I am teaching the first half of the American history survey this semester. We have just gotten the Constitution ratified and Washington elected, but I’m already deep in thought about teaching the second half of the survey next semester.  My book list is due soon and it has got me thinking about what we assign to read in these introductory courses.

I always try to provide a balance of primary and secondary sources.  This semester I used Foner’s Give Me Liberty, Mark Smith’s short document reader Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt, and Paul Johnson’s Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper along with an assortment of other primary sources and electronic secondary readings.  I like the progression; we read mostly Foner and some primary sources for the first few weeks and then spend one week studying Stono.  Because there are lots of documents and a few short interpretive essays, we can really talk about how to read sources, make an interpretation, and present a cogent argument.  Armed with these skills, we can then take a more critical look at the founding documents and are ready to read a historical monograph toward the end of class.  At least, that is how I envision it.

The reality is messier.  My students like the Stono reader, but they don’t walk away marveling at how four scholars can present such different views of the same material based on their historical lens.  They make a decision about which scholar is right.  Try as I might, they always view the textbook as Truth with a capital T rather than a scholarly interpretation.  They enjoy talking about the drunk guy who jumps off waterfalls, but they struggle to use Johnson’s book in essays and exams.

Now, I’m preparing to teach the second half of the American history survey.  This is new ground for me and not nearly as comfortable as my America to 1877 course.  As I sift through textbooks, monographs, and primary sources, I find myself overwhelmed with the possibilities.  In the first half of the survey, I have no problem seeing a narrative that weaves its way through my course.  But, in the unfamiliar territory of the twentieth century, I can appreciate students’ inability to place monographs and primary sources into historical arguments.  They don’t know enough of the story and they don’t have a base of knowledge to judge these sources against.

So, I am rethinking my readings in the survey course.  What is the American history survey supposed to do, after all?  While surveys of non-western traditions offer students an important new lens on the world through content alone (I think we can all agree that our students need exposure to the basic chronology of Sub-Saharan Africa and that this knowledge is novel to the vast majority of college students), it doesn’t seem that American surveys are bringing students content entirely new to them.  Is the goal then, to offer them an alternative narrative of American history?

If that is the goal of the survey, then one related goal has to be that students leave class better able to evaluate narratives for themselves.  If not, they leave class with nothing more than a new story that they have consumed, unthinkingly, from an authority figure.  Assigning monographs as expert sources, it seems to me, underscores this idea; even when we ask students to be critical of monographs, in survey classes we rarely have time to give students the content they need to engage in a true critique.  Readers like the popular Major Problems series provide an excellent combination of historiography and primary source but, in my experience, students find the combination of primary and secondary sources along with lecture and written assignments overwhelming.

I’ve been a TA for instructors that saw the goal of the survey to pass on content and placed themselves as the sole historical authority.  I’ve also worked for professors who valued exposing students to the rudiments of historiography and others who valued the ability to dissect a primary source.  For me, the goal of the survey is to give my students access to a historical narrative and the skills to prioritize events and sources for themselves.   I am struggling with what this means in practice.  Do I need to let go of the idea that they are getting a comprehensive history of the time period? Or, do I need to let go of the monograph?

What readings do you assign in a survey course? And what is the ultimate goal in assigning these readings?

Also, I’m shamelessly taking suggestions for the second half of the survey.