (consumers).


Text:
Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.


Grading:
2 page book review due weekly; 50%
Final 5 page project; 20%
Class Participation; 30%

With global expansion from the spread of warfare, commerce and credit, exploration, New World Colonization, technological innovation, and religious reformation and counter-reformation, the seventeenth century saw the spread of knowledge and experience of the world through human interaction in the form of conflict, economic exchange, and cultural creativity. Extensions of human geography and puzzling encounters with strange people, gods, material culture, and flora and fauna in exotic places, also formed the basis of a remarkable convergence of science, art and culture between east and west during this period. The purpose of this lecture course is to begin to map just a few of the major patterns in this enormous global process as they touch upon the various regions of Spanish, British, and French North America during the earliest period of settlement.

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country (Electronic Resource on UTCAT); Franklin W. Knight, ed., Andrew Hurley translator, Bartolome de las Casas, An Account, Much Abbreviated , of the Destruction of the Indies;   David Cressy, Coming Over (pdf available on blackboard);   Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire;   April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia;   John Demos, Unredeemed Captive; Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (Electronic Resource on UTCAT);  Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade;   James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins.

Midterm and Final Essay Examinations, one 2-page book review, one quiz.  Grading percentages are not written in stone but may be calculated roughly as follows:  midterm (30%), final (40%), book review (20%), and quiz (10%). Please note:  while there are no explicit percentages for class participation listed in this framework, enthusiastic engagement with the readings during discussions is expected and will be rewarded in the final grade.  As a result, those of you who do not participate will suffer by comparison.

Most of America’s earliest settlements were coastal communities.  Indeed, in human terms, bodies of water: oceans, lakes, rivers, bays, sounds, tidal pools, ponds, and streams helped define both the extent and limits of local, regional, and ultimately global history and culture.  Water simultaneously connected and separated through the movements of highly mobile populations which communicated through exploration, war, commerce, migration, and travel along routes sometimes millennia old during a time when travel by boat was far simpler than overland travel.  Hence, American history can be understood within the broad, transoceanic web of human geography called Atlantic history and culture.  The purpose of this course is to explore the social and cultural history of American coastal communities from an interactive perspective.  Ultimately, then, we are concerned with water and water-mediated culture as fundamental modes of contact and communication in the pre-industrial world.

Selected readings will include: H. Magnusson and H. Palsson, The Vinland Sagas (on the Vikings); M. Kurlansky, Cod, N. Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex; and Marcus Rediker’s book on pirates, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.  

This course meets substantial writing requirements.  Students will read about a book a week or substantial articles from a multidisciplinary list.  One film will be shown.  Attendance is mandatory.  Students must contribute regularly to class discussion and turn in brief (2 page maximum) weekly writing assignments analyzing the reading for that week.  These readings should not be considered standard book reviews; rather, they take the form of focused essays about problems, issues, and questions that the student wants to ask in the seminar, so they are intended to help facilitate discussion.  A 5-page final essay will propose an article to be included in a (fictitious) collection of essays about the major themes to emerge from this course.  Grades: weekly papers (50%); discussion (30%); final essay (20%). 

This course is a survey of 400 years of American history, from the Age of Exploration to the Civil War. It meets two times weekly for lectures. Your TAs will lead weekly discussions of required readings at the beginning of class on Thursdays.

Two of the four required readings are available for free as e-books on UTCAT. Print copies of the readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and (most) on PCL Reserve.

Grading:

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), two geography quizzes; brief, multiple choice Canvas quizzes (see below), and a 20-minute written quiz on one of the books. Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams only.

Exams will test specific knowledge of both lectures and readings.  There will also be a series of 10 short quiz questions and a map quiz on Canvas. Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Quiz 10%, Canvas Quiz 10%, Map Quiz 10%.

Material culture is a term borrowed by a number of disciplines from archaeology that refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool; from architectural monuments to hedge rows—that are studied by historians in the hope of revealing their use as overlooked evidence of past lives that reach beyond the written text.

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution. We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas. We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of both the artisans (makers) and their societies (consumers).

Text:

Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.

Grading:

2 page book review due weekly; 50%

Final 5 page project; 20%

Class Participation; 30%

This course is a survey of 400 years of American history, from the Age of Exploration to the Civil War.  It meets two times weekly for lectures.  Your TAs will lead weekly discussions of required readings at the beginning of class on Fridays. 

Two of the three required readings are available for free as e-books on UTCAT.  Print copies of the readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and (most) on PCL Reserve.

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), and a quiz on Minutemen.  Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams. 

Exams will test specific knowledge of both lectures and readings.  There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final.  There will also be a series of 10 short quiz questions and a map quiz on Canvas.  Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Quiz 10%, Canvas Quiz 10%, Map Quiz 10%.

This course is a requirement for first- and second -year history graduate students with a U.S.-area concentration, but we also welcome graduate students from all fields both inside and outside the history department. Early American history was among the first global fields of study and was traditionally cross-disciplinary avant la letter, so the course will benefit greatly from students with diverse interests and chronologies.

The course is designed to identify influential traditions and analyze crucial patterns in the historiography of North America from the late pre-Columbian era to the U.S. Civil War. To accomplish this task in one 14-week semester means that important material will be left off the syllabus. Therefore, this will be a somewhat general and idiosyncratic introduction drawn inevitably (but only to a limited extent) from my personal interests. Mostly our reading list is comprised of a combination of still well regarded formulations from the early canon as well as significant books published recently. This approach will facilitate study of the most influential methodologies in pre-1865 U.S historiography and how they changed over time with an eye toward the social and intellectual contexts that informed those changes.

We will read roughly the equivalent of a book a week and you will be expected to write a two-page reaction piece to the reading due the day of class. You will only have to hand in 8 of these short papers out of the 12 weeks of reading (none the first week). Every student will be expected to lead class discussions on the weekly reading at least once and perhaps twice during the semester, depending on the size of the class. As discussion leader, you need only provide a brief summary of the contents, since we will have all done the reading. Rather, you might address some or all of the following issues as they might or might not apply to the weekly reading (although you should not feel constrained to limit your analysis to these issues): the author’s theoretical and methodological assumptions and how they shape his/her text; the nature of the evidence and how that shapes the text; the narrative structure of the text (for example, the influence of particular genres); the politics of the text; the use of language and rhetorical strategies; the author’s choices for inclusion and exclusion. In the course of your analysis, please formulate three questions about the reading to facilitate discussion.
Preliminary Reading List

The following is a reading list from an earlier semester. It will certainly change— perhaps dramatically—by the first day of class so it is merely intended to suggest possibilities:

New Cultural History: Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom, or James H. Sweet, Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World

Puritanism: Francis Bremer, John Winthrop, America’s Forgotten Founding Father Imperial History: JH Eliot, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in

America, 1492-1830
Legal History, Christopher Tomlins, ed, The Many Legalities of Early America

Religious History/Material Culture: Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots’ New World, 1517-1751

Borderlands History: David Weber, Barbaros: Spaniards and their savages in the Age of Enlightenment

American Revolution / Consumer Revolution: TH Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence

Intellectual History, Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism

History of Sexuality: Clare Lyons, Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830

Native American History: Elliott West, Contested Plains: Indians, Gold Seekers and the Rush to Colorado

Political History: Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: From Jefferson to Lincoln

Popular History: Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction
There is a final 10 to 15-page paper due during Exam Week. The final paper can be either a historiographical paper or a prospectus for a future research project. You should ponder your final paper and talk with me about it as early in the semester as possible. Participation in class discussion is required and will account for 30% of your grade; the weekly papers count 30% and the final paper 40%.

Most of America’s earliest settlements were coastal communities.  Indeed, in human terms, bodies of water: oceans, lakes, rivers, bays, sounds, tidal pools, ponds, and streams helped define both the extent and limits of local, regional, and ultimately global history and culture.  Water simultaneously connected and separated through the movements of highly mobile populations which communicated through exploration, war, commerce, migration, and travel along routes sometimes millennia old during a time when travel by boat was far simpler than overland travel.  Hence, American history can be understood within the broad, transoceanic web of human geography called Atlantic history and culture.  The purpose of this course is to explore the social and cultural history of American coastal communities from an interactive perspective.  Ultimately, then, we are concerned with water and water-mediated culture as fundamental modes of contact and communication in the pre-industrial world.

Selected readings will include: H. Magnusson and H. Palsson, The Vinland Sagas (on the Vikings); M. Kurlansky, Cod, N. Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex; and Marcus Rediker’s book on pirates, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.  

This course meets substantial writing requirements.  Students will read about a book a week or substantial articles from a multidisciplinary list.  One film will be shown.  Attendance is mandatory.  Students must contribute regularly to class discussion and turn in brief (2 page maximum) weekly writing assignments analyzing the reading for that week.  These readings should not be considered standard book reviews; rather, they take the form of focused essays about problems, issues, and questions that the student wants to ask in the seminar, so they are intended to help facilitate discussion.  A 5-page final essay will propose an article to be included in a (fictitious) collection of essays about the major themes to emerge from this course.  Grades: weekly papers (50%); discussion (30%); final essay (20%).

This course is a survey of 400 years of American history, from the Age of Exploration to the Civil War.  It meets three times weekly for lectures.  Your TAs will lead weekly discussions of required readings at the beginning of class on Fridays.  Two of the three required readings are available for free as e-books on UTCAT.  Print copies of the readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and (most) on PCL Reserve.  Primary documents will be assigned on Canvas for discussion on Fridays for most weeks (check Canvas Tuesday afternoons for the following Thursday) from Michael P. Johnson, ed., Reading the American Past, Vol.1: to 1877.  Other required readings will include the revolutionary war history Minutemen and Their World by Robert A. Gross, and William Freehling’s civil war history, The South Versus the South (both Gross and Freehling are available as e-books on UTCAT). 

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), and a quiz on Minutemen.  Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams.  Exams will test specific knowledge of both lectures and readings.  There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final.  Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 50%, Midterm 40%, Quiz 10%. 

Material culture is a term borrowed by a number of disciplines from archaeology that refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool; from architectural monuments to hedge rows—that are studied by historians in the hope of revealing their use as overlooked evidence of past lives that reach beyond the written text.

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution. We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas. We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of both the artisans (makers) and their societies (consumers).

Text:

Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.

Grading:

2 page book review due weekly; 50%

Final 5 page project; 20%

Class Participation; 30%

With global expansion from the spread of warfare, commerce and credit, exploration, New World Colonization, technological innovation, and religious reformation and counter-reformation, the seventeenth century saw the spread of knowledge and experience of the world through human interaction in the form of conflict, economic exchange, and cultural creativity. Extensions of human geography and puzzling encounters with strange people, gods, material culture, and flora and fauna in exotic places, also formed the basis of a remarkable convergence of science, art and culture between east and west during this period. The purpose of this lecture course is to begin to map just a few of the major patterns in this enormous global process as they touch upon the various regions of Spanish, British, and French North America during the earliest period of settlement.

Selected reading:  Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country (Electronic Resource on UTCAT);   Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire;  John Demos, Unredeemed Captive.

Midterm and Final Essay Examinations, one 2-page book review, one quiz.  Grading percentages are not written in stone but may be calculated roughly as follows:  midterm (30%), final (40%), book review (20%), and quiz (10%). Please note:  while there are no explicit percentages for class participation listed in this framework, enthusiastic engagement with the readings during discussions is expected and will be rewarded in the final grade.

Survey of United States history from the colonial period through the Civil War.Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Texts:Required readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and on PCL Reserve. Short readings from primary documents will be assigned most weeks on Blackboard from Michael P. Johnson, ed., Reading the American Past, Vol.1. Other required readings will include the combined labor and religious history by Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, and William Freehling’s civil war history, The South Versus the South.

Grading:Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), a 2-page book review on Shopkeeper’s Millennium, and a quiz on one document chosen from the M. Johnson collection of primary documents. (For rules on plagiarism, please see the dept’s policy online at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/about/academic-integrity.php) Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams. Exams will test knowledge of both lectures and readings. There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final. Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Review 20%, and Quiz 10%. Plus / minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. To learn more about the mechanics of this new system, go to this link: http://www.utexas.edu/provost/planning/plus-minus/. Be aware that the assignment of grades has always been, and remains, up to the discretion of the instructor.

Material culture is a term borrowed by a number of disciplines from archaeology that refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool; from architectural monuments to hedge rows—that are studied by historians in the hope of revealing their use as overlooked evidence of past lives that reach beyond the written text.

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution. We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas. We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of both the artisans (makers) and their societies (consumers).

Texts:Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.

Grading:

2 page book review due weekly; 50%

Final 5 page project; 20%

Class Participation; 30%

With global expansion from the spread of warfare, commerce and credit, exploration, New World Colonization, technological innovation, and religious reformation and counter-reformation, the seventeenth century saw the spread of knowledge and experience of the world through human interaction in the form of conflict, economic exchange, and cultural creativity. Extensions of human geography and puzzling encounters with strange people, gods, material culture, and flora and fauna in exotic places, also formed the basis of a remarkable convergence of science, art and culture between east and west during this period. The purpose of this lecture course is to begin to map just a few of the major patterns in this enormous global process as they touch upon the various regions of Spanish, British, and French North America during the earliest period of settlement.

Texts:

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country (Electronic Resource on UTCAT); Franklin W. Knight, ed., Andrew Hurley translator, Bartolome de las Casas, An Account, Much Abbreviated , of the Destruction of the Indies;   David Cressy, Coming Over (pdf available on Canvas)

Grading:

Midterm and Final Essay Examinations, one 2-page book review, one quiz.  Grading percentages are not written in stone but may be calculated roughly as follows:  midterm (30%), final (40%), book review (20%), and quiz (10%). Please note:  while there are no explicit percentages for class participation listed in this framework, enthusiastic engagement with the readings during discussions is expected and will be rewarded in the final grade.  As a result, those of you who do not participate will suffer by comparison.

Scientists and Artisans: Arts and Artifacts in the Early Modern Atlantic

Material culture is a term borrowed by a vast number of academic disciplines from

the study of archaeology, anthropology and folklore. It refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things that range in status from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool, from architectural monuments to hedgerows, from religious rituals to factories and industrial products. All this and much more are now studied avidly by a growing number of historians in the hope of revealing overlooked evidence of past lives that both compliment and reach beyond the historian’s traditional “comfort zone” with the written text.

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-­?Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution, with occasional forays into later periods where appropriate. We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-­?section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas. We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of artisans, consumers and their societies within specific historical contexts that are simultaneously local, regional and global. We will also think about the history of beauty.

Texts:

Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective

Samuel Y. Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico

Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600-­?1860 (out of print but

readily available used on amazon.com and reserve)

Sherry Turkle, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (also available as an

Electronic Resource via the UT Library Catalog)

Pamela Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, 1997)

The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 2006)

P. Smith articles on Atlantic history of science.

Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in

Early Modern Italy (California 1996)

Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500-­?1800 (Routledge

2013)

Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the

Huguenots New World (Johns Hopkins, 2005)

Owen Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry

(Johns Hopkins, 1975)

Pamela O. Long, Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences 1400-­?1600

(Oregon, 2011)

Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge

from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Johns Hopkins, 2004)

Charlers Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern

Science (Cambridge, 1982)

Mario Biagioli, books, articles Simon Schaffer, books, articles Others

Grading:

Students will choose reading (HIS 392) or research (HIS 389) option at the beginning of the course. If reading, students will be expected to write brief review essays (2 pages) with questions / problems posed by weekly reading. These students will write a 5-­?7 page final paper assessing the historiography. Final paper is 30% of the grade; review essays (and class discussion) are 70%.

Students who choose the research (HIS 389) will write reviews for only 5 weeks of their choosing. These students will be expected to produce an article-­?length research paper on a subject of their choice. Reviews and discussion will constitute 25% of the grade; the final research paper 75%.

Survey of United States history from the colonial period through the Civil War.

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Texts:

Required readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and on PCL Reserve.  Primary documents will be assigned most weeks on Blackboard from Michael P. Johnson, ed., Reading the American Past, Vol.1.  Other required readings will include the combined labor and religious history by Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, and William Freehling’s civil war history, The South Versus the South. Exact dates these books will be discussed in class will be posted on Blackboard. Optional (that is, unassigned) reading is available from the textbook Nation of Nations. You need not buy this expensive book but it may prove useful as a general resource with a good subject index for those with limited backgrounds in American history.

Grading:

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), a 2-page book review on Shopkeeper’s Millennium, and a quiz on one document chosen from the M. Johnson collection of primary documents.   (For rules on plagiarism, please see the dept’s policy online at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/about/academic-integrity.php) Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams.  Exams will test knowledge of both lectures and readings.  There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final.  Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Review 20%, and Quiz 10%. Plus / minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. To learn more about the mechanics of this new system, go to this link:  http://www.utexas.edu/provost/planning/plus-minus/.  Be aware that the assignment of grades has always been, and remains, up to the discretion of the instructor.

Material culture is a term borrowed by a number of disciplines from archaeology that refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool; from architectural monuments to hedge rows—that are studied by historians in the hope of revealing their use as overlooked evidence of past lives that reach beyond the written text.

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution.  We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas.  We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of both the artisans (makers) and their societies (consumers).

Texts:

Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.

Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire, and nation : explorations of the history of science in the Iberian world

Neil Kamil, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Disappearance and Material Life in early New York,” in American Furniture 1995

Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics and Mateial Life in the Huguenots' New World, 1517-1751

Jules Prown,  American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture

Henri Focillon, The Life of Form

Jones, Michael Owen, Handmade Object and its Maker

Deetz, James, In Small things Forgotten

Humes, Ivor Noel, Martins Hundred

SY Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico

Grading:

2 page book review due weekly; 50%

Final 5 page project; 20%

Class Participation; 30%

With global expansion from the spread of warfare, commerce and credit, exploration, New World Colonization, technological innovation, and religious reformation and counter-reformation, the seventeenth century saw the spread of knowledge and experience of the world through human interaction in the form of conflict, economic exchange, and cultural creativity. Extensions of human geography and puzzling encounters with strange people, gods, material culture, and flora and fauna in exotic places, also formed the basis of a remarkable convergence of science, art and culture between east and west during this period. The purpose of this lecture course is to begin to map just a few of the major patterns in this enormous global process as they touch upon the various regions of Spanish, British, and French North America during the earliest period of settlement.

Texts:

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country (Electronic Resource on UTCAT); Franklin W. Knight, ed., Andrew Hurley translator, Bartolome de las Casas, An Account, Much Abbreviated , of the Destruction of the Indies;   David Cressy, Coming Over (pdf available on blackboard);   Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire;   April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia;   John Demos, Unredeemed Captive; Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (Electronic Resource on UTCAT);  Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade;   James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins.

Grading:

Midterm and Final Essay Examinations, one 2-page book review, one quiz.  Grading percentages are not written in stone but may be calculated roughly as follows:  midterm (30%), final (40%), book review (20%), and quiz (10%). Please note:  while there are no explicit percentages for class participation listed in this framework, enthusiastic engagement with the readings during discussions is expected and will be rewarded in the final grade.  As a result, those of you who do not participate will suffer by comparison.

Most of America’s earliest settlements were coastal communities.  Indeed, in human terms, bodies of water: oceans, lakes, rivers, bays, sounds, tidal pools, ponds, and streams helped define both the extent and limits of local, regional, and ultimately global history and culture.  Water simultaneously connected and separated through the movements of highly mobile populations which communicated through exploration, war, commerce, migration, and travel along routes sometimes millennia old during a time when travel by boat was far simpler than overland travel.  Hence, American history can be understood within the broad, transoceanic web of human geography called Atlantic history and culture.  The purpose of this course is to explore the social and cultural history of American coastal communities from an interactive perspective.  Ultimately, then, we are concerned with water and water-mediated culture as fundamental modes of contact and communication in the pre-industrial world.

Texts:

Week 1: Handouts.  Daniel Vickers, “Beyond Jack Tar” (article); Jeffrey Bolster, “Putting the Ocean in Atlantic History” (article); Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, vol I (selections).

Week 2:  H. Magnusson and H. Palsson, Vinland Sagas 

Week 3:  M. Kurlansky, Cod 

Week 4: P.E Perez-Mallaina, Spain's Men of the Sea 

Week 5: D. Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea 

Week 6:  D. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen 

Week 7: N. Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex 

Week 8: Herman Melville, Moby Dick  (electronic selections) 

Week 9: Handouts. Cal Winslow, “Sussex Smugglers,” and John G. Rule, “Wrecking and Coastal Plunder,” (articles) 

Week 10: Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 

Week 11: Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks 

Week 12:  E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

Grading:

This course meets substantial writing requirements.  Students will read about a book a week or substantial articles from a multidisciplinary list.  One film will be shown.  Attendance is mandatory.  Students must contribute regularly to class discussion and turn in brief (2 page maximum) weekly writing assignments analyzing the reading for that week.  These readings should not be considered standard book reviews; rather, they take the form of focused essays about problems, issues, and questions that the student wants to ask in the seminar, so they are intended to help facilitate discussion.  A 5-page final essay will propose an article to be included in a (fictitious) collection of essays about the major themes to emerge from this course.  Grades: weekly papers (50%); discussion (30%); final essay (20%). 

Survey of United States history from the colonial period through the Civil War.

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Texts:

Required readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and on PCL Reserve.  Primary documents will be assigned most weeks on Blackboard from Michael P. Johnson, ed., Reading the American Past, Vol.1.  Other required readings will include the combined labor and religious history by Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, and William Freehling’s civil war history, The South Versus the South. Exact dates these books will be discussed in class will be posted on Blackboard. Optional (that is, unassigned) reading is available from the textbook Nation of Nations. You need not buy this expensive book but it may prove useful as a general resource with a good subject index for those with limited backgrounds in American history.

Grading:

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), a 2-page book review on Shopkeeper’s Millennium, and a quiz on one document chosen from the M. Johnson collection of primary documents.   (For rules on plagiarism, please see the dept’s policy online at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/about/academic-integrity.php) Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams.  Exams will test knowledge of both lectures and readings.  There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final.  Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Review 20%, and Quiz 10%. Plus / minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. To learn more about the mechanics of this new system, go to this link:  http://www.utexas.edu/provost/planning/plus-minus/.  Be aware that the assignment of grades has always been, and remains, up to the discretion of the instructor.

Material culture is a term borrowed by a number of disciplines from archaeology that refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool; from architectural monuments to hedge rows—that are studied by historians in the hope of revealing their use as overlooked evidence of past lives that reach beyond the written text.

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution.  We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas.  We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of both the artisans (makers) and their societies (consumers).

This course may be used to fulfill three hours of the U.S. history component of the university core curriculum and addresses the following four core objectives established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board: communication skills, critical thinking skills, personal responsibility, and social responsibility.

Texts:

Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.

Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire, and nation : explorations of the history of science in the Iberian world

Neil Kamil, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Disappearance and Material Life in early New York,” in American Furniture 1995

Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics and Mateial Life in the Huguenots' New World, 1517-1751

Jules Prown,  American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture

Henri Focillon, The Life of Form

Jones, Michael Owen, Handmade Object and its Maker

Deetz, James, In Small things Forgotten

Humes, Ivor Noel, Martins Hundred

SY Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico

Grading:

2 page book review due weekly; 50%

Final 5 page project; 20%

Class Participation; 30%

===================================

HIS 352L - MEXICAN REVOLUTION, 1910-20 Butler, Matthew

This course examines Mexico’s Revolution through both its armed and post-revolutionary phases, from 1910-1940. During the semester we will focus on several key questions. What kind of revolution was the Mexican Revolution: an agrarian, political, social, cultural, or even mythical process? What caused and drove it? What did ordinary people think about the revolution and how far did they shape its course or simply suffer its consequences? Did “many Mexicos” just produce many revolutions, or can a broad narrative be discerned? What were the main contours of the post-revolutionary regime, and how different were they to those of the old regime? The course will consist of lectures, group discussions of set readings, primary documents, and folk songs (corridos), and occasional viewings of theater films made during (or about) the revolution. By the end of the course you will have a broad theoretical sense of what constitutes a social revolution and a detailed knowledge of Mexico’s revolutionary history that will help you to make up your own mind about the $64K questions: did twentieth-century Mexico truly experience a revolution? If so, how “revolutionary” was it?

Texts:

Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution ?Leslie Bethell (ed.), Mexico since Independence

David Brading (ed.), Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution

Luis González y González, San José de Gracia: Mexican Village in Transition

Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz

Stephen E. Lewis and Mary Kay Vaughan, The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940

John Womack Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution

Grading:

Map quiz, 5%

Reading papers, 60%

Final paper, 35%

With global expansion from the spread of warfare, commerce and credit, exploration, New World Colonization, technological innovation, and religious reformation and counter-reformation, the seventeenth century saw the spread of knowledge and experience of the world through human interaction in the form of conflict, economic exchange, and cultural creativity. Extensions of human geography and puzzling encounters with strange people, gods, material culture, and flora and fauna in exotic places, also formed the basis of a remarkable convergence of science, art and culture between east and west during this period. The purpose of this lecture course is to begin to map just a few of the major patterns in this enormous global process as they touch upon the various regions of Spanish, British, and French North America during the earliest period of settlement.

Lectures will take place on both Tuesday and Thursday, but Thursday’s lecture will be preceded by a 30-minute discussion of the weekly reading outlined on Blackboard at least one week before, and led by your Teaching Assistant.

Requirements:  Midterm and Final Essay Examinations, one 2-page book review, and a quiz.  Review will be due one week after the book is scheduled on BB for discussion in class. Study questions will be provided at least a week before the exams.

Grading percentages are not written in stone but may be calculated roughly as follows:  midterm (30%), final (40%), book review (20%), and quiz (10%). Please note:  while there are no explicit percentages for class participation listed in this framework, enthusiastic engagement with the readings during discussions is expected and will be rewarded in the final grade.  As a result, those of you who do not participate will suffer by comparison.  Dates assigned to specific lectures listed on the syllabus are flexible as are the lectures themselves and may vary at the instructor’s discretion.  Failure to complete any single assignment will constitute automatic failure for the entire course.

PROBABLE Required Readings / Date and page selections TBA on Blackboard: Books available at Coop for purchase (but it may be worth it to shop around online) and on reserve (PCL):

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country (Electronic Resource on UTCAT); Franklin W. Knight, ed., Andrew Hurley translator, Bartolome de las Casas, An Account, Much Abbreviated , of the Destruction of the Indies;   David Cressy, Coming Over (pdf available on blackboard);   Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire;   April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia;   John Demos, Unredeemed Captive; Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (Electronic Resource on UTCAT);  Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade;   James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins

With global expansion from the spread of warfare, commerce, exploration, New World Colonization, technological innovation, and religious reformation and counter-reformation, the seventeenth century saw the spread of knowledge and experience of the world through widespread human interaction in the form of conflict, economic exchange, and cultural creativity. Extensions of human geography and puzzling encounters with strange people, gods, material culture, and flora and fauna in exotic places, also formed the basis of a remarkable convergence of science, art and culture between east and west during this period. The purpose of this lecture course is to begin to map just a few of the major patterns in this enormous global process as they touch upon the various regions of Spanish, British, and French North America during the earliest period of settlement.

Lectures will take place on both Tuesday and Thursday, but Thursday’s lecture will be preceded by a 30 minute discussion of the weekly reading outlined on Blackboard at least one week before, and led by your Teaching Assistant (TBA).

Texts

Reading list (subject to change)/ Date and page selections TBA on Blackboard: Books available at the Coop for purchase (but it may be worth it to shop around online) and on reserve (PCL):

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country;   

Franklin W. Knight, ed., Bartolome de las Casas;   

David Cressy, Coming Over (handouts);   

Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire;   

April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia;   

John Demos, Unredeemed Captive;   

Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power;  

Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade;   

James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins

Grading

Grading percentages are not written in stone but may be calculated roughly as follows:  midterm (30%), final (40%), 2 book reviews (15% each).

Textbooks

Required readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and on PCL Reserve.  Primary documents will be assigned most weeks on Blackboard from Michael P. Johnson, ed., Reading the American Past, Vol.1.  Other required readings will include the combined labor and religious history by Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, and William Freehling’s civil war history, The South Versus the South. Exact dates these books will be discussed in class will be posted on Blackboard. Optional (that is, unassigned) reading is available from the textbook Nation of Nations. You need not buy this expensive book but it may prove useful as a general resource with a good subject index for those with limited backgrounds in American history.

Grading

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), a 2-page book review on Shopkeeper’s Millennium, and a quiz on one document chosen from the M. Johnson collection of primary documents.   (For rules on plagiarism, please see the dept’s policy online at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/about/academic-integrity.php) Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams.  Exams will test knowledge of both lectures and readings.  There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final.  Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Review 20%, and Quiz 10%. Plus / minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. To learn more about the mechanics of this new system, go to this link:  http://www.utexas.edu/provost/planning/plus-minus/.  Be aware that the assignment of grades has always been, and remains, up to the discretion of the instructor.  

Approximate order of lectures / readings:

Weeks one-three 

Spain and Columbus; Humanism and the New World; Nature of the Colonial Enterprise; Regional histories of British America; The transatlantic Reformation; Puritanism and Personality; Witchcraft.

Weeks four-six  

Slavery and Staple Crops:  British Caribbean and Chesapeake; American Revolution; Forging a New Government:  Articles of Confederation and the Constitution; Federalists and anti-Federalists; Washington and Hamilton; Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit.

Midterm (date tba): 75-minute essay question.

Weeks seven-nine 

Thomas Jefferson’s legacy; Ambiguity of Jeffersonian Republicanism; War of 1812; Westward expansion; Industrial Revolution; Andrew Jackson and what is meant by Jacksonian Democracy; Compromise of 1820; early talk of disunion.

Weeks ten-eleven (Quiz on Johnson document.)

Slavery and Abolition; Election of 1848 (Pro-slavery arguments); Compromise of 1850; the continuing vexing question of Slavery and its Expansion west; sectional politics (the census and redistricting); secessionism and the south.

Week twelve to end of course 

Sectional Politics: John Brown; Lincoln, Free Soil, and the Election of 1860; was the south “monolithic”—was the North?  Slavery and Disunion, Civil War and postwar America. 

Final: 3 hrs (check UT website for time/place)

This course partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history. 

Material culture is a term borrowed by a vast number of academic disciplines from the study of archaeology, anthropology and folklore.  It refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things that range in status from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool, from architectural monuments to hedgerows, from religious rituals to factories and industrial products.  All this and much more are now studied avidly by a growing number of historians in the hope of revealing overlooked evidence of past lives that both compliment and reach beyond the historian’s traditional “comfort zone” with the written text.  

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution.  We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas.  We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of artisans, consumers and their societies within specific historical contexts that are simultaneously local, regional and global.

Requirements: 

We will meet for discussions 3 hours per week.  Enthusiastic participation in discussion counts for a high percentage of your final grade (35%).  Readings will range from one or two articles to a book weekly.  This is a writing course so requirements include a weekly 2 pp paper from all students on the main problems and questions posed by the readings (35%).  There will be a final paper and class presentation on an artifact of the students’ choice (30%).

Selected readings:

Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.

Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire, and nation : explorations of the history of science in the Iberian world

Neil Kamil, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Disappearance and Material Life in early New York,” in American Furniture 1995; also selections from Fortress of the Soul.

Jules Prown,  American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture

Henri Focillon, The Life of Form

Jones, Michael Owen, Handmade Object and its Maker

Deetz, James, In Small things Forgotten

Humes, Ivor Noel, Martins Hundred

SY Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico

This course partially fulfills the legislative requirement for American history. 

With global expansion from the spread of warfare, commerce, exploration, New World Colonization, technological innovation, and religious reformation and counter-reformation, the seventeenth century saw the spread of knowledge and experience of the world through widespread human interaction in the form of conflict, economic exchange, and cultural creativity. Extensions of human geography and puzzling encounters with strange people, gods, material culture, and flora and fauna in exotic places, also formed the basis of a remarkable convergence of science, art and culture between east and west during this period. The purpose of this lecture course is to begin to map just a few of the major patterns in this enormous global process as they touch upon the various regions of Spanish, British, and French North America during the earliest period of settlement.

Lectures will take place on both Tuesday and Thursday, but Thursday’s lecture will be preceded by a 30 minute discussion of the weekly reading outlined on Blackboard at least one week before, and led by your Teaching Assistant (TBA).

Texts

Reading list / Date and page selections TBA on Blackboard: Books available at the Coop for purchase (but it may be worth it to shop around online) and on reserve (PCL):

• Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country;   
• Franklin W. Knight, ed., Bartolome de las Casas;   
• David Cressy, Coming Over (handouts);   
• Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire;   
• April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia;   
• John Demos, Unredeemed Captive;   
• Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power;  
• Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade;   
• James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins

Grading

Grading percentages are not written in stone but may be calculated roughly as follows:  midterm (30%), final (40%), 2 book reviews (15% each).

350R

Material culture is a term borrowed by a number of disciplines from archaeology that refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool; from architectural monuments to hedge rows—that are studied by historians in the hope of revealing their use as overlooked evidence of past lives that reach beyond the written text. 

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution.  We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas.  We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of both the artisans (makers) and their societies (consumers).

Texts

• Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.
• Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs
• Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire, and nation : explorations of the history of science in the Iberian world
• Neil Kamil, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Disappearance and Material Life in early New York,” in American Furniture 1995
• Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics and Mateial Life in the Huguenots' New World, 1517-1751
• Jules Prown,  American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture
• Henri Focillon, The Life of Form
• Jones, Michael Owen, Handmade Object and its Maker
• Deetz, James, In Small things Forgotten
• Humes, Ivor Noel, Martins Hundred
• SY Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico

Grading

2 page book review due weekly; 50% 

Final 5 page project; 20%

Class Participation; 30%

History 315K (unique #:  39065)
Fall 2010
Intro. to US, 1492-1865
Prof. Neil Kamil
GAR 2.146
Office Hours: TTH 11-12 (and by appointment)
TAs: (SI) Emily Brownell, Mikki Brock, Brian Stauffer, and Jessica Shore, will post their office hours and locations on Blackboard

Lectures: TTH, 9:30-11 in BUR 106

This course meets two times each week for lectures and has an SI (Emily Brownell), who will arrange for optional discussion sections.  Required readings will be discussed at the beginning of class every Thursday for about 20-30 minutes and are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and on PCL Reserve.  Primary documents will be assigned most weeks on Blackboard (check BB Tuesday afternoons for the following Thursday) from Michael P. Johnson, ed., Reading the American Past, Vol.1.  Other required readings will include the combined labor and religious history by Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, and William Freehling’s civil war history, The South Versus the South. Exact dates these books will be discussed in class will be posted on Blackboard; however, provisional dates by week are listed below.  Optional (that is, unassigned) reading is available from the textbook Nation of Nations. You need not buy this expensive book but it may prove useful as a general resource with a good subject index for those with limited backgrounds in American history.

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), a 2-page book review on Shopkeeper’s Millennium, and a quiz on one document chosen from the M. Johnson collection of primary documents.   (For rules on plagiarism, please see the dept’s policy online at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/about/academic-integrity.php) Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams.  Exams will test knowledge of both lectures and readings.  There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final.  Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Review 20%, and Quiz 10%. Plus / minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. To learn more about the mechanics of this new system, go to this link:  http://www.utexas.edu/provost/planning/plus-minus/.  Be aware that the assignment of grades has always been, and remains, up to the discretion of the instructor.  Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259.

Please note that makeup exams will not be given except in extraordinary instances and a physician’s letter is usually required.  Final exam dates are published by the Registrar on the UT web site well in advance so premature end-of-semester travel plans will not be considered valid for requesting a makeup for the final.  Occasional quizzes that are not listed on the syllabus are optional at the discretion of the instructor or the TAs.  Please note that weeks assigned to specific lectures on the syllabus are flexible as are the lectures themselves and may vary at the instructor’s discretion.  Failure to complete any single assignment will constitute automatic failure for the course.

Approximate order of lectures / readings:

Weeks one-three (Thursday readings in M. Johnson, check Blackboard)

Spain and Columbus; Humanism and the New World; Nature of the Colonial Enterprise; Regional histories of British America; The transatlantic Reformation; Puritanism and Personality; Witchcraft.

Weeks four-six  (Thursday readings in M. Johnson; check Blackboard)

Slavery and Staple Crops:  British Caribbean and Chesapeake; American Revolution; Forging a New Government:  Articles of Confederation and the Constitution; Federalists and anti-Federalists; Washington and Hamilton; Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit.

Midterm (date tba): 75-minute essay question.

Weeks seven-nine (Thursday readings in M. Johnson, check Blackboard; Book Review on Shopkeeper’s Millennium, week nine.) 

Thomas Jefferson’s legacy; Ambiguity of Jeffersonian Republicanism; War of 1812; Westward expansion; Industrial Revolution; Andrew Jackson and what is meant by Jacksonian Democracy; Compromise of 1820; early talk of disunion.

Weeks ten-eleven (Thursday readings in M. Johnson, check Blackboard. Quiz on Johnson document.)

Slavery and Abolition; Election of 1848 (Pro-slavery arguments); Compromise of 1850; the continuing vexing question of Slavery and its Expansion west; sectional politics (the census and redistricting); secessionism and the south.

Week twelve to end of course (Thursday readings in M. Johnson, and all of South v. South, check Blackboard)

Sectional Politics: John Brown; Lincoln, Free Soil, and the Election of 1860; was the south “monolithic”—was the North?  Slavery and Disunion, Civil War and postwar America. 

Final: 3 hrs (check UT website for time/place)

This course contains a Cultural Diversity flag.

History 350R (39350); Neil Kamil / GAR 2.146 / TTH 11-12 (and by appointment)
Fall 2010 / GAR 1.122 / W 12-3
Coastal Communities:  Life along the Water in Early America

Most of America’s earliest settlements were coastal communities.  Indeed, in human terms, bodies of water: oceans, lakes, rivers, bays, sounds, tidal pools, ponds, and streams helped define both the extent and limits of local, regional, and ultimately global history and culture.  Water simultaneously connected and separated through the movements of highly mobile populations which communicated through exploration, war, commerce, migration, and travel along routes sometimes millennia old during a time when travel by boat was far simpler than overland travel.  Hence, American history can be understood within the broad, transoceanic web of human geography called Atlantic history and culture.  The purpose of this course is to explore the social and cultural history of American coastal communities from an interactive perspective.  Ultimately, then, we are concerned with water and water-mediated culture as fundamental modes of contact and communication in the pre-industrial world.

This course meets substantial writing requirements.  Students will read about a book a week from a multidisciplinary list.  One film will be shown.  Attendance is mandatory.  Students must contribute regularly to class discussion and turn in brief (2 page maximum) weekly writing assignments analyzing the reading for that week.  These readings should not be considered standard book reviews; rather, they take the form of focused essays about problems, issues, and questions that the student wants to ask in the seminar, so they are intended to help facilitate discussion.  A 5-page final essay will propose an article to be included in a (fictitious) collection of essays about the major themes to emerge from this course.  Grades: weekly papers (50%); discussion (30%); final essay (20%). Plus/minus grades will be assigned for the final grade.  Please be aware that the assignment of grades has always been, and remains, up to the discretion of the instructor.  Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259.

Required Weekly Readings (at COOP or shop around online / on reserve at PCL):

Week 1: Handouts.  Daniel Vickers, “Beyond Jack Tar” (article); Jeffrey Bolster, “Putting the Ocean in Atlantic History” (article); Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, vol I (selections).

Week 2:  H. Magnusson and H. Palsson, Vinland Sagas

Week 3:  M. Kurlansky, Cod

Week 4: P.E Perez-Mallaina, Spain's Men of the Sea

Week 5: D. Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea

Week 6:  D. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen

Week 7: N. Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex

Week 8: Herman Melville, Moby Dick  (electronic selections)

Week 9: Handouts. Cal Winslow, “Sussex Smugglers,” and John G. Rule, “Wrecking and Coastal Plunder,” (articles)

Week 10: Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Week 11: Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks

Week 12:  E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

Week 13:  Film, tba

Presentations of Final Projects in Class

This course contains a Writing flag.

History 317L (39465)  Spring 2010

TTH 12:30-2.  JGB 2-102

Neil Kamil  GAR 2.146  Office Hours  tba

Teaching assistant:  tba

TA’s Office Hours:  tba

The United States in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World

With global expansion from the spread of warfare, commerce, exploration, New World Colonization, technological innovation, and religious reformation and counter-reformation, the seventeenth century saw the spread of knowledge and experience of the world through widespread human interaction in the form of conflict, economic exchange, and cultural creativity. Extensions of human geography and puzzling encounters with strange people, gods, material culture, and flora and fauna in exotic places, also formed the basis of a remarkable convergence of science, art and culture between east and west during this period. The purpose of this lecture course is to begin to map just a few of the major patterns in this enormous global process as they touch upon the various regions of Spanish, British, and French North America during the earliest period of settlement.

Lectures will take place on both Tuesday and Thursday, but Thursday’s lecture will be preceded by a 30 minute discussion of the weekly reading outlined on Blackboard at least one week before, and led by your Teaching Assistant (Stephen Dove).

Requirements:  Midterm and Final Examinations (dates tba; essay questions only) and two 2-3 page book reviews. The first book review will be on Facing East from Indian Country; the second on Atlantic Virginia.  Reviews will be due one week after the book is scheduled on BB for discussion in class. Study questions will be provided at least a week before the exams. 

The history department (and indeed the University of Texas at Austin) has a zero-tolerance policy concerning plagiarism.  Please read the department’s statement on its website on how to avoid plagiarism before writing your book reviews, so there will be no confusion about this important matter.  Grading percentages are not written in stone but may be calculated roughly as follows:  midterm (30%), final (40%), 2 book reviews (15% each).  Quizzes may be given occasionally at the instructor’s discretion, in which case these percentages will be adjusted slightly to accommodate them.  Please note:  while there are no explicit percentages for class participation listed in this framework, enthusiastic engagement with the readings during discussions is expected and will be rewarded in the final grade.    As a result, those of you who do not participate will suffer by comparison.  Dates assigned to specific lectures listed on the syllabus are flexible as are the lectures themselves and may vary at the instructor’s discretion.  Failure to complete any single assignment will constitute automatic failure for the entire course.

Reading list / Date and page selections TBA on Blackboard: Books available at the Coop for purchase (but it may be worth it to shop around online) and on reserve (PCL):

Weeks 1-7—Part One: Dating and Updating British-Imperial History.  Patterns in the British-American Transatlantic Tradition: Approximate order of lecture topics:

Spain and Columbus; Humanism and the New World

The nature of the Colonial Enterprise/ The land—Europeans and Natives

Regionalism and Historiography in British America

The Southwestern Borderlands

Puritanism and Personality in England and America

Witchcraft and Social Control in the Atlantic world

Slavery and Staple Crops: The British Caribbean and the Chesapeake

Midterm Exam (75 mins):  Early March

Weeks 8-14—Part Two:  Variations on the Imperial Update.  Approximate order of lecture topics:

The Far North:  Northern New England and French Canada.  Screening Black Robe at UGL; read Unredeemed Captive

The Middle Colonies:  New Amsterdam/ New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania

The Deep South:  Georgia, South Carolina and Florida

Final thoughts

Final Exam (3 hours):  date tba registrars office

His 350L (39665), Spring 2010

M 2-5, MEZ 1.104

Prof. Neil Kamil, GAR 2.146, Office Hours tba

“Pluralism” in Early America

Pluralism (1933):  The existence or toleration of diversity of ethnic or cultural groups within a society or state…        

Diversity (ca. 1340):  The condition or quality of being diverse, different, or varied; difference, unlikeness.           

Boundary (1626):  That which serves to indicate the bounds or limits of anything whether material or immaterial; also the limit itself.       

Interaction (1832):  Reciprocal action; action or influence of persons or things on each other.

            --Oxford English Dictionary

How to write a history of cultural pluralism?  Did it exist in colonial America?  Has pluralism ever really existed in practice as defined by the OED? What are some other words—perhaps ones that come from the colonial period itself—that might better account for variations, interactions and historical conditions on the ground?  Through what methods and perspectives have a number of creative historians concerned with such questions addressed them in their regional studies of everyday life in early America?  The goal of this reading and research seminar is to trace the social, cultural, racial, tribal, economic, and religious origins of what we now call “multiculturalism,” in myth and reality, as it was (or was not) lived and experienced in early America.  In so doing, we will read widely and try to encompass the new histories of race and slavery and Indian and European encounters in our inquiries.

This seminar meets the substantial writing component.  Every student is expected to engage the assigned weekly readings closely and attentively and to produce a 2-page (maximum) weekly critique as well as a 5-page research prospectus at the end of the semester.  The weekly critiques are intended to help students formulate questions and consider problems they discover in the readings.  Each week, three students will be chosen to read aloud their papers at the beginning of class to stimulate discussion.  Final project: students will prepare a 5-7 pp. research prospectus on an aspect of the course of the student’s choosing. 

I do not grade according to strict percentages, but approximately 65% of your grade will be determined by the quality of your weekly papers and final project and 35% by active participation in class discussion. 

Week two: Basic Problems and Methods

Handouts: available for sign out (outside GAR 2.146):

Thomas J. Archdeacon, “The Formative Period, 1607-1790,” in Becoming American: An Ethnic History, 1-26

James Axtell, “Ethnohistory: An Historian’s Viewpoint”; “The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America,” in The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America, chapts 1 and 3; and “Colonial America without the Indians,” in After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America, chapt 11.

Week three:  The Indian Perspective Facing East

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East From Indian Country

Week four:  Middle Colonies (a classical perspective)

J. Hector St John de Cr’evecoeur, Letters From an American Farmer (electronic resource UTCAT)

Week five: Middle Colonies (NY)

Daniel Horsmanden, The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741

Week six:  Middle Colonies (NY and slavery)

Shane White, Somewhat More Independent

Week seven:  Middle Colonies (PA)

James Merrell, Into the American Woods:  Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier

Week eight:  Upper South (VA)

April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia

Week nine:  Lower South

Readings on French in SC and LA, tba

Week 10:  West Indies (Jamaica)

Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire

Week eleven:  The Southwest

Ramon Guttierez, When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (electronic resource UTCAT)

Week twelve: The Southwest (Film, 1996)

John Sayles, “Lone Star”

Week thirteen:  Student presentations of final research prospectus

History 315K (unique #: 39640)
Fall 2009
Intro. to US, 1492-1865
Prof. Neil Kamil
GAR 2.146
Office Hours: TTH 11-12 (and by appointment)
TAs: Rob Holmes (SI), Julia Rahe, Aarti Bhalodia, and Ran Segev, will post their office
hours and locations on Blackboard

Lectures: TTH, 9:30-11 in BUR 106

This course meets two times each week for lectures and has an SI (Rob Holmes), who will arrange for optional discussion sections. Required readings will be discussed at the beginning of class every Thursday for about 20-30 minutes and are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and on PCL Reserve. Primary documents will be assigned most weeks on Blackboard (check BB Tuesday afternoons for the following Thursday) from Michael P. Johnson, ed., Reading the American Past, Vol.1. Other required readings will include the ecological history of early New England by William Cronon, Changes in the Land, and William Freehling’s civil war history, The South Versus the South. Exact dates these books will be discussed in class will be posted on Blackboard; however, provisional dates are listed below. Optional (that is, unassigned) reading is available from the textbook Nation of Nations. You need not buy this expensive book but it may prove useful as a general resource with a good subject index for those with limited backgrounds in American history.

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), a 2-page book review on Changes in the Land, and a quiz on one document chosen from the M. Johnson collection of primary documents. (For rules on plagiarism, please see the dept’s policy online.)

Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams. Exams will test knowledge of both lectures and readings. There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final. Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Review 20%, and Quiz 10%. Plus / minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. Learn more about the mechanics of this new system.

Be aware that the assignment of grades has always been, and remains, up to the discretion of the instructor. Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259.

Please note that makeup exams will not be given except in extraordinary instances and a physician’s letter is usually required. Final exam dates are published by the Registrar on the UT web site well in advance so premature end-of-semester travel plans will not be considered valid for requesting a makeup for the final.  Failure to complete any single assignment will constitute automatic failure for the course.

Approximate order of lectures / readings:

Weeks one-three (Thursday readings in M. Johnson, check Blackboard)

Spain and Columbus; Humanism and the New World; Nature of the Colonial Enterprise; Regional histories of British America; The transatlantic Reformation; Puritanism and Personality; Witchcraft.

Weeks four-six (Thursday readings in M. Johnson; all of Changes in the Land. Book review on Changes, due approximately week six. For exact dates, check Blackboard)

Slavery and Staple Crops: British Caribbean and Chesapeake; American Revolution; Forging a New Government: Articles of Confederation and the Constitution; Federalists and anti-Federalists; Washington and Hamilton; Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit.

Midterm (date tba): 75 minute essay question.

Weeks seven-nine (Thursday readings in M. Johnson, check Blackboard; Quiz on Johnson document.)

Thomas Jefferson’s legacy; Ambiguity of Jeffersonian Republicanism; War of 1812; Westward expansion; Industrial Revolution; Andrew Jackson and what is meant by Jacksonian Democracy; Compromise of 1820; early talk of disunion.

Weeks ten-eleven (Thursday readings in M. Johnson, check Blackboard)

Slavery and Abolition; Election of 1848 (Pro-slavery arguments); Compromise of 1850; the continuing vexing question of Slavery and its Expansion west; sectional politics (the census and redistricting); secessionism and the south.

Week twelve to end of course (Thursday readings in M. Johnson, and all of South v. South, check Blackboard)

Sectional Politics: John Brown; Lincoln, Free Soil, and the Election of 1860; was the south “monolithic”—was the North? Slavery and Disunion / Civil War and its aftermath.

Final: 3 hrs (check UT website for time/place)

History 350L (40080)
Neil Kamil
GAR 2.146 / TTH 11-12 (and by appointment)
Fall 2009 / PAR 210 / Tues. 3:30-6:30
Coastal Communities: Life along the Water in Early America

Most of America's earliest settlements were coastal communities. Indeed, in human terms, bodies of water: oceans, lakes, rivers, bays, sounds, tidal pools, ponds, and streams helped define both the extent and limits of local, regional, and ultimately global history and culture. Water simultaneously connected and separated through the movements of highly mobile populations which communicated through exploration, war, commerce, migration, and travel along routes sometimes millennia old during a time when travel by boat was far simpler than overland travel. Hence, American history can be understood within the broad, transoceanic web of human geography called Atlantic history and culture. The purpose of this course is to explore the social and cultural history of American coastal communities from an interactive perspective. Ultimately, then, we are concerned with water and water-mediated culture as fundamental modes of contact and communication in the pre-industrial world.

This course meets substantial writing requirements. Students will read about a book a week from a multidisciplinary list. One film will be shown. Attendance is mandatory. Students must contribute regularly to class discussion and turn in brief (2 page maximum) weekly writing assignments analyzing the reading for that week. These readings should not be considered standard book reviews; rather, they take the form of focused essays about problems, issues, and questions that the student wants to ask in the seminar, so they are intended to help facilitate discussion. A 5-page final essay will propose an article to be included in a (fictitious) collection of essays about the major themes to emerge from this course.

Grades: weekly papers (50%); discussion (30%); final essay (20%). Plus/minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. Please be aware that the assignment of grades has always been, and remains, up to the discretion of the instructor. Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259.

Required Weekly Readings:
(at COOP or shop around online / on reserve at PCL)
Week 1: H. Magnusson and H. Palsson, Vinland Sagas
Week 2: M. Kurlansky, Cod
Week 3: J.M. Cohen, The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Week 4: D. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen
Week 5: D. Vickers, ed., The Autobiography of Ashley Bowen (1728-1813)
Week 6: N. Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex
Week 7: Herman Melville, Moby Dick (selections)
Week 8: (articles-handouts) Cal Winslow, "Sussex Smugglers," and John G. Rule, "Wrecking
and Coastal Plunder."
Week 9: Marcus Rediker, Villains of all Nations
Week 10: Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks
Week 11: E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
Week 13: Film, tba

Please check back for updates.