REVISED AS OF 24 APRIL. CHECK WEBSITE FOR
CURRENT EDITION.
Historical Studies B-41
Inventing New England: History, Memory,
and the Creation of a Regional Identity
/~hsb41/
Sever 113
Tuesday-Thursday 11-12
Professor Laurel
Ulrich
Head TF Richard Bell
Robinson 121
Emerson
413
Office Hours
Wednesdays 10-12
Office Hours Wednesdays 2-4
ulrich@fas.harvard.edu
rjbell@fas.harvard.edu
Course Description
Much
of what we think we know about “colonial” New England was actually a 19th-century
invention. Iconic images of the first Thanksgiving, the Salem witch trials,
Paul Revere's ride, and white spired churches overlooking village greens were
largely produced by public commemorations, poems, novels, family histories,
and exhibits created long after the fact. This course explores these 19th-century
inventions in the light of current scholarship on the history of early New
England. Students will explore artifacts, images, and landscapes as well as
written documents.
READING
The following
books are available at the Coop. (Harvard Bookstore
may also have some copies available)
Ulrich,
Age of Homespun. Vintage paperback
Hawthorne,
House of the Seven Gables, Penguin paperback
William
Apess, Son of the Forest and Other Writings, ed. Barry O'Connell,
U. Massachusetts
Press, paperback
Karlsen,
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Vintage paperback
Young,
The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, Beacon paperback
Fischer,
Paul Revere's Ride, Oxford paperback
A course reader
is available at the Science Center or on reserve at Hilles and Lamont Libraries.
A special supplement
of the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant, Complicity: How Connecticut
Chained Itself to Slavery, will be distributed after registration. Additional
readings are online, either on our web site or through Hollis.
SECTIONS
Sections will
begin the week of February 11. For each section, please come prepared to discuss
the week's reading, using the study questions provided in class and on our
web site.
PAPERS AND
EXAMS
1. There will
be two exams
•
midterm March 20
NOTE:
With prior permission seniors writing honors theses may choose to substitute
an additional question on the final exam for the midterm.
•
final May 15, 2.15pm. Science Center C.
2. During the semester, you will write two
3-4 page papers, one chosen from each of the categories listed below. The
papers are based on readings assigned for section the week in which they are
due. Whichever papers you decide
to write, they should be submitted on the dates below. Since the material
will be discussed in section, there can be no late papers.
a. Interpretation of an object: (choose one)
March 13 (the “Old-Time Farm-House”)
April 17 (the “Washington
elm”)
b. Interpretation of an event: (choose one)
March
6 (King Philip’s War)
April
10 (Boston Massacre)
3. An 8-10 page paper due Monday 12 May.
We’ll talk about this more in lecture and in section as the time approaches,
but the general assignment will be to outline a proposal for a new interpretation
of a person, event, or site in New England history. Check website under
'assignments' for more information.
GRADING
The final
grade for the course will be composed of the following elements:
SCHEDULE
Part One: History
and Memory
Not
to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a
moral,--the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into
the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes
a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he would feel it a singular
gratification if this romance might effectually convince mankind--or, indeed,
any one man--of the folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold,
or real estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them, until the accumulated mass shall be scattered
abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative
to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind.
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Preface, House of the Seven Gables
January 30 What this course is about
February 4 Layers of history
February 6 How Harvard became colonial
1.
Read The Age of Homespun, Preface and Introduction (pages 3-40)
2.
Read the following selections in the course reader:
Adams, John, "Letter 75."
In Familiar Letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams during the
Revolution, edited by
Charles Francis Adams. New York: Cambridge Riverside, 1876. 120-121.
Nissenbaum,
Stephen. "New England as Region and Nation." In All Over the
Map: Rethinking American Regions, edited by Edward Ayers, et al. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. 39-61.
Hale,
Sarah Josepha. "Thanksgiving Dinner." In Northwood; or, Life
North and South: Showing the Character of Both. New York: H. Long and
Brother, 1852. 87-97.
Bradford,
William. "First Thanksgiving." Of Plimoth Plantation 2000,
90.
"Records
of the Old Colony Club." Proceedings of the Massachusetts
Historical Society 3 (1887): 382-383,
400-405, 417-418.
Kamensky,
Jane. "Thankstaking." Common-place 2001, 1-5.
Smith,
Juliana. "A Diary kept by Juliana Smith of Massachusetts in 1779",
in We Gather Together: The Story of Thanksgiving, edited by Adelin
Linton and Ralph Linton, 73-77. New York: Henry Schuman, 1949.
Hemans,
Felicia. “The Breaking Waves Dashed High” (The Pilgrim Fathers). Boston: Lee
and Shepard, 1883.
3.
Start reading The House of the Seven Gables
4.
Explore “Inventing Harvard” on the course website
5.
Read selections in reader:
James,
Henry. "The New Harvard." In The American Scene. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946. 60-63.
Campbell,
Robert. "When building becomes branding." Boston Globe, 4
August 2002, L5.
February 11 Romancing
the past
February 13 Memory’s
Houses
1.
Finish The House of the Seven Gables
2.
Read selections in reader:
Conforti, Joseph A. "Heritage and Americanization:
'Restoring' the House
of the Seven Gables." In Imagining
New England: Explorations of Regional
Identity
from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2001. 248-262, 354-357.
James,
Henry. "Salem." In The American Scene. Bloomington, Indiana
University Press, 1968. 264-272
FIRST
SECTION MEETING
MOVIE
SCREENING: Wednesday 12 February, 8pm, 'The Plymouth Adventure.' Science Center
102B. Check website for details.
Part
Two: Property
Being of an eccentric and melancholy turn of mind, and
greatly given to rummaging old records and hearkening to old traditions, he
had brought himself, it is averred,
to the conclusion that Matthew Maule, the wizard, had been foully wronged
out of his homestead, if not out of his life.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of the Seven Gables, Chap. 1, “The Old Pyncheon family”
February 18 The
witchcraft puzzle
February 20 Pilgrims,
Puritans, and Quakers
1
Read The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, (Preface, chapters 1, 2, and
4)
2.
Read the Quaker poems in the course reader
Whittier, John Greenleaf. "Cassandra Southwick."
1880, "How the Women went from Dover." 1883, "The King's Missive." 1881
MOVIE SCREENING: Wednesday 19 February, 8pm, 'Witch
City.' Sever 103. Check website under 'announcements.'
February 25 Why
Indians "Disappear"
February 27 Baskets,
Bones, and Battered Doors
1.Age
of Homespun, Chapters 1, 7, 10.
2.
Read selections on archaeology in reader:
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "Skeleton
in Armor." In Ballads and Other
Poems, 1841.
Stark, John. "Antiquities in North
America," American Monthly Magazine (1836): 67-70
Mason, Otis T. "Skeleton in Armor."
American Anthropologist (April 1888): 189-190
Turgeon,
Laurier. "The Tale of the Kettle: Odyssey of an Intercultural Object."
Ethnohistory 44, no. 1 (1997): 1-29.
3. Read Axtell, James, “The Vengeful Women
of Marblehead: Robert Roules’s Deposition of 1677.” William and Mary Quarterly
31, no. 4 (1974): 646-652.
OUTING:
Sunday 2 March. Re-enactment of the Boston Massacre and the Trial of the Century.
Check website under 'announcements.'
March 4 Indian
removal and New England history
March 6 King
Philip's Ghost
1. Read historical
materials on "King Philip" in course reader:
Easton, John. "A Relacion of the Indyan
Warre." In Narratives of the
Indian
Wars, edited by Charles Henry Lincoln. New York: Scribner and Sons, 1913.
3-17.
Lepore, Jill: "Wigwam words." American Scholar 70
(Winter 2001): .97-108.
Stone, John Augustus. "Metamora,
or, The Last of the Wampanoags." In Dramas from the American Theatre,
1762-1909, edited by Richard Moody. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company,
1966. 205-227.
2.
Read William Apess, Son of the Forest and Other Writings (pps. ix-xxv,
1-73, 88-93, 103-138)
FIRST
EVENT PAPER DUE: King Philip’s War
MOVIE
SCREENING: Wednesday 5 March, 7.30pm, 'The Last of the Mohicans.' Sever 103.
Check website for details.
March 11 "Real"
property and "Movable" Property
March 13 Skeletons
in the New England attic
1.
Read The Age of Homespun, Chapters 3, 5, 6
2.
Read the following selection in the course reader:
Stowe,
Harriet Beecher. The Minister's Wooing. New York: Derby and Jackson,
1859. 1-3, 4-19, 135-149, 167-169,
246-251
3.
Complicity: How Connecticut Chained Itself to Slavery. 1-29.
4.
Explore the ‘Old-Time Farm-House’ on the course website
FIRST
OBJECT PAPER DUE: Old-Time Farm-House
DISCUSSION:
Wednesday 12 March, 5pm. Karl Haglund talks about 'Inventing the Charles
River.' Check website under 'announcements.'
March 18 Review
for exam
March 20 MID-TERM
NO SECTION THIS
WEEK!
SPRING BREAK
Part Three:
Liberty
There is something
so massive, stable, and almost irresistibly imposing in the exterior presentment
of established rank and great possessions, that their very existence seems
to give them a right to exist; at least, so excellent a counterfeit of right,
that few poor and humble men have moral force enough to question it, even
in their secret minds. Such is
the case now, after so many ancient prejudices have been overthrown; and it
was far more so in ante-Revolutionary days, when the aristocracy could venture
to be proud, and the low were content to be abased.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, Chap. 1, “The Old Pyncheon
Family”
April 1 Violence
and deference in pre-revolutionary Boston
April 3 From
riots to revolution
1.
Read The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, Part One
2.
Read the following selections in the reader:
Snow,
Caleb. "Attack on Thomas Hutchinson." In A History of Boston,
the Metropolis of Massachusetts, from its Origin to the Present Period; with
some Account of the Environs, 258-262. Boston: Abel Brown, 1828.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "My Kinsman,
Major Molineux." 1852.
OUTING: Salem! Saturday 5 April. Meet
at Out of Town News at 10am. Check 'announcements' on course website for details.
April 8 Ordinary
men and forgotten women
April 10 The
politics of memory
1.
Read The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, Part Two
2.
Explore the Tea Museum on course website
3.
Read materials in reader on the Boston Massacre:
Doggett,
John, Jr. A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston. Boston:
Edes & Gill, 1849. 3-9, 12-39, 90-91.
Nell, William Cooper. The Colored Patriots
of the American Revolution.
13-20. New York: Arno Press and The New
York Times, 1968.
Goodell, A. C. “The Boston Massacre” Boston
Daily Advertiser. May 24 1887.
Haskell,
Dave. "Boston Massacre Re-enactment." United Press International,
March 4 2002.
4. Read "Summation
of John Adams" on the 'WWW Links' page of the website under the 'Revolution'
heading.
April 15 The sacred tree of liberty
April 17 Revolution and Civil War
1.
Reader Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, pages 44-164, 327-344
2.
Read selections in course reader:
Longfellow "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,"
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, "A Concord Hymn."
1836.
Anderson,
Fred W. "The Hinge of the Revolution: George Washington Confronts a People's
Army, July 3, 1775." Massachusetts Historical Review, 1 (1999): 21-48
Hosley,
William. "Sam Colt and the Charter Oak: The Heart of Empire." In
Colt: The Making of an American Legend, Amherst, MA: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1996. 126-137, 243-244.
3.
Explore the ‘Washington Elm’ on the course website
SECOND
OBJECT PAPER DUE: the Washington Elm
Part Four: Progress
You are aware, my dear sir,--you must have observed it
in your own experience,--that all human progress is in a circle; or, to use
a more accurate and beautiful figure, in an ascending spiral curve. . . The
past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and the future.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, Clifford
Pyncheon, Chapter 17, “The Flight of Two Owls.”
April 22 Gender
and the new economy
April 24 Remembering
maritime New England
1. Age of Homespun, Chapters 9 and 11
2.
Selections in course reader:
Norling,
Lisa. Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England women and whalefishery, 1720-1870.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000: 1-14, 262-270.
Vickers, Daniel. "The First Whalemen
of Nantucket." William and Mary
Quarterly 40, no. 4 (1983): 560-583.
Whittier, James Greenleaf, "Skipper Ireson's Ride."
Roads, Samuel Jr. The History and Traditions
of Marblehead. Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1881: 231-234.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “The Wreck
of the Hesperus.” 1840.
Melville, Herman. “Tartarus of Maids.” Harper’s
New Monthly Magazine, 10 April 1855, 673-678
Anonymous, “Rags.” Atlantic Monthly, 19 March 1867, 364-371.
3.
Read documents on the Dover Strike on the course website.