historiographical essay

The take-home, essay part of the exam will test student’s familiarity with class readings and lectures. Students should expect to use any reading assigned on the syllabus, supplementary materials, as well as lecture notes in their answer. I will be especially attentive to the ways in which you use American Colonies and readings posted on Blackboard.
In your essays, use the following prompts to construct an argument about the importance of markets, geography, and/or gender in United States history. Remember to be specific in the details and evidence: dates, names of important historical actors, specific groups, places, ideas, etc. This is a take-home examination, so there is no reason not to include as much information—dates, names of important people and locations, and even specific concepts—as possible in order to provide evidence for your arguments. Also, be specific when discussing your citations, including both the author and title of a source and whether the source is a primary or secondary source. Page numbers are required unless you have the ebook for Taylor, in which case a chapter citation will be sufficient.
Students should expect to write at least 1,000 words for each essay, or 2,000 words total, for this assignment. There is no maximum limit and students should write as much as they want.
Argue for the importance of geography in the history of European colonization in the Americas, the expansion of the United States as an “Empire of Liberty,” and the sectional conflict that characterized the Civil War and Reconstruction. Consider both the east-west as well as north-south axis of expansion and territorial conflict. Students should devote at least a paragraph each to the following geographic elements of this history: the ways in which Native Americans viewed European arrivals and encroachments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; colonial conflicts between the British, Spanish, French, Dutch, and other European powers; the meanings of the “frontier” in encounters between Europeans and Native Americans from the colonial era to the earliest years of the United States; the territorial expansion of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812; and the emergence of Manifest Destiny during the era of the Mexican- American War; the conflict over the spread of slavery into the territories; and the sectional conflicts that characterized the Civil War and Reconstruction. In your answer, you must consider the roles of Native Americans, the significance of slavery and race, and the importance of European immigration and immigrants.
Explain how gender and sexuality were central to the European colonization of the Americas, the development of the slave trade, and the establishment of social order and hierarchy in the British colonies of North America and in the United States. Explain how gender and sexuality have been overlooked in American history and the ways in which gender and sexuality have shaped daily life in the United States. In your answer, you should focus on three distinct periods: 1) the early colonial period and the ways in which Native American, African, and European gender roles differed from one another and were sometimes the source of conflict as well as the ways in which sexuality cemented relations among these different groups; 2) the prerevolutionary period and the ways in which gender shaped Euro-American society in the colonies, and focus especially on your readings about gender in Puritan society (think about the readings on Salem) as well as the development of white supremacy and patriarchy in the South; and 3) the early Republican period/the early nineteenth century and the ways in which gender and sexuality shaped the dynamics of political and social activism (especially abolitionism) among women and men, and especially the revival, spread, and practice of slavery in the United States before the Civil War.
Tips for mastery:
Use your opening to introduce your reader to your argument about the importance of your topic, for example of markets, geography, or gender, as well as the supporting ideas you will explore. Your argument should be more descriptive rather than argumentative or persuasive.
Use supporting evidence drawn from readings and lectures, and carefully describe whether your evidence is primary source evidence, arguments or references made by authors of secondary sources (i.e. the historiography), or information presented by me in class lecture. In your introduction, you will need to take into account how you are going to justify your argument as well as the different kinds of supporting interpretations and analyses required to distinguish between evidence from the time period under discussion (primary sources) and the arguments or narratives constructed by professional historians (historiography, or secondary sources).
In your conclusion, briefly address the ways in which this history presents continuing challenges to our understanding of both the past and present of United States history as well as any ways in which this history has yet to be fully resolved.

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