HIST 2401A: History of the United States to 1865
Fall 2022
Instructor: Dr. Jill St. Germain
An understanding of American history has never been more relevant! Just about everything you read about the United States in the news these days has long, long roots and Americans often call upon the past – as the individual invoking it understands it – to justify actions in the present. To assess the use made of history in public and private forums, it’s important for you to have a greater familiarity with the contours of American history and to bring a critical eye to bear on the subject.
HIST 2401 will examine the history of the United States from the inauguration of the colonial era to the end of the American Civil War in 1865. The course will chart the emergence of a national sensibility among the several European colonies established on the Atlantic coast in the 17th and 18th centuries and address the conflicts and challenges of nation-making, with emphasis on the coming of the American Revolution and the crisis of the American Civil War. In considering these events we will pay specific attention to the mingling of peoples – Native American, African, and European – and the relationships among them that formed the foundation of the new nation and shaped it in so many ways. Themes of particular concern include: the concept of American “exceptionalism”; the impulse for and consequences of territorial expansion; race relations with emphasis on the experiences of dispossession, enslavement, and resistance; and competing visions of nation. We will also be concerned with linking the unfolding panorama of the American past with events in the present-day United States.
Format
History 2401 will be delivered online in an asynchronous format. Lectures will be available on the cuLearn course page in text and audio form. That is, you can read them as essays, listen to the lecture, or both. They will be supplemented with powerpoint presentations emphasizing important points and providing visual materials to enhance understanding of and appreciation of the written/audio lecture material.
Six times during the term there are assigned primary source readings. For five of these, you are required to complete a short reading assignment.
Assessment
- Completion weekly of a multiple choice online quiz based on the lecture and powerpoint materials of the week. The quizzes are available only for the seven days of the appropriate week, so it is important to stay on top of your work.
- Five times over the course of the term you are obliged to complete a short written assignment addressing a required primary source reading.
- The major assignment of the term is a “Primary Source Scavenger Hunt” exercise which asks you to find electronic copies of the full text of several significant primary source documents and then to answer a series of short factual, analytical, and interpretive questions about each of them.
Learning Outcomes
On the completion of this course you should:
- Have gained a depth and breadth of knowledge about the history of the United States in the period
- Understand and explain historical events, people, institutions, movements, and ideas associated with the history of the United States to 1865.
- Have developed your capacity to assess and analyze historical documents and other primary sources.
- Be able to evaluate historical arguments.
- Have improved internet researching skills.
- Be able to express in writing the results of historical thinking and research.