Course Description
This course introduces the history of what is now the United States, beginning with the catastrophic collision of cultures during the European age of exploration and concluding with the American Civil War. The goal is to extend your mental map of the country across time, as well as space. To this end, we will alternate between a birds-eye view of important events and trends, and reconstructing what the early American scene looked like through the eyes of people on the ground. You will meet, among others, the Powhatan Indian Pocahontas and the explorer John Smith, President George Washington and his runaway slave Ona Judge, and the nineteenth-century social commentators Ralph Waldo Emerson, Catherine Beecher and Benjamin Palmer.
The course will not only expand your knowledge of the American past, but also help you develop the analytical skills that make the study of history a useful path into a range of professions. Readings emphasize primary sources such as maps, journals, letters, and legal documents. There will be several short exercises designed to help you analyze and argue from these materials, and to foster class discussion. There will also be two mid-terms and a final.
