This course focuses on a few of the scholarly debates about American history that historians have engaged in. Exploring <del>classic</del> works and recent studies about aspects of American history such as the American Revolution, American foreign policy, slavery, and immigration history, students will become acquainted with the major facts and aspects of these topics of American history and the presuppositions (theoretical and otherwise) and biases of the historians discussing them.
Time Table
Semester I, see timetables.
Method of Instruction
Literature seminar; attendance is compulsory (see the rules and regulations of the Department of History, art. 2).
Course objectives
The course aims to make students familiar with a few topics of American history, the academic debates about these topics, and the theoretical issues involved in the debates.
Required reading
Stanley Elkins, Slavery (1959)
Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs (1985)
Bell Hooks, Yearning (1990)
Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1993)
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (1995)
Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence (2002)
David Roediger, Working toward Whiteness (2005)
George McKenna, The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism (2007)
Examination
Participation in class discussions, presentation, and paper.
Information
With the tutors: Dr. E.F. van de Bilt
Blackboard/Website
Yes
Enrolment
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