John Trumbull, The Signing of the Declaration of Independence

HIST 212: United States History to 1877

Fall 2020: HIST 212 surveys British America and United States history from Jamestown (1607) to Reconstruction (1877). Lectures and readings trace key social, cultural, and environmental developments. The goal is to develop contextual reasoning, which means knowing not only what happened and why, but how broader forces shaped events. Life was more contingent than destined or inevitable. The challenge for students is thus to master both the personal and specific and the general and conceptual in order to understand the past on its terms. Students will engage source materials ranging for lectures to primary documents and secondary texts. In-class discussions and exams will focus on big themes. The two papers, each five pages, require the contextual analysis of a set of pre-selected documents available online through Canvas.

Topics: Colonialism, environmental contingencies, industrialism, nationalism, political culture, racialism and racism, religion

Course Prerequisites
45 credit hours including 9 hours of lower division history credit and one of HIST 101, 212, or permission of the department

Required Texts 
Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, The American Yawp
Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: With Related Documents
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth
American Civil War diaries and letters
Tutorial readings available through Canvas Course Site    

Course Evaluation
Weekly Quizzes:     10%
Midterm:               30%
Papers:                 15% each
Final:                    30%