SYLLABUS--HIST 1011/RELGST 1010
RELIGION AND THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY, 1492-1850
Monday and Wednesday, 1-2:20 Krebs 124
WARNING!
This syllabus is currently under
revision for the Autumn 2001 term.
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syllabus.
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Instructor
Paul Douglas Newman H. 535-3176 Krebs 123 O. 269-2987 Office Hours:
Tues and Thurs 11-12 and by appointment
Aims of History 1011/Relgst 1010
In spite of its cross-listing as a Religious Studies course, this will
be a history class. We will explore the effects of religion, in all of
its cultural and denominational guises, on the development and evolution
of an American people. We will examine Religion and spiritual beliefs as
agents of social change, and as such, we will be less concerned about the
significance of a religion's peculiarities to its practitioners than its
broader implications for the society in which it operates. Therefore, we
will discuss theology and belief systems only in the broadest of contexts.
We will use the lens of religion to investigate the contact of native and
western cultures, western schemes for American development, transatlantic
migration, social development, American political autonomy, defending and
attacking slavery, living with and dispossessing Native Americans, the
legacy of religious pluralism and religious liberty in America, and many
other topics. Finally, I have been using the first person plural throughout
this paragraph because I do not intend to stand before you and pontificate
my own ideas for three hours a week. You will form your own opinions by
reading books, articles, and primary resources and we will meet three times
a week to discuss our informed opinions and attempt to reach consensus
when possible or at least a clearer understanding of the problem at hand.
The reading load for this seminar is extremely heavy. You will be required
to read approximately 100 pages per week from the book and the packet of
articles assigned for this class, on top of outside reading for other assignments.
There is also a substantial writing requirement for this class. This class
is not for the faint of heart. If you doubt in any way your ability to
handle this workload over a fourteen week semester please inform me of
your decision to withdraw as soon as possible--there are several people
who would like to add this class. And to those of you who have decided
to stay, "Welcome!" You will work hard this semester, trust me, and at
times you may find yourself resenting me, believe me, but when it is all
said and done you will leave this class a better student, have faith in
me.
The Course
Required Reading
Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). Paul Douglas Newman, ed.,
"Religion and the Evolution of American Society,"packet on sale at UPJ
bookstore.
Attendance
You should attend all classes, however, I am not going to baby you with
an attendance policy. None of you are freshman so I do not feel the need
to hold your hands. I will call the roll each class an keep a record for
myself but this will not be used either against you or in your favor--it
will just help me to better understand your performance at term's end.
Reading
As mentioned above, there will be an extremely heavy reading load in this
course, and each class will serve as a discussion that will revolve around
that reading. Therefore, you must read the assignments in order for this
class to work. If you fail to complete a reading assignment there is little
reason for you to come to that class.
Grading
Grading for this class will be based on a point system: a 500 point scale.
900-999=A, 800-899=B, 700-799=C, 600-699=D, 000-599=F
Quizzes
There will be periodic, unannounced quizzes on the reading assignments--some
open book and some not. They will account for 100 points (20%).
Class Participation
You will be expected to participate in every class discussion. Participation
will account for 100 points (20%).
Analytical Essays
1. You will be responsible for one analytical essay in which you will analyze
the various historical arguments made in one weeks' readings (I will distribute
a hand-out on the particulars separately). Two people will be assigned
to each week. Their essays will be due on the Monday following "their week."
They will be expected to be particularly knowledgeable in discussion during
"their week." Those essays will account for 50 points (10%). I will then
mark the exam and offer instructions for revision and turn the paper back
to you. You then have one week to make the instructed revisions and return
the revision to me for 25 points (5%)
2. The second assignment will be just another analytical essay
with an outside book thrown in for good measure. We will again assign two
people per week and they will choose an appropriate book to read in conjunction
with the scheduled readings and to include in their essay. The book should
be read by the beginning of "their week" and they should be prepared to
give a brief oral report to the class at some point during that week. The
paper will again be due on the Monday following "their week," and it will
account for 50 points (10%). I will then mark the exam and offer instructions
for revision and turn the paper back to you. You then have one week to
make the instructed revisions and return the revision to me for 25 points
(5%). The oral report will comprise 50 points (10%).
All written assignments--analytical essays and term papers--will
be graded on the "Total Package," that is grammar, organization, style
and composition in addition to content.
Final Exam
On Tuesday, April 21, 1997, we will have a final exam from 12:30-2:30 in
Krebs 124. The final will consist of an in-class essay for which you will
be allowed to use your notes from the various readings you have completed
over the course of the semester. Those notes MUST be taken on 5x8 inched
ruled index cards and nothing else. One card per chapter from Butler and
one card for each article in the packet will be allowed. One week before
the final I will distribute a list possible questions for the final exam,
from which I will choose one or two to be answered for the exam. The final
will account for 100 points (20%).
Disabilities
Students with disabilities who require special testing accommodations or
other classroom modifications should notify the Director of Disability
Resources and Services (Diane Van Blerkom) no later than the fourth week
of the term. Documentation of a disability may be needed to determine the
appropriate accommodations or classroom modifications. To schedule an appointment,
call extension 7107 or come to the Learning Resource Center, 133 Biddle
Hall.
Course Outline
January 5--Introduction and other pleasantries
Topic One--"Western Origins."
Jan 7: Lecture. Read: Butler, 1-36
Jan 12: Lecture, discuss Butler 1-36
Jan 14: Packet--Morgan, "Dreams of Liberation
Topic Two--"Natives and Newcomers: Early Contact and Conversion."
Jan 21: Packet--John, Bowden
Jan 26: Packet--Morgan, "Idle Indian..." and "Jamestown Fiasco,"
and Richter
Jan 28: Packet: Morrison, Ronda
Feb 2: MOVIE "Black Robe" viewed in AV lab, Blackington Hall--will
run until 5:30pm
Feb 4: Discussion of "Black Robe"
Topic Three--"Puritan Migrants and Motives"
Feb 9: Packet--Miller, Walzer
Feb 11: Breen, "Persistent Localism," Anderson
Topic Four--"Puritan Settlement versus Virginia Settlement"
Feb 16: Packet--Lockridge, "Policies of Perfection," "Heart of
Perfection"
Feb 18: Packet--Butler Chapter 2, Breen "Looking Out for Number
One"
Topic Five--"Social Development in Puritan New England, the First Hundred
Years."
Feb 23: Packet--Greven, Mintz & Kellogg
Feb 25: Packet--Ulrich, Dayton
Topic Six--"Declension and Witchcraft."
March 9: Butler Chapter 3, Packet--Demos, "Role of Witchcraft..."
March 11: Packet--Karlsen, Demos, "Poor and Powerless..."
Topic Seven--"Middle Colony Pluralism"
March 16: Butler Chapter 4, Packet--Lodge
March 18: Packet--Newman, Levy
Week Eight--"The Great Awakening."
March 23: Butler Chapter 6, Packet--Stout
March 25: Packet--Merrit, Isaac
Week Nine--"Religion and Revolutionary America."
March 30: Butler 7, Packet--McGloughlin
April 1: Packet--Isaac, Curry, Loof
Week Ten--"Slaves, Slavery, Free Blacks and Religion."
April 6: Butler Chapter 6, Packet--Joyner
April 8: Butler 247-252, Packet--Blassingame, Berlin
Week Eleven--"The Second Great Awakening and the Antebellum Reform
Movement."
April 13: Butler Chapter 8, Packet--Hatch, Bonomi
April 15: Packet--Johnson, Abzug
Supplementary Reading List for RELGST 1010
Topic Two: Ruth M. Underhill, Red Man's Religion: Beliefs and Practices
of the Indians North of Mexico; Henry Warner Bowden, American Indians and
Christian Missions; Kenneth M. Morrison, The Embattled Northeast: The Elusive
Ideal of Alliance in Abenaki-Euramerican Relations; Francis Jennings, The
Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest; Bernard
Sheehan, Savagism and Civility: Indians and Englishmen in Colonial Virginia;
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English
and Indian Cultures in America, 1580-1640
Topic Three: David D. Hall, World of Wonders, Days of Judgement:
Popular Religious Belief in Early New England; Lloyd Cohen, God's Caress:
The Psychology of the Puritan Religious Experience; Edmund S. Morgan, The
Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop
Topic Four: Kenneth Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred
Years; Paul R. Lucas, Valley of Discord: Church and Society Along the Connecticut
River, 1636-1725
Topic Five: John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in
Plymouth Colony; Laura Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in
the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750
Topic Six: Carol Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman; Paul
Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed; John Demos, Entertaining
Satan; Marion Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into
the Salem Witch-Trials
Topic Seven: Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British
Settlement in the Delaware Valley; Michael Zuckerman, Friends and Neighbors:
Group Life in America's First Plural Society; Sally Schwartz, a Mixed Multitude':
The Struggle for Toleration in Colonial Pennsylvania
TopicEight: Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia; Patricia
Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial
America; Edwin Scott Gaustad, The Great Awakening in New England
TopicNine: Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty; Alan
Heimert, Religion and the American Mind from the Great Awakening to the
Revolution; Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American
Thought, 1756-1800; Thomas J. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State
in America to the Passage of the First Amendment
Topic Ten: Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution
in the Antebellum South; Alfloyd Butler, The Africanization of American
Christianity; Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan, Roll
Topic Eleven: Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American
Christianity; Paul E. Johnson, Shopkeeper's Millennium; T.L. Smith, Revivalism
and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America; Robert Abzug, Passionate
Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform; Donald Matthews,
Religion and the Old South; Larry E. Tise, Pro-Slavery: A History of the
defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840; James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors:
The Abolitionists and American Slavery; Louis S. Gerteis, Morality and
Utility in American Anti-Slavery Reform
PURPOSE
This analytical essay will serve as a summary and comparison exercise.
It is designed to enable students to develop depth in a specific subject
area and to reflect that depth in written form. Writing provides us with
perhaps the most precise way we have of expressing our thoughts, of revealing
what it is that is on our minds. This exercise, then, moves beyond the
course in its intent to assist you in refining your basic writing skills
so that your papers will reflect clear thinking, cogent arguments, and
an understanding of the use of evidence.
SUMMARY
You have been assigned two sets of reading material that will serve as
the basis for your essays. Your fist objective will be to summarize the
authors various theses and the evidence they use to sustain their arguments.
ANALYTIC COMPARISON
There are two objectives within the analytic portion of the assignment:
historiographic comparison and thematic analysis.
1. First, the comparison is that part of the essay which moves
beyond the summary, concentrating on the meaning extracted from the various
readings. The comparison itself should consider the different interpretations
the historians have advanced regarding the historical topic under study.
How do the historians' arguments differ and why? Which interpretations
appear more valid and why? What evidence do they use and how well do they
use their evidence? Is that evidence reliable? Why are some interpretations
less valid? Do the authors appear to have a particular bias created by
the times in which they live that tints their objectivity? These are just
a sampling of the kinds of questions you should address in your essay and
which will raise the intellectual levels of your papers far above mere
summary. Your content grade for these assignments will be based primarily
on how well you move beyond summary. At times, some of the reading selections
may not focus on precisely the same topic--in those instances you will
have to evaluate the excerpt on its own merit without comparison.
2. Second, the thematic analysis will be that portion of the essay
that attempts to make some sense out of the various interpretations of
the various subjects--where you will try to bring some order to the confusion
by discerning a common thread, or a theme, that defines perhaps not only
the subject you are studying, but also the manner in which historians have
treated that topic. You should use all of the readings in your selections
to form and attempt to answer such questions as: What were the central
religious motivations behind exploration and colonization and were those
motives really central? How did religion taint the character of "contact"
between Europeans and Native Americans? What was the legacy of religion
for the American Revolution and the era of the "Founding"? What role did
religion play in the enslavement and liberation of African-Americans? And
about the authors, is there any uniformity or central theme about the manner
in which they approached their subject? For example: Do scholars of the
"contact" period all tend to dwell on the Native Americans as victims and
the colonizers as villains? and so forth.
METHODOLOGY
The guidelines above specify only areas which each paper must address;
they do not, however, restrict your conceptual approach to addressing those
areas. You may summarize first, compare second, and analyze third. You
may summarize, compare, and analyze all at the same time--whichever you
feel is the clearest, most efficient, and aesthetically pleasing mode of
delivery. However, any good history paper should at least begin with an
introduction that clearly spells out your thesis. In other words, begin
with your conclusions! You are not Agatha Christie--there should be no
mystery here. Tell me what you are going to tell me, and then go ahead
and tell me!
About quoting: if you plan to use portions of sentences, sentences,
or strings of sentences that are the words of a writer other than yourself,
"you must give that person credit, like so"(Newman, 463). Just like that.
You should avoid extensive quoting--simply paraphrase the authors idea.
Use specific quotes only when necessary to prove a specific point about
an author's argument.
FORMAT and DUE DATE
The essays will be two to four pages long, and certainly not longer than
five. They will be typed or word-processed, double-spaced, and free of
typos, grammatical and spelling errors. They will be due at 3:30 pm on
the Wednesday following the week in which your reading assignments were
covered in discussion. Late work will not be accepted.
GRADING
The essays will be worth 75 points each. The first draft will account for
50 points--15 for writing mechanics, 15 for summary, and 20 for analytic
comparison. The revision will account for 25 points and all points will
be accorded on the basis of how well you have implemented my instructions.
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