Course Description
Analysis of the political, military, social, and economic history of British North America and the United States between 1765 and 1815. Emphasis on the origins of the Revolution, the destructive civil war that ensued, and the controversies over the Confederation and the Constitution.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
In addition to the assigned course work, students taking the course for graduate credit will be expected to read extensively in the secondary literature on the American Revolution and complete a 15-20 page historiographic essay that discusses, in an integrated fashion, that extra reading. The goal of pairing such in-depth historiographic work with participation in the lecture course (and completion of all its requirements) will be to prepare graduate students to teach courses on the American Revolution. Graduate students will be expected to meet with the instructor as a group to discuss these additional readings and approaches to teaching the subject.
Athena Title
AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Prerequisite
2000-level HIST course
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students who complete this course will be able to think, write, and speak critically about the political and ideological origins of American democracy and the American nation-state. In particular, the course will require students to think about key concepts in American history and contemporary life--equality, freedom, republicanism, tyranny--and relate them to both the history of the Revolutionary era and to our own day. A principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to both the limitations and possibilities of change. The course seeks to acquaint students with the ways in which past societies and peoples have defined the relationships between community and individual needs and goals, and between ethical norms and decision-making. In general students will be expected to: 1. read a wide range of primary and secondary sources critically. 2. polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively. 3. write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
Topical Outline
1. Pre-revolutionary Society: family, women, community, and religious awakenings 2. Pre-revolutionary politics: deferential society and rural revolts 3. The growth of Whig ideology 4. The Stamp Act crisis 5. The Growing Crescendo of Crisis: British taxation policy, 1766-1773 6. Tom Paine's Common Sense and Declaring Independence 7. The Loyalist Persuasion 8. British and patriot military strategy and the progress of the War 9. The soldiers' and civilians' war 10. The African-American's and Indians' war 11. The post-revolutionary economy: stagnation and recovery 12. The Massachusetts Regulation 13. The Constitutional Convention 14. Ratification of the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist persuasions 15. Rural discontents and the forging of a national government 16. Republican motherhood and its discontents 17. Evangelical resurgence in the new nation 18. The Revolution of 1800 and the Jeffersonian persuasion
Syllabus