Historianess

2012-01-11T22:08:00.002-05:00

Goodbye, Hello, Historianess

With this, my 400th post at the URL, I announce that I am moving Historianess to a new service.

You can find Historianess now at http://historianess.wordpress.com/

Please join me (and Pepper the Crazy Cat) there!

(This site will be deleted in six months.)

2011-08-19T16:43:00.002-04:00

Welcome to Sex, Lies, and Depositions

Since the good folks at Phi Beta Kappa were interested, I'm posting this! I've taught versions of the course before.

Prof. R. Goetz History 486 Spring 2011 (Office Hours Mon 10-12) rgoetz@rice.edu

Sex, Lies, and Depositions
(Microhistories of Virginia County Court Records)

Court records are fascinating sources for understanding the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of early Virginians. The surviving court records of Northampton County, Virginia are full of amazing stories of libel, slander, theft, attempted murder, fights, great escapes by servants and slaves, rape, and illicit sex. They are also full of the more mundane legalities of everyday Virginia life: petitions, suits for the collection of debt, probate of wills, and the registration of cattle brands. These seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century records are by far the best source for hearing the echoes of the voices of ordinary Virginians; nowhere else can historians find the words and experiences of planters, both wealthy and poor, indentured servants, African slaves, free blacks, and women, both married and unwed. In this course students will read in these records and produce a 20-25 page research paper based on a court case or set of court cases, learning as they work the historians’ craft of researching and writing about the past.

Required Readings:

• John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia (Oxford University Press, 2003).
• Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Seventh Edition) (University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Expectations and Grading Scheme:

There are a number of writing assignments, both graded and ungraded. Every piece of writing you do in this class will help you write the final paper, so even though most writing assignments are “worth” only a small percentage of your grade, they make producing your final paper much easier. Therefore, I do not recommend skipping them. Additionally, you will have three individual conferences with me during the course of the semester. Although these are also ungraded, they are specifically designed to help you with the research and writing process. I do not recommend skipping those either.

* 1st short writing assignment 5%
* 2nd short writing assignment 5%
* annotated bibliography 5%
* proposal 5%
* narrative history assignment 5%
* comments on partner’s narrative 5%
* outline 5%
* first draft evaluation 5%
* comments on partner’s first draft 5%
* revision plan 5%
* First Draft 20%
* Final Draft 30%

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick or have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, please provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Allen Center.

Week 1: Introduction
Mon 22 August: Course Introduction, What is Microhistory?
* handout: “What is Microhistory?/Reading Guide to Anne Orthwood’s Bastard”
Wed 24 August: Primary and Secondary Sources
* Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, pps. 3-80.
* receive first short writing assignment (primary and secondary sources)
Week 2: What is Microhistory?
Mon 29 August: Argument and Interpretation in Microhistory
* read Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, 81-150
* first short writing assignment due
* receive second short writing assignment (writing about argument)
Mon 31 August: What is Microhistory, all over again!
* Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “The Significance of Trivia” Journal of Mormon History vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 1993), 52-66. (in class handout)
* Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography” Journal of American History vol. 88, no.1 (June 2001), 129-144. (online through JSTOR)
* second short writing assignment due
* receive York County Microfilm Assignments
* handout “Reading Virginia Court Hand”
* explore online resources for transcription assistance
Week 3: Defining a Topic
Mon 5 Sept: NO CLASS (LABOR DAY)

Wed 7 Sept: Library Scavenger Hunt (meet in our classroom)
* Booth, Craft of Research, 283-311. (handout)
* handout “Generating an Annotated Bibliography”
*Be wary of the web! Separating the useful from the useless

*resources of the week: JSTOR, America: History and Life, Academic Search Complete, Virginia Index.

Week 4: Topics and Sources
Mon Sept 12: Topics→Questions→Problems
* Turabian, 5-35.
* receive county court record presentation assignment
Wed Sept 14: The Parts of a County Court Record
*bring a printout of your case(s), a preliminary transcription, and Anne Orthwood’s Bastard to class with you
*receive annotated bibliography assignment

*resource of the week: The Oxford English Dictionary Online, 3rd Edition

Week 5: Interpretation, interpretation, interpretation
Mon Sept 19: Thurs 29 January: County Court Record Presentations; Transcribing
Helps/Hints
*schedule individual conferences with me (bibliographies)

Wed Sept 21: Source materials and inferences
* read Storey, Chapter Two (Interpreting Source Materials) and Chapter Four (Use Sources to Make Inferences) (handouts in class)
* final court record selection due, bring a clean photocopy of the actual records and your transcription to class with you (note: this assignment is ungraded but still required!)

*resource of the week: Minutes of the Council and General Court

Week 6: From Research to Writing, part I
Mon Sept 26: Taking and organizing notes; Importance of Citing Properly
* read Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graf, The Modern Researcher, Chapter Two (The ABC of Technique) (Handout in class)
* Turabian, 36-47.
* Warren Billings, “The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A Note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 30, no. 3 (July 1973), 467-474. (JSTOR)
Wed Sept 28: February: arguments and proposals
*write three-five sentences that you think represent your argument to class with you (again, not graded, but crucial!)
* receive formal proposal assignment

*resource of the week: the oeuvre of Warren Billings

Week 7: From research to writing, part II
Mon Oct 3: Formulating arguments
*Turabian, 48-61.
*be ready to think about what “warrants” mean to solid argumentation
*bring your revised three-five sentence argument to class with you
*annotated bibliography due
Wed Oct 5: Formal Proposal Presentations
*3-5-page formal proposal due

Week 8: From Nothing to Something: First Drafts
Mon Oct 10: NO CLASS (FALL RECESS)
Wed Oct 12: Writing narrative, or, what really happened?
* read Narrative Techniques for Historians (handout)
* receive narrative history assignment
*Meet with me, Wed-Fri to discuss proposals

Week 9: First drafts, continued.
Sun Oct 16: Exchange narrative assignments with your partners by 5pm
Mon Oct 17: Uncertainty in historical narratives
* meet with your partner, discuss narrative history assignment
* bring a clean copy of your narrative history assignment, plus your comments on your partner’s work to class with you
Wed Oct 19: To outline or not to outline, that is the question
* Storey, Chapter Five (Get Writing!) and Chapter Six (Build an Argument) [handouts]
* Turabian, 62-81.
* receive outline assignment

Week 10: OUTLINE → DRAFT!
Sun Oct 23: Exchange outlines by 5pm
Mon Oct 24: Brainstorm your outlines in class
Wed Oct 26: no class; private meetings with me

Week 11: Research and Writing Problems
Mon Oct 31: Troubleshooting in your Research (or, Solving the Unsolvable)
* bring a one-page description of a research or interpretation problem you’re having to class for discussion (note: this assignment is ungraded but still required!)
Wed Nov 2: Strategies for Writing a First Draft
* read Storey, Chapter Three (Writing History Faithfully), Chapter Eight (Writing Sentences in History), and Chapter Nine (Choose Precise Words)
[handouts]
* handout on free writing

Week 12: First drafts, continued….
Mon Nov 7: Introductions and Conclusions
* Turabian, 102-108.
* receive first draft evaluation assignment
*receive First Draft FAQ
Wed Nov 9: no class, individual conferences with me

Week 13: First drafts and Revision!
Sun Nov 13: Exchange First Drafts by 5pm
Mon Nov 16: First draft discussions in class
*bring your evaluation of your own paper and that of your partner to class
*receive revision assignment
Wed Nov 18: Writing a plan for revision
*Storey, Chapter Ten (handout)
* bring a draft of your revision plan to class

Week 14: Towards a Final Draft: Revising content
Mon Nov 21: No class, individual conferences with me
Wed Nov 23: No class, THANKSGIVING

Week 15: Towards a Final Draft: Revising Style
Mon Nov 28: Style!
* Turabian, 109-119.
* bring a problem paragraph to class with you
Wed Nov 30: The Perfect Word/Form over Function (just this once)
* Barzun and Graff, The Modern Researcher, 193-234 (in class handout).
* bring your partially revised draft to class with you
*look over your footnotes, especially.
* bring Turabian, A Manual for Writers to class with you.

ALL FINAL DRAFTS ARE DUE TO MY OFFICE ON WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 14th IN HARD COPY NO LATER THAN 5 P.M.

2011-05-06T23:46:00.002-04:00

Parson Weems and David Barton--Traveling Salesmen/preachers

I have a fondness for the absurd, and there are few things more absurdly enjoyable than the collected writings of Mason Locke Weems. Parson Weems, as he dubbed himself, was not actually a parson, but rather a printer, traveling books salesman, entrepreneur, and fabulist of the highest order. He had an eye for opportunity, making his name (though his fame was unaccompanied by fortune) by publishing his masterpiece, A History of the Life, Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington (1800), a few weeks after his hero’s death. The good parson circumnavigated the southern United States peddling his biography of Washington—I say “biography,” but Parson Weems’s writing hardly meets the modern definition. Weems has the dubious distinction of being the originator of the story of little George chopping down his father’s prized cherry tree, and then owning up to his sin by piously intoning “I can’t tell a lie, Pa, you know I can’t.” Parson Weems made that story up out of whole cloth, as he did so many others about Washington and his other subjects (Francis Marion, Benjamin Franklin, and William Penn).
Weems had a habit of recreating the colonial and revolutionary American world for his readers, and he did it, I think, to show readers a lost world of religiosity and virtue, and to urge them to begin that lost world anew. Weems was a prophet of the past as well as the future, fashioning each to suit his vision of what America was and would be yet again.
Weems was much on my mind this morning, since my twitter feed and email inbox overflowed with the New York Times story about David Barton. Mr. Barton, the Times tells us helpfully, “is a self-taught historian who is described by several conservative presidential aspirants as a valued adviser and a source of historical and biblical justification for their policies.” I have long familiarly with Barton; he has been a thorn in the side of progressive educators in Texas for decades. (I myself am the product of public education in Texas.) Barton, autodidact and spiritual advisor, is also the founder of Wallbuilders, a dominionist organization whose goal “is to exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by (1) educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; (2) providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values; and (3) encouraging Christians to be involved in the civic arena.” Barton sees the hand of God clearly in the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and in the country’s early history, and he also sees a present in which secularists and atheists are destroying the fabric of God’s kingdom on earth. In a well-publicized controversy last year, Barton was hired by the Texas State Board of Education as an evaluator of the state’s social studies curriculum; he billed himself an “expert reviewer” (though his formal education, from Oral Roberts University, is in religion) and offered factually, er, unreliable recommendations to increase schoolchildren’s knowledge of the virtue and religion of the founding generation.
I have long thought that Parson Weems, nineteenth-century fantasist, and David Barton have much in common. Like Weems, Barton criss-crosses the country selling his version of the past to all comers. Like Weems, Barton excels at cherry-picking quotes from the hallowed Founders, often folks like George Washington, to suit not the art of historical inquiry, but rather to bring about a future that matches the past—or the past as he remembers it to have been. David Barton’s American history is untainted by nastiness—it is a peaceful place, inhabited by industrious, pious, Christian white people who brought the light and wonder of God to the new world. In return, God granted them a biblical Republic and His protection—a protection that Barton darkly believes will soon be withdrawn if the United States does not change course. In this past, there was no violence, imperialism, slavery, or racism. Such blemishes do not become a vision of the past perfect.
Weems looked upon the past in similar terms, creating a history that would be a model for the future. Weems, writing about Washington’s virtue: “And truly Washington had abundant reason, from his own happy experience, to recommend Religion so heartily to others. For besides all those inestimable favours which he received from her at the hands of her celestial daughters, the Virtues; she threw over him her own magic mantle of Character. And it was this that immortalized Washington. By inspiring his countrymen with the profoundest veneration for him as the best of men, it naturally smoothed his way to supreme command; so that when War, that monster of Satan, came on roaring against America, with all his death's heads and garments rolled in blood, the nation unanimously placed Washington at the head of their armies, from a natural persuasion that so good a man must be the peculiar favourite of Heaven, and the fastest friend of his country. How far this precious instinct in favour of goodness was correct, or how far Washington's conduct was honourable to Religion and glorious to himself and country, bright age to come and happy millions yet unborn, will, we confidently hope, declare to the most distant posterity.”
David Barton might have written something like that, perhaps in a less flowery way. And Barton would have found a way to work supply-side economics into it, but the sentiment is the same.
Weems and Barton, prophets of the past and the future. Their concerns are the same, though separated by two hundred years: that the nation is losing its virtue, its religion, and its place in God’s favor. The “most distant posterity” they both fear, will lose God’s blessings and squander the Founders’ efforts. Yet that past remains a mystery for Barton, as it did for Weems. As Barton told the Times, “We haven’t had the time to read through even 5 percent of these things,” he said, opening a sheaf of 18th-century newspapers. “You never know what you’ll find.” And I wonder what would happen if Barton read, truly read, those newspapers. Is he prepared for what he might learn?

2009-05-15T17:49:00.001-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

I'm feeling very zen today. Mom rescued another kitty. He's living in the bathroom and I am pretending not to care.

2009-05-14T14:46:00.000-04:00

On Leave!

Schedule

15 June 2009
*finish proposal and table of contents

30 June 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Two (Converting Indians, Converting Europeans)

31 July 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Three (The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-Indian Christian Commonwealth)

31 August 2009
*finish research for the new Chapter One

30 September 2009
*rewrite of Chapter One incorporating new research (Title TBA)
*draft of historiographical piece buttressing more sensational claims in Chapter Eight

31 October 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Four (Faith in the Blood)

15 December 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Five (Baptism and the Birth of Race)

BREAK 15 December 2009-15 January 2010

15 February 2010
*rewrite of Chapter Six (title TBA)

15 March 2010
*complete research for new Chapter Seven

15 April 2010
*new draft of Chapter Seven (Becoming Christian, Becoming White)

1 June 2010
*rewrite of Chapter Eight (An Empire of Christian Slaves) and new draft of supporting historiographical article for separate publication

15 June 2010
*draft of Epilogue (Towards Christian Abolitionism and Scientific Racism)

15 June 2010-15 July 2010 BREAK

1 August 2010
*draft of introduction (Christians and Heathens in the Atlantic World)

=FULL DRAFT OF THE AMAZING MR BOOK (ROUND II)

2009-02-27T18:02:00.004-05:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

I make my triumphant return to Friday cat blogging with this portrait! Mom has a new digital camera to replace the old broken one. She told me she really needed the camera so she can take pictures of documents (she is going to someplace called England to look at these document things) but so far she has just been laying on the floor taking pictures of me. Aren't I cute?

2009-02-12T20:30:00.001-05:00

Happy 200th Birthday Mr. Charles Darwin!

And, Mr. Lincoln, too.

2009-01-23T23:01:00.003-05:00

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passes Senate, 61-36

Now, who are the thirty-six miserable Senators who think it is OK to pay women less than men for the same job? And how hard are we going to work to throw the bums out?

2009-01-16T17:58:00.002-05:00

Notes and observations from the course evaluation wars

One of the fun things about the first half of the survey is anticipating what sorts of things students will say on their evals at the end of the semester. It's always interesting to see what students understood the course was about. Case in point from Fall 2008's HIST 117:

Good, not outstanding because we talked way more about Indians than I would have expected for this class.

Clearly I must have failed to make the point that understanding why Indians did what they did is critical to understanding American history! I guess from this student's point of view, outstanding courses only focus on white Americans?

Another of my favorites:

There is no textbook and there are four to five novels to read.

Novels? Novels! At first I thought that perhaps my students are unaware of the difference between fiction and nonfiction, but one of my colleagues has suggested that many students use the words "book" and "novel" synonymously. Hilarious! This student went on to write:

Keeping up with the reading will greatly increase your chances of succeeding in this class.

At least I did manage to make that little fact clear!

In the odd comment category, I place this evaluation of my teaching:

I did not like the manner she spoke her lectures. She spoke them, rather than talked about them, and they were nonstop.

I find this one pretty puzzling. One doesn't generally "speak" lectures, one "gives" or "delivers" them. How does one "speak" a lecture, rather than "talk" about a lecture? Sigh. At least I am not at a public university in Texas, where my receipt of a bonus might be contingent on the things students write about my class.

2008-12-14T16:23:00.003-05:00

Whatever happened to "Mission Accomplished?"

I'm reading the hilarious coverage of Bush ducking to avoid shoes an irate Iraqi journalist chucked at him. Very funny.

At one point during his news conference, Bush declared, "The war is not over, it is decisively on its way to being won."

As my post title asks...

2008-12-05T15:29:00.003-05:00

Why do the scientists have all the fun?

The 2008 AAAS/Science dance your dissertation on YouTube awards are up here.

I particularly like the human hemoglobin dance.

I'm now wondering what my manuscript would look like if conveyed as an interpretive dance or as a musical. (Surely no one would tap-dance their way to spontaneous combustion a la Buffy.)

What about you? What would your dramatized manuscript look like?

2008-11-30T13:00:00.002-05:00

Sex, Lies, and Depositions!

Very few changes from this syllabus's previous iterations-I've had to change the end of the course to account for fewer instructional days in Rice's new calendar, and we're looking at a different county this time. Otherwise, this was such a success last time that it needed only a few tweaks.

Sex, Lies, and Depositions
(Microhistories of Virginia County Court Records)

Court records are fascinating sources for understanding the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of early Virginians. The surviving court records of Northampton County, Virginia are full of amazing stories of libel, slander, theft, attempted murder, fights, great escapes by servants and slaves, rape, and illicit sex. They are also full of the more mundane legalities of everyday Virginia life: petitions, suits for the collection of debt, probate of wills, and the registration of cattle brands. These seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century records are by far the best source for hearing the echoes of the voices of ordinary Virginians; nowhere else can historians find the words and experiences of planters, both wealthy and poor, indentured servants, African slaves, free blacks, and women, both married and unwed. In this course students will read in these records and produce a 20-25 page research paper based on a court case or set of court cases that they select, learning as they work the historians’ craft of researching and writing about the past.

Required Readings:

• Wayne C. Booth, et al. The Craft of Research (3rd Edition) (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
• John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia (Oxford University Press, 2003).
• William Kelleher Storey, Writing History: A Guide for Students (3rd Edition) (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Seventh Edition) (University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Expectations and Grading Scheme:

There are a number of writing assignments, both graded and ungraded. Every piece of writing you do in this class will help you write the final paper, so even though most writing assignments are “worth” only a small percentage of your grade, they make producing your final paper much easier. Therefore, I do not recommend skipping them. Additionally, you will have three individual conferences with me during the course of the semester. Although these are also ungraded, they are specifically designed to help you with the research and writing process. I do not recommend skipping those either.

* 1st short writing assignment 5%
* 2nd short writing assignment 5%
* annotated bibliography 5%
* proposal 5%
* narrative history assignment 5%
* comments on partner’s narrative 5%
* outline 5%
* first draft evaluation 5%
* comments on partner’s first draft 5%
* revision plan 5%
* First Draft 20%
* Final Draft 30%

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick or have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, please provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Week 1: Introduction
Tues 6 January: Course Introduction, What is Microhistory?
* handout: “What is Microhistory?/Reading Guide to Anne Orthwood’s Bastard”
Thurs 8 January: Primary and Secondary Sources
* Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, pps. 3-80.
* receive first short writing assignment (primary and secondary sources)
Week 2: What is Microhistory?
Tues 13 January: Argument and Interpretation in Microhistory
* read Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, 81-150
* first short writing assignment due
* receive second short writing assignment (writing about argument)
Thurs 15 January: What is Microhistory, all over again!
* Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “The Significance of Trivia” Journal of Mormon History vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 1993), 52-66. (in class handout)
* Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography” Journal of American History vol. 88, no.1 (June 2001), 129-144. (online through JSTOR)
* second short writing assignment due
* receive Northampton County Microfilm Assignments
* handout “Reading Virginia Court Hand”
* explore online resources for transcription assistance
Week 3: Defining a Topic
Tues 20 January: Library Scavenger Hunt (meet in our classroom)
* Storey, Chapter One (Getting Started)
* Turabian, Manual for Writers, 29-32.
* Booth, Craft of Research, 283-311.
* handout “Generating an Annotated Bibliography”
*Be wary of the web! Separating the useful from the useless.
Thurs 22 January: Topics‡Questions‡Problems
* Booth, Craft of Research, 35-82.
* receive county court record presentation assignment
Week 4: Solidifying your Sources
Tues 27 January: The Parts of a County Court Record
*bring a printout of your case(s), a preliminary transcription, and Anne Orthwood’s Bastard to class with you
*receive annotated bibliography assignment
*resource of the week: The Oxford English Dictionary Online, 3rd Edition
Thurs 29 January: County Court Record Presentations; Transcribing Helps/Hints
*schedule individual conferences with me (bibliographies)
Week 5: Interpretation, interpretation, interpretation
Tues 3 February: Source materials and inferences
* read Storey, Chapter Two (Interpreting Source Materials) and Chapter Four (Use Sources to Make Inferences)
* final court record selection due, bring a clean photocopy of the actual records and your transcription to class with you (note: this assignment is ungraded but still required!)
Thurs 5 February: Taking and organizing notes; Importance of Citing Properly
* read Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graf, The Modern Researcher, Chapter Two (The ABC of Technique) (Handout in class)
* Booth, Craft of Research, 84-101.
* bring Turabian, A Manual for Writers to class with you
* Warren Billings, “The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A Note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 30, no. 3 (July 1973), 467-474. (JSTOR)
Week 6: From research to writing, part I
Tues 10 February: arguments and proposals
*write three-five sentences that you think represent your argument to class with you (again, not graded, but crucial!)
* receive formal proposal assignment
Thurs 12 February: Formulating arguments
*Booth, Craft of Research, 108-170.
*reread Story, 63-67.
*be ready to think about what “warrants” mean to solid argumentation
*bring your revised three-five sentence argument to class with you
*annotated bibliography due
Week 7: From research to writing, part II
Tues 17 February: Formal Proposal Presentations
*3-5-page formal proposal due
Thurs 19 February: Writing narrative, or, what really happened?
* read Storey, Chapter Seven (Narrative Techniques for Historians)
* receive narrative history assignment
*Meet with me, Wed-Fri to discuss proposals
Week 8: From Nothing to Something: First Drafts
Mon 23 February: Exchange narrative assignments with your partners by 5pm
Tues 24 February: Uncertainty in historical narratives
* meet with your partner, discuss narrative history assignment
* bring a clean copy of your narrative history assignment, plus your comments on your partner’s work to class with you
Thurs 26 February: To outline or not to outline, that is the question
* Storey, Chapter Five (Get Writing!) and Chapter Six (Build an Argument)
* Booth, Craft of Research, 173-212.
* receive outline assignment

Week 9: SPRING BREAK! Work on your Outlines

Week 10: Outline ‡ Draft!
Mon 10 March: Exchange outlines by 5pm
Tues 11 March: Brainstorm your outlines in class
Thurs 13 March: no class; private meetings with me
Week 11: Research and Writing Problems
Tues 17 March: Troubleshooting in your Research (or, Solving the Unsolvable)
* bring a one-page description of a research or interpretation problem you’re having to class for discussion (note: this assignment is ungraded but still required!)
Thurs 19 March: Strategies for Writing a First Draft
* read Storey, Chapter Three (Writing History Faithfully), Chapter Eight (Writing Sentences in History), and Chapter Nine (Choose Precise Words)
* handout on free writing
Week 12: First drafts, continued….
Tues 24 March: Introductions and Conclusions
* Booth, Craft of Research, 232-248.
* receive first draft evaluation assignment
*receive First Draft FAQ
Thurs 26 March: no class, individual conferences with me
Week 13: First drafts, concluded
Mon 30 March: Exchange First Drafts by 5pm
Tues 31 March: First draft discussions in class
*bring your evaluation of your own paper and that of your partner to class
*receive revision assignment
Thurs 2 April: no class: Spring Recess
Week 14: Towards a Final Draft: Revising content
Tues 7 April: Writing a plan for revision
* Storey, Chapter Ten (Revising and Editing)
* bring a draft of your revision plan to class
Thurs 9 April: no class, individual conferences with me
*bring a clean copy of your revision plan to your meeting with me
Week 15: Towards a Final Draft: Revising Style
Tues 14 April: Style!
* Booth, Craft of Research, 249-269.
* Turabian, Manual for Writers, 119-128, 283-358.
* bring a problem paragraph to class with you
Thurs 16 April: The Perfect Word/Form over Function (just this once)
* Barzun and Graff, The Modern Researcher, 193-234 (in class handout).
* bring your partially revised draft to class with you
*look over your footnotes, especially.
* bring Turabian, A Manual for Writers to class with you.

ALL FINAL DRAFTS ARE DUE TO MY OFFICE ON WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL IN HARD COPY NO LATER THAN 5 P.M.

2008-11-24T20:34:00.002-05:00

Welcome to History 566

Otherwise known as Readings in North American History, 1500-1800. It is somewhat changed from the Spring 2007 syllabus. I eliminated the week on Gender and Culture and added, in its stead, a Borderlands week. I'm OK with this since there are several gender readings scattered throughout the semester under other themes. The other major change is since Rice now has a slightly shorter semester, I have smooshed the old Republican Politics and Republican Cultures weeks into one called. simply, Republic. Other than that, a few small changes from week to week, but the structure of the course remains otherwise unchanged. It has been fun over the last two years making notes for changes, and as always, it has served as an incentive to constantly keep up with emerging literature. This is becoming more difficult task every year, as the geographical boundaries of "early America" broaden.

***

This graduate readings seminar introduces recent problems and questions as well as enduring issues in early American history. It is arranged both thematically and chronologically. Students will be expected to explore three key elements of early American historiography: chronology (the basic timeline and narrative of historical development), major events and turning points (periodization), and they will be expected to engage in critical analysis of the major works and themes in the field. By the end of the course you should be familiar with broad themes and interpretations in early American history, in preparation for oral exams, research in early American history, and teaching the first half of the standard American history survey.

If you think you need a refresher course on background and basic chronology, you should consult Alan Taylor’s American Colonies (Viking, 2001), D.W. Meinig’s The Shaping of America, vol. I (Yale, 1986), and/or Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Empire and the Formation of American Culture (UNC, 1988). For a historiographical overview, you should read the relevant articles in Daniel Vickers, ed., A Companion to Colonial America (Blackwell, 2003). For the English background, you should consult the first two volumes of The Oxford History of the British Empire or Keith Wrightson’s English Society, 1580-1680 (London, 1982). For the Spanish in North America, see especially David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (Yale, 1992). For the French in North America, see especially W.J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1765 (Michigan State, 1998). These books are all on reserve at Fondren Library for you to consult.

Each student in the course will participate in weekly discussions, review one week’s readings, and write a historiographical essay, due at the end of the semester (in lieu of a final exam). All reading is required (with the exception of the section labeled “recommended.” These readings are not required, will not be discussed in class, and are for your interest and future reference only.) Students should take notes on individual readings as well as make synthetic notes on each week’s topic as a whole. As the semester progresses, your knowledge and familiarity of the field will increase, and I will expect you to make methodological and historiographical connections with earlier readings. For the week you select to write a review of the readings, you must also submit (by 8pm on Monday the evening before class) a set of concise questions for the seminar, distributed via email to me and to the whole class. Your review of one week’s readings will be 8-10 pages in length, and your final paper, on a topic of your choosing, will be 12-15 pages. You are expected to do additional reading for the final paper; you will consult with me to formulate a topic and I will make recommendations for additional readings. A prospectus and annotated bibliography for the final paper is due on our final class meeting, Friday, 17 April 2009. The final paper is due to my office by 12 noon on Monday, 11 May 2009. No late papers will be accepted and no extensions will be granted (except in the case of severe illness or other personal emergency—any excuses must be accompanied by appropriate documentation).

Your grade will be based on active participation in class discussion (30%), the 8-10 page review and pre-circulated questions (30%), and the final paper (40%).

I recommend that you purchase books that are assigned in full (using Amazon or some other site). All books are also on reserve at Fondren Library. All assigned articles are online and available via JSTOR, History Cooperative, Informaworld, or Synergy.

Tuesday 6 January: Introductions
For our first class, please read the following short articles, and prepare a 3-5 page essay answering the question “Why study early American history?” This essay won’t be graded, but I will read it and return it with comments. As you read and write, you should also consider some key thematic questions: what should be the geographical boundaries of early America? When should “early America” begin? Who were the early Americans? And, where has the historiography and methodology of early American history been, and where should it go next?
• James A. Hijiya, “Why the West is Lost” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 51, no. 2 (April 1994), 276-292. (JSTOR)
• Michael McGiffert, et al., “Forum: Why the West is Lost” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 51, no. 4 (October 1994), 717-754. (JSTOR)
• Claudio Saunt, “Mapping Early American Historiography,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 65, no. 4 (October 2008), 745-778. (History Cooperative)
• Juliana Barr, “How Do You Get from Jamestown to Santa Fe? A Colonial Sun Belt,” Journal of Southern History vol. 73, no. 3 (August 2007), 553-566. (available via History Cooperative)
• Philip Morgan, “Rethinking Early American Slavery,” in Pestana and Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America (Dartmouth, 1999), 239-266. (on reserve)
• James Taylor Carson, “American Historians and Indians,” Historical Journal vol. 49, no. 3 (October 2006), 921-933. (I will provide copies.)
• Elizabeth Mancke, “Another British America: A Canadian Model for the Early Modern British Empire,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History vol. 25, no.1 (January 1997), 1-36. (Informaworld.com)
• Joyce E. Chaplin, “Expansion and Exceptionalism in Early American History Journal of American History vol. 89, no.4 (March 2003), 1431-1456. (available via History Cooperative)

Tuesday 13 January: Native North America
• Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2001), entire.
• Neal Salisbury, “The Indians’ Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 53, no. 3 (July 1996), 435-458. (JSTOR)
• John F. Scarry, “The Late Prehistoric Southeast” in Hudson and Tesser, eds., The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704 (University of Georgia Press, 1994), 17-35. (on reserve)
• Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (University of North Carolina, 1992), 1-49. (on reserve)
Recommended:
• Patricia Galloway, Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700 (Nebraska, 1998), entire.

Tuesday 20 January: Encounters
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (Yale, 2006), xiii-xx, 3-28, 57-87.
• Joshua Piker, Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America (Harvard, 2004), entire.
• Nicholas P. Canny, “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 50, no. 3 (July 1973), 575-598. (JSTOR)
• Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 33, no. 2 (April 1976), 289-299. (JSTOR)
• Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Harvard, 2001), 1-3, 157-198. (on reserve)
Recommended:
• Karen Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Cornell, 2000), entire.
• Michael Leroy Oberg, The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand: Roanoke’s Forgotten Indians (Penn, 2008).

Tuesday 27 January: Migration
• Alexander X. Byrd, Migrants and Voyagers: Black Migrants Across the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World (LSU, 2008), entire.
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 29-56.
• Allan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto, 1997), 3-26. (on reserve)
• Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991), ix-xvi, 1-93.
• Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630-1640” New England Quarterly vol 58, no. 3 (September 1985), 339-383. (JSTOR)
Special Guest Star: Dr. Alexander Byrd.
Recommended:
• Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (Vintage, 1986), entire.
• James P.P. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (UNC, 1994), 1-120.

Tuesday 3 February: Profit
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 88-116.
• Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1-40, 256-355. (on reserve)
• Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern (Verso, 1997), 127-184, 217-276. (on reserve)
• Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (W.W. Norton, 1975), 3-212. (on reserve)
• Richard White, The Middle Ground, 94-141.

Tuesday 10 February: Work
• Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Pennsylvania, 2004), entire.
• Richard White, The Middle Ground, 94-141 (think about this in the context of work as well as profit).
• Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (Verso, 1997), 307-368, 457-508. (on reserve)
• Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 213-292. (on reserve)
• Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America, (University of North Carolina, 1988), 3-47. (on reserve)
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine,” in Ibid., 70-105. (on reserve)
• Philip D. Morgan, “Task and Gang Systems: The Organization of Labor on New World Plantations,” in Ibid., 189-220. (on reserve)
• Allan Greer, The People of New France, 27-42. (on reserve)
• Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (University of North Carolina, 2004), 37-68. (on reserve)
Recommended:
• Sharon B. Sundue, Industrious in Their Stations: Young People at Work in Urban America, 1720-1810 (UVA, 2008), entire.

Tuesday 17 February: Religion and Belief
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 184-218.
• Perry Miller, “Errand into the Wilderness” in Errand into the Wilderness (Harvard, 1956), 1-16, 48-98. (on reserve)
• David Hall, “On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 44, no. 2 (April 1987), 193-229. (JSTOR)
• Emma Anderson, The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert (Harvard, 2007), entire.
• Rhys Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists’ Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765-1775” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 31, no. 3 (July 1973), 345-368. (JSTOR)
Recommended:
• Jon E. Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Harvard, 2005), entire.
• Rebecca Larsen, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700-1775 (Knopf, 1999), entire.
• Mary Maples Dunn, “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period” American Quarterly vol. 30, no. 5 (Winter 1978), 582-601. (JSTOR)
• Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776 (Harvard, 2000), 185-224. (on reserve)
• E. Brooks Hollifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (Yale, 2003), entire.

Tuesday 24 February: Borderlands
• James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (UNC, 2002), entire.
• Juliana Barr, “A Diplomacy of Gender: Rituals of First Contact in the ‘Land of the Tejas’”, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 61, no. 3 (July 2004), 393-434. (available via History Cooperative)
• Steven W. Hackel, “The Staff of Leadership: Indian Authority in the Missions of Alta California,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 54, no. 2 (April 1997), 347-376. (JSTOR)
• David J. Weber, “Bourbons and Bárbaros: Center and Periphery in the Reshaping of Spanish Indian Policy,” in Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500-1820 (Routledge, 2002), 79-104. (on reserve)
• Forum on Richard White, The Middle Ground (articles by Susan Sleeper-Smith, Richard White, Philip J. Deloria, Heidi Bohaker, Brett Rushforth, and Catherine Desbarats), William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 63, no. 1 (January 2006), 1-96. (available via History Cooperative)

Tuesday 3 March: No Class, Spring Break

Tuesday 10 March: Politics, Authority, and Power
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 117-183.
• Holly Brewer, By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority (UNC, 2005), entire.
• Richard White, The Middle Ground, 142-268.
• Gary B. Nash, “The Transformation of Urban Politics, 1700-1764” Journal of American History vol. 60, no. 3 (December 1973), 605-632. (JSTOR)
• Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (UVA, 1994), 1-24. (on reserve)
• Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (Yale, 1992), 11-54, 195-236 (on reserve)
Recommended:
• Adrian Howe, “The Bayard Treason Trial: Dramatizing Anglo-Dutch Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century New York City” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 47, no. 1 (January 1990), 57-89. (JSTOR)
• Daniel Hulsebosch, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World (UNC, 2005), entire.
• Any of the other essays in Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (UVA, 1994).
• Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (UNC, 2006), entire.

Tuesday 17 March: Political Economy
• Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, 1997), entire.
• Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1944), chapters 3-5. (on reserve)
• Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, 307-400. (on reserve)
• J.E. Crowley, This Sheba, Self: The Conceptualization of Economic Life in Eighteenth-Century America (Johns Hopkins, 1974), prologue, chapters 1, 2, 4. (on reserve)
• Joyce O. Appleby, “Ideology and Theory: The Tension between Political and Economic Liberalism in Seventeenth-Century England,” American Historical Review vol. 81 (1976), 499-515. (JSTOR)

Tuesday 24 March: Material Culture
• James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (Anchor Books, 1996), entire.
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (Knopf, 2001), 41-74 (“An Indian Basket”) and 108-141 (“Hannah Barnard’s Cupboard”). (on reserve)
• Rodris Roth, “Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage,” in Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600-1860 (Northeastern University Press, 1988), 439-462. (on reserve)
• Laurier Turgeon, “The Tale of the Kettle: Odyssey of an Intercultural Object” Ethnohistory vol. 44, no. 1 (Winter 1997), 1-29. (JSTOR)
• T.H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776” Journal of British Studies vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1986), 467-499. (JSTOR)

Monday 2 April: Atlantic Worlds
• David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Palgrave, 2002), 11-30. (on reserve)
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 255-291.
• Vincent Brown, The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Harvard, 2008), entire.
• Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700 (Stanford, 2006), 1-34, 215-233. (on reserve)
• Joyce Chaplin, “Race” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, 154-172. (on reserve)
• “Forum: Beyond the Atlantic” (essays by Alison Games, Philip J. Stern, Paul W. Mapp, and Peter Coclanis) William and Mary Quarterly vol. 63, no. 4 (October 2006), 675-742. (History Cooperative)
Recommended:
• John Thornton, African and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, 2nd Edition (Cambridge, 1998), entire.

Tuesday 7 April: Revolution
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 292-368.
• Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard, 1967), entire.
• David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Harvard, 2007), 1-102.
• Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African-Americans in the Age of Revolution (Harvard, 2005), 1-68.
• Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 14, no. 1 (January 1957), 3-15. (JSTOR)
• T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising” Journal of American History vol. 84, no. 1 (June 1997), 13-39. (JSTOR)
• Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1968), 371-407. (JSTOR)
Recommended:
• Charles Royster, “Founding a Nation in Blood: Military Conflict and American Nationality” in Hoffman and Albert, eds., Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution (Virginia, 1984), 25-49.
• Benjamin L. Carp, Rebels Rising: Cities in the American Revolution (Oxford, 2007), entire.

Friday 17 April: Republic
• J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 369-411.
• Richard White, Middle Ground, 269-523.
• Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 69-170.
• Daniel T. Rodger, “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept” Journal of American History vol. 79, no. 1 (June 1992), 11-38. (JSTOR)
• Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Vintage, 1991), entire.
• “Forum: How Revolutionary was the Revolution? A Discussion of Gordon S. Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution (articles by Michael McGiffert, Joyce Appleby, Barbara Clark Smith, Michael Zuckerman, and Gordon S. Wood), William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4 (October 1994), 677-716.
• James T. Kloppenberg, “The Virtues of Liberalism: Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethics in Early American Political Discourse,” Journal of American History vol. 74, no. 1 (June 1987), 9-33. (JSTOR)
Recommended:
• Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, 1980), entire.
• Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (Hill and Wang, 2007), entire.
• Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (Knopf, 2006), entire.

2008-11-24T15:27:00.003-05:00

Ah, Monday!

I have learned, via a reliable informant, that the online Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving has approximately 25,000 entries. Good thing I don't have to read them all in order to finish my slavery think piece!

The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography is now online via JSTOR. Hurrah!

I just read a fantastic lit review in the March 2008 Slavery and Abolition by Sylvia Frey: "The Visible Church: HIstoriography of African American Religion since Raboteau." I highly recommend it.

I finally got my books for HIST 486: Sex, Lies, and Depositions ordered--despite the fact that the bookstore's ordering website refused to acknowledge that my class exists. Sigh.

2008-11-12T15:11:00.003-05:00

Quick post-election, non-Obama post

So I'm working on a think piece for the Journal of Southern History about where we are in the origins debate (slavery), including transatlantic origins, and the role culture and religion played in sustaining slavery. (I know! This is a lot for 15 double-spaced pages!)

I had thought it would be fun, and useful, to look through back issues of Slavery and Abolition, which includes a yearly bibliographical roundup of publications on slavery. This would be a way to gauge, in the first or second paragraph, the vastness of current scholarship on slavery generally, and then to show how large even a subset of slavery studies, say, the colonial south, is.

To my joy, I discovered S & A's annual bibliographical supplement is now online at http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/bibliographyofslavery. The bibliography is fully searchable, which is neat. Not so neat is the opening page, which states clearly the number of entries in the bibliography: "The database contains over XXXX bibliographical references from XXXX to XXXX."

Sigh.

2008-09-11T23:10:00.002-04:00

IKE-O-RAMA!

In response to the comment below, nope, not leaving, not ever, not nohow.

Seriously though, I live outside all the mandatory evac zones, and we are supposed to stay put for now to give those folks who really do have to leave (especially anyone and everyone in Galveston) the road. Things are quiet here as I poach a little wifi from my fabulous neighbors; the moon in shining and the air is peculiarly calm. I've hurricane-proofed the house; no projectiles here!

Since I live in the Houston Heights (elevation: 40 ft!) I won't flood. My house is set back from the street and is on a pier-and-beam foundation, so even if the streets flood (likely) my house will stay nice and dry.

Unless 115 mph winds tear off my roof and blow out my windows.

In which case, Pepper and I will retreat to the bedroom closet (the only windowless "room" in the house) and wait things out!

We'll be fine. We'll check in after the storm as soon as we are able.

2008-08-18T16:16:00.006-04:00

The Perils of the Academic Job Wiki

It was truly bewildering to follow our job search on the Academic Job Wiki last year. We advertised a tenure-track position in the long nineteenth century (United States). It generated a lot of discussion, none of which made sense to those of us in the department or on the committee.

The opening comment:

“the circles seem to inform that they want someone that has 20th century AFAM project/interests (9/11/07)”

Huh?

Another poster asked, sensibly:

"What's "AFAM"?”

Reply:

That would imply African American related.”

A request for another clarification:

“okay, what's a "circle"?”

Reply:

“questions questions, meaning I heard! i am sure we ALL know the academic circles run small and are well connected. Not much more to add.”

At this point, I’m pretty puzzled. Circles? I’m in the department and I can’t think where this might be coming from. I’m actually here and I’m not aware of any circles of any type emphasizing anything in particular. I can certainly categorically state that it would be insane for us to advertise a nineteenth-century position if what we wanted was twentieth-century African-American history.

Then:

I must be in a different circle. It's my understanding that there will be a second position advertised. If you look at the chronology of this search and then observe what conspicuous fields are *not* represented currently on Rice's faculty (think kepis, funny beards, and hardtack), that should serve as some clue. Then again, maybe both circles are right. It wouldn't be the first time that a department had two circles, both with stong [sic] opinions for the type of person the department wants.”

Again, Huh?

Luckily, another reader requested some clarification there:

“When thinking about the fields not represented, what does this mean: "think kepis, funny beards, and hardtack." I'm just not following”

Good, because I’m not either.

Reply:

“I'm not the OP [the person who made the original post], but I assume s/he meant Civil War”

So at this point, there are two rumors on the internet about our search: one that we want someone who does African-American history, and another that we want (or possibly don’t want? That wasn’t really clear) a Civil War historian. Neither of these two rumors are correct: we were looking for exactly what the ad said we were looking for: the long nineteenth century, subfield open. I was really bothered by this. It seemed to me that job seekers were on the wiki deliberately starting rumors about our search, possibly to limit the numbers or types of candidates. There was no such thing as the wiki a few short years ago when I was on the market; I used to think information was power, but the “information” being circulated here seems calculated to render competitors powerless.

OK, next:

“I received an email from someone on the search committee asking me to apply for the job before I had sent in my application. My specialty is not African American. They are running a second search for assoc./full professor in southern history”

Which prompts a crazy reply:

This comment could possible [sic] go below [under another topic heading], but I have to object to the practice of sending select invitations to apply. It creates the impression of cherry-picking a candidate under the guise of conducting a national search. That kind of thing smacks of old-boy club and the old guild. Thoughts?”

Reply:

“I guess it does smack of the OBC [Old Boy Club], but I think there are so many variables in a search that an invite does not mean slam dunk. As a grad student, we had a national search that we all thought was a dog and pony show for one candidate who had a well received book in the field of our specialized PHD program. She didn't even get an offer because department members didn't like her next project. Anyway if the dept. is a fossil of the dinosaur era and is full of Good Ole Boys, do you or I really want to work there anyway? Just a though[t].”

Letters to colleagues pointing out the existence of a position are fairly common. Most search committees want to widen their applicant pool, rather than narrow it. If you are a job seeker and you receive one of these letters asking you to apply for a job, pat yourself on the back and send in the application. If you don’t receive a letter, send in your app anyway. I also wondered here: was the poster suggesting that Rice's history department "is a fossil of the dinosaur era?" Or that it is full of Good Ol' Boys? Not amusing!

And, don’t overthink the wiki. There’s a lot of emotional angst out there during the job season, which I totally understand, but it doesn’t seem to me that the wiki is really good for the delicate psyches of graduate students. Nor does it seem to provide accurate information beyond the scheduling of AHA interviews, etc. that help clarify the timeline of a particular search.

2008-08-01T12:35:00.002-04:00

The Survey, Again

I'm teaching America to 1848 again this fall, and I'm glad to be doing it again so soon. This way lessons learned can be more quickly applied.

I've made several changes:

I've eliminated two sets of readings (one secondary and one primary) in favor of more dicussion on fewer readings. I've come to the conclusion that in the survey, less is more.

I've rethought the relationship between reading and writing assignments. There will be two papers, one towards the beginning of the semester that allows students to work on interpreting a primary document they have read closely and that they have read a secondary interpretation of, and another that teaches them to identify primary sources in an online database and to interpret them on their own, using two secondary sources. So, a little research paper. I'm thinking of these as units, and the first unit will also involve a draft process. I can get away with this since surveys at Rice are small.

I've kept the quiz structure, but regularized it (every Wednesday after the first week of class). I'd like to teach students to use these as a diagnostic tool for themselves.

I've decided we'll have a primary source every lecture, one that relates to the lecture, which we'll discuss in the final ten-fifteen minutes of class. This will mean shorter lectures, but more meaningful engagement with material presented in the lecture.

Though many people treat the survey as a content-driven class, this is fast becoming an experiment with making this a skills-based class: it is geared towards teaching freshmen basic skills they will need to function in a college environment: how to read effectively, how to interpret data (in this case, primary sources), how to listen to lectures and identify important points, how to study effectively for exams, how to write analytically, this list could go on. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with this; I do believe American History is important, and that every citizen of this country should have a basic grasp of our history. I'm afraid that a more skills-driven course might make more successful students but less engaged citizens. But, this is an ongoing experiment, and we'll see how it goes.

I'm sticking with my no-textbook policy. This was, I think, successful, and I think other teachers are having some luck with it (most recently Kevin Levin over at Civil War Memory).

Here's the syllabus:
HISTORY 117
America to 1848

This course examines the America’s colonial beginnings, the founding of the nation we now call the United States, and the early years of the Republic, as the United States sought to expand and cover the entire continent. The course will conclude at the end of the war between the United States and Mexico, and consider what it meant to be an American on the eve of the Civil War.

Grading:

Draft of First Paper……………...5%
First Paper…...…………………..10%
Final Paper Proposal…..………...10%
Final Paper………………………25%
Wednesday quizzes……………...10%
Midterm………………………….15%
Final Exam………………………25%

The first paper (5-7 pages) will deal with the first two books we read about Cabeza de Vaca. The final paper will be a research paper (8-10 pages) based upon either Rothman’s Slave Country or West’s Contested Plains. You will receive more detailed assignments for each paper later.

You’ll see in the syllabus that nine times in the semester we have a class period especially dedicated to “discussion.” In these sessions, you will be asked to participate in an in-depth analysis of our readings. Please come prepared: this means you must not only finish the reading but also spend some time thinking about it. Come to class ready to ask questions and make arguments!

There will be a quiz covering reading material and lectures every Wednesday starting September 3 and continuing through December 3, for a total of 14 quizzes. I will count the top 12 grades you earn. I do not give make-ups for these quizzes, so if you plan on being absent more that two Wednesdays, please see me immediately. Please note: there will be a quiz on November 26 (the day before Thanksgiving). Please plan any plane travel accordingly.

Required Readings:
• Alvar Nuñez Cabeva de Vaca, Castaways (California, 1993)
• Andrés Reséndez, A Land so Strange: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century (Basic Books, 2007)
• Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, Fifth Edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007)
• Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana (Hill and Wang, 2001)
• Adam Rothman, Slave Country (Harvard, 2005)
• Elliott West, The Contested Plains (Kansas, 1998)

A copy of each of these books is available on reserve, or you may purchase them in our bookstore (or online if you prefer—be sure you get the right editions). I will also be handing out various primary sources in class. Make sure you keep these—I suspect some might turn up on exams. J You’ve probably noticed that I don’t use a textbook. I generally think textbooks are a huge waste of students’ money, so I don’t assign them. However, I have put a standard American history textbook on reserve at the library. If you feel like you need a refresher course on names, dates, places, facts, and figures, feel free to check it out. Nothing from the textbook will be discussed in class or on exams.

Expectations:

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick, or if you have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, please provide appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You should come to my office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

As a matter of fairness, I do NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes go astray—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Week 1 Reading: Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, xv-xxx, 1-45; Rampolla 1-10
Monday August 25: Introduction
Wednesday August 27: Native North America
Friday August 29: The Columbian Exchange

Week 2 Reading: Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, 47-127.
Monday September 1: Labor Day (No Class)
Wednesday September 3: Three North American Beginnings
Friday September 5: Discussion: Castaways

Week 3 Reading: Resendez, A Land so Strange, 1-110; Rampolla, 14-16, 25-28.
Monday September 8: English North America
Wednesday September 10: Profits from the Wilderness
Friday September 12: Discussion: A Land so Strange

Week 4 Reading: Resendez, A Land so Strange, 111-225; Rampolla, 48-60, 88-94, 96-130.
Monday September 15: From Servitude to Slavery, part I
Wednesday September 17: From Servitude to Slavery, part II
Friday September 19: Discussion: A Land so Strange

Week 5 Reading: Fenn, Pox Americana, ix-91.
Monday September 22: Imperial Clashes
Wednesday September 24: The Empire Strikes Back
Draft of First Short Essay Due at the beginning of class (5% of your grade)
Friday September 26: Discussion of essays/please read Rampolla, 60-68.

Week 6 Reading: Fenn, Pox Americana, 92-184, Rampolla, 38-42.
Monday October 29: Declaring Independence
Wednesday October 1: Liberty & Tyranny, Part I
First Short Essay Due at the beginning of class (15% of your grade)
Friday October 3: Liberty & Tyranny, Part II

Week 7 Reading: Fenn, Pox Americana, 185-277.
Monday October 6: Republic
Wednesday October 8: Discussion: Pox Americana
Friday October 10: MIDTERM EXAM (Dr. Goetz in New Orleans)

Week 8 Reading: Rothman, Slave Country, ix-70.
Monday, October 13: Midterm Recess (no class)
Wednesday October 15: Politics in the New Republic
Friday October 17: NO CLASS (Dr. Goetz in Indianapolis)

Week 9 Reading: Rothman, Slave Country, 71-163.
Monday October 20: Jefferson and his United States
Wednesday October 22: Independence Confirmed
Friday October 24: The Cotton Frontier and the Prairie Frontier

Week 10 Reading: Rothman, Slave Country, 164-224.
Monday October 27: Discussion: Slave Country
Wednesday October 29: The United States, 1815-1848: Many Revolutions?
Friday October 31: Democratizing Politics

Week 11 Reading: Rampolla, 70-87.
Monday November 3: The Religious Republic
Wedneday November 5: From Awakening to Reform
Friday November 7: Meet in Fondren to learn how to use the America’s Historical Newspapers database

Week 12 Reading: West. The Contested Plains, xv-xxiv, 1-62.
Monday November 10: Slavery and Freedom in Jacksonian America
Wednesday November 12: Urbanization and Immigration
Friday November 14: A Market Revolution? An Industrial Revolution?

Week 13 Reading: West, The Contested Plains, 63-170.
Monday November 17: Technology and Communications (or: More Revolutions?
Wednesday November 19: Andrew Jackson and the Indians
Proposal for Final Paper Due at the beginning of class
Friday November 21: Discussion: The Contested Plains/Paper Proposals

Week 14 Reading: West, The Contested Plains, 171-271.
Monday November 24: Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion
Wednesday November 26: The Texas Revolution
Friday November 28: NO CLASS (Thanksgiving Recess)

Week 15 Reading: West, The Contested Plains, finish.
Monday December 1: War with Mexico
Wednesday December 3: Discussion: The Contested Plains
Friday December 5: The United States after 1848
Final Exam Information
Final paper due at the beginning of class, Friday, December 5

2008-07-22T19:01:00.003-04:00

When the Editor Won't Print Your Letter....

Those with blogs have the option of self-publishing! Hurrah for the blogs!

Scott Sowerby and Kevin Levin have written recently to ask if everything is all right...I'm perfectly fine! I just had a busy semester (what with the primary and all) and graduated from a busy spring to a busy summer. But, I return to the 'sphere now with my unprinted Letter to the Editor.

The Houston Chronicle reported a little over a month ago that our lovely Governor is contemplating linking professorial salaries to student evaluations. I find this to be a horrific idea, and here's why:

To the Editor:

The Chronicle reports that the University of Houston is contemplating adopting Governor Perry’s plan of linking bonuses for professors to student evaluations (see “UH regents receptive to state’s reform pitch,” 10 June 2008). This is a lazy and unworkable solution to perceived teaching problems in higher education.

Student evaluations are useful for many things. They help me gauge the effectiveness of my lectures, discussions, assignments, and exams. They also help me determine which reading materials worked, and they help me pinpoint concepts that students had difficulty grasping. I can then revise and improve my courses based in part upon student responses. But evaluations are not good indicators of a professor’s quality. Students tend to reward courses with little required effort or professors who grade generously with positive evaluations. I suspect implementing the Governor Perry’s plan of linking “performance” to pay would encourage professors to avoid teaching difficult or unpopular courses and would contribute to grade inflation. Additionally, this plan would discourage professors from teaching necessary introductory courses that attract large numbers of non-specialists and new college students. In my experience, these courses teach students to adapt to doing college-level work, but they tend to get fewer positive reviews. Eighteen-year-olds are often not appropriate judges of whether or not a classroom experience was good for them or not.

This does not mean that collegiate instructors should not be thinking about effective teaching and finding ways to evaluate it. I find that having conversations with colleagues about trouble spots in my teaching and asking them to attend my classes and give me feedback are far better ways of encouraging my improvement in the classroom. These kinds of interactions, though, should not be mandated by the state but discussed in individual departments and schools. Surely our government can find more workable and effective ways of improving collegiate teaching than rebranding our universities as consumer goods.

Rebecca A. Goetz
The writer is Assistant Professor of History at Rice University.

Now, I feel better! I can't believe this idea is getting serious attention, but there you have it.

2008-03-27T18:03:00.003-04:00

UNBELIEVABLE!

So Bill Clinton gets on the conference call, and announces that "Hillary is only 16 pledged delegates behind."

HUH?

Oh wait, that's only if you count states that had primaries (and presumably Michigan and Florida as well). "It's the caucuses that are killing her," he goes on to say.

It's Clinton logic, again. If caucuses don't work to our advantage, then don't count them.

The rest of the call was focused on remedying the nine-vote deficit Hillary has in caucus delegates in Texas. But since those are caucus votes and not primary votes, does that mean that picking up those votes would make Hillary 7 pledged delegates behind? Yes--because caucuses count when Hillary wins them.

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo's Election Central has the full story (and a better transcript than mine).

2008-03-27T17:50:00.001-04:00

And, update

There are 950 people on the conference call. I wonder how many are actually Obama supporters? Want to join?

Dial in: 1-800-214-0745
Participant password: 498616

2008-03-27T17:44:00.002-04:00

On the Clinton Conference Call

This is really entertaining. I've been mistaken for a Hillary supporter and I was invited to participate in a conference call with the Texas Hillary campaign and with Bill. It's like drinking Hillary kool-aid!

Gary Mauro "We're going to do better than expected in the county and state senate district conventions."

Yeah, right. If you're so disorganized you can't tell the difference between an Obama supporter and a Hillary supporter, you're in BAD SHAPE.

They are also reporting that they have never had such good turnout on a conference call. Well, I'm signing on just to cost ya'll money!

2008-03-18T15:55:00.002-04:00

This I have to read

From the Briefly Noted section of the New Yorker:

Johnny One-Eye, by Jerome Charyn (Norton, $25.95). Set on Manhattan Island during the Revolutionary War, this leisurely picaresque concerns the adventures of an orphan reared in a brothel who loses an eye when he follows Benedict Arnold into battle. Johnny is a man of both nations; he joins up with Arnold as a secret agent for the British, but his admiration for him [Arnold] is genuine. His feelings are further complicated by his discovery that George Washington--here gentle, intelligent, and tortured by love for the brothel's madam--may be his father, but ultimately his loyalty lies with his true love, an octoroon prostitute named Clara. Charyn skillfully breathes life into historical icons like Arnold, Washington, and Alexander Hamilton, and constructs a careful plot of shifting alliances, roving spies, and double-dealing.

I've long searched for a good historical novel of the American Revolution, but aside from Esther Forbes' classic Johnny Tremaine and Nelson's excellent Hornblower-esque novels of the Revolution at sea, I've never found something I could really embrace. Perhaps this will be the one?

2008-03-05T10:38:00.003-05:00

The Texas Two-Step, from the inside

I've been ridiculously busy these last few weeks as a Precinct Captain for Barack Obama. I'll say I'm disappointed in yesterday's results; I do not understand the appeal Hillary Clinton has for Democrats. Nevertheless, I've been out in force for the last two weeks working for Obama: making phone calls, canvassing, recruiting for my precinct convention at the primary location yesterday, and helping run my precinct's convention and its Obama caucus last night. It was a crazy evening. I do know that there were complaints aired on CNN last night by Clinton's people about irregularities at the conventions, so here's my tale of what went down last night.

I spent the afternoon at my precinct's polling place (oh joy, oh rapture, oh sunburn). My job was basically to hand out information to Obama supporters about the evening's conventions, and to provide some Obama visibility. I got one of the grad students to help out. We were also there to counterbalance the Hillary folks, who were also present. (It was during the afternoon that I learned that the state chairperson for NOW lives in my precinct.) There were representatives of other campaigns--state reps, constables, judges, etc., and some candidates even dropped by to shake hands and kiss babies. It was a friendly gathering of primary opponents--we were all excruciatingly polite to one another and I provided pizza around 5pm. (This was followed by a crazy interlude involving a drunk driver/domestic violence/car crash/assault of a police officer--it facilitated bonding and high blood pressure for everyone.)

At last another of my precinct's captains showed up, and we were able to start preparing for the convention. Two precincts voted in one tiny building, but luckily our convention was moved a few doors down to a Presbyterian church. Our first job, then, was to make sure all of our precinct's people went through the right door. I soon found, though, that some HIllary folks inside who were running the sign in began the sign in BEFORE the last person had voted in the primary. This was, of course, a violation of Texas Democratic Party rules. Though the polls closed at 7, those people waiting in line at 7 were entitled to vote and then take part in the convention, so the convention itself could not start until the last person voted. I sent two Obama supporters in to stop the process but they came back out and reported that they had been unsuccessful. So I stood in the doorway and yelled, "We cannot start the sign in until the last person has voted. We are in violation of Democratic Party rules!" There were other folks there, including Hillary supporters, who also knew the rules, which was lucky for me, because one particularly nasty Hillary supporter (who had already tried to engage me on the subject on Tony Resko) demanded to know my credentials. I responded that I was a registered Democrat, just like her, and that I had been trained in Democratic Party rules, and that she was welcome to call the Harris County party to confirm. She continued to harass me while I prevented the convention from starting. About five minutes later the election judge came to tell us that the last voted had cast a ballot and we could start.

The Clinton folks later asked me if I was going to lodge a protest, and I said no, that the sign in process had stopped, and that I was satisfied. "You're sure?" he asked. "You're not going to make the people who signed in early go to the end of the line?" Since the people who had signed in early had done so in good faith, mostly because someone told them to, I declined to pursue it. I've thought about this since: most of the people who signed in early were also elderly or disabled. In my most cynical heart of hearts, I wonder if the Clinton people wanted me to say yes, send them to the end of the line. This would have allowed them to then say that the Obama campaign hates little old ladies and folks in wheelchairs.

We signed in 257 people. It took almost two hours to accomplish that, so while people waited in line, I made name tags for Obama supporters and explained the convention system impartially to anyone who would listen. (I also talked to two people who claimed to be McCain supporters who had voted Democratic in order to attend a convention for Hillary. Dirty, dirty, dirty.) I was elected Convention secretary--a fun job involving filling out forms and assisting in the vote count. (Let me tell you, deciphering messy handwriting and counting lines on a ballot at ten at night is no picnic!) About halfway through the count a representative of the Hillary campaign turned up wanting to investigate claims that HIllary supporters were prevented from voting in the precinct convention. Someone apparently had called her campaign to complain (dare I suggest--I bet it was the Hillary supporter who questioned my competence and motives and who wanted to talk about Tony Resko). We had to briefly stop counting to inform him that everyone who wanted to vote had voted here without any trouble. The Hillary folks and the Obama folks agreed on that point, so finally he was persuaded to go away. I'm wondering, though, if the brief trouble at our precinct was one of the sources for the CNN stories that Obama supporters were preventing Clinton supporters from voting.

We wrapped things up around 11. I'm an Obama delegate for our precinct, and couldn't be more pleased to do so (although we lost the precinct by a small margin). I thought that overall the process was fair, fun, and interesting. I think the Democrats can be proud that so many people turned out around the state. I used to think that the convention system was antiquated and useless, but I now think it's great to see democracy in action.

Lastly, it seems that Clinton's victories last night made only the smallest of dents in Obama's lead. So, I am still convinced he will be our nominee. And, I couldn't be happier about that!

2008-02-15T15:46:00.001-05:00

New Identity!

I'm an Obamazon. (translation: a staunch woman supporter of Barack Obama.)

2007-12-27T22:23:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays!

The Historianess and HRH Prince Pepper the Crazy Cat wish all readers a happy and joyous holiday season!

Regular posting will resume in the New Year!

2007-12-14T14:32:00.000-05:00

Welcome to HIST 584

(The Early South, 1500-1800, a graduate research seminar.)

HIST 584 The Early South, 1500-1800
Prof. R. Goetz
HUMA 334
rgoetz@rice.edu
Ext. 2886
Office hour T 1-2.

In this research seminar, each student will complete an article-length essay (30-35 pages, including notes) based on original research, on a topic relating to some aspect of the early American South between 1500 and 1800. STUDENTS SHOULD COME WITH A TOPIC IN MIND THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS. (This topic may later change.) The paper should be appropriate for submission to a professional historical journal.

Our initial meetings will discuss some background literature and larger questions about the historiography of the early South—where was the South? Was the South distinctive prior to the American Revolution? If so, what made it distinctive from other North American geographic regions? Later sessions will focus on framing appropriate research topics, then on the research and writing of these topics. Students will later write a prospectus that will include a statement of a TOPIC, the PROBLEM the paper will solve or the QUESTION it will answer, a list of accessible PRIMARY SOURCES, a statement of the paper’s methodology, and a statement of the HISTORIOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE of the work. The prospectus is due in the sixth week of the class, after which the seminar will focus on shared discussions of independent research. Students will be responsible for oral and written critiques of one another’s work throughout the semester. Individual appointments with me will be scheduled throughout the semester. The final weeks of the course will be devoted to discussion of rough drafts and to revision.

No late written work will be accepted. Failure to turn in any written work on the due date will result in a ZERO. In the event of illness or personal emergency, please contact me. Computer and printer problems are not suitable excuses.

Your performance in the seminar will be evaluated on the basis of your paper (60%, with 10% for the prospectus), your other written work, including critiques (20%), and your overall participation in class (20%). All required books are available on reserve.

Monday 7 January: Introduction.
• The Early South—when and where?
• What are you interested in? Come with a topic!
• Library trip—source identification.

Monday 14 January: Topics and Problems in the History of the Early South.
• Discussion of the special issue of the Journal of Southern History, “Redefining and Reassessing the Colonial South” vol. 73, no. 3 (August 2007), 523-670.
• Complete a 2-3 page critique of one of the essays (your choice) but you must read them all.
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 37-74.

Monday 21 January: no class, MLK, Jr. Day.

Tuesday 22 January: Writing a Publishable Paper.
• Susan Scott Parish, “The Female Opossum and the Nature of the New World,” William and Mary Quarterly vol. 54, no. 3 (July 1997), 475-514. (JSTOR)
• Margot Minardi, “The Boston Inoculation Controversy of 1721-1722: An Incident in the History of Race,” William and Mary Quarterly vol. 61, no. 1 (January 2004), 47-76.
• Turn in a list of three possible topics, with an explanation and possible source base.
Each student should meet with me by the end of the week to discuss his research topic.

Monday 28 January: Sources, sources, sources.
• Prepare a 3-5 page report on the body/bodies of primary sources you will be using for your paper. Identify where they are, what they are, and how you will be using them. Give your report to your partner by 5pm Sunday evening, and be sure to email all of them to me.
• E.H. Carr, What is History? 3-35 (handout).

Monday 4 February: Arguments, arguments, arguments.
• Bring a thesis paragraph with you—what is your argument?
• How to write a proposal.
• E.H. Carr, What is History? 113-143.
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 109-182.

Monday 11 February: discussion of formal proposals.
• Oral presentations on proposals 8-10 minutes each.
• Give your proposal to your partner by 5pm Sunday evening, and be sure to email them to me.
• Prepare a 1-2 page critique of your partner’s proposal.

Monday 18 February: no class, meet with me.
• Revised proposals are due to me by Friday 22 February, 12 p.m.

Monday 25 February: From notes to thesis statements—think big, think small.
• Bring your revised thesis paragraph to class with you—make sure you have considered the significance of your argument!
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 183-207.
• Barzun and Graff, The Modern Researcher (6th edition), 101-148.

Monday 3 March: No class, midterm break.

Monday 10 March: Outlines, outlines, outlines.
• Circulate your detailed outlines to your partner and to the class by 5pm Sunday evening. Be sure to email them to me!
• Bring to class a 1-page critique of your partner’s outline.

Monday 17 March: Research Problems and Primary Sources.
• Bring to class one research problem you are having difficulty solving.
• Turn in to me an informal exploration of one of your key primary sources to me (2-3 pages).
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 208-240.

Monday 24 March: No class, meet with me.

Monday 31 March: No class, meetings with me are optional.

Wednesday 2 April: ROUGH DRAFTS ARE DUE IN HARD COPY TO MY OFFICE BY 12 NOON. PICK UP COPIES OF EVERYONE’S DRAFT BY 5pm.

Monday 7 April: Rough draft presentations (this will be a long session, probably from 2-7, with a pizza break)
• Read and prepare to comment on each student’s draft.
• Prepare a 1-2 page critique for your partner.

Monday 14 April: No class, individual meetings with me.

Monday 21 April: The Fine Art of Revising.
• Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 263-282.
• Barzun and Graff, The Modern Researcher, 6th Edition, 193-234, 257-274.
• The Chicago Manual of Style Common Errors handout.

Monday 5 May: FINAL PAPERS DUE TO MY OFFICE IN HARD COPY BY 5 PM.

2007-12-13T13:55:00.000-05:00

Welcome to HIST 265

I've taught this course--North America in the Age of Revolution--before. (I didn't blog that syllabus.) I've made quite a few changes to it, including eliminating one of the writing assignments. Though I generally don't approve of eliminating writing, this will allow me to put more emphasis on research process for the students' term papers, and hopefully they won't leave it until the end of the semester if they are less burdened with other writing assignments.

I've also added a test and made the midterm an in-class exam. The test is towards the beginning of the semester and will cover basic facts (names, dates, events) of the Revolution. I'm hoping students can get a handle on the who, what, and when so we can then spend the rest of the semester in close readings of several important secondary works (Bailyn, Fischer, Frey, and Countryman) and many important primary sources and shorter secondary readings. I haven't tried teaching a class quite in this manner before, so this is something of an experiment.

HIST 265 North America in the Age of Revolution, 1763-1804

Dr. R. Goetz
Office hour: T 1-2 and by appointment
HUMA 334
Ext. 2886
rgoetz@rice.edu

Required texts:

• Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard University Press reprint 1992)
• Edward Countryman, ed., What did the Constitution Mean to Early Americans? (Bedford/St. Martins, 1999)
• David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Sylvia R. Frey, Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton University Press, 1991)
• James Kirby Martin, ed., Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin (Brandywine Press, 1999)
• Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776 (Penguin Great Ideas, 2006)
• Gordon Wood, The American Revolution: A History (Modern Library, 2003)

A copy of each of these books is available on reserve, or you may purchase them in our bookstore (or online if you prefer—be sure you get the right editions). I will also be handing out various primary sources in class. Make sure you keep these—I suspect some might turn up on exams. J

Grading:
Test………………………10%
Short Paper………………15%
Midterm………………….15%
Term Paper Proposal…….10%
Term Paper………………25%
Final Exam………………25%

Expectations:

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick, or if you have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Computer and printer problems are not a suitable excuse for late papers. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave.

I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!). If you send me an emailed paper, that paper will receive a grade of ZERO.

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper. (You may of course study together for tests and exams.)

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Monday, January 7 Course introduction: What was the Revolution about?
W 1/9 Interpreting the American Revolution, Part I
*Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (1805), 3-16; Charles Beard, The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, xli-liii (1913); and Charles M. Andrews, “The American Revolution: An Interpretation” American Historical Review, vol. 31, no. 2 (January 1926), 219-232. (handouts)
F 1/11 Interpreting the American Revolution, Part II
*Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 14, no. 1 (January 1957), 3-15; Jesse Lemisch, “The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up” in Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History; and T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising” Journal of American History vol. 84, no. 1 (June 1997), 13-39. (handouts)
Monday January 14 Wood, American Revolution, 1-44
W 1/16 Wood, American Revolution, 46-109
F 1/18 Wood, American Revolution, 113-166
Monday January 21 NO CLASS (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day)
W 1/23 TEST
F 1/25 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, v-xvi, 1-54
Monday, January 28 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 55-159
W 1/30 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 160-198
Friday February 1 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 198-246
*Thomas Fitch, et al. Reasons Why the British Colonies in America Should Not Be Charged With Internal Taxes (1764) (handout)
Monday February 4 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 246-320
W 2/6 LIBRARY EXERCISE/FIRST PAPER DUE
F 2/8 Paine, Common Sense, 3-24
Monday February 11 Paine, Common Sense, 24-46
W 2/13 Paine, Common Sense, 46-78
F 2/15 COMMON SENSE DEBATE
Monday February 18 MIDTERM EXAM
W 2/20 Fischer, Washington’s Crossing, 1-65
F 2/22 Fischer, WC, 66-114, Joseph Plumb Martin, vii-xviii, 1-64
Monday February 25 Fischer, WC, 115-205, JPM, 65-121
W 2/27 Fischer, WC, 206-262, JPM, 123-145
F 2/29 Fischer, WC, 263-289, JPM, 145-168
LIST OF THREE POSSIBLE TOPICS DUE
March 1-March 9 SPRING BREAK, NO CLASS
Monday March 10 Fischer, Washington’s Crossing, 290-379
W 3/12 Who were the Loyalists?
*Robert M. Calhoun, “Civil, Revolutionary, or Partisan: The Loyalists and the Nature of the War for Independence,” in The Loyalist Perception and Other Essays (on reserve)
F 3/14 The Indians’ Revolution
*Colin Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, Chapter Three (Stockbridge: The New England Patriots); Chapter Nine (Cuscowilla: Seminole Loyalism and Seminole Genesis); Chapter Ten (The Peace That Brought no Peace)
Monday March 17 Frey, Water from the Rock, 3-80
W 3/19 Frey, Water from the Rock, 81-142
F 3/21 Frey, Water from the Rock, 142-205
Monday March 24 Frey, Water from the Rock, 205-332
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE
W 3/26 Visit from Dr. Byrd
F 3/28 State Constitutions
*The Pennsylvania and Massachusetts state constitutions (handout)
Monday March 31 The Articles of Confederation
PAPER PROPOSALS DUE
W April 2 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 69-88
*Alan Taylor, “Agrarian Resistance in Post-Revolutionary New England,” in Robert Gross, ed., In Debt to Shays (on reserve)
F 4/4 NO CLASS SPRING RECESS
Monday April 7 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 1-29
*Gary Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 69-122 (on reserve)
W 4/9 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 33-68
F 4/11 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 89-112
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 321-379
Monday April 14 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 113-140
Linda Kerber, Liberty’s Daughters, 256-299 (on reserve)
W 4/16 Countryman, What Did the Constitution Mean? 141-163
F 4/18 Federalists, 10, 84, and 85 (handout)
Monday April 21 The Haitian Revolution
W 4/23 What was the Revolution About?
FINAL PAPERS DUE

2007-11-20T15:29:00.000-05:00

Cliopatria Awards, 2007

Yes, dear readers, it is that time of the year again! It is time for all good readers of the history blogosphere to make nominations for the best history writing on the blogs. This year I am chair of the committees judging Best Post and Best Individual Blog. My fellow judges are Elizabeth Klaczynski of The Sotweed Factor and Paul Harvey of Religion and U.S. History.

You may make your nominations for Best Post and Best Individual Blog in the comments here or over at the Cliopatria Awards nominations page (there are four other categories as well!) Please consult the Awards page for all the rules!

2007-11-03T08:53:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Meow! Mom's gone to some Southern Historical Association or something like that, and she's left me to my own devices! I think I'll go unroll the toilet paper or something like that. That's what Mom gets for abandoning me!

2007-09-25T16:10:00.001-04:00

Where Teaching and Research Meet

(Or: wherein the Historianess gives a quiz, is disappointed, and then works on her own research.)

Yesterday I gave a quiz in my survey class. I like quizzes; they're a good way to measure how well students are picking up basic facts and patterns, and they're a good way to see both if the students are reading, and how they are doing the reading.

One of the easier questions was "Name two Puritan colonies." Based on my notes, they had three options there: Massachusetts Bay, New Haven (I would accept Connecticut as an answer), and Providence Island. I figured some students would answer with Plymouth or Rhode Island, which would give me an opportunity to remind them that the Pilgrims were Separatists, and that Puritans considered theologically-liberal Rhode Island to be a den of iniquity.

Instead, about two-thirds of the class answered with "Jamestown" or "Virginia."

ARGH! I'm sure that somewhere in a lecture I did talk extensively about how Massachusetts was a Puritan colony and Virginia was *not* a Puritan colony.

So after finishing my grading, I went home to work on the footnotes for my conference paper A Puritan Virginia? Rethinking English Identities in the Early Chesapeake, 1607-1644.

(Insert ironic comment here.)

2007-09-07T18:03:00.000-04:00

Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007

The children's fantasy writer Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, has died.

A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite books when I was little. I love the scene towards the end, when Meg is pondering how to free her little brother Charles Wallace from the clutches of the Big Brother-like creature IT, and she realizes that all she must do is tell him she loves him, and mean it. It's a wonderful, emotional book about the trascendent power of love in the face of evil. And it's also about instantaneous travel through time and space, if that's your thing.

2007-08-31T14:59:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Ah, rest and relaxation. After a difficult night of destroying Mom's stuff, I settle in for a long daytime nap in my specially constructed cat chair. Mom is really upset about her fountain pen, whatever that is. I didn't mean to break it. But she should have played with me, rather than leaving me to find my own fun.

2007-08-29T15:24:00.000-04:00

R.I.P. O Fountain Pen!

I received a beautiful Waterman fountain pen for my sixteenth birthday. Since then the pen has been my constant companion: I guarded it all through high school; I brought it to college with me, where I flowed debate rounds and wrote a first draft of my senior thesis in elegant style; I brought it to graduate school, where it assisted me in making notes on the many, many books I read, and I have in file folders a complete fountain pen draft of each of my dissertation chapters.

I had my pen out last night as I was writing a lecture. I have up the ghost around 10 and went to bed, leaving the pen out on my desk.

Now His Royal Highness Prince Pepper has been disgusted with me for the last few days. I've been so busy with the start of the school year and all the work that entails that I have not, I regret, had much time to spend dragging around a bunch of feathers on a stick for HRH. This is an activity upon which we usually spend a half an hour every evening before I go to bed. Pepper was clearly angry at my lack of attention last night, for during the night he cleared my desk: he knocked off the papers, pens, coasters, books, articles, flashlight, and telephone. The only items remaining on my desk were my laptop and the desk lamp. Alas, on the floor this morning I found the battered corpse of my fountain pen. I'm not sure if the impact with the floor caused it to crack, or if Pepper took out additional frustrations on it after he had pawed it off the desk, but there you have it. I discovered it in a small puddle of (appropriately) red ink, looking like the mortal remains of a soldier abandoned on a battlefield.

I'm not sure how I'll write the Amazing Mr. Book without my fountain pen. I'm very distressed. And Pepper is...well, he's in the dog house for sure.

2007-08-24T12:21:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

If you find this picture confusing, and you can't tell where I'm hanging out, maybe this will help:

What can I say, I love high places! Mom is resigned to me hanging out up here. I know this because she put a cushion up there. How nice!

2007-08-20T12:19:00.000-04:00

Monday Kitten Blog

This is Tabitha (although I think her new family is going to give her a different name!). I trapped her in my backyard after feeding her for about two and a half weeks. The vet said she was probably 8-10 weeks old, which means she was probably on her own from the age of 4 or 5 weeks. I found no evidence of a mamma cat or any siblings, so I imagine she was tossed out of a moving vehicle (apparently a popular method in Houston for dumping unwanted kittens and puppies).

At any rate, it only took her about 24 hours to figure out I was the person with the food. She warmed up to me almost immediately, and developed a love of snuggling. As soon as her ear mites were under control, I let her play with Pepper. Pepper was very patient (although I don't think he wants another cat in the house).

On Saturday evening, Tabitha left for her forever home with my friend Rebecca. I'm sure she's going to have a marvelous life!

2007-08-17T16:09:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Here I am helping Mom work. My assistance comes chiefly in the form of sitting on her notes and typing my own comments onto the computer. Last night I typed 7777777777777666tr. I think that was enormously helpful.

You see, I'm trying to remind Mom how indispensable I am. She has another creature in the house, a little kitten she trapped outside. The kitten lives in the bathroom at the moment but I'm afraid she's going to displace me. So here's my plea: Mom! Get rid of the interloper! Now! Meow!

2007-08-15T16:16:00.000-04:00

Welcome to History 117: America to 1848

Here's my first stab at teaching a survey class. I'm not using a textbook, although I've made one available as a security blanket for students who want one. I've formatted it so that I lecture at least twice a week, there are seven classes dedicated exclusively to discussion, and in my own planning I've built in some flexible time for discussion of relevant primary sources. Wish me luck!

HIST 117 America to 1848
E Pluribus Unum? In Uno Plures?

E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) is the motto of the United States, but in some ways In Uno Plures (many in one) is a subtly different yet perhaps more accurate rendering of American history and of the American people. Students will consider the appropriateness of each phrase while learning how historians think about important questions and major themes in American history. This course examines the America’s colonial beginnings, the founding of the nation we now call the United States, and the early years of the Republic, as the United States sought to expand and cover the entire continent. The course will conclude at the end of the war between the United States and Mexico, and consider what it meant to be an American in 1848.

Grading:

1st Short Paper…………………..10%
2nd Short Paper………………….10%
3rd Short Paper…………………..20%
Occasional quizzes……………...20%
Midterm………………………...15%
Final Exam……………………..25%

The first short paper will deal with the first two primary sources we read for the class (Cabeza de Vaca and William Bradford). The second paper will be a book review of either The Unredeemed Captive or Pox Americana. The third paper will involve your analysis of a portion of the online documents collection America’s Historical Newspapers. You will receive more detailed assignments for each paper later.

You’ll see in the syllabus that seven times in the semester we have a class period especially dedicated to “discussion.” In these sessions, you will be asked to participate in an in-depth analysis of our readings. Please come prepared: this means you must not only finish the reading but also spend some time thinking about it. Come to class ready to ask questions and make arguments!

The occasional quizzes will be unscheduled. They will cover your reading. Thus it is a good idea to make sure you stay on top of each week’s readings, even if we don’t have a discussion scheduled for that week.

Required Readings:
∑ Alvar Nuñez Cabeva de Vaca, Castaways (California, 1993)
∑ William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (McGraw-Hill, 1981)
∑ John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive (Vintage, 1995)
∑ Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana (Hill and Wang, 2001)
∑ Adam Rothman, Slave Country (Harvard, 2005)
∑ Elliott West, The Contested Plains (Kansas, 1998)

A copy of each of these books is available on reserve, or you may purchase them in our bookstore (or online if you prefer—be sure you get the right editions). I will also be handing out various primary sources in class. Make sure you keep these—I suspect some might turn up on exams. J You’ve probably noticed that I don’t use a textbook. I generally think textbooks are a huge waste of students’ money, so I don’t assign them. However, I have put a standard American history textbook on reserve at the library. If you feel like you need a refresher course on names, dates, places, facts, and figures, feel free to check it out. Nothing from the textbook will be discussed in class or on exams.

Expectations:

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick, or if you have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Week 1: Reading, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, xv-xxx, 1-45
Monday August 27: Introduction
Wednesday August 29: Native North America
Friday August 31: The Columbian Exchange

Week 2: Reading, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, 47-127.
Monday September 3: Labor Day (No Class)
Wednesday September 5: Settling North America
Friday September 7: Discussion: Castaways

Week 3: Reading, William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, chapters 9-15, 27-32.
Monday September 10: English North America
Wednesday September 12: Tobacco and Furs
Friday September 14: Discussion: Of Plymouth Plantation

Week 4: Reading, John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, 1-166.
Monday September 17: From Servitude to Slavery, part I
First short essay due by the beginning of class, Monday 17 September
Wednesday September 19: From Servitude to Slavery, part II
Friday September 21: Essay discussion

Week 5: Reading, John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, 167-252.
Monday September 24: Imperial Clashes
Wednesday September 26: The Seven Years’ War (1754-1763)
Friday September 28: Discussion: The Unredeemed Captive

Week 6: Reading, Fenn, Pox Americana, ix-166.
Monday October 1: Frustrated Empire
Wednesday October 3: Independence and War
Friday October 5: What Independence Meant

Week 7: Reading, Fenn, Pox Americana, 167-277.
Monday October 8: Republic
Wednesday October 10: Discussion: Pox Americana
Friday October 12: MIDTERM EXAM (Dr. Goetz in Nova Scotia)

Week 8: Reading, Rothman, Slave Country, ix-70.
Monday, October 15: Midterm Recess (no class)
Wednesday October 17: Of Factions
Friday October 19: Another Revolution? The United States in 1800

Week 9: Reading, Rothman, Slave Country, 71-163.
Monday October 22: Jefferson’s America
Wednesday October 24: The War of 1812
Friday October 26: The Cotton Frontier and the Old South

Week 10: Reading, Rothman, Slave Country, 164-224.
Monday October 28: Discussion: Slave Country
Wednesday October 30: No Class (Dr. Goetz in Richmond, VA)
Friday November 1: No Class (Dr. Goetz in Richmond, VA)
Second Short Essay due to the History Office by 4pm, Friday, November 1

Week 11: Reading, Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, pages TBA.
Monday November 4: Jackson’s America
Wedneday November 6: From Awakening to Reform
Friday November 8: Discussion: Democracy in America

Week 12: Reading, West. The Contested Plains, xv-xxiv, 1-62.
Monday November 11: Jackson and Removal
Wednesday November 13: Urban America
Friday November 15: Immigrant America

Week 13: Reading, West, The Contested Plains, 63-170.
Monday November 18: Industrializing America
Wednesday November 20: Slavery and Freedom
Friday November 22: No Class (Thanksgiving)

Week 14: Reading, West, The Contested Plains, 171-271.
Monday November 26: A Texas Revolution, and Statehood
Wednesday November 28: War with Mexico
Friday November 30: The Great Plains, Gold, and Indians

Week 15: Reading, West, The Contested Plains, finish.
Monday December 3: Discussion, The Contested Plains
Wednesday December 5: America in 1848: E Pluribus Unum? In Uno Plures?
Friday December 7: Conclusions, and final exam information.
Third Short Essay due at the beginning of class, Friday, December 7

2007-08-07T15:41:00.000-04:00

Welcome to History 465!

I'm really excited about this syllabus. I think Jamestown and all the historical issues surrounding it are fascinating, and I'm looking forward to exploring them with students.

History 465: From Roanoke to Jamestown: English Colonization of North America, 1550-1650

The first English settlements in North America—at Roanoke in the 1580s and in Jamestown starting in 1607—are the stuff of myth. Who hasn’t heard of the Lost Colonists of Roanoke, the triumphal settling of Jamestown, and Pocahontas saving John Smith from a grisly execution? The trouble with myths, though, is that they usually ignore or distort historical evidence, and they obscure the actual experiences of the people involved in iconic events. In this course, we’ll read many original sources as well as historians’ interpretations of them in order 1) to rethink those myths, and 2) to answer important questions about English ideologies of colonization. We’ll also think about how we should understand Indian responses to the English invasion, and how Jamestown should be commemorated. Overall, this course will be governed by two overriding questions: what happened at Jamestown? And, why does Jamestown matter?

Required Readings:
∑ Karen Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, 2nd ed. (2006)
∑ Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia Britannia (1590)
∑ James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (2005)
∑ Rountree, Powhatan, Pocahontas, Opechancanough: Three Lives Changed by Jamestown (2006)
∑ Edward Wright Haile, ed., Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony (1998)

Grading:
1st short writing assignment…………..10%
2nd short writing assignment………….20%
Proposal and presentation…………….10%
Final writing assignment……………...40%
Participation…………………………..20%

Please note the meaning of “participation” is not showing up to class and sitting like a lump on a log. Your presence in class requires active involvement in our discussions: asking questions of the readings, commenting on readings, and responding to your classmates’ ideas. Your participation grade also includes the class session in which you lead our discussion (we’ll talk more about that as soon as enrollment is stabilized).

A note on absences: Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick or have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, please provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

The two short writing assignments will be 3-5 pages in length, and will respond to visual materials we discuss in class. The final writing assignment, for which you will also write a short proposal and give a short presentation in class, will be on a topic of your choosing and will be 12-15 pages in length. We’ll discuss that in greater detail later in the semester.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Tsenacommacah and its Environs, 1550
Tuesday August 28 Introduction and syllabus
Thursday August 31:
∑ Helen Tanner, “The Land and Water Communication Systems of the Southeastern Indians” in Waselkov, Wood, and Hatley, eds., Powhatan’s Mantle, 27-42 (on reserve).
∑ John F. Scarry, “The Late Prehistoric Southeast” in Hudson and Tesser, eds., The Forgotten Centuries, 17-35 (on reserve).

Ajacán, 1567-1571
Tuesday September 4:
∑ Lewis and Loomie, Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 3-64 (on reserve).
∑ Letters of Quirós, Segura, and Rogel in Lewis and Loomie, Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 85-122 (on reserve).

London, 1584
Thursday September 6
∑ Richard Hakluyt, Discourse on Western Planting (1584) (on reserve).
Everyone will read the introduction (xv-xxxi); we will divvy up the other 21 chapters for discussion.

Virginia, 1585-1589
Tuesday September 11
∑ Hakluyt, Discourse of Western Planting, conclude.
∑ Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, 1-85.
Thursday September 13:
∑ Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia Britannia (1590), read the English version and examine the engravings.
∑ Kupperman, Roanoke, 87-178.
Tuesday September 18:
∑ Hariot, A Briefe and True Report, conclude.
∑ Kim Sloan, A New World, 51-64. Look carefully at the watercolors, 93-147 (on reserve).
Thursday September 20: Why did Roanoke matter?
First Short Writing Assignment due

Jamestown, 1607
Tuesday September 25
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 1-72.
∑ Gabriel Archer, “A Relation,” in Jamestown Narratives, 101-123.
∑ George Percy, “Observations Gathered out of a Discourse,” in Jamestown Narratives, 85-100.
Evening movie: Nightmare at Jamestown
Thursday September 27
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 73-130.
Tuesday October 2
∑ John Smith, “A True Relation,” in Jamestown Narratives, 142-182.
∑ Carville Earle, “Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia,” in Tate and Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century, 96-125 (on reserve).

A Kindler, Gentler Colonialism? Jamestown, 1608-1609
Thursday October 4
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 131-156.
∑ William Strachey, A Historie of Travail into Verginia Britannia (1610), in Jamestown Narratives, 563-689. (We’ll divide this one by chapter.)

The First Anglo-Powhatan War, 1609-1614
Tuesday October 9:
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 157-224.
∑ J. Frederick Fausz, “ ‘An Abundance of Blood Shed on Both Sides:’ Virginia’s First Indian War, 1609-1614” VMHB 98 (1990), 3-56. (on reserve)
∑ George Percy, “A True Relation,” in Jamestown Narratives, 497-519.
∑ Thomas Dale, “Lawes Divine, Morall, and Martiall, in Jamestown Narratives, 27-37.

Tsenacommacah, 1607-1614
Thursday October 11: (Dr. Goetz in Nova Scotia)
∑ Watch Pocahontas Revealed.
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 225-290.
∑ John Rolfe, “The Pocahontas Letter,” in Jamestown Narratives, 850-856.
Tuesday October 16: No Class, Fall Recess
Thursday October 18:
∑ Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Lives Changed by Jamestown, xi-175.
Second short writing assignment due

Détente, 1614-1618
Tuesday October 23:
∑ Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough, 175-238.
∑ Karen Robertson, “Pocahontas at the Masque” in Signs (Spring 1996), 551-583 (JSTOR).

The Tobacco Revolution: Englishmen at Jamestown, 1614-1622
Thursday October 25:
∑ The Letters of Richard Frethorne (handout in class)
∑ Emily Rose, “The Politics of Pathos: Richard Frethorne’s Letters Home” in Appelbaum and Sweet, eds., Envisioning an English Empire, 92-108 (on reserve).
∑ Peter C. Mancall, “Tales Tobacco Told in Sixteenth-Century Europe” Environmental History vol. 9, no. 4 (via History Cooperative).
Tuesday October 30
∑ Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 108-195 (on reserve).
∑ Engel Sluiter, “New Light on the ‘20.Odd Negroes’ Arriving in Virginia, August 1619” WMQ vol. 54, no. 2 (1997), 395-398 (JSTOR).
∑ John Thornton, “The African Experience of the ’20. And Odd Negroes’ Arriving in Virginia in 1619” WMQ vol. 55, no. 3 (1998), 421-434 (JSTOR).

The Second Anglo-Powhatan War, 1622-1644
Thursday November 1 (Dr. Goetz in Richmond, VA)
∑ Watch documentary on Martin’s Hundred
∑ Edward Waterhouse, “A Declaration of the State of the Colony…” (London, 1622) (EEBO).
∑ “Chauco,” in the Dictionary of Virginia Biography (handout).
Tuesday November 6
∑ Ian K. Steele, Warpaths, pages TBA (on reserve).
∑ Letter of William C. Capp, Records of the Virginia Company of London (handout).

Life in Tobacco Virginia, 1625-1660
Thursday November 8—Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich!
Tuesday November 13
∑ Selections from Hening’s Statutes (handout).
∑ The Case of Alice Boyse (handout).

Towards an English Tidewater, 1644-1660
Thursday November 15
∑ McCartney, “Cockacoeske, Queen of Pamunkey: Diplomat and Suzeraine” in Waselkov, Wood, and Hatley, eds., Powhatan’s Mantle, 243-266 (on reserve).
Tuesday November 21: final project presentations
Thursday November 23—No Class THANKSGIVING RECESS

What Happened at Jamestown? Why does Jamestown Matter?
Tuesday November 27
∑ John Smith, The Generall Historie, in Jamestown Narratives, pages TBA.
∑ Robert Beverley, A History and Present State of Virginia (handout).
Thursday November 29
∑ Rasmussen and Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend, entire (on reserve).
∑ Pocahontas plate
∑ Custalow Linwood, The True Story of Pocahontas, pages TBA (on reserve).
∑ Fahrenthold, “A Dead Indian Language is Brought Back to Life” (handout).
Tuesday December 4
∑ Explore the Jamestown 2007 website: http://www.jamestown2007.org/
∑ Watch the ad (URL tba).

The New World, The Movie
Thursday December 6: food, movie, discussion.

2007-07-20T08:34:00.001-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

My grandparents have new bookcases...it's a good thing Mom taught me to like books! Here I am keeping the books company.

It isn't as high as I would like...I really like a high perch, but still, this is pretty nice.

2007-07-06T09:39:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Lately I've taken to climbing up onto the dividing wall between the living room and the bedroom. It's really neat up there but I'm scared to jump down so Mom has to lift me down. She really doesn't like it when I go up there, but I can't resist it! It's so neat there! Last night I got up there in the middle of the night and howled really loudly until Mom woke up. She took this picture of me before she got me down.

2007-07-05T21:43:00.000-04:00

Double Tagged...

...for the 8 Random Facts Meme by PhDinHistory and John at By the Bayou (and I think someone else did also, but I can't remember!). I'm not going to tag anyone because everyone I read has already been tagged...but I'll do the meme! Here are eight random facts about me:

I don't drink caffeinated beverages. I really love coffee but I find my stomach doesn't really love it. I drink a lot of herbal teas.

When I was little I wanted to be a palaeontologist and I was obsessed with dinosaurs. I'm still interested in fossils of all kinds.

When I was in high school I wanted to be an equine veterinarian.

I have an extensive collection of My Little Ponies. I liked them better than Barbies.

My favorite movie *ever* is The Great Race, with Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, and Jack Lemmon.

I've had short hair since I was fifteen. I hate having hair--the shorter the better!

I got my ears pierced when I was six, on the same day that I met Geraldine Ferraro (who was running for Vice President).

My favorite book *ever* is Jane Eyre.

2007-07-04T08:51:00.000-04:00

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

Read it here.

Pay special attention to the list of the King's many tyrannies. Anything sound familiar?

Also, for your Independence Day reading pleasure: Bill Fowler's Boston Globe column "Lives Lost for Freedom." It contains a description of the suffering of Revolutionary War soldiers, and a lovely quote from Washington's Newburgh Address (which prevented the onset of a military coup against Congress in 1783).

2007-07-03T15:00:00.000-04:00

An odd factoid for an odd afternoon

I'm wrapping up in the Library of Virginia; I have only a few days left and I'm busy solving small problems. One thing I'm thinking about is a manuscript I recently read on microfilm (Bodleian Library Class Tanner MSS 447, if you must know) and transcribed. It is entitled An Act for the Baptizing and Better Ordering of Negroes & Infidals in the King of Englands Plantations in America. Naturally, I was very excited by this find, which from context appears to be a draft bill originating in Parliament. It is, however, undated. The Virginia Colonial Records Project surveyors gave it a date of 1619, but this makes no sense: there was no sitting Parliament in 1619. James I's most recent Parliament at that point (the Addled Parliament of 1614) had been dissolved after only a few months, and James would not call another Parliament until 1621. So 1619 is out.

So I'm trying to date this thing, and in my notes I found reference to the Commonwealth Parliament that Cromwell called in 1653 after he dissolved the Rump (the vestigial remains of the Long Parliament). One of this Parliament's members, an MP from London, was a lay preacher of varied and odd theology named Praise-God Barebone. Praise-God's brother had an even more unfortunate name: "If-Christ-had-not-died-for-you-you-had-been-damned Barebone." Folks apparently couldn't get their tongues around that name and instead referred to him as Damned Barebone. (Couldn't his parents have gone easy on him and named him Habbakuk? or Zerubbabel? You know, something nice and easy.) The 1653 Parliament was thus known as Barebones Parliament.

Ah, English radical religion of the seventeenth century. Where would we be without it?

Of course my draft bill couldn't have originated in the Barebones Parliament. The draft clearly indicates this is a bill originating from the King-in-Parliament, and in 1653 there was no king. I personally suspect that the draft comes from Charles II's first Parliament, which sat from 1661-1679. The bill itself references slavery, which did not legally exist in 1619, and a bill from that Parliament would be contemporaneous with colonial legislation about the baptism of slaves.

This was all a way for me to tell my readers all about Praise-God Barebone and his unfortunately named brother. :)

2007-07-02T09:44:00.000-04:00

Welcome to History Carnival #54

It being summer, which as historians know is not a season of rest but rather a season of research trips and conferences, I'm sure many readers of the History Carnival are sitting in archives surrounded by piles of material, which they must make sense of in order to fulfill their summer writing quotas. Or at least, I'm sitting here in Virginia surrounded by a pile of material, trying to make sense of it. Sometimes, though, there is just no rhyme or reason. For History Carnival #54 I've gone through more than forty nominated posts. I couldn't use them all, but I've tried to group some posts on common themes. So here it is, in all its carnie glory, with topics ranging from mummies to poo, from murders to mayhem. Enjoy!

Just to put you in that archival mood, here's Dictatorship of the Air blogging from a research trip to Russia.

Judith Weingarten puts the discovery (rediscovery?) of Hatshepsut in context.

Manan Ahmed writes about outsiders in the East India Company, using the character of William Moorcroft (veterinary surgeon, explorer, surveyor, and judge of fine horseflesh) as a way of thinking about British imperialism in the early nineteenth century. While we're on the topic of horses and vets, here's an odd case, of, er, horse witchcraft.

Walking the Berkshires shows off a certificate his great-grandmother received for supporting the Francis Scott Key homestead--the house was torn down in 1947. In another problem of historical memory, Clio Bluestocking focuses not on historic preservation but instead on the historical myths surrounding the Underground Railroad. Rob MacDougall takes on similar issues in this post about the role of amateur historians in how the public thinks about history. At Frog in a Well: China, Alan Baumler comments on historic preservation and historical reconstruction (?) in China.

Natalie Bennett discovers the remarkable fourteenth-century life of Margery Kempe, pilgrim, writer, and, dare I suggest, Historianess?

Greg Afinogenov discovers the eighteenth-century death of one Danvers Osborne, depressive, flatulent, and governor of New York for five days. But was it really suicide?

American Presidents Blog notes the origins of the phrase "pin money" and indicates that First Ladies actually have a pin money trust fund. Who knew?

Poop the Book presents a history of sewers. Apparently, what we have now is not optimum for the removal of human poo. Again, who knew? In case you missed it, here is Slate's tour of London's sewers.

Aadvarchaeology quotes Keith Windschuttle on postmodernism, receives many (some hostile) comments, and then clarifies his own position on culture. (This post is an excellent window into some hot debates in archaeology and anthropology that do affect how historians think about the history of colonized groups.)

Konrad Lawson visits the Museum of Natural History's "Hall of Asian Peoples" and finds it wanting.

From the land Down Under, Disability Studies has a post recognizing the 140th birthday of deaf balladeer Henry Lawson.

Also on music (and architecture), Mary Beard comments on some operatic ironies.

Unitary Moonbat at Progressive Historians takes on another controversy with a history of anti-immigrant walls (they just don't seem to work! yet we're building one!).

James Livingston, also at Progressive Historians, invites historiographical controversy with this take on Abraham Lincoln.

Frumteacher comments on teaching history
through old films at Frumteacher, and Owen Miller at Frog in a Well: Korea comments on the rising popularity of historical fiction in Korea.

Owen Miller also has a stunning 18-part series on the 20th anniversary of the 1987 pro-democracy protests in Korea. See the whole series here.

Historical Resources:
on ancient literature, at Trivium Pursuit;
new web resources on being poor in Victorian England, at Victorian Peeper;
Kevin Levin of Civil War Memory offers up a reading list on Civil War Memory. Boy, do I have some catching up to do.
Natalie Bennett reviews the new exhibition of John White's sixteenth-century American drawings. If you have a chance to see them when they tour the US, you absolutely should. Or, you can view some online at Virtual Jamestown.

And, some conference blogging for any other self-described conference geeks out there. Jon Dresner guestposts at Chapati Mystery on the Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast conference.

As my concluding remark, I leave you with the Patahistorian's LOLFoucault. That ought to leave all you carnies giggling for the rest of the day!

The next History Carnival will be held at Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory on or around August 1.

2007-07-02T07:33:00.001-04:00

All your internet are belong to us!

Sorry, folks! My corporate overlords got their wires crossed and my cable internet was shut off at midnight June 30. I spent some quality time yelling into the phone yesterday and this morning things are back up and running. So, History Carnival #54 to appear shortly before noon today. My apologies for the delay!

2007-06-30T09:42:00.000-04:00

I passed!

Not only did I pass, but I passed well, with a B+. The quiz doesn't tell you which questions you missed but I suspect I missed physics-type questions and I answered correctly on biology, chemistry, astronomy, and geology. Physics is the only science I never took, either in high school or college.

2007-06-29T18:23:00.001-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Here I am, relaxing. Mom's not relaxing, though, she's working really hard. She's transcribing this messy document from 1619. Cats never work that hard. Geez. She wishes to remind you all that History Carnival #54 will be here on Sunday. Send in your nominations here!

2007-06-28T09:41:00.000-04:00

Help from the War Historian

Last fall, I taught a course on the American Revolution. Now I know aspects of the Revolution very well; I've read extensively in issues leading up to the Revolution, in great debates regarding the intellectual origins of the Revolution, in social issues and outcomes of the Revolution, in constitutional issues before, during, and after the Revolution, in the role of slavery, slaves, and free blacks in the Revolution, the participation of Indians on both sides of the conflict, the role of women, the Revolution's Atlantic aspects, and its effects on France, Haiti, and Spanish America. So, I know a lot about the Revolution.

But of course the Revolution was also a war. You'll note that my areas of expertise on the Revolution don't include the war. So, I found myself reading up. I ended up assigning the memoirs of Joseph Plumb Martin as well as the relevant chapters in Middlekauf's The Glorious Cause--the former I intended as a look at the experiences of an ordinary soldier and the latter as a detailed discussion of various campaigns and battles. It was difficult, to say the least, and I had some students who styled themselves experts on military history (these guys knew things like thesizes of guns and the types of uniforms). So I finally had to email the good Professor Grimsley and ask about some of the details.

This led to a dialogue on why professional historians seem to know so little military history. I suggested to Professor Grimsley that I wasn't 1) willfully ignorant, or 2) hostile towards military history. My own training is in social and cultural history, with a generous dab of intellectual and political history. Military history just never came up in my graduate training and now that I'm teaching, military history hangs around my neck like an albatross.

Professor Grimsley has now asked me some questions about how a trained historian who is largely unfamiliar with problems and issues in military history might learn:

In what courses would you use military history?

What is the optimum way to learn the material?

What would you like to take away from exposure to military history?

don't

Over to you, Mark!

2007-06-27T15:30:00.000-04:00

A good baptism story

I was paging though Bishop Meade's remarkable and remarkably annoying two-volume antiquarian account of the Church of England in Virginia this afternoon when I came across this story in a footnote. Bishop Meade sets the scene by briefly describing a raid on Indians in Maryland led by Captain Giles Brent in 1675 in retaliation for the gory murder of an English settler on the frontier. A young boy, possibly the son of a chief, was captured.

"Of him a circumstance is related, showing that there was not only religion in those days, but superstition also. The boy lying in bed for ten days, as one dead, his eyes and mouth shut but his body warm, Captain Brent, who was a Papist, said that he was bewitched, and that he had heaerd baptism was a remedy for it, and proposed the trial. Colonel Mason answered that there was not minister in many miles. Captain Brent replied, 'Your clerk, Mr. Dobson, may do that office;' which was accordingly done by the Church of England Liturgy. Colonel Mason and Captain Brent stood godfathers, and Mrs. Mason godmother. The end of the story is, that the child, being eight years old, soon recovered."*

Now I've collected all sorts of documents about Maryland's Catholics, England's Protestants, and the Indians (with a few Quakers mixed in) in the years between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution. It was a dangerous time for Protestants, who were besieged by heretics and heathens on all sides (or so they thought) and the end result was often forays into Maryland by rogue militia captains from Virginia to attack Catholics, Quakers, Indians, or anyone suspected of being Catholic, Quaker, or Indian. Maryland protested, and Virginia sometimes apologized. But this episode is one I've never run into: it's remarkably detailed, especially in terms of the liturgy used and the presence of godparents, and it seems to affirm a continuing belief among English Catholics and Anglicans on the efficacy of baptism as an exorcism. I would love to know more, and to read the actual source without Bishop Meade's commentary attached, but alas, like most nineteenth-century antiquarians, he does not indicate his source. How frustrating! I can affirm that it appeared in no county court records, and it isn't in the Calendar of State Papers. There are some official Virginia records that might contain this anecdote, but my real fear is that it is in Maryland's records, in which case finding it will become more difficult.

Incidentally, Captain Giles Brent was the son of Mary Kittomaquund, the daughter of the "Tayac of Maryland" (probably a Piscataway chief), who was baptized a Catholic in the 1630s and married off to the senior Giles Brent at the age of eleven or twelve, after the death of her parents. The Brent clan probably hoped to gain title to Piscataway-held lands by virtue of the marriage. She had at least two children before her death. I've written about her before, here.

* William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia, 2 vols (Richmond, 1857; reprint 1992), I, 93.

2007-06-22T09:40:00.001-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Mom says I don't belong up here, and she always lifts me down when I climb up. But the view is so grand! I can see the whole apartment. I can supervise Mom making her dinner. I can supervise Mom making my dinner. I can reach down and bat her head with my paws when she's washing dishes. It's great! I'm going to convince her to let me stay up here. Already, I can tell she's weakening. After all, she left me up here long enough to take my picture!

2007-06-19T11:27:00.001-04:00

Wherein the Historianess Makes a To-Do List

This summer, the Historianess must:

complete research on her Dictionary of Virginia Biography entry "Emanuel Driggus"

write her DVB entry "Emanuel Driggus"

complete revisions on her article "The Child Should be Made a Christian": Baptism, Race, and Identity in the Early Chesapeake"

finish the research for her conference paper "A Puritan Virginia? Rethinking English Identities in the Early Chesapeake, 1607-1644"

write said conference paper

write a book proposal and make some progress on getting a contract for the Amazing Mr. Book (otherwise known as From Potential Christians to Hereditary Heathens: Religion and Race in Early America, 1550-1750)

finish a book review

finish her syllabus for HIST 465 "From Roanoke to Jamestown"

finish her syllabus for HIST 117 "America to 1848"

catch up on her sleep

2007-06-18T10:42:00.000-04:00

The Historianess as History Carnival Hostess

Yes, that's right! The 54th History Carnival is coming to Historianess on July 1. I'm looking for a few good history posts, so please send your nominations to rebecca_goetz at hotmail dot com, or use the handy submission form.

The above link also lists criteria for eligible posts. So, all historians and historianesses, please check your archives and your regular reads and send interesting historical posts my way!

2007-06-15T17:21:00.001-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Here I am, just hangin' out. I'm real comfortable with my felineness. Meow!

2007-05-22T16:05:00.000-04:00

Thinking Bloggers

Here I am enduring my four-hour layover in Kansas City, Missouri. I have to say, KCI is a pretty crap airport, but for one thing: free wifi! May other airports follow its wireless example (but not its inane security arrangements). To avoid finishing next semester's syllabi, an activity that constitutes real work, I am catching up on old emails and doing a little blogging.

Awhile back, Professor Grimsley, the War Historian, tagged me with a Thinking Blogger Award.

Here are the rules:

If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,

Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,

Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote. (We'll see how this goes; KCI has wifi but it is slower than molasses going uphill in January and I think clicking the "upload image" button might cause the network to suffer an apoplectic breakdown.)

Without further ado, here are my five nominations (a nice mix of academic and non-academic bloggers)

Redneck Mother ("Raising Children, Lettuce, and Hell in Texas"). Redneck Mother lives in the town I grew up in, so her remarks on aspects of Texas local politics give me a warm, homey feeling (accompanied by disgust). Redneck Mother also comments upon home-schooling and sustainable living. It's good stuff--check it out!

Elle, ABD, now Elle, PhD ("Ruminations and Revelations of One Southern Historian"). I'm known for having complained, frequently, of the difficulties history grad students face--Elle is not only an accomplished Houston-based student but also a single mom. Hats off to Elle, and Congratulations on finishing that dissertation!

Little Professor ("Things Victorian and Academic"). I would add to her subtitle: "and things truly hilarious." Check out her version of CSI. I've actually taken to muttering "Foucault you" under my breath when annoyed (most recently at the TSA in Denver--that's another post for another time).

Chapati Mystery ("What is the Vertiginous Chapati Saying to Me?"). Manan is a rabid baseball fan and one of my treasured academic drinking buddies. We're on a panel together at the AHA (see below). And, his blog is a window into South Asian history for the initiated and uninitiated alike.

And, New Kid on the Hallway. One of my favorite medievalists on the web, her recent academic adventures make great reading. Way to pull through, NK!

This is by no means a comprehensive list; it merely proves to me that I have got to update my links. Maybe sometime in this summer...but oh no! My summer is already all planned up....onward and upward with the Amazing Mr. Book!

2007-05-13T22:01:00.000-04:00

Best. Tank. Ever.

1 tank.

34 days.

10.445 gallons

510 miles.

48.8 mpg

All urban driving--just my commute. Wow. Hildegarde is AWESOME.

2007-05-10T16:43:00.000-04:00

Cool links

Manan has posted the VIII Cliopatria Symposium. It's all about Jamestown; check it out!

Scott Jaschik at Insidehighered.com has written a story about our experience with the AHA Program Committee. I'll have some responses to the story and the comments attached to it later (but I'm trying to finish a book review just now so I can't do it yet).

2007-05-07T16:51:00.000-04:00

In Which the Historianess Becomes a Token

Last week my friend and fellow Cliopat Manan Ahmed posted on Cliopatria about a letter he received from the AHA. Manan, along with a few other Cliopats, had detected some similarities in their scholarly work and they resolved to do a panel on their work--not as bloggers, but as colleagues.

Their panel was accepted with a condition: Since the AHA has a standing commitment to gender diversity on panels, the Program Committee has decided to require you to find a female participant, perhaps to serve as chair or a second commentator for your session.

?!

Manan points out that while AHA regulations do "encourage" gender diversity on panels, they do not *require* it, as this program committee has done. And, as he also notes, no reminder of this official policy of encouragement appears on the AHA's Calls for Papers.

Manan and his colleagues were understandably embarrassed to contact women academics with a request to chair the panel; would you want to call someone up, even a friend, and say "Apparently, me and my colleagues are not gender diverse; so, since you're a girl, would you please chair our panel?" (Or, who would want to ask the converse: "Would you chair my panel since you're a boy?") Because these guys are my friends, and because I think this situation plainly stinks, I offered to take on the job as the AHA's token woman on the panel and thus saved it from rejection.

Here's what makes me so darn angry:

1. While gender diversity on panels is in general a good idea, rejecting perfectly decent panels because of a lack of gender diversity is short-sighted and offensive. It's short-sighted because it alienates historians of any gender who would like to put together panels (which is time-consuming work in and of itself) while limiting their options and encouraging them to pick panelists simply because of gender rather than because of scholarly interest or ability.

2. It's offensive because it installs a woman simply for the sake of having a woman on the panel. I won't be doing any serious scholarly work for this panel; I just show up and introduce my friends (I many also get to wear a t-shirt that says "token"). That's a great way to encourage gender diversity: put the token in a position of little authority or consequence, just because he/she will fit the quota. Ridiculous, and offensive. In all my time in academia, I've never been treated this way.

3. There are huge gender problems among historians. Women academics are still paid less than equivalently qualified male colleagues. Women still face discriminatory maternity leave "policies" that complicate balancing an academic career and motherhood. There is still a serious dearth of women at the tenured level in history departments, especially at the level of full professor. Income inequality and inequality at the level of senior scholars are both serious problems; sticking me, or any women, on an AHA panel is *not* a solution. Interestingly, my (admittedly quick) perusal of the AHA's annual report did not reveal any substantive inquiries in the past year into gender inequality in our profession. Perhaps the AHA thinks that by getting a woman to chair Manan's panel, history's gender problems are solved.

So here's my plea: no more offensive half-measures, no more quotas for panels, no more ridiculous "requirements" for panels. Instead, let's have a serious discussion about the challenges that women still face in this profession. Let's talk about unequal pay, about maternity leave policies, and about women as senior scholars. Let's have some requirements that do something to actually ameliorate these problems.

In the mean time, I invite you to attend our panel. It will be great, even though there will be a token presiding.

2007-05-01T16:28:00.000-04:00

Tuesday Fashion Blogging

I'm $685 poorer but infinitely more dignified (I think the sneakers are a nice touch, myself).

Of course, if my face were slightly more bulbous, I would be the spitting image of Martin Luther (it's the beanie that suggests the resemblance!).

2007-04-26T12:36:00.000-04:00

My daemon is...

Before I saw ADM's daemon, I did not even know that Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass will be a movie (in December 2007). I'm not sure I like the notion of making the His Dark Materials trilogy into films, but I suppose this will have the evangelicals complaining bitterly about the books' overtly anti-institutional religion point of view. The books are quite different from, say, C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, but equally enjoyable.

2007-03-23T15:51:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

See how much I like Mom's furniture? This is not actually a bureau; it's a sophisticated IKEA cat roost.

2007-03-06T16:44:00.000-05:00

And the Idiot Prize goes to...Bedford/St. Martin's

This week's mail, by the numbers:

1. 30 copies of America's History, Sixth Edition (Henretta, Brody, and Dumenil).
2. There are 22 members of the department.
3. 8 members of the department actually teach American history.
4. 6 of the books were sent to faculty who no longer work here or are retired.
5. 6 of the books were sent to faculty who do not teach American history at all.
6. 2 of the books were sent to our administrative assistants.

Let me run that by you again: Bedford/St. Martin's sent THIRTY copies of a textbook that will cost upwards of NINETY DOLLARS each (ed. note: my pricing based on Amazon's price for the fifth edition) to a department of TWENTY-TWO faculty, and of those THIRTY copies, FOURTEEN were addressed to retired or otherwise departed faculty, non-Americanist faculty, and administrative assistants, and in our department, only EIGHT faculty teach American history. In other words, Bedford/St. Martin's sent THIRTY copies when EIGHT would have sufficed.

Who is running the marketing department over there? No wonder textbooks cost so much...undergraduates have to bear the cost of blanket marketing techniques.

Which is why I will NOT be adopting America's History, Sixth Edition as my textbook in the American survey next fall. Come to think of it, maybe I won't use a textbook at all.

***UPDATE*** I just received an email from Amazon telling my that America's History, Sixth Edition is now available for purchase at the bargain price of $93.95.

2007-03-02T15:53:00.000-05:00

Friday Cat and Furniture Blogging

This morning I went to Crate and Barrel to pick up my new desk (a housewarming present from my parents). It was funny watching the C & B guys trying to get it into Hildegard. I love my hybrid car but she was really not built for cargo-in-a-big-box.

Nevertheless, we stuffed the desk in and I got it home, back out of the car, into my house, out of the box, and put together in under an hour. Now I have a solid work area at home!

Of course, it is unclear if I'll actually be allowed to use it, because Pepper has decided that the new desk is clearly a new piece of cat lounging furniture. He also decided my new bureau would be a good place to hang out too, and I can't keep the surface clear of cat fur. I suspect I'll have the same experience with my desk. Sigh.

2007-02-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

Why Texas *really* needs more electricity

The pages of the Houston Chronicle have been full of advertisements featuring the filthy faces of men, women, and children and bearing the slogan "Coal is Dirty." They were part of an advertising campaign against utility company TXU's proposal to build 11 new coal-fired electricity plants in Texas.

Luckily for Texans who think that clean air is important, TXU was just bought out by a larger utility firm that will only build 3 of the coal-fired plants, instead of the original 11. But that hasn't ended fears from certain quarters that Texas, whose population is set to double in the next fifteen years, won't have enough electricity to serve all those new Texans.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I walked through my neighborhood a little after 6pm. The sun was setting, and it was about 70 degrees. There was a light wind from the north, and none of the humidity that usually characterizes Houston. It was a beautiful evening. At home I had left my windows open and my house fan humming. I've been pleased by this weather because I haven't had to run my gas-powered furnace or my electric-powered air conditioner in about a week. My utility bills will be small next month! Of course, as I walked, I heard the sounds of birds settling down for the evening and the hum of air conditioners.

Air conditioners? Huh? In this beautiful weather?

As I walked yesterday evening, I noticed that about 3 out of five houses were running air conditioners. Many of these houses didn't even have screens on their windows, indicating that invariably some form of climate control is running in those houses, even when the weather is gorgeous.

I suggest that perhaps Texans need to learn something about conservation *before* any utility firm builds new electrical plants, whether it be three coal-fired plants or 11.

2007-02-11T15:17:00.000-05:00

Faust, Confirmed

The Harvard Crimson today confirmed the selection of Drew Gilpin Faust as the next President of Harvard University.

My deepest congratulations to Dean Faust, and the best of luck herding cats!

2007-02-09T12:18:00.000-05:00

Faust to succeed Summers

Today's Boston Globe is reporting that current Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Drew Gilpin Faust will become the next president of Harvard University.

I have to say this news is very exciting. I've long thought that Dean Faust would be an ideal candidate for the position: she is a thoughtful scholar, and good administrator, a brilliant fundraiser and program builder, and most important of all, she will be a consensus builder rather than a contentious figure in the university. Harvard is a decentralized institution, and she will be much mroe adept than Larry Summers at navigating the various interests that permeate the university.

Moreover, it's just great that the country's oldest university will finally have a woman at the helm.

2007-02-07T13:58:00.000-05:00

On Rereading One's Dissertation

One of my colleagues recently told me to stop thinking of my dissertation as a dissertation and start thinking of it as a manuscript. So I've attempted to do that by actually rereading the darned thing while thinking of it as a manuscript rather than a dissertation. Keep in mind that I haven't actually taken it out of its little drawer since late October when I sent it in to be bound. Rereading went something like this:

Ooh, look at the title page. How nice!

I made a table of contents? Really? I have no recollection of doing that.

DOOM! There's a conspicuous typo on page 19!

Reading...reading...reading...hey, this is really interesting! I didn't know I knew about these things!

Clearly the two hours I spent dividing up the monochapter that became chapters one and two was *not* time successfully spent.

I recently discovered that Isaac La Peyrere was a Huguenot. Yet I write that he spent his final days in a monastery. Is there a problem here? What did I miss?

Ooh, Chapter Three is full of dirty fornicators! Excellent!

Chapter Four definitely needs to go on a diet. Yet trimmed up it could be interesting. (Note: I did in fact just trim it up and send it off to an essay competition. We'll see.)

The fifth chapter is ostensibly about household violence and "unchristianlike usage." It also touches on slaves beating masters, Bacon's Rebellion, and the "just war" doctrine that allowed the enslavement of non-Christians.

Chapter Five thus needs to be, clearly, three chapters.

But I don't have enough *research* to actually fill out three chapters with good, original, informative arguments! (insert whine here)

Then do more research, historianess!

I can't believe this. On page 236 I actually wrote the sentence, "Slaves had a tougher row to hoe." Was I trying to be punny?

And after that, Chapter Six drifts back into Chapter Four. Ergh. I think I was repeating myself...

I have a conclusion! Really, I do! I have no recollection of writing it, but there you have it.

I used to be terrified of my dissertation. Now I'm terrified of my manuscript!

2007-01-26T16:43:00.000-05:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Over Christmas Mom took me on a big airplane and we went to meet my grandparents (and a new cat and two dogs!). I didn't really care for the airplane, but once we arrived it was a lot of fun! Here I am helping Mom wrap some presents while I stick out my tongue. Such fun!

2007-01-23T17:55:00.000-05:00

Teaching Research and Writing Skills in a Digital Age

In this weekend’s Houston Chronicle, I read an interesting op-ed piece by a librarian at a private high school near Washington, D.C. The librarian wrote about the rise of the “information age” and the subsequent decline of the ability to actually read books. (I can’t find a digital version of the article now, so you’ll have to excuse the quotes.)

Literacy, the librarian argued, “…is defined less by how English department or a librarian might teach Wordsworth or Faulkner than by how we find our way through the digital forest of information overload.”

I think this observation is right on: I can’t keep up with the number of digital resources available in American history (which probably doesn’t matter since no library but the wealthiest can possibly afford to buy them all—as an aside, Rice’s library just bought the Sabin Americana Digital Collection for about $200,000—that’s the going price for subscriptions to many of these resources). I just had my students in Sex, Lies, and Depositions course spend an hour with our research librarian, and the class was not focused on how to use card catalogues and Library of Congress classifications, but rather on how to wrest information from the online catalogue with “keyword” and “begins with” searches, boolean searches, how to use massive periodical databases like Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, America: History and Life, and Historical Abstracts. (If you haven’t heard of these resources before, think the old Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, updated to include thousands of international periodicals and non-English-language periodicals, digitized, fully searchable, with links to the full texts of articles, reviews, and dissertations.) We also explored that amazing and frustrating resource, Early English Books Online (full-text pdf images of every book printed in England from 1450-1720). I even learned about a new search option in Academic Search Premier, Bibliography of Native North America. We did not have the opportunity to play with some of the other journal options like History Cooperative and Synergy. These databases make many more resources available—things I would have had to fly across the Atlantic to access ten years ago are now only as far away as an internet-connected computer.

But this mess of material, to any undergraduate student, is also a “digital forest of information overload.” Students don’t know how to judge the reliability of these resources any more than they know how to actually read them. Writes the frustrated librarian,

These days, librarians measure the quality of returns in data-mining stints. We teach students how to maximize a database search, about successful retrieval rates. What usually gets lost in the scramble is a careful reading of the material.
Students are still checking out the standard research fare—the Thomas Jefferson biography, the volume of literary criticism on Jane Austen—but few read it. The library checks the books back a day later, after the students have extracted the information vitals—usually an excerpt or two to satisfy the requirement that a certain number of works be cited in their papers.

Students mine the books as they mine a database. They do not read a book to understand its argument and how the writer has put that argument together, but simply to pull a neat line or two that they then insert into their own papers. No student actually reads the books he or she uses in a term paper or a research paper.

I learned this lesson the hard way last semester. I assigned a term paper of 10-12 pages, and I endeavored to avoid the book-mining problem by mandating that the paper be truly a term paper in the syllabus. That is, I constructed assignments around the selection of a topic, the location of resources, the generation of an annotated bibliography, a proposal, and then a final draft. These I spread out through the semester in hopes that students would start early and have plenty of time to read books and articles about their topics and to write well-thought-out papers.

Sadly, in most cases I did not get these types of papers. Most papers were still quick jobs, with many mined quotes. I’m not sure how to avoid this problem. We absolutely must teach our students how to navigate the vast number of digital resources available to them. I have no problem teaching students these new digital-age research skills, but I also want them to read and to think—two skills that seem to have fallen by the wayside.

This semester I’m teaching a course whose sole aim is the production of a 20-25-page paper. I’ve structured the reading and writing assignments even more tightly than I did last semester. I opened the class with a close reading of one book—we spent over three hours in class with that book, picking apart the argument and the sources. I hope that will introduce students to the art and necessity of careful reading and will be a model to them in creating and structuring their own historical arguments. I hope that they understand that research skills, reading skills, and writing skills are all part of the same whole—that students will learn not only how to locate information, but how to process it, how to think about it, and how to apply it to the historical problems they are writing about.

We’ll see if the effort is successful.

2007-01-17T16:37:00.000-05:00

I'm Back!

I do apologize for the long drought of posts here. Other bloggers post polite warnings when they anticipate being unable to blog, but I've never felt bound by the cultural expectation in the bloggy world that bloggers should give a warning when they disappear. After all, I blog because I like blogging, not necessarily because I feel I have an obligation to my readers. :)

At any rate, the end of my first semester teaching was marred by a bout with pneumonia. That, coupled with the exhaustion of having survived teaching and simultaneously completing a dissertation, brought a brief interruption to blogging.

I'm looking out my window now at the rain--and yes, it is rain--and I think I'm in a perfect November day in Boston. Houston is experiencing a bit of wintry weather; it's about 34 degrees and there are some isolated patches of ice. This has brought city and university to a standstill. Classes were cancelled this morning, and the faculty club was closed (thank goodness I brought my lunch!). Yesterday evening major roads were closed *while* road crews applied sand. I'm still reeling in shock from that one. I didn't realize cold weather on its own could bring life to such a standstill...

2006-12-18T13:14:00.000-05:00

End of Year Carbon Report

On 16 June 2006 I picked up the most expensive piece of machinery I have ever purchased--a 2006 silver Honda Civic Hybrid. Since I was moving to Houston (a city with a reputation for bad public transport) from Boston (a city where owning a car is ridiculously difficult and not worth the expense or effort), I needed a car. So I splurged and got a properly green car.

(I researched both the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid. The Prius and the Civic get comparable gas mileage but the Prius was more expensive.)

So here are my stats (since 16 June 2006):

miles: 6,436
lifetime mpg: 47.9
number of tanks: 13
total gallons of gas: 134.4

My record tank was my drive from Chilhowie, Virginia, to West Memphis, Arkansas, a drive across the entire length of Tennessee: 55.7 mpg.

WOW!

By my calculations, with my $2500 federal income tax credit, if gas remains about where it is in Houston today ($2.159/gal), my car's $3000 premium for the hybrid power train will have paid for itself within 18 months of purchase. Hurrah!

2006-12-01T12:31:00.000-05:00

Friday Cat Blogging

My best feature: my long, luxurious tail! I adore my tail! I love to capture it! Sometimes I even feel moved to chew on it! And then it hurts...but I still can't resist chasing it!

2006-11-27T13:41:00.000-05:00

Jamestown: a "positive" contribution from the South?

While munching on pumpkin bread and apple pie and reading the Houston Chronicle over breakfast on Saturday, a Letter to the Editor caught my eye. I enjoy reading Letters to the Editor; sometimes people write the darndest things. On this bright post-Thanksgiving, a letter writer wrote one of the more puzzling screeds about the "first" Thanksgiving, the founding of Jamestown, and the place of "the South" in history I've ever read. It begins as a lament that so few Americans today know the country's history (a lament I happen to share), and then ends in a lament for the lost positive contributions of the South to that history (a lament I, ah, do not happen to share).

Here's the letter:

The Chronicle's Nov. 23 article "Think you know what happened at first Thanksgiving? Well, think again" was correct to state that most Americans think they know the "story of Thanksgiving ... and most would be wrong."
How many people today even remember or know about the Jamestown Colony, which was here in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims?
This is just another example of the rewriting of American history to downplay or to eliminate anything positive from the South.

(The original article is a fairly innocuous fluff piece about what the Pilgrims and their Indian neighbors actually ate at the "first Thanksgiving" and also points out that there is no historical continuity between that event and today's Thanksgiving holiday.)

I'm not sure, though, that there's a connection between our collective lack of knowledge about the Plymouth colony and a lack of knowledge about the founding of Jamestown in 1607. Most American schoolchildren could probably tell you that there were English people at Jamestown in 1607. Most would probably also tell you something garbled and mythological about John Smith and Pocahontas. So I think there's a general awareness there of Jamestown, but probably not the kind of awareness professional historians would welcome.

It's that third paragraph that gets me: in it the letter writer implies that there has been an intentional rewriting (by persons unknown) of the historical record to supplant Jamestown with Plymouth, and in so doing, to discredit the "South."

Nothing could be further from the truth. There's a great deal of interest right now in Jamestown; the four hundredth anniversary of English settlement at Jamestown is next year and so a number of scholars are interested in reevaluating the event. We now know far more about tidewater Virginia's native people before and after settlement, more about the English who formed that little settlement, and more about the development of a slave-driven tobacco plantation culture in the Chesapeake than we did fifty years ago, the last time Jamestown celebrated an anniversary.

Now this issue of discrediting positive contributions from the "South:" the south as we understand it today did not exist in 1607. All of North America, was, in English eyes, "Virginia." In fact, Virginia-the-continent was the "North": that is, it was north of Spain's American possessions. The "south" as a geographical and cultural construct did not yet exist and would not for at least another 150 years.

Now, to the final claim: was Jamestown indeed a "positive" contribution to American history? I generally tend to stay away from blatant value judgments in historical thinking. Permanent English settlement in North America is a fact of life as we now know it; assigning a value to that is diificult and ahistorical. But I can say that the experience of permanent English settlement was not a positive one for the vast majority of people who participated in it--Indians, English, and Africans alike.

The English arrival in 1607 heralded the beginning of fifty years of intermittent Anglo-Indian warfare peppered by mutual violence of the most horrendous sort. For example, in an act of revenge for the death of an English captain named Ratcliffe, George Percy led a raid against the Paspahegh in November 1609. After burning the village's houses and fields, the English captured the Paspahegh werowansqua and her children. The English, Percy wrote, decided not to keep the children alive, pitching them out of their canoes and "shoteing owtt their Braynes in the water." The werowansqua they kept alive for a time, eventually deciding to stab her repeatedly with a sword instead of burning her at the stake. Captain Ratcliffe, in whose name this slaughter was carried out, was killed by a group of Powhatans (possibly Nansemonds) who executed him in Algonkian ritual fashion by scraping his flesh "from his bones with mussell shelles and before his face throwne into the fyer."

Of course, the gory deaths of many Powhatans and Englishmen are vastly outnumbered by deaths from starvation and disease. Settlement was hardly positive. It was dirty, brutal, and deadly, and on this legacy our country was built.

2006-11-20T12:11:00.000-05:00

Eric Keroack--it gets worse

In my post below, I wrote about Bush's nomination of Eric Keroack to head the Department of Health and Human Services Family Planning Division. (This is the Federal agency that oversees contraception programs for poor women.)

Keroack's position on contraception, if one wants to call it that, is bizarre and certainly calls into question his ability to do the job properly. But now Andrew Sullivan has a link to a PDF of a powerpoint presentation Keroack regularly gave. The presentation calls premarital sex "germ warfare" and also claims that premarital sex is addictive and acts like an opiate on the brain.

This is a deeply unhealthy attitude towards human sexuality. Adult Americans should be free to make their own choices about their sexuality without government interference--yet this pitiful excuse for a medical doctor peddles fear and misinformation and is about to use our tax dollars to continue his crusade.

Where's the outrage?

If you need more reasons to oppose Keroack and his message, you need only read this Washington Post commentary. Key point? A HHS spokeswoman was unable to confirm whether or not Keroack would prescribe oral contraceptives to unmarried women. What Americans don't need are doctors with federal dollars telling them what to do with their bodies and making moral judgments about their medical decisions.

2006-11-17T13:22:00.000-05:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat

Well, folks, it's gotten cool here in Texas. Mom has this thing against the gas company; she doesn't want to give them any more money than strictly necessary so she didn't actually turn on the heat until last night. I had to find other ways to keep warm.

Sometimes if Mom is around, I'll snuggle up with her. (Those are Mom's knees in the foreground of the picture.)

If Mom isn't around, I make do with other warm things. Here I am, snug as a bug in a...blanket.

2006-11-17T12:36:00.000-05:00

Now that the election's over...

...let's start thinking seriously about reproductive health policy in this country. Two stories in the news have shaken me out of my first-semester-teaching isolation and reminded me that though the Dems have retaken Congress (finally!), important battles need to be fought to ensure that Federal agencies cease disseminating Bush administration nonsense about women's reproductive health.

Bush has just nominated Dr. Eric Keroak to head the Department of Health and Human Services' Family-Planning programs office. Dr. Keroack currently heads the Dorchester, MA-based Christian pregnancy-counseling service "A Woman's Concern" finds contraception "demeaning to women."

Yes, if you just did a head-swivel on that one, you're not alone. How can a man who represents an organization that is basically anti-contraception and who believes that contraception is demeaning possibly head a federal agency that advocates contraception for poor women?

Following on that point, I'd love to know how controlling one's own reproduction and gaining the ability to have children only when childbearing is financially and emotionally feasible is demeaning. I'm not sure anyone can explain that to my satisfaction. This is just a reminder that not only is this administration anti-legal abortion, it is also anti-contraception.

In other news: the Government Accountability Office has announced that the Department of Health and Human Services routinely distributes inaccurate information about human sexuality, contraception, and sexually-transmitted infections to teenagers. The Department's response? No one has sufficiently defined what "scientifically accurate" means, so it has no way of judging the information it produces.

This would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous: among the information distributed is the assertion that latex condoms do not block HIV (they do).

What makes the situation worse is that the Department is spending millions preaching the same dangerously inaccurate information to adults. If you haven't heard of it yet, you've heard of it now: the Bush administration's abstinence-only message for twenty-and thirty-somethings. I guess this is what Andrew Sullivan refers to as big-government conservatism--the movement that enjoys peering into the bedrooms of adult Americans. (If you didn't vote Democratic in the recent election, I hope you voted Libertarian.)

**UPDATE** The NRO's Kathryn Jean-Lopez attempts to explain Keroack's position:

"Passing out contraception without any deeper context or conversation is degrading and disrespectful — to men and women..."

Um, I'll second Andrew Sullivan on this. I don't see how it can't be degrading and disrespectful of adult men and women to accompany contraceptives with government-provided information about the immorality of their contraceptive decisions. I sure as heck don't look to the government for deeper context or conversation about anything that has to do with my own personal intimate relationships. The idea that government does/should have that role is patently offensive. Andrew's right: these folks are NUTS.

2006-11-10T12:18:00.000-05:00

Welcome to History 566

At long last, I have finished my syllabus for the graduate readings seminar in early American history. I've titled it Readings in North American History, 1500-1800. While the course focuses most heavily on British North America, every week's readings contain some comparative material about Spanish and/or French North America. The readings contain material about the Caribbean as a matter of course. I've tried to incorporate recent historiographical developments that emphasize borderlands and comparative colonization in the early modern era. I hope it will also expose graduate students to developments in the prehistory and history of native North Americans and to recent reinterpretations of the history of slavery.

Students will read 14 books in their entirety, including Richard White's The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815,, which many people mentioned as a must-read for grad students (an assessment with which I heartily agree), and J.H. Elliott's 2006 masterpiece of synthetic history, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830. Students will also read numerous book chapters, book parts, and articles. I've also listed helpful reference material to help students lacking background in early American history catch up.

I am deeply indebted to the many graduate readings seminar syllabi I have accumulated over the years; I borrowed topics, assignment ideas, and readings from many of them. I'll also note the Word does not transpose well into Blogger. Please bear with the formatting snafus.

Lastly, I invite the Weekly (sub)Standard to sneer. :)

Readings in North American History, 1500-1800

This graduate readings seminar introduces recent problems and questions as well as enduring issues in early American history. It is arranged both thematically and chronologically. Students will be expected to explore three key elements of early American historiography: chronology (the basic timeline and narrative of historical development), major events and turning points (periodization), and they will be expected to engage in critical analysis of the major works and themes in the field. By the end of the course you should be familiar with broad themes and interpretations in early American history, in preparation for oral exams, research in early American history, and teaching the first half of the standard American history survey.

If you feel you need a refresher course on background and basic chronology, you should consult Alan Taylor’s American Colonies (Viking, 2001) or D.W. Meinig’s The Shaping of America, vol. I (Yale, 1986). For a historiographical overview, you should read the relevant articles in Daniel Vickers, ed., A Companion to Colonial America (Blackwell, 2003). For the English background, you should consult the first two volumes of The Oxford History of the British Empire or Keith Wrightson’s English Society, 1580-1680 (London, 1982). For the Spanish in North America, see especially David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (Yale, 1992). For the French in North America, see especially W.J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1765 (Michigan State, 1998). These books are all on reserve at Fondren Library for you to consult.

Each student in the course will participate in weekly discussions, review one week’s readings, and write a historiographical essay, due at the end of the semester (in lieu of a final exam). All reading is required. Students should take notes on individual readings as well as make synthetic notes on each week’s topic as a whole. For the week you select to write a review of the readings, you must also submit (by 8pm on Sunday the evening before class) a set of concise questions for the seminar, distributed via email to me and to the whole class. Your review of one week’s readings will be 8-10 pages in length, and your final paper, on a topic of your choosing, will be 12-15 pages. You are expected to do substantial additional reading for the final paper; you will consult with me to formulate a topic and I will make recommendations for additional readings. A prospectus and annotated bibliography for the final paper is due on our final class meeting, Monday, 23 April 2007. The final paper is due to my office by 12 noon on Monday, 7 May 2007. No late papers will be accepted and no extensions will be granted (except in the case of severe illness or other personal emergency—any excuses must be accompanied by appropriate documentation).

Your grade will be based on active participation in class discussion (30%), the 8-10 page review and pre-circulated questions (30%), and the final paper (40%).

Books that are assigned in full are available for purchase at the bookstore. All books are also on reserve at Fondren Library. All assigned articles are online and available via JSTOR, History Cooperative, or Synergy.

Monday 8 January: Introductions
For our first class, please read the following short articles, and prepare a 3-5 page essay answering the question “Why study early American history?” This essay won’t be graded, but I will read it and return it with comments. As you read and write, you should also consider three key questions: what should be the geographical boundaries of early America? When should “early America” begin? And, who were the early Americans?
? James A. Hijiya, “Why the West is Lost” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 51, no. 2 (April 1994), 276-292. (JSTOR)
? Michael McGiffert, et al., “Forum: Why the West is Lost” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 51, no. 4 (October 1994), 717-754. (JSTOR)
? Gordon S. Wood, “A Century of Writing Early American History: Then and Now Compared; Or, How Henry Adams Got It Wrong” American Historical Review vol. 100, no. 3 (June 1995), 678-696. (JSTOR)
? Philip Morgan, “Rethinking Early American Slavery,” and Gary B. Nash, “The Concept of Inevitability in the History of European-Indian Relations,” in Pestana and Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America (Dartmouth, 1999), 239-291. (on reserve)
? Joyce E. Chaplin, “Expansion and Exceptionalism in Early American History Journal of American History vol. 89, no.4 (March 2003), 1431-1456. (available via History Cooperative)

Monday 15 January: Native North America (MLK, Jr. Day—we’ll meet Wed.)
? Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2001), entire.
? Neal Salisbury, “The Indians’ Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 53, no. 3 (July 1996), 435-458. (JSTOR)
? John F. Scarry, “The Late Prehistoric Southeast” in Hudson and Tesser, eds., The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704 (University of Georgia Press, 1994), 17-35. (on reserve)
? Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (University of North Carolina, 1992), 1-49. (on reserve)

Monday 22 January: Encounters
? Karen Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Cornell, 2000), entire.
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (Yale, 2006), xiii-xx, 3-28, 57-87.
? Nicholas P. Canny, “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 50, no. 3 (July 1973), 575-598. (JSTOR)
? Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 33, no. 2 (April 1976), 289-299. (JSTOR)
? Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Harvard, 2001), 1-3, 157-198. (on reserve)

Monday 29 January: Migration
? Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (Vintage, 1986), entire.
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 29-56.
? Allan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto, 1997), 3-26. (on reserve)
? Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991), ix-xvi, 1-93.
? Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630-1640” New England Quarterly vol 58, no. 3 (September 1985), 339-383. (JSTOR)

Monday 5 February: Profit
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 88-116.
? Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1-40, 256-355. (on reserve)
? Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern (Verso, 1997), 127-184, 217-276. (on reserve)
? Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (W.W. Norton, 1975), 3-212. (on reserve)
? Richard White, The Middle Ground, 94-141.

Monday 12 February: Politics, Authority, and Power
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 117-183.
? Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Empire and the Formation of American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 1-100.
? Richard White, The Middle Ground, 142-268.
? Gary B. Nash, “The Transformation of Urban Politics, 1700-1764” Journal of American History vol. 60, no. 3 (December 1973), 605-632. (JSTOR)
? Adrian Howe, “The Bayard Treason Trial: Dramatizing Anglo-Dutch Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century New York City” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 47, no.1 (January 1990), 57-89. (JSTOR)

Monday 19 February: Religion and Belief
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 184-218.
? Perry Miller, “Errand into the Wilderness” and “The Marrow of Puritan Divinity” in Errand into the Wilderness (Harvard, 1956), 1-16, 48-98. (on reserve)
? David Hall, “On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 44, no. 2 (April 1987), 193-229. (JSTOR)
? Jon E. Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Harvard, 2005), entire.
? Rhys Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists’ Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765-1775” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 31, no. 3 (July 1973), 345-368. (JSTOR)
? Mary Maples Dunn, “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period” American Quarterly vol. 30, no. 5 (Winter 1978), 582-601. (JSTOR)
? Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776 (Harvard, 2000), 185-224. (on reserve)

Monday 26 February: Gender and Culture
? Carol Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (Vintage Books, 1989), 1-116. (on reserve)
? Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, & Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789 (University of North Carolina, 1995), entire.
? Billy G. Smith, “Black Women Who Stole Themselves in Eighteenth-Century America” in Pestana and Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America (University Press of New England, 1999), 134-159. (on reserve)
? Sarah M.S. Pearsall, “Gender” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 113-132.
? Natalie Zemon Davis, “Iroquois Women, European Women” in Hendricks and Parker, eds., Women, Race, and Writing in the Early Modern Period (Routledge, 1994), 423-58.
? Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (Vintage Books, 1980), 13-86. (on reserve)
? Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” in Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia, 1999), 28-50. (on reserve)

Monday 5 March: No Class, Spring Break

Monday 12 March: Work
? Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Pennsylvania, 2004), entire.
? Richard White, The Middle Ground, 94-141.
? Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (Verso, 1997), 307-368, 457-508. (on reserve)
? Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 213-292. (on reserve)
? Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America, 3-47. (on reserve)
? Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine,” in Ibid., 70-105.
? Philip D. Morgan, “Task and Gang Systems: The Organization of Labor on New World Plantations,” in Ibid., 189-220.
? Allan Greer, The People of New France, 27-42. (on reserve)
? Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (University of North Carolina, 2004), 37-68. (on reserve)

Friday 16 March: Attend Jennifer Morgan’s lecture. Time and place TBA.

Monday 19 March: Political Economy
? Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, 1997), entire.
? Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1944), chapters 3-5. (on reserve)
? Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, 307-400. (on reserve)
? J.E. Crowley, This Sheba, Self: The Conceptualization of Economic Life in Eighteenth-Century America (Johns Hopkins, 1974), prologue, chapters 1, 2, 4. (on reserve)
? Nuala Zahedieh, “Economy” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World 1500-1800 (Palgrave, 2002), 51-68. (on reserve)

Monday 26 March: Material Culture
? Richard L. Bushman, “American High-Style and Vernacular Cultures,” in Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole, eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 345-383. (on reserve)
? James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (Anchor Books, 1996), entire.
? Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (Knopf, 2001), 41-74 (“An Indian Basket”) and 108-141 (“Hannah Barnard’s Cupboard”). (on reserve)
? Rodris Roth, “Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage,” in Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600-1860 (Northeastern University Press, 1988), 439-462. (on reserve)
? Laurier Turgeon, “The Tale of the Kettle: Odyssey of an Intercultural Object” Ethnohistory vol. 44, no. 1 (Winter 1997), 1-29. (JSTOR)
? T.H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776” Journal of British Studies vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1986), 467-499. (JSTOR)

Monday 2 April: Atlantic Worlds
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 255-291.
? David Armitage, “Greater Britain: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?” American Historical Review vol. 104, no. 2 (April 1999), 427-45. (JSTOR)
? John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, 2nd Edition (Cambridge, 1998), entire.
? Eric Hinderaker, “The ‘Four Indian Kings’ and the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empire” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 53, no. 2 (April 1996), 487-526. (JSTOR)
? Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, 101-169.
? Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, “The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century” Journal of Historical Sociology vol. 3, no. 3 (September 1990), 225-253. (Synergy)
? Joyce Chaplin, “Race” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., British North America, 1500-1800, 154-172.

Monday 9 April: Revolution
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 292-368.
? Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard, 1967), entire.
? Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African-Americans in the Age of Revolution (Harvard, 2005), 1-68.
? Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 14, no. 1 (January 1957), 3-15. (JSTOR)
? T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising” Journal of American History vol. 84, no. 1 (June 1997), 13-39. (JSTOR)
? Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1968), 371-407. (JSTOR)
? Charles Royster, “Founding a Nation in Blood: Military Conflict and American Nationality” in Hoffman and Albert, eds., Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution (Virginia, 1984), 25-49. (on reserve)

Monday 16 April: Republican Politics
? J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 369-411.
? Richard White, Middle Ground, 269-523.
? Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (University of North Carolina, 1969), 46-124, 393-564. (on reserve)
? Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 69-122.
? Daniel T. Rodger, “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept” Journal of American History vol. 79, no. 1 (June 1992), 11-38. (JSTOR)

Monday 23 April: Republican Culture
? Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Vintage, 1991), entire.
? Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, 1980), pages TBA. (on reserve)
? Linda K. Kerber, “The Paradox of Women’s Citizenship in the Early Republic: The Case of Martin vs. Massachusetts” American Historical Review vol. 97, no. 2 (April 1992), 349-378.
? Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 123-170.
? Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, 170-210.

2006-11-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat!

Hi folks,

Mom didn't take any new pictures of me for awhile, but here I am in my favorite spot in the house, basking in the bathroom sink. I like it almost as much as I like the shower, but not quite as much...

2006-11-05T14:53:00.000-05:00

Burn an Effigy for me!

Remember, remember
The Fifth of November!

(I find myself deeply interested, suddenly, in early modern Catholic-Protestant terrorism. Perhaps there are historical lessons that need to be learned there.)

2006-11-01T16:05:00.000-05:00

My first guest post ever

I've written a post for colleague and fellow Cliopat Mark Grimsley's Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, entitled "What Happens when Non-Military Historians Teach Military History? (answer: students and instructor alike learn a lot from the experience)."

Hop on over and check it out!

(BTW, Mark uses Wordpress, and I think I'm now a convert. It's really time to ditch blogger and move Historianess to its own URL and take care of my own hosting...)

2006-11-01T12:33:00.000-05:00

A Giant of Anthropology

Sharon at Early Modern Notes brings us the word that noted anthropologist Clifford Geertz has died at the age of 80.

Geertz was well-known to historians; historians have employed Geertz's method of "thick" ethnographic description of other cultures to the documents and artifacts of the past. Geertz's work influenced early American history particularly through Rhys Isaac's path-breaking (and Pulitzer prize-winning) 1982 book The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790. As the field of early American community studies morphed into microhistory, Geertz's methods and insights proved very useful to historians reconstructing ordinary lives in the past.

I had to read Geertz's most famous article "Notes on the Balinese Cock-Fight," which appeared in the journal Daedalus in 1972. At the time I did not appreciate the article's significance; only later as I read more deeply in early American history did I realize how much Geertz's ethnographical method had shaped my own field. (We also studied the limninal spaces of Victor Turner and the South Pacific observations of Sahlins and Obeyesekere that same week; neither anthropologist has made such a deep impact as Geertz.)

There are several links over at Savage Minds.

2006-10-23T17:23:00.000-04:00

Yikes!

Would the other Rebecca Goetzes please change their names? Thanks!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are:
34
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

(H/T the unique Miriam Burstein at Little Professor...I'm so jealous!)

2006-10-22T13:08:00.000-04:00

Sunday read!

If you're sick of grading midterms (!) take a break and check out the twentieth edition of Carnivalesque. It's early modern this time around and it looks like it's got some good stuff!

I've just realized I haven't noted recent editions of Carnivalesque or the History Carnivals here. This is mostly because I haven't had much time to read them, but now that the Amazing Mr. Book is done, I'll have more time to both read and recommend the web's best history blogging!

2006-10-20T13:32:00.000-04:00

Houston business to NOT patronize...

...Garden Guys, Inc.

The owners of this fine landscaping establishment sent the following email to two potential clients earlier this week:

From: Garden Guy Inc
Date: October 18, 2006 9:08:36 AM CDT
To: ----------------
Subject: Cancel Appt -Garden Guy

Dear Mr. ----------------,

I am appreciative of your time on the phone today and glad you contacted us. I need to tell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work for homosexuals.

Best of luck in finding someone else to fill your landscaping needs.

All my best,

Sabrina

[email signature redacted]

Since the blog firestorm this email started, it has become apparent that Garden Guys are not members of the professional organization they claim to belong to, and they use clip art on their website. Click here for an update.

Such discrimination is legal in Texas, but Houstonians have a moral obligation to boycott bigots. So, if you're in the market for landscaping, don't hire these folks.

2006-10-20T12:29:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging

(in which Pepper explores his new house)

When Mom brought me away from that dreadful place, I was really shy for awhile. Then I figured out that our house is full of all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies where cats can hide and play.

The linen closet is a most glorious perch. I jumped up there, but I was too scared to jump down, so Mom had to help me. But whenever she opens it I'm still happy to jump up and check it out!

I also like the towel cupboard. If Mom leaves it open I worm my way in and take a nap among the towels.

Mom's house is old, so there are other places to hide, like this telephone table. (I don't like telephones; when Mom's telephones ring, I run and hide!)

I like this swank pet carrier. I nap in it sometimes. Mom says I'm going to take a real big trip in it soon, on an airplane, whatever that is.

2006-10-13T13:36:00.000-04:00

An Early American Canon?

Over at Cliopatria, I've done two posts about the difficulties of creating a graduate-level readings seminar in a field whose geographical, temporal, and methodological boundaries have grown exponentially in the last two generations of scholarship.

What are your top five books in early American history, broadly defined?

Leave your thoughts here in the comments, or over at Cliopatria.

2006-10-13T09:45:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging

(in which Pepper kills things)

You know what? Mom is really not fond of cockroaches or geckos. So whenever they come in the house I trap them for her. Sometimes I even kill them while she's still hunting for a shoe to smack them with. In between insect and lizard visitations, I practice my killing skills on other things.

Here I'm killing an evil roll of paper towel Mom left out. Kill, KILL!

Here I'm slaughtering an evil mousie that smells suspiciously like catnip. Grrr...MEOW!

Now you see what happens after I've done all that killing. I just have to have a nap!

2006-10-06T14:13:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging

Aren't I just the handsomest fellow you've ever seen? Last week Mom went away over night and some graduate student person came to feed me, and he took this picture of me looking out the window.

2006-10-05T13:15:00.000-04:00

Next Semester's Syllabus

As I promised below, here I share my syllabus for HIST 487. The purpose of the class is to teach sophomore, junior, and senior history majors how to conduct historical research and how to write substantial papers based on that research. I'm just about ready to call it final and order the books. I now sit back and wait for the Weekly (sub)Standard to sneer! (Please excuse the formatting; Word for Mac doesn't seem to translate well into Blogger.)

Sex, Lies, and Depositions
(Microhistories of Virginia County Court Records)

Court records are fascinating sources for understanding the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of early Virginians. Students will read seventeenth and early eighteenth-century court records and write a research paper based on court cases they select, learning as they work the historian’s craft of researching and writing about the past.

The surviving court records of York County, Virginia are full of amazing stories of libel, slander, theft, attempted murder, fights, great escapes by servants and slaves, rape, and illicit sex. They are also full of the more mundane legalities of everyday Virginia life: petitions, suits for the collection of debt, probate of wills, and the registration of cattle brands. These seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century records are by far the best source for hearing the echoes of the voices of ordinary Virginians; no where else can historians find the words and experiences of planters, both wealthy and poor, indentured servants, African slaves, free blacks, and women, both married and unwed. In this course students will read in these records and produce a 20-25 page research paper based on a court case or set of court cases that they select, learning as they work the historians’ craft of researching and writing about the past.

Required Readings:

? Wayne C. Booth, et al. The Craft of Research (2nd Edition) (University of Chicago Press, 2003)
? John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia (Oxford University Press, 2003)
? William Kelleher Storey, Writing History: A Guide for Students (3rd Edition) (Oxford University Press, 2006)
? Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Sixth Edition) (University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Expectations and Grading Scheme:

There are a number of writing assignments, both graded and ungraded. Every piece of writing you do in this class will help you write the final paper, so even though most writing assignments are “worth” only a small percentage of your grade, they make producing your final paper much easier. Therefore, I do not recommend skipping them. Additionally, you will have three individual conferences with me during the course of the semester. Although these are also ungraded, they are specifically designed to help you with the research and writing process. I do not recommend skipping those either.

* 1st short writing assignment 5%
* 2nd short writing assignment 5%
* annotated bibliography 5%
* proposal 5%
* narrative history assignment 5%
* comments on partner’s narrative 5%
* outline 5%
* first draft evaluation 5%
* comments on partner’s first draft 5%
* revision plan 5%
* First Draft 10%
* Final Draft 30%

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions are not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick or have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, please provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Week 1: Introduction
Tues 9 January: Course Introduction, What is Microhistory?
* handout: “What is Microhistory?/Reading Guide to Anne Orthwood’s Bastard”
Thurs 11 January: Primary and Secondary Sources
* Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, pps. 3-80
* receive first short writing assignment (primary and secondary sources)
Week 2: What is Microhistory?
Tues 16 January: Argument and Interpretation in Microhistory
* read Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, 81-150
* first short writing assignment due
* receive second short writing assignment (writing about argument)
Thurs 18 January: What is Microhistory, all over again!
* Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “The Significance of Trivia” Journal of Mormon History vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 1993), 52-66. (on reserve)
* Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography” Journal of American History vol. 88, no.1 (June 2001), 129-144. (online through the History Cooperative)
* second short writing assignment due
* receive York County Microfilm Assignments
* handout “Reading Virginia Court Hand"
Week 3: Defining a Topic
Tues 23 January: Library Scavenger Hunt
* Storey, Chapter One (Getting Started)
* handout “Generating an Annotated Bibliography”
Thurs 25 January: Topics‡Questions‡Problems
* Booth, Craft of Research, 37-89
* receive county court record presentation assignment
Week 4: Solidifying your Sources
Tues 30 January: The Parts of a County Court Record
*bring a printout of your case(s), a preliminary transcription, and Anne Orthwood’s Bastard to class with you
*receive annotated bibliography assignment
Thurs 1 February: County Court Record Presentations; Transcribing Helps/Hints
*schedule individual conferences with me (bibliographies)
Week 5: Interpretation, interpretation, interpretation
Tues 6 February: Source materials and inferences
* read Storey, Chapter Two (Interpreting Source Materials) and Chapter Four (Use Sources to Make Inferences)
* final court record selection due, bring a clean photocopy of the actual records and your transcription to class with you (note: this assignment is ungraded but still required!)
* Snyder, Brabbling Women, 3-18. 45-66, 140-144
Thurs 8 February: Taking and organizing notes; Importance of Citing Properly
* read Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graf, The Modern Researcher, Chapter Two (The ABC of Technique)
* Booth, Craft of Research, 90-108
* bring Turabian, A Manual for Writers to class with you
* Warren Billings, “The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A Note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 30, no. 3 (July 1973), 467-474.
Week 6: From research to writing, part I
Tues 13 February: arguments and proposals
*write three-five sentences that you think represent your argument to class with you (again, not graded, but crucial!)
* receive formal proposal assignment
Thurs 15 February: Formulating arguments
*Booth, Craft of Research, 111-161
*bring your revised three-five sentence argument to class with you
Week 7: From research to writing, part II
Tues 20 February: Formal Proposal Presentations
*3-5-page formal proposal due
Thurs 22 February: Writing narrative, or, what really happened?
* read Storey, Chapter Seven (Narrative Techniques for Historians)
* receive narrative history assignment
*Meet with me, Wed-Fri to discuss proposals
Week 8: From Nothing to Something: First Drafts
Mon 26 February: Exchange narrative assignments with your partners by 5pm
Tues 27 February: Uncertainty in historical narratives
* meet with your partner, discuss narrative history assignment
* bring a clean copy of your narrative history assignment, plus your comments on your partner’s work to class with you
Thurs 1 March: To outline or not to outline, that is the question
* Storey, Chapter Five (Get Writing!) and Chapter Six (Build an Argument)
* Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graf, Modern Researcher, Chapter Nine (Organizing: Paragraph, Chapter, and Part) (on reserve)
* receive outline assignment

Week 9: SPRING BREAK! Work on your Outlines

Week 10: Outline ‡ Draft!
Mon 12 March: Exchange outlines by 5pm
Tues 13 March: Brainstorm your outlines in class
Thurs 15 March: no class; private meetings with me
Week 11: Research and Writing Problems
Tues 19 March: Troubleshooting in your Research (or, Solving the Unsolvable)
* bring a one-page description of a research or interpretation problem you’re having to class for discussion (note: this assignment is ungraded but still required!)
Thurs 21 March: Strategies for Writing a First Draft
* read Storey, Chapter Three (Writing History Faithfully), Chapter Eight (Writing Sentences in History), and Chapter Nine (Choose Precise Words)
* handout on free writing
Week 12: First drafts, continued….
Tues 27 March: Introductions and Conclusions
* Booth, Craft of Research, 183-240
* receive first draft evaluation assignment
Thurs 29 March: no class, individual conferences with me
Week 13: First drafts, concluded
Mon 2 April: Exchange First Drafts by 5pm
Tues 3 April: First draft discussions in class
*bring your evaluation of your own paper and that of your partner to class
*receive revision assignment
Thurs 5 April: no class: Spring Recess
Week 14: Towards a Final Draft: Revising content
Tues 10 April: Writing a plan for revision
* Storey, Chapter Ten (Revising and Editing)
* bring a draft of your revision plan to class
Thurs 12 April: no class, individual conferences with me
*bring a clean copy of your revision plan to your meeting with me
Week 15: Towards a Final Draft: Revising Style
Tues 17 April: Style!
* Booth, Craft of Research, 263-282
* bring a problem paragraph to class with you
Thurs 19 April: The Perfect Word
* Barzun and Graff, The Modern Researcher, 193-234
* bring your partially revised draft to class with you
Week 16: Final Drafts
Tues 24 April: Form over function (just this once)
*look over your footnotes, especially
* bring Turabian, A Manual for Writers to class with you, as well as
a working copy of your final draft
Thurs: What is Microhistory, revisited
*FINAL DRAFT DUE AT BEGINNING OF CLASS
*course evaluations

2006-10-04T12:55:00.001-04:00

The Amazing Mr. Book, Complete, and with Statistics!

Every time I hit a big milestone with the diss I announce it here, which has meant that my completion timeline has been artifically stretched out. Hurrah, I finished a draft! Hurrah, I finished a second draft! Hurrah, my advisor signed the form! And now, hurrah, I have deposited said dissertation at the Registrar's Office, and there is absolutely nothing left to do. It really is DONE. I am really, really, truly, Dr. Goetz.

So here are the stats:

291 pages
86,118 words
465, 244 characters not including spaces
553, 044 characters including spaces
1279 paragraphs
7,896 lines

Whew!

I submitted all this material last Friday; on the same day I received my copy of "Thinking Like your Editor" by Susan Rabiner from amazon.com. So, onward and upward with The Book! After a six-month break, that is.

2006-09-29T15:31:00.000-04:00

Friday Cat Blogging!

A Message from Pepper:

Yesterday Mom took me back to that place. I don't know why, but I had to stay there all day, and they stuck me with needles! I thought maybe Mom didn't love me anymore. I was very relieved when she came to get me! I was very quiet last night because I was a little upset with Mom for bringing me there, and also because I was oddly sore. Mom says the fact that I'm sore means I had some injections so I won't get rabies or really bad colds, whatever those are!

2006-09-25T12:31:00.000-04:00

I love my Mac

For a long time, I despised Macs. When I was in high school I worked our school newspaper, and we used Pagemaker on Macs to do the paper's layouts. Those Macs crashed ona regular basis, so much so that when working one had to hit open-apple-s (save) once a minute in order not to lose valuable work. Not only was that a waste of time, but waiting for the computer to reboot after it froze also took way too much time. So I developed a decade-long aversion to all things Mac.

In the end, though, I was deeply unsatisfied with the Dell laptops that got me through graduate school. My first laptop had to be repaired when it was less than a year old; the on switch stopped working. Dell's customer service was pretty good then, and the repair happened quickly. But when the computer died, it completely died. The keyboard fritzed out, followed by the hard drive (within about five minutes of each other). The warranty had expired three months before. So I got a new Dell, and this one developed problems almost immediately. When it was less than a year old, it needed a new processor and processor fan, since it consistently overheated and shut off. A year after that replacement, it started overheating again, leading me to conclude that Dell sells poorly engineered machines.

So it's a real relief to have a functional new Mac powerbook, which I've been using for several weeks and appears to be working flawlessly. Not only does it have a cool feature that allows me to take goofy pictures of myself, but it doesn't crash or shut down. It's a strange feeling to have a reliable computer!

I've also been using itunes, which I enjoy (especially now that I've figured out how to make it pause between songs instead of slurring them together DJ style--that works great for pop music but not for opera!). I've digitized most of my music. I don't have an ipod but I've developed a yearning for one. I'm also using Endnote 10 for Mac, which also seems to work better than the PC versions I've used.

So, am I a convert? I'm not sure. I've got my semi-functional Dell laptop set up at home, and I'm using the MacBook Pro here in the department. Rest assured: if the MacBook acts up, the blogosphere will be the first to know!

2006-09-22T13:19:00.000-04:00

Hello! My Name is Pepper!

In honor of Friday Cat Blogging, I have allowed the new member of my household to introduce himself:

Hi, folks, my name is Pepper. I'm about a year old, and until two weeks ago, I lived here. Before that, I lived with some other people. But when I needed bladder surgery they gave me to the veterinarian because they couldn't afford it. (I'm better now!)

I didn't really like living at the clinic; it was really noisy and there were many strange smells. One day a very nice lady came, put me in a crate, and took me home.

I was really scared at first. I hid in my litter box and wouldn't come out! But gradually I got to know my new mom's house. She got me lots of toys and a scratching post. She's even promised to get me a new cat house and a water fountain when she goes to Petsmart this weekend!

I really like the little bed Mom made me in her closet. But I especially like to snuggle with her when she watches Buffy DVDs or when she's reading (she reads a lot!). She told me just this morning, after I woke her up at 6am to remind her to feed me, that she doesn't know how she got along without me!

2006-09-21T13:54:00.000-04:00

Some Harvard-related news

The Big H's endowment increased over the past year, and now comes in at 29.2 billion. Wow. Now, I would like the university to pay my UMI fees out of that windfall, please.

I've recently been learning all the fees associated with finishing. There's a charge for this, a bill for that, and plenty of fees to eat up my next paycheck. Surely a university with the Big H's resources could help out with that? After all, six years of enforced grad school poverty don't allow one to save a finishing nest egg. (Come to think of it, they don't allow one to save much of anything at all!)

My signed and sealed dissertation acceptance certificate arrived at the Registrar's Office yesterday. I think this means I'm officially Dr. Goetz.

There will be champagne tomorrow.

2006-09-20T12:28:00.000-04:00

Thoughts on popular and academic history

A reader sent me the transcript to Nathaniel Philbrick's online chat at the Washington Post about his recent book Mayflower. Now I'll preface my remarks by saying I haven't yet had time to read Philbrick's book; I've been finishing my dissertation and moving to Houston and stepping into my new role as college professor. But, Philbrick hasn't been shy about telling folks what his book is about; in the chat he casts his book as one fighting against the prevailing myths of Plymouth Colony:

Land was a central issue to the growing tensions in 17th century New England, but the war was not inevitable. There had been flare ups of potential violence for more than 50 years but those of the 1st generation had found ways to avert catastrophe. By the 2nd generation, a different attitude prevailed--on both sides. In many ways I see King Philip's War as a crisis of leadership involving both Gov. Josiah Winslow and Philip.

Later in the chat, Philbrick also points out that one of the big myths about the Pilgrims is that they arrived on Cape Cod as a unified group; that certainly is an interpretation most historians would agree is invalid. The Mayflower passengers were a socially and theologically divided group. In other words, Philbrick has framed his book about seventeenth-century New England and King Philip's War as a mythbuster.

But, as one of his readers at the chat points out, none of the myths Philbrick is busting are current anymore:

It's funny: As someone pushing 30, I can tell you I grew up more with the destruction of the myth than the myth itself. For instance, my teachers tended to emphasize the nation's horrible treatment of Native Americans than the journey of the pioneers. I clearly remember reading a children's book when I was six talking about the horrible conditions of the early Plymouth colony and having textbooks in elementary school and high school talking at length about King Phillip's War. And George Washington and the cherry tree? I was taught that it was a lie long before I was taught the actual story. I'm not complaining, mind you: I'd rather have the complicated truth than the clear falsehood. But is it right to say that the "myth" of Plymouth still holds sway? I think people are far more sophisticated about history than Yardley [a previous reviewer of Mayflower] may believe. At the very least, they're more skeptical when it comes to unblinking stories of heroism.

This has been the thrust of other reviews of Philbrick's work, most notably Jill Lepore's review in the New Yorker. Lepore excoriates Philbrick's unquestioning use of sources, and ultimately, his ahistoricality as well:

...he [Philbrick] finds most history books written by professors a chore to read. Trained as a journalist, Philbrick once explained his decision to include a bibliographic essay instead of footnotes or references to works of scholarship in his text: “I wanted to remove the scholarly apparatus that so often gets in the way of the plot in academic history.”

Herein, I think, lies the root of the problem between academic history and the popular history that folks like Philbrick write. Academic historians resent works like Philbrick's that claim to destoy myths that a generation, and sometimes two or three generations, of scholars have already debunked. Lepore points out that Samuel Eliot Morison, hardly a font of revisionist historical thought, published a book in the 1950s that raised many of the same issues about the Pilgrims as Philbrick does. If one reads works written later than the 1950s, you find Neal Salisbury's great book Manitou and Providence, for example, a plethora of books about King Philip's War, synthetic histories like Alan Taylor's American Colonies that briefly makes some of the same points Philbrick claims to make in his chat, and even more recent work that elucidates further the problems of land and domestic animals (like Virginia Anderson's Creatures of Empire). In other words, academic historians have been there and done that, and they were able to do so through the "scholarly apparatus" and scholarly methods that Philbrick finds so annoying.

So why, then, does the reading public devour Philbrick's book but heap scorn upon the many books that made Mayflower possible? Part of it, I think, lies in Philbrick's own attitude. Philbrick resents footnotes, emphasizes plot over analysis, and as Lepore points out, often takes sources on their face that historians would be much more sceptical of. In other words, Philbrick can weave a scintillating narrative without the substructure or the method that academic historians rely upon. The result, the reading public believes, is not only easier to read but also more accurate. Academic historians have a reputation for undoing cherished American myths: they abuse the founding fathers, European immigrants, and other assorted heroes of the American past. Instead of a simple truth historians present a complicated story. I don't think the reading public generally wants a complicated story; they want it easy with clear heroes and villains, winners and losers. Journalists like Philbrick can give readers that kind of history.

What academic historians provide, however, is argumentative, provocative history that engages deeply with many sources. Sure, academic history is festooned with footnotes--it has to be, for readers should know where to look for the antecedents to particular arguments. That "scholarly appartatus" is precisely what makes our work transparent, and what allows us to debate our interpretations. Acacemic history isn't always neat and tidy, nor should it be. but nevertheless, I think the reading public would enjoy academic history if it could get over its suspicion of it.

I don't resent Philbrick for his success. On the contrary, if some readers come away from his book with a better understanding of seventeenth-century Massachusetts, that's great. But I think readers should understand that he has done a disservice to scholars in the process: without our many generations of work, his neat, tidy, and entertaining interpretation would not even be possible.

2006-09-18T15:16:00.000-04:00

Sneer at me too!

The Weekly Standard has included a course taught by my fellow Cliopat Tim Burke in a list of courses it decided have "ridiculous content." You can read Tim's syllabus and judge for yourself what you think of the content; calling it ridiculous seems, well, ridiculous. Tim has posted several critiques of the Horowitzian position on the contemporary university, and the Weekly Standard's foolish editorial seems to prove Tim's point. Conservatives criticize academia, especially postmodern theory and philosophy, queer studies, and women's and gender studies, for example, but they do so without engaging with the content or methodologies of actual courses taught. It's easy, I suppose, to sneer at something without attempting to understand it.

So, I ask the Weekly Standard to sneer at me too. I'm teaching a course next semester called "Sex, Lies, and Depositions." Like Tim's course (which is titled "The Whole Enchilada") I suppose a Weekly Standard editor with an axe to grind might conclude, without seeing the syllabus, that such a course will amount to mindless fluff.

Actually, the class is a research and writing intensive seminar for juniors and seniors that focuses on Virginia's seventeenth-century county court records. I'm finishing the syllabus this week (in preparation for next semester's book orders, which have to be in in a few weeks). I'll post the syllabus then. In the mean time, though, please, WS: sneer at me! I could use the entertainment.

2006-09-12T17:29:00.000-04:00

AT&T

I was really disappointed to learn that Verizon does not serve my Houston neighborhood, so I had to go with AT&T for phone service. I paid my bill last week (only two and a half weeks after I got the service originally, which seemed excessive to me). My payment was a day late and I got a nastygram in the mail from AT&T threatening to cut off my service, which I thought was just too much. Would any other company out there actually threaten to cut off service after a payment one day late and after less than one month of service?

Today I got an acknowledgement of receipt of payment:

==============================================================================
An Important Message from AT&T Texas
==============================================================================

Dear Valued Customer,

We recieved your recent payment of $64.11.

This payment has been applied to telephone number (713) xxx-xxxx.

AT&T Texas thanks you for your business and the opportunity to serve you.

Wow. The AT&T customer service is not only inefficient (sending out a nastygram after one day) but it also cannot spell. I plan on sending in my payments a day late from here on out, so that AT&T must waste postage on unnecessary nastygrams, and so I can see how long it takes the company to STOP THE SPELLING ERRORS.

**UPDATE 9/16/06**

The actual check with which I paid my bill cleared my account today, and on the reverse it clearly showed processing on September 7, the day the bill was actually due. So, my payment was not a day late after all, and AT&T wasted lots of money having to field my phone calls and sending me a completely unnecessary demand for payment. Wow. Incompetence carried out to the nth degree, with misspellings.

Next up: Historianess's feud with CenterPoint Energy, which provides the gas for my stove. Also a tale of woe and incompetence.

2006-09-12T10:25:00.000-04:00

Harvard is ending Early Action

My PhD alma mater, Harvard University, today announced it is ending its early action program, which allowed students to find out by December 15 if they were admitted, rejected, or deferred to ther egular applicant pool. (Students then had until May 1 to accept admission at Harvard.)

Interim President Derek Bok says that early action hurt minority, international, and disadvantaged students, and it contributed to the increasing pressures college applicants face.

It seems like a good idea to me. I'm sure that first-generation college students, especially those from disavantaged backgrounds, have less access to the high-powered counseling and assistance that many early applicants have. And, anything that reduces the pressure high school seniors face is a good thing.

I wonder if other colleges and universities will follow Harvard's lead on this?

2006-09-11T14:41:00.000-04:00

September 11

Several blogs have personal remembrances of September 11, 2001 today (I read one at By the Bayou). I don't have anything particular to relate in that vein, except that I spent most of the day with friends who had family in New York, waiting with them to hear about their families (they were all unhurt).

I spent an hour today listening to the Rice Chorale sing Faure's Requiem. It was a beautiful way to remember the events and the victims of five years ago. It was remarkably well-attended, especially since acaemics and students, like everyone else, are notoriously jealous of their lunchtime prerogatives. The concert hall was packed with people. I can't think of a more appropriate way to express collective grief and remembrance.

2006-07-28T18:24:00.000-04:00

What A Week It's Been!

Monday: Gave draft of dissertation to advisor.

Thursday: Fourth anniversary of (a)musings of a grad student.

Friday: Movers come and empty my apartment.

Saturday: Depart on my drive to Texas.

Sometime next week (or possibly the week after!): Resume regular posting.