Well, the earnest, hard-working guys at Teaching United States History never take a break. We’re preparing for Spring 2012 already. I’ll be teaching the first half of the U.S. history survey (contact to Civil War) and Kevin will be teaching a course in American Religious History, which I’m guessing he’ll bring into the blog now and again. Here at the blog, I plan on focusing on primary documents and differing historical intepretations of each time period (“how revolutionary was the revolution?” or “what caused the Civil War?” … wait, wait, wait … look for it, look for it … and yes, there’s that one student who is deeply, passionately committed to the notion that slavery did NOT cause the war and he is eager to address the topic!).
If you will be teaching the first half of the survey, and you would be interested in blogging here at Teaching United States History, shoot me an email at: eblum@mail.sdsu.edu. Maybe you have a game you use; maybe there’s a movie you analyze; maybe you dress up as Lucretia Mott and give abolitionist speeches and you want to link to your youtube video … then this is the place for you.We’ll probably be on hiatus here until just before the New Year. Then, I’ll start posting about my syllabus, texts, and assignments.
Ed,
It was a pleasure hearing about your ideas for the survey course. I teach AP US at a high school on Long Island (also a grad student in the CUNY system) and, as I’m constantly thinking over how to make the course better, it’s great to be able to see/hear similar ideas bouncing around.
That being said, thank you very much.
Looking forward to the next installment,
Ken
I am teaching the first half of the survey this spring for the first time. I will be interested to see how you track with what I am thinking. The period is so long, conquest to Civil War, that I working with three themes to carry all the way through. That is the only way I can figure out how to limit the subject. Looking forward to what you have to offer.
Lilian, we would love to hear about your three themes. I’ll be posting more soon and am starting a new feature from various scholars to discuss the main debates of the time period. Hope to hear more from you and feel free to send any ideas along.
Edward, here is my course description:
The course examines the history of the American people from the pre-Columbian period through the American Civil War, with a particular emphasis on the ideas that contributed to the political, economic, and social order of the new nation. We will deal with the broad themes of freedom, diversity, and the search for a viable order and pay attention to how the nation dealt with conflicting interests. We will address the following questions: What ideas contributed to the revolutionary mood and the formation of a new government? How did the presence of Indians, women, slaves, and wage labor figure in the definition of freedom? How did religious ideas contribute to both to the emergence of individualism and social reform? What were the regional differences that helped cause the outbreak of the Civil War? Using textbooks, primary documents, and visual sources we will explore, discuss, and write about the environmental, political, economic, social, and cultural transformations that occurred during the period.
I am approaching the survey as a history of political, cultural and social thought by comparing ideologies, cosmologies, and worldviews, that are always in play and often in conflict. Since I am an intellectual and cultural historian this feels right for me. I am attempting to give students a sense of how the debate over the meaning of freedom, the diversity of the nation, and the challenge of constructing a viable social order is still with us in our current situation.
I will see how all this works class by class as I try to tie lectures, visuals and discussions to the themes.
Thanks so much for this Lillian; looks great. I’ll post my main themes and assignment plans next week and then after the new year. If you need a copy of _Major Problems in American History_ just let me know and I can have one shipped to you asap. And if you want to send us any blog posts on your classroom ideas, experiences, assignments, feelings, etc., we would love to have them.
Edward, thank you, I would love to have your book. I will send address by e-mail. Anyway, my plans for the last class it to discuss how the Civil War is remembered and how historians have argued about its cause.