Email: kdierks@indiana.edu

Office hours: Ballantine 734, Tuesdays, 12:15-2:15 p.m., or by appointment

Office phone: 855-6288

Course description:

This course focuses on the cultural and social history of writing in early America between the late fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Taking a comparative and multicultural approach, the course considers how acts of writing -- handwritten and printed -- affected the lives of people in different social groups:  Native Americans, European and English immigrants, and African Americans; men, women, and children; affluent, middling, and impoverished folk.  We will examine the changing ways writing was deployed as an instrument of power, and how these changes contributed to the transition from a pre-modern to a more recognizably modern world.

At the end of the course, I hope you will have sharper analytical skills with which to assess evidence and formulate your own arguements, as well as sharper writing and verbal skills with which to organize and articulate your own ideas -- beyond the confines of history, and and useful in any field of endeavor.  I also you will have a solid grounding in a formative period of American history when writing and printing were as crucial instruments of power as email communication and satellite technology are in the present day.

Course requirements:

CLASS PARTICIPATION.  Because this course is an intensive seminar, its success depends on your regular attendance and your active participation.  Attending every class is thus absolutely mandatory.  If you must be absent at some point, you should have the courtesy to alert the professor beforehand and to provide official written notification from the Dean of Students (Franklin Hall 108) for any such absence to be excused.  Unexcused absences will result in a steep grade deduction on the ensuing paper.

You are expected to have completed the readings prior to coming to class, and to be prepared to contribute to respectful, informed, and constructive discussions.  Class participation will count 20% toward your final grade.

READING ASSIGNMENTS.  Weekly reading will generally involve a blend of "primary" documents produced by people in the past, and "secondary" readings written by historians.  Links to these readings can be found in the course syllabus, from where you can print them out.  Be sure to bring print-outs with you for discussion.  In addition, there are three course books to be purchased (as listed below).

Specific questions to keep in mind as you do the weekly reading can be found by clicking on the "Readings" headings in the course syllabus.  For general tips on interpreting primary documents and evaluating secondary readings, see the following two guidelines:  Strategies for Interpreting Primary Documents; Strategies for Evaluating Secondary Readings.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS.  Consistent with the intensive writing requirements of the College of Arts and Sciences, there will be two shorter papers and one longer paper, as well as a number of one-page response papers.  All of these assignments will be posted ahead of time on the course syllabus, from where you can print them out.  The first shorter paper (10%); the longer paper (30%), the second shorter paper (20%), and the one-page response papers (20%) account for the remaining 80% of your final grade (beyond class participation).  Improvement over the course of the semester will be rewarded.

Papers are due at the beginning of the class period.  All papers should be double-spaced, in a readable font, and stapled (no folders), with your name (but never your social security number), course number and title, date, and paper title at the top of the first page.  Lateness will be penalized, unless excused by official written notification from the Dean of Students (Franklin Hall 108).

Plagiarism will result in failure of and withdrawal from the class, and will become a permanent part of the student's transcript and academic record.  Writing must be original, and all quotations, derivative ideas and uncommon facts must be duly footnoted.

See plagiarism guidelines from Writing Tutorial Services.  See plagiarism procedures from IU Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct (III. Student Misconduct; A. Academic Misconduct; 3. Plagiarism).

For general assistance with writing papers or other study skills, you are encouraged to visit Writing Tutorial Services, one of the Academic Support Centers, or the Study Smarter Workshops run by the Student Academic Center.

ASSISTANCE.  If at any time during the semester you have questions about the course website, lecture material, reading material, writing assignments, or your performance in this class, please feel free to speak to the professor before or after class, during office hours, via email, or via telephone to make an appointment.

If you have a disability or learning disability, please provide me with official written notification from either Disability Services for Students (Franklin Hall 096, 327) as soon as possible so that any necessary accommodations can be made.

Course books: (available at the college bookstores and via online booksellers)

Hall, David D.  Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book.  Amherst: U niversity of Massachusetts Press, 1996.

Wyss, Hilary.  Writing Indians: Literacy, Christianity, and Native Community in Early America.  Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003.

Headrick, Daniel R.  When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Course syllabus:
 

August 31	Course Introduction and Concepts
September 7	Course Themes (response paper #1)
	Readings: A narrative of American exceptionalism:  Starr, Paul.  The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications.  New York: Basic Books, 2004.  introduction, coda (pp. 1-19, 385-402) * ON RESERVE AT THE MAIN LIBRARY:  P92.U5 S646 A narrative of European exceptionalism:  Headrick, Daniel R.  When Information Came of Age, ch. 1 (pp. 3-14) U.S. Department of Commerce, "A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding their Use of the Internet" (February 2002) "Life Caching" (Trendwatching.com, July 2004)
September 14	Written Language, Cultural Encounters, and Cultural Brokers (response paper #2)
	Reading: Hilary Wyss, Writing Indians.  introduction, chs. 2-4 (pp. 1-11, 52-153)
September 21	Literacy, Education, and Social Boundaries (response paper #3)
	Reading: Hall, David. Cultures of Print.  pp. 38-41, 45-78, 79-96 (New England), 97-132, 148-150 (Chesapeake)
September 28	Print Culture, Authorship, and Public Spheres
	WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1 DUE
October 5	In-class writing workshop
October 12	Cultural Models of Writing (response paper #4)
	Reading: Tamara Plakins Thornton, Handwriting in America: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), ch. 1 ("The Lost World of Colonial Handwriting"), pp. 2-41 (pdf)
October 19	Social Networks of Writing (response paper #5)
	Reading: Toby L. Ditz, "Shipwrecked; or, Masculinity Imperiled: Mercantile Representations of Failure and the Gendered Self in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," Journal of American History 81 (1994): 51-80 (JSTOR pdf)
October 26	Visual Cultures and Material Cultures of Writing
November 2	Student consultations to be scheduled -- see class email
	WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2 ROUGH DRAFT DUE
November 9	Communications in Politics -- Empire, Revolution, War, Nation (response paper #6)
	Readings: Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675-1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), ch. 12 ("Governors, Agents, and the Communication of Politics"), pp. 229-250 (pdf) Julie M. Flavell, "Government Interception of Letters from America and the Quest for Colonial Opinion in 1775," William and Mary Quarterly Ser. 3, 58 (2001): 403-430 (JSTOR pdf) Richard R. John and Christopher J. Young, "Rites of Passage: Postal Petitioning as a Tool of Governance in the Age of Federalism," In The House and Senate in the 1790s: Petitioning, Lobbying, and Institutional Development, Kenneth R. Bowling and Donald R. Kennon, eds. (Athens: Ohio State University Press, 2002), pp. 100-138 (pdf)
November 16	Writing in Slavery and Freedom -- Agency amid Violence
	WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2 FINAL DRAFT DUE
November 23	Student consultations to be scheduled (Thanksgiving week)
	Reading: Headrick, Daniel R.  When Information Came of Age.  chs. 2-3 (pp. 15-95)
November 30	Communications Systems at the Early Modern Vanguard (response paper #7)
	Reading: Headrick, Daniel R.  When Information Came of Age.  chs 4-5 (pp. 96-180)
December 7	Course Conclusion (response paper #8)
	Reading: Boo, Katherine, "The Best Job in Town: The Americanization of Chennai," The New Yorker, July 5, 2004 pp 1-2 (title page and color photograph) (pdf; large file) pp 3-14 (text) (pdf)
December 13-16	FINALS WEEK -- WRITING ASSIGNMENT #3 due by Tuesday, December 14, 4:45 p.m.