Messiah College  HIS 341: Colonial America Fall 2006 MWF 11:00-11:50  Boyer 331 Instructor: John Fea, Ph.D  Office: Boyer 258 Office Hours:  M 2-2:45; W 2-5; F 2-5, and by appointment.  Phone: x2253  e-mail: jfea@messiah.edu Syllabus is on-line at: http://www.home.messiah.edu/%7Ejfea/341Fall2006.htm

    
Course Description
This upper division history course will be a study of the political, social, and cultural history of the North American colonies from the sixteenth century to 1763.  The first portion of the course will focus on the seventeenth-century establishment of British (and Dutch and Swedish) settler societies in the Chesapeake Bay, New England, the Carolinas and the Caribbean, and the mid-Atlantic.  We will also spend considerable time in this portion studying the European encounter with native-American populations.  The second portion of the course will explore British-American life in the eighteenth century through a careful study of the Enlightenment, the First Great Awakening, social mobility, consumerism, politics, and the French and Indian War.

Course Objectives
1.Historical Knowledge:  Students have a better historical understanding of political, social, cultural, economic, and religious practices and structures.
2. Historical Methods:  Students demonstrate an understanding of historical causation, an ability to conduct basic historical analysis of primary and secondary sources, and an ability to communicate that analysis in effective written and oral communication.
3. Historical Interpretation:  Students use texts and other cultural resources to make sense of the past, understand ways in which the past influences the present, and consider how the present influences our study of the past.
4. Historical Convictions:  Students become more thoughtful, curious, and empathetic due to their evaluation of the historical complexity of human identities, cultures, and societies from the perspective of Christian faith.

Required Textbooks (Available in the Campus Book Store)
Susan Klepp and Billy Smith, ed., The Infortunate
Ned Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials
Edmund Morgan, American Slavery-American Freedom
Daniel Richter, Facing East from Indian Country
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives
Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist
Outside Reading (See Below)
**A United States History survey textbook (optional)

A Word on Outside Reading: In addition to the textbooks listed above, we will also rely on required outside reading to be found on the Internet and on JSTOR.  Readings listed as "On-Line" will include an address where the document can be found.   Others will be found in the "JSTOR" database. In order to access these articles you will need to point your Internet browser toward www.jstor.org.  Click on “search,” type the author’s name in the search engine and then scroll down and select “history” as the type of journal that you want to search.  When the article appears, you can either read it on the screen or print it.  I strongly suggest printing these articles so that you can mark them up and bring them to class, but in order to do so you may have to download some software onto your computer.  The JSTOR web site will provide you with instructions (it is fairly easy) on how to do this.  All of these articles will be linked to the on-line version of this syllabus .

Course Requirements
This course will include both lecture and discussion. You are expected to complete the assigned reading before the class period in which it will be discussed and arrive prepared to actively engage in class discussion.  This will be VITAL to your success in this course.  You will be evaluated based on the following:

Three In-Class Exams: 30%
A Comprehensive Final Exam: 20%
Participation, Attendance, and Reading Quizzes (Announced and Unannounced)--20%
2 Papers: 30%
 
Notes:

• 2 or more unexcused absences will impact your class-participation grade in this course.
• Students who do not take the final exam and/or hand-in all three papers, no matter how late, will fail the course 
•  Late papers will be penalized a full letter grade for each class period it is late.  Papers handed-in more than 4 class periods late will receive a failing grade, but must still be handed-in before the end of the semester in order to receive a passing grade for the course. 
• AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT:   Any student whose disability falls within ADA guidelines should inform the instructor at the beginning of the semester of any special accommodations or equipment needs necessary to complete the requirements for this course. Students must register documentation with the Office of Disability Services (OM 342).  If you have questions, call extension 5358. 
• Plagiarism will be penalized according to college policies.  According to the Student Handbook, plagiarism is “submitting as one’s own work part or all of any assignment (oral or written) which is copied, paraphrased, or purchased from another source, including on-line sources without the proper acknowledgment of that source. Examples include:  failing to cite a reference, failing to use quotation marks where appropriate, misrepresenting another's work as your own.”  The penalty for plagiarizing all or most of a paper is the assignment of an ‘F’ for the course.
  

Papers

You will write two 5-7 page papers for this course.  Both papers will examine of a primary document from the seventeenth or the eighteenth century (pre-1763).  Students will select a document from the Early American Imprints (Evans) collection.  This is a database of thousands of printed pamphlets, tracts, broadsides, and books from the colonial period.  I will introduce you to the database in class on September 6th. During this meeting I will show you how to search the database and locate documents that might be of interest to you.  The possibilities are endless, but if you are struggling to find a document I would encourage you to go to one of your class texts or else the early American portion of your US History Survey textbook to get some general ideas of a theme that might be of interest.  The database includes documents related to nearly every theme in this course and more.  The document that you choose must be more than twenty pages in length.  

The papers will require you to tell the story of the document.  Who wrote it and why?  What is the argument of the document?  What were the historical circumstances from which the document arose?  This, of course, will require you to do some additional research and detective work.  For example, if you want to interpret a seventeenth-century Puritan sermon, you will need to know what kind of sermon it was and why it was preached and eventually published.  Who was the author?  Was it preached to address a particular event or crisis in the life of Puritan New England?  This will require you to do some secondary reading about Puritan preaching and sermons or perhaps about Puritan New England generally.  I will be happy to help you with your papers and suggest some secondary sources.  The best papers will not only summarize the document but show evidence of a serious attempt to interpret the document in its proper historical context.

The first paper will be due on October 25th.  This paper must analyze a document from the period prior to 1700.  The second paper will be due on December 6th.  This paper must analyze a document from the period  between 1700 and 1765.


Tentative Class Schedule

DATE   PROGRAM AND ASSIGNMENTS

Aug. 30:  Introduction to the Course

Sept. 1:  Mercantilism, Exploration, and the Early Modern English Quest for Empire
READ: Morgan, 1-43
 
Sept. 4:  Facing East:  The Native's New World
READ: Richter, 1-68

Sept. 6:  EVANS DATABASE TRAINING: ROOM TBA

Sept. 8: Jamestown
READ: Morgan, 44-91; Richter, 69-78

Sept. 11: Jamestown
READ: Morgan, 108-157

Sept. 13:  Jamestown
READ:  Morgan,  158-211

Sept. 15: The Chesapeake
READ: Morgan, 215-270

Sept. 18: The Chesapeake
READ:  Morgan, 271-315

Sept. 20: The Chesapeake
READ:  Morgan, 316-387

Sept. 22:  EXAM

Sept. 25:  The Puritan Vision:  "A City on a Hill"

Sept. 27:  The Puritan Conversion Experience
READ: Richter 110-129

Sept. 29:  Dissent: Baptists, Quakers, Indians and Popular Religion
READ:  Carla Pestana, "The City Upon a Hill Under Seige;" Richter, 90-109

Oct. 2:  Men and Women in Puritan Society
READ:  Ulrich, Introduction and Part One

Oct. 4:  Men and Women in Puritan Society
READ:  Ulrich, Part Two

Oct. 6:  Men and Women in Puritan Society
READ: Ulrich, Part Three

Oct. 9:  Salem
READ:  Overview  (Read "Further Explanation" as well).

Oct. 11: Salem

Oct. 13:  FALL BREAK

Oct. 16:  New Netherland and the Dutch in the New World

Oct. 18:  EXAM

Oct. 20:  New York and East Jersey: 1664-1688

Oct. 23:  New York Diplomacy
READ: Richter, 129-150

Oct. 25:  Pennsylvania and West Jersey: The Quaker Colonies
1st Paper Due

Oct. 27:  Pennsylvania and Liberalism

Oct. 30:  Pennsylvania and Pluralism

Nov. 1:  The South Carolina Experience
READ: Ira Berlin, "Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society..."

Nov. 3: The South Carolina Experience

Nov. 6:  EXAM

Nov. 8:  The Enlightenment in America
READ:  Landsman, 31-91

Nov 13:  The Enlightenment in America
READ:  Landsman, 123-148

Nov. 15:  On "Making it" and "Not Making It" in Colonial America
READ:  The Infortunate,  Introduction

Nov. 17:  On "Making It" and "Not Making It" in Colonial America
READ:  The Infortunate (Rest of Book)

Nov. 20:  The First Great Awakening:  Did it Happen?
READ:  Jon Butler, "Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretive Fiction;" Stout, The Divine Dramatist, xiii-98

Nov. 22:  NO CLASS: THANKSGIVING BREAK

Nov. 24:  NO CLASS: THANKSGIVING BREAK

Nov. 27: The First Great Awakening
READ: Stout, 87-174

Nov. 29: The First Great Awakening
READ: Stout, 201-269

Dec. 1:  A Transatlantic Consumer Economy
READ:  Breen, "An Empire of Goods"

Dec. 4:  Colonial Politics:  Structure and Philosophy
READ:  Landsman, 149-180

Dec. 6:  The Consequences of the French and Indian War
READ:  Richter, 150-188
SECOND PAPER DUE

Dec. 8:  Conclusion:  From Colonials to Provincials
READ: Landsman, 8-30; 176-180.

FINAL EXAM:  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11th, 10:30-12:30