Index 2756
Spring 2000
Instructor: Dr. Crandall Shifflett
Wednesday 9:00-11:50 (Major Williams 427)
Office hours: Wednesday, 11:00-12:00 and by appointment
shifflet@vt.edu
1-8372
Course Objectives:
History 5684 is a reading colloquium devoted to the body of historical writing
on the American South. The course objectives are to acquaint you with the
historiography of the South from the Colonial Period to the present and develop
your skills in interpreting history. After taking this course, you should be
thoroughly familiar with the central themes of and contributions to scholarship
in the major periods of the South's history. In one single area, you should
become an expert on the entire body of writing for that particular topic.
Course Requirements:
1) An annotated bibliography of ca. 25 pages to accompany number two below
2) A class presentation on the historiography (the secondary literature) of a particular topic (ca. 45 minutes). Consider it a formal presentation (such as one you might make at a convention of professional historians). Feel free to use the podium, blackboard, overhead projector, or other graphics aids to enliven your presentation. Tell us about the major historiographical debates, trace lines of argument, compare and contrast interpretations, identify pivotal essays or monographs whose interpretations have stirred controversy in the profession or redirected the course of scholarship, and justify your topical division of the literature as you take the class through the evolution of historical arguments; answer questions following the presentation. Presenters please provide me with an outline of your oral presentation.
3) Read a book on the topic of the week and write a three-page review, using the format in this hyperlink to Professor Jones Web page, including the file on “How to Read a Book.” During the week read the previous week’s student book reviews and rank them on a scale of one to three, with one being the best. Peer reviews should follow the guidelines in this hyperlink. Your peer review is due at class time along with the current week’s book review. The presenter is excused from this assignment during the week of his/her presentation. The choice of books to read is yours; use this as an opportunity to read the most well known writing on the topic. Do not pick some obscure, antiquarian work that is “the only book I could find in the library on the topic.”
3) Attendance at all classes and active participation in class discussions. Included below are questions to guide class discussions after the presentations; students should come prepared to participate in discussion of these questions.
4) In your sweep over the literature, you will need to cover at least the last 20 years of major journals for articles on your topic; include in your bibliography the most important articles you find, ESPECIALLY those which are themselves historiographical surveys of the literature (including the pertinent Boles and Nolan and Link and Patrick essays). These surveys are excellent guides to what your survey should contain.
Major journals include the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Journal of Southern History, Reviews in American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, and the William and Mary Quarterly. Other journals of potential importance, depending upon your topic, include The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Civil War History, Ethnohistory, Social Science History, Southern Studies, Journal of Economic History, Journal of Historical Geography, Appalachian Journal, Southern Exposure, Radical History Review, Business History Review, Southern Cultures, and Labor History. You might also find special anthologies devoted to your topic.
This exercise guides you through the process of doing the background reading for any research project in primary sources. You should begin, for example, with historiographical essays, like those in Boles and Nolen and the older but still important Arthur S. Link and Rembert W. Patrick, eds., Writing Southern History: Essays in Historiography in Honor of Fletcher M. Green (1967). Look at the encyclopedias, including the Encyclopedia of Southern History (LSU, 1979), Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (UNC, 1989), and the Encyclopedia of Social History (Garland, 1994), all of which have brief entries and bibliographies on your topic. You should always check the Harvard Guide to American History for bibliography. Jessica Brown, The American South is very helpful (unfortunately, it is not in Newman Library); don't pass up Mary Beth Norton, ed., The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature (1995), Vol. 2, the most recent and complete listing of historical sources anywhere. Jean Key Gates, Guide to the Use of Libraries and Information Sources (1994), chapter 24, gives an annotated list of reference sources for history and geography. Librarians often compose extremely useful annotated bibliographies on topics, states, or even time periods. Those of Gates, Jessica Brown and Francis Prucha are examples. In all research, librarians and those trained in library research techniques are your best friends. Don't be afraid to ask for help.
Reading book reviews is an excellent way to become familiar quickly with the work of others. Every history journal has a book review section. The major history journals are places where new books are reviewed each year, usually within 18 months after publication. Reviews in American History offers a more extended discussion, often treating several books on the same topic. Check The New York Review of Books for extended, timely, and lively discussions of the literature by well-known writers. Each Sunday edition of the New York Times (and other major urban newspapers too) has a book review section. As you read the reviews, be conscious of how the reviewers treat the work of others and look for examples of good critical reviews that you would like to emulate. Subscriber networks on the Internet and professional meetings provide other opportunities to learn about the work of others.
Some Suggested Topics for Class Presentations:
1. The Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake
2. The South Before 1800
3. The Eighteenth-Century South
4. The Nineteenth-Century South
5. Slavery in Change and Transition: Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
6. The Secession Crisis and Civil War
7. The South from Reconstruction to 1954
8. Cultural and Social Change in the Postwar South, 1865-1945
9. The South Since 1945
10. The South and the Civil Rights Movement
11.
Your Choice (after consultation with me)
Class Meetings:
Each class features an oral presentation followed by a question and answer period led by the presenter. Students making oral presentations should make enough copies of their annotated bibliographies to give the instructor and each person in class a copy at the time of their presentation. Students should provide me with a brief outline of their presentations. Following the presentations and discussion, each student will respond to the question of the day.
Grading
Grades will be based upon organization, creativity, balance, and mastery of the
literature.
1. Historiography and annotated bibliography 60%
2. Oral Presentation 20%
3. Class Participation 20 %
CALENDAR
Jan 19 Introduction
Remaining class meetings and schedule to be announced at first class meeting.
SPRING BREAK MAR 11-19
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES, HISTORIOGRAPHIES, AND FINDING AIDS
America: History and Life. Ref E45 A485. CD-ROM. Electronic Reference
Area.
Boles, John B. and Evelyn Thomas Nolen, Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham (1987)
Brown, Jessica S., ed. The American South: A Historical Bibliography. ABC Clio, 1986. 2 vols. 8,900 abstracts and annotations of articles. F209 A45. Unfortunately, Newman Library does not have a copy of this valuable bibliography. Copies are available in reference areas of Hollins College and Alderman Library (UVA).
Freidel, Frank B. Harvard Guide to American History. 1974. E178 F77.
Gates, Jean Key. Guide to the Use of Libraries and Information Sources. McGraw-Hill, 1994.
Goodheart, Lawrence B., et.al. Slavery in American Society (1993)
Greene, Jack P. Interpreting
Early America: Historiographical
Essays (1996)
Historical Abstracts. Ref 299 H5. CD-ROM. Electronic Reference Area.
Link, Arthur S. and Rembert W. Patrick, ed. Writing Southern History. (1967). F208.2 L5
McPherson, James M., et.al. Blacks in America: Bibliographical Essays (1971)
Miller, Joseph C. Slavery: A Worldwide Bibliography, 1900-82. Kraus International, 1985. HT861.M54
Norton, Mary Beth, ed. The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature. 2 vols. 1995. Up to date and thorough. D20 A55 Reference Area.
Olson, James S. Slave Life in America: A Historiography and Selected Bibliography. University Press of America, 1983. Newman Library does not have this bibliography.
Parish, Peter J. Slavery: History and Historians. Harper, 1989. Good brief survey.
Perman, Michael. The Coming of the American Civil War (1993)
Prucha, Francis. Handbook for Research in American History: A Guide to Bibliographic and Other Reference Works. 1987. E178 P79.
Roller, David L. and Robert W. Twyman. Encyclopedia of Southern History. LSU, 1979. Ref F207.7 E52.
Smith, James Morton. Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History (1959)
Stearns, Peter N. Encyclopedia of Social History. Garland, 1994. HN28.E53.
Tate, Thad W. and David L. Ammerman, The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth
Century (1979)
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 104: 1 (Winter 1996). Articles devoted to the literature in various periods of Virginia history by Brent Tarter, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, James P. Whittenburg, Jane Turner Censes, Edward L. Ayers, James Tice Moore, and Robert A. Pratt.
Wilson, Charles Reagan and William Ferris. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. UNC, 1989. F209.E53.