Leveroni & Kiskis (Regents College)
General Information
Abstract
This course draws on materials commonly studied in
courses such as American Literature to 1850, American History,
and Political Science. As an interdisciplinary, humanities
elective, it most closely approximates an upper level American
Studies offering. It is organized thematically within three
chronological periods. The majority of readings are primary
works of literature supplemented with political documents,
scholarly essays, and introductory overviews. Emphasis is placed
on diversity and multicultural representation.
Population
This course (Interdisciplinary/American
Studies) servies as upper level humanities credit for students
pursuing the baccalaureate degree. It is given entirely by home
study and credit is awarded on an examination basis only
(comprehensive, three hour, essay format). The course serves a
variety of students on military bases, remote location distance
learners, etc. Students tend, however, to be primarily middle
aged females. Students listen to taped lectures and word with
guided self-study questions to acquire course content and prepare
for examination.
Texts
The American Dream, Prof. John Roth. SuperStar Teachers.
The Teaching Company. Audio Cassette.
Declaration of Independence & U.S. Constitution. Pamphlet.
The American Dream (Part I): A Book of Readings
ed. Regents
College Faculty Committee.
Frazier, Thomas, ed.
The Underside of American History, Volume
I, To 1877.
Lauter, et. al.
Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume
I.
General Pedagogy
Students are given a variety of suggestions under "Hints for
Successful Independent Study" which is part of their Study Guide
that outlines the course content and examination procedures.
General Annotation
Final Comments:
It should be clear from the readings selected, their
juxtapositions and diversity, and the inclusion of critical and
stimulating alternative visions, that the course does not follow
a traditional or eulogistic view of the American experience.
Rather we seek to stimulate understanding and appreciation of the
contributions of all groups and the issues of class, race and
gender that run throughout our history. Students are clearly
told that this course differs in many ways from what might have
been taught years ago, and are introduced to questions about
history, language, and the canon. Emphasis is placed on the
evolving nature of American culture and identity. Students are
asked to explore a complex but discrete set of questions and
issues and to formulate their own ideas about the continuing
dialogue and debate over being "an American." Students must,
however, ground their thinking and writing in a specific body of
knowledge and theory embodied in the readings and be able to
present them analytically. Although some references and
allusions are made to later periods, the course ends at the
somewhat traditional Civil War break. Part II will continue to
explore the American Dream from thence into the contemporary
period.
Course Organization
The Course is divided into three Units with the same four themes
in each. In addition, Unit I has an addendum to incorporate
early southwestern tradition materials. The three main Units
are:
I. Colonial America (1620-1750)
II. Revolution and Nation Building (1750-1820)
III. The Antebellum Period: Revolution and Reform (1820-1861)
The four themes are:
A. Wealth and Success
B. The Individual and the Community
C. The Role of Government
D. Forging an American Identity
A complete subdivided syllabus list of required readings follows
below. (Students may proceed at their own pace following the
directed study questions; when they feel they have mastered the
content, they may apply to sit for the examination which allows
them to receive credit and grade).
Sample Study Questions for Unit I:
How are wealth and success defined, obtained, and retained in
Colonial America?
Does the search for wealth necessarily lead to
exploitation of land and other people?
How did facing the challenges presented by the "new world" affect
people's notion of the individual and the community:
What were the settler's and native people's earliest conceptions
of law and what role did each believe government should have in
supporting community and the acquisition of wealth?
Readings
Unit I
Overview
Roth, Lecture 2: "The New Commonwealth"
Colonial Period: to 1700 (Heath, pp. 4-25)
Iroquois or Confederacy of the Five Nations
(Heath, pp. 56-59)
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (Heath, pp. 776-80; 82081)
I. A.
THE QUEST FOR WEALTH AND SUCCESS
Christopher Columbus
, from
Journal of
the First Voyage to America
(Heath, pp. 69-80)
Samuel de Champlain
, from
The Voyages
of Samuel de Champlain,
1604-1618, "an encounter with the Iroquois" (Heath, pp. 149-50;
156-59)
William Bradford
, from
Of Plymouth
Plantation, Book II, Chap. xiv
(Heath, pp. 210-11, 220-21), Book II, Ch. xix (Heath, pp. 221-25)
Cotton Mather
, from
Magnalia Christi
Americana
(Heath, pp. 406-
14)
William Cronin, "Indians, Colonists, and Property Rights"
(Underside, pp. 11-33)
I. B.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY
John Smith
, "Advertisements for the
Unexperienced Planters of New
England, or Anywhere, or the Pathway to Experiences to Erect a
Plantation" (Heath, pp. 149-50, 160-64)
John Winthrop
"On Trade" (Book of Readings,
#1)
Thomas Morton
, from
New English
Canaan, Book I, Ch. vi (Heath, p.178), Book II, Ch. xiv (Heath, pp. 183-84), Book III, Ch.
XV
(Heath, pp. 184-187), Book III, Ch. xvi (Heath, pp. 187-88)
Roger Williams
, "To the Town of Providence"
(Heath, pp. 232-34,
254-55)
The New England Prime
r
[selection] (Heath, pp.
308-10)
Jonathan Edwards
, from
Personal
Narrative
(Heath, pp. 544-54);
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
(Heath, pp. 555-67)
I.C.
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
William Bradford, from
Of Plymouth Plantation, Chap. xi (Heath,
pp. 210-11, 217-10)
I. D.
FORGING AN IDENTITY
Sean Wilentz, "Artisan Republicans" (Underside, pp. 137-72)
Ira Berlin "Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American
Society" (Underside, pp. 83-112)
I. E.
ADDENDUM; A LOOK WEST
"The Coming of the Spanish and the Pueblo Revolt"
[Hopi] (Heath,
pp. 52-55)
"Letter on the Pueblo Revolt of 1680,"
Don
Antonio de Otermin
(Heath, pp. 432-40)
"Letter on the Reconquest of New Mexico,"
Don
Diego de Vargas
(Heath, pp. 440-45)
"Report made by Rev. Father Fray Carlos Delgado to our Father
Ximeno,"
Rev. Father Fray Carlos Degado
(Heath, pp. 756-62)
Unit II
II. A.
THE QUEST FOR WEALTH AND SUCCESS
Thomas Jefferson,
from
Notes on the
State of Virginia,
query xix (Book of Readings, #4)
Alexander Hamilton, "On the Subject of Manufacturers" (Book of
Readings, #5)
Max Weber, from
The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism
(Book of Readings, #2)
Richard Bushman, "Family Security in the Transition from Farm to
City, 1750-1850" (Underside, pp. 315-31)
Washington Irving, "Style at Ballston" (Book of Readings, #3)
II. B.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY
Gustavus Vassa (Olaudah Equiano)
, from "The
Interesting Narrative
of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vass, The African,
Written by Himself" (Heath, pp. 694-712)
Phillis Wheatley
, Poetry (Heath, pp. 712-25)
Jupiter Hammon
, An Address to Miss Phillis
Wheatley [sic] (Heath,
pp. 712-25)
Francisco Palou
, from
Life of Junipero
Serra
(Heath, pp. 762-70)
Thomas Paine
, from
An Occasional Letter on
the Female Sex
(Heath, pp. 936-39)
Abigail Adams
, Letter to John Adams, 3/31/76
(Heath, pp. 925-26,
930-31)
David Walker
, from Appeal (Heath, pp. 1781-
91)
II. C
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
from
The Federalist Papers #6
(Heath, pp.
1008-13), #10 (Heath,
pp. 1013-18)
"An Anti-Federalist Paper" (Heath, pp. 1018-21)
Thomas Jefferson
, "First Inaugural Address"
(Heath, pp. 957-60,
971-74)
II. D.
FORGING AN AMERICAN IDENTITY
Thomas Paine
, from
The American
Crisis, "Number 1" (Heath, pp.
936-37, 946-51)
Patriot and Loyalist Songs and Ballads
(Heath,
pp. 994-1006)
James Fenimore Cooper
, "An Aristocrat and a
Democrat" (Book of
Readings, #12)
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur,
from
Letters from an American
Farmer
(Heath, pp. 890-925)
Thomas Archdeacon, "Natives & Newcomers" Confrontation"
(Underside, pp. 261-88)
III.
Overview
Roth, Lecture 4: "Inalienable Rights and Rugged Individualism"
and Lecture 6: "Some Dreams Deferred: Race and Gender"
Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865 (Heath, pp. 1179-213)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
, "Self-Reliance" (Heath,
pp. 1467-70, 1511-
28)
Frederick Douglass
, from
Narrative of the
Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave
(Heath, pp. 1637-704)
III. A.
THE QUEST FOR WEALTH AND SUCCESS
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo
, from
Recuerdos historicos u personales
tocante a la alta California
(An Account of the Gold Rush)
(Heath, pp. 1952-54, 1961-64)
Fanny Fern (Sara Willis Parton)
, "The Working-
Girls of New York:
(Heath, pp. 1899-1901, 1907-80)
Herman Melville
"Bartleby, the Scrivener"
(Heath, pp. 2400-31);
"The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" (Heath, pp.
2400-04, 2447-64)
III. B.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY
Harriet Ann Jacobs
, from
Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl
(Heath, pp. 1723-50)
William Lloyd Garrison
, from
William
Lloyd Garrison: The Story
of His Life
(Heath, pp, 1792-95)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
, "Declaration of
Sentiments" (Heath, pp.
1893-95), 1897-99)
Henry David Thoreau
, from
Walden,
"Where I Lived, and What I
Lived For" (Heath, pp. 1964-66, 1981-90)
Sojourner Truth
, "Reminiscences by Frances D.
Gage of Sojourner
Truth, for May 1851" (Heath pp. 1980-13)
Margaret Fuller
, from Woman in the Nineteenth
Century (Heath, pp.
1580-82, 1604-26)
Bret Harte, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" (Book of Readings, #14)
"Tennessee's Partner" (Book of Readings, #15)
Emily Dickinson
, Poem #324 (Heath, p. 2858);
Poem #508 (Heath, p.
2870)
H. Storing, from The Moral Foundations of the American Republic
(Book of Readings, #13)
Jacqueline Jones, "Black Women, Work and the Family Under
Slavery" (Underside, pp. 332-55)
Mary P. Ryan, "Women, Revival, and Reform" (Underside, pp. 173-
212)
III. C.
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
"Concord Hymn "
(Heath, pp. 1567-68)
Henry David Thoreau
, "Resistance to Civil
Government" (Heath, pp.
1964-1981)
David Christy, "Cotton is King" (Book of Readings, #6)
Eric L. McKitrick, "The Defense of Slavery" (Book of Readings,
#7)
Edmund Ruffin, "Political Economy of Slavery" (Book of Readings,
#8)
Abraham Lincoln,
"Address at the Dedication of
the Gettysburg
National Cemetery" (Heath, pp. 1882-85)
"Second Inaugural Address" (Heath, pp. 1885-86)
III. D.
FORGING AN AMERICAN IDENTITY
George Washington Harris
, "Sut
Lovingood's Adventures in New
York" (Book of Readings, #9)
"Sut Lovingood on the Puritan Yankee" (Book of Readings, #10)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
, "The American Scholar"
(Heath, pp. 1467-70,
1499-1511)
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
"My Kinsman, Major
Molineux" (Heath, pp.
2065-82)
George Washington Harris,
from The Crockett
Almanacs (Heath, pp.
2429-38)
Harriet Beecher Stowe
, from Uncle Tom's Cabin
(Heath, pp. 2307-
58)
Frederick Douglass
, "What to the Slave is the
Fourth of July?"
(Heath, pp. 1637-39, 1704-23)
Chief Seattle, "Speech of Chief Seattle" (Heath,
pp. 1769-72)
Caroline Kirkland,
from A New Home--Who'll
Follow? (Heath, pp.
2286-07)
Fanny Fern (Sara Willis Parton)
, "Independence"
(Heath, pp. 1899-
1901, 1906-07)
John Rollin Ridge
, "Oppression of the Digger
Indians" (Heath, pp.
1772-75)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
, "The Jewish
Cemetery at Newport"
(Heath, pp. 2727-40)
Walt Whitman
, "Song of Myself" (Heath, pp.
2709-12, 2727-40 [to
line 349])
Jordan and Litwack, "The Last American West" (Book of Readingss,
#11)
William Kephart and William Zellner, "The Oneida Community" (Book
of Readings, #16)
Leonard Arrington and David Britton, "Brigham Young Leads Mormons
in the West" (Underside, pp. 318-404)
Jean Baker, "Learning to be Americans: Schooling and American
Culture" (Underside pp. 227-54)
Emily Dickinson
, Poem #341 (Heath, p. 2861;
Poem #657 (Heath, p.
2880)