Theory and Method in American Studies - JMM654

• Title: Theory and Method in American Studies
• Guaranteed by: Department of North American Studies (23-KAS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2016 to 2016
• Semester: winter
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:1/1, C [HT]
• Capacity: 15 / 15 (25)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment; priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
• Guarantor: Dr. phil. Lucie Kýrová, M.A.
• Teacher(s): Dr. phil. Lucie Kýrová, M.A.

Aim of the course

Last update: Dr. phil. Lucie Kýrová, M.A. (30.09.2016)

The central purpose of this course is to introduce students to the theoretical approaches and methods that have informed and shaped the writing of history. While we will concentrate on the researching and writing of history, many of the approaches we will discuss are applicable to other fields of scholarly pursuit. When possible, our readings will concentrate on one event – the Salem witch trials of 1692, to better demonstrate the different approaches and methods that scholars have used to explain historical events as well as contemporary issues. These will be supplemented by a selection of other readings that will further help to demonstrate the different approaches, methods, and schools discussed and cover those approaches not applicable to the Salem events.

Our class meetings will consist of discussions of the assigned materials and related topics and a short presentation of background information on each school of thought. With the exception of our first and last classes, each week two students will be in charge of the class discussion and material presentation. I will provide the background information for each historiography school. 

Syllabus

Last update: Dr. phil. Lucie Kýrová, M.A. (30.09.2016)

Theory and Methods

(JMM 271 / JMM 654)

Mondays, 12:30 – 13:50, room # J3017

 

Lucie Kýrová

[e-mail]

Office room 3080

Office hours: Mondays, 15:00 – 16:00

                 Tuesdays, 11:00 – 12:00 and by appointment via email.

 

The central purpose of this course is to introduce students to the theoretical approaches and methods that have informed and shaped the writing of history. While we will concentrate on the researching and writing of history, many of the approaches we will discuss are applicable to other fields of scholarly pursuit. When possible, our readings will concentrate on one event – the Salem witch trials of 1692, to better demonstrate the different approaches and methods that scholars have used to explain historical events as well as contemporary issues. These will be supplemented by a selection of other readings that will further help to demonstrate the different approaches, methods, and schools discussed and cover those approaches not applicable to the Salem events.

 

Assignments

Discussions

Our class meetings will consist of discussions of the assigned materials and related topics and a short presentation of background information to each school of thought. With the exception of our first and last classes, each week two students will be in charge of the class discussion and material presentation. I will provide the background information for each historiography school.

 

Historiography paper

You will write a historiography paper on a topic of your choice, not to exceed 8 double-spaced pages. You can use your MA Thesis topic, if you want to. In this exercise, you will critically evaluate the existing literature on your topic, its merits and shortcomings. You will do this assignment in stages – from a selection of a topic and preliminary bibliography, through a book review of one of your sources, a draft of the lit review to be critiqued by a colleague in the class, to the final paper. Detailed instructions and due dates will be posted on SIS.

 

Grading

Class attendance and participation in discussions = 10%

Leading a discussion = 20%

Book review = 20%

Final paper = 50%

 

Readings

Mappen, Marc. Witches and Historians: Interpretations of Salem. 2^nd edition. Malabar, Florida: Krieger

Publishing Company, 1996.

 

Assigned chapters from Mappen and other books or articles not available electronically through the Jinonice library will be posted on SIS.

 

Schedule

Week 1                Primary Sources and The Empiricists

                           Mappen, “The Verdict of Contemporaries,” pp. 20 - 35

                                     Cotton Mather, “Satan’s Attack on New England”

                                     Robert Calef, “An Attack on the Trials”

                                     John Hale, “The Lessons of Salem”

 

Analyze the primary sources – What can you learn about the events from these sources? What can you learn about their authors? About the time, place and society they were created in?  What are these sources? Who wrote them? When were they created? Where were they created? And why (for what purpose) were they created?

 

Week 2                Social History – Class and Marxist Historians

                       Stone, Lawrence, “A New Interpretation of Witchcraft,” in Mappen, pp. 10 – 19.

                       Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum, “A Clash of Two Worlds,” in Mappen, pp. 115 –117.

                       Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Redicker. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000. Chapter 5, “Hydrarchy: Sailors, Pirates and the Maritime

                       State,” pp. 151 – 181. Electronic version available through Jinonice library.

Email me your choice of topic and preliminary bibliography by October 14^th, 8 pm.

 

Week 3                Social History – Quantitative History (and Economic History)

                    Carr, Lois Green. “Emigration and the Standard of Living: The Seventeenth Century Chesapeake.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 52, No. 2 (June 1992), pp. 271 – 291.

                    Demos, John. “Families in Colonial Bristol, Rhode Island: An Exercise in Historical Demography.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January 1968), pp. 40 – 57.

 

Week 4                Women and Gender History

                      Karlsen, Carol F. “Witches as Sexual Threat.” In Mappen, pp. 118 – 126.

                      May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999. Chapter 1, “Containment at Home: Cold War, Warm Hearth,” pp. 10 – 29.

 

Week 5                American Religion

                      Godbeer, Richard. “Diabolical Witchcraft and Maleficent Witchcraft.” In Mappen, pp. 127 – 137.

                      Harley, David. “Explaining Salem: Calvinist Psychology and the Diagnoses of Possession.” The American Historical Review. Vol. 101, No. 2 (April 1996), 307 – 330.

                      Dailey, Jane. “Sex, Segregation, and the Sacred after Brown.” Journal of American History. Vol. 91 (June 2004), 119 – 144.

 

Week 6                Race, Ethnohistory, and Native American History

                       Tucker, Veta Smith. “Purloined Identity: The Racial Metamorphosis of Tituba of Salem Village.” Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 30, No. 4 (March 2000), 624 – 634.

                       Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Chatper 1, “Imagining a Distant New World,” pp. 11 – 40.

 Book review due in class. Bring an extra copy for a classmate to comment on it (by next class)

 

Week 7                African-American History

                      Miles, Tiya. Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2005. Chapter 3, “Motherhood,” 44 – 63. Available electronically through the Jinonice library.

                      Harris, LaShawn. “Playing the Numbers: Madame Stephanie St. Clair and African American Policy Culture in Harlem.” Black Women, Gender + Families, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall 2008), 53 – 76.

                             Payne, Charles. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: the Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Strugggle. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. Chapter 2, “Testing the Limits: Black Activism in Postwar Mississippi,” 29 – 66.                       Available electronically thought the Jinonice library.

 ** Read the article and one of the book chapters. Those presenting have to read everything.

 Bring your comments on your classmate’s book review back for them.

 

Week 8                 Biology and Environmental Studies

                       Caporael, Linnda R. “A Biologist Diagnoses Disease.” In Mappen, 63 – 71

                       Spanos, Nicholas P. and Jack Gottlieb. “The Disease Diagnosis Disputed.” In Mappen, 72 – 82.

                       Alchon, Suzanne Austin. A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Chapter 4, pp. 83 – 108.

                               

Week 9                 Psychohistory and Psychoanalysis

                           Caulfield, Ernest. “A Physician Diagnoses Hysteria.” In Mappen, pp. 51 – 62.

                           Demos, John. “Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of Seventeenth-Century New England.” The American Historical Review. Vol. 75, No. 5 (June 1970), 1311 – 1326.

                           Interview: Mary Beth Norton discusses the Salem witch trials. Source: NPR Weekend Edition, October 27, 2002. Transcript: https://teacherweb.com/CA/LodiHighSchool/MrsRose/Interviewmaryhortonsalem.doc.

 Email a draft of your paper to your review partner by 8 pm, so they have time to read and comment on it before the next class.

 

Week 10              Political and Diplomatic History

                       Bennett, M. Todd. ”The Spirit of ’76: Diplomacy Commemorating the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976.” Diplomatic History, Vol. 40, No. 4 (September 2016), 695 – 721.   

                       Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Chapter 2, “Telling Stories about Race and Democracy,” 47 – 78.

Bring or email your comments on your classmate’s draft back to them.

 

Week 11              Labor History and History of American Capitalism

                       Enstad, Nan. Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1999. Chapter 3, "Fashioning Political Subjectivities: The                        1909 Shirtwaist Strike and the ‘Rational Girl Striker,” 84 – 118.

                       Ott, Julia Cathleen. “When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for Investor’s Democracy and the Emergence of the Retail Investor in the United States, 1890 – 1930.” Enterprise and Society, Vol. 9. No. 4 (December 2008), 619 – 630.

 

Week 12              Oral History, Public History, Digital Humanities

                       TBA