dholland@stanford.edu

Office: 200-312

www.stanford.edu/class/history29s

In the decades that followed the founding of the United States, much about the character of the new nation remained unclear. Despite the unifying influence of new national institutions, the fact remained that America was inhabited by diverse groups of immigrants and indigenes. Divided by race, religion, and origins, citizens of the Early Republic consciously worked to create a sense of collective identity.

In the view of many early Americans, the most fundamental characteristics of the United States were its form of government and its relationship to God. Religion and politics therefore provided the principal sources from which the debate over national identity drew. The primary objective of this course is to explore the ways politics and religion worked in tandem to produce Americans' conceptions of themselves and their nation. In the process, the course will address a number of important issues, including slavery, sexism, and immigration.

The history department requires each history major to take a sources and methods seminar. In these seminars students learn to do history rather than simply learn about history. This seminar will force you to grapple with the primary sources of the period. You will learn to analyze a wide variety of historical artifacts, including newspapers, legislative debates, slave spirituals, sermons, autobiographies, travelogues, and poetry. Though the course does employ a pair of secondary works and a handful of lectures, you will spend the bulk of your time dealing with early Americans in their words and on their terms.

Course Reader -- Available at Stanford Bookstore

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

Jill Lepore, The Name of War

Respect. Because this seminar is designed to stimulate thought and expression, it is absolutely essential that we cultivate an atmosphere of mutual respect. Each member of the seminar must feel at ease sharing ideas and posing questions. While differences of opinion are appropriate--and even encouraged--any behavior that works to inhibit the free and comfortable flow of thought will not be tolerated.

Participation. The success of this seminar depends on each member's participation. Students should be willing to venture their own thoughts and address the thoughts of fellow class members.

Preparation. Participation requires preparation. Students should come to class having read closely and thought carefully about the assigned readings.

Attendance. Participation presupposes attendance. A student's presence in the seminar will be expected.

Written work. Papers must be turned in on time. In the absence of a legitimate excuse, a paper's score will be docked one point for each day late.

Grading (see course calendar for detailed explanations of assignments)

1. Brief Papers: There will be a written assignment due approximately every week in class. These assignments, though relatively brief, will constitute the main portion of your work. This is where you will show how carefully and creatively you have analyzed that week's sources. The papers will be graded out of 15 points and will cumulatively account for 150 of the 200 points available in the course.

2. Final Project: This assignment will account for 50 of the 200 possible points.

3. Participation: I reserve the right to adjust your grade higher or lower by up to 10% depending on your participation in class.

COURSE CALENDAR

Introduction to the course. General administration.

NO CLASS: Martin Luther King, Jr's. Birthday

Read Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities.

Written assignment: Submit one page on each of the following questions:

1) What is national identity?

2) How is national identity constructed?

Mini-lecture and discussion: Providentialism and American identity.

Read Jill Lepore's The Name of War.

Written assignment: Submit one page on each of the following questions:

1) What is America's national identity as Professor Lepore has defined it?

Be prepared to discuss your experience with the following assignment:

•The Avalon Project (link through course website)

•The American Memory Project (link through course website)

Mini-lecture and discussion: The problem of race in early America.

Carefully read the documents in the course reader. How did religion, politics, and notions of national identity shape the debate over slavery. (3-4 pages)

Slavery and Religion: Gabriel's Rebellion, Part One--The Narrative

Carefully read the documents on Gabriel's Rebellion in the course reader. Try to piece together the story of the rebellion, without referring to any other sources. As if you were a journalist, use the evidence at your disposal to reconstruct the who, what, when, and where. Be as detailed as possible. We will present our versions of the story in class, comparing and discussing their respective merits.

Slavery and Religion: Gabriel's Rebellion, Part Two--The Analysis

Revisit the documents on Gabriel's Rebellion. Now that you have the narrative framework, focus on analyzing the documents for what they say about early American religious ideas, political struggles, and notions of national identity. (2-3 pages)

Mini-lecture and discussion: Providence in an age of science

No class: President's Day

Consider the documents in the reader. How did ideas about the natural and supernatural figure into notions of national identity. (2-3 pages)

Part One: Mini-lecture and discussion

Part Two: Catholicism

Read the documents on Catholicism. What do these documents reveal about faith, social power, and identity? (2-3 pages)

Part Three: Judaism

Read the documents on Judaism. How do these discussions of Judaism speak to questions of faith, social power, and identity? (2-3 pages)

Mini-Lecture and Discussion: Death in America

Read the documents from the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. How did this event both expose and inform Americans' conceptions of their political and religious identity? (2-3 pages)

Personal consultations with me regarding the final project--by appointment.

Final Project Due!!

Final Project: Select a book from the following bibliography—or choose one of your own—which deals with the development of American identity in the early national period. In roughly 8 to 10 pages, analyze the author's use of sources, answering the following questions.

1) What sources does the author use?

2) Why these sources?

3) How effectively does the author use them?

4) What might you have done differently?

Give a careful discussion of the sources and methods of historical inquiry exemplified in the book.

Appleby, Joyce. Inheriting the Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.

--. Capitalism and the New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790's. New York: New York University Press, 1984.

Bloch, Ruth. Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756-1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Brooke, John L. The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Bushman, Richard. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Knopf, 1992.

Davidson, Cathy. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975.

Fliegelman, Jay. Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Hatch, Nathan. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.

Jordan, Winthrop. White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1968.

Kammen, Michael. A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture. New York: Knopf, 1986.

Kerber, Linda. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Kettner, James H. The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978.

Mullin, Michael. Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and British Caribbean, 1736-1831 Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720- 1840. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Newman, Simon. Parades and Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early America Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.

Rothman, David J. The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.

Salmon, Marylynn. Women and the Law of Property in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Taylor, Alan. William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Tomlins, Christopher L. Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Waldstreicher, David. In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 17-76-1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1992.