I just realized that I missed the last posting of the semester as well as the first one. Not a good way to start or the end semester. Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed partaking in a class that looked at history in a manner that I was not accustomed. Now, having completed my last history class in my major, it is interesting to reflect on the different ways that history is taught, and viewed. Some professors tend to focus on the dates, and major events, while others attempt to use their students implied understanding of significant historical events as a means to show its overall impact on the world's diverse societies. I thought this course was solid balance of both, while still adding its own unique flavor by giving students an understanding of "who" writes history. Some of histories most famous writers are names like Turner, Hofstadter, Weems; all of which were foreign to me until I enrolled in this class. I thought the peer-biographical portion of the class was an incredible method for students to truly understand. The difficult process that historians must go through in deciding what is important enough to be written about. I plan to carry with me a "more critical" view of American history textbooks, while at the same time a greater appreciation for those that shaped its pages. Thanks for everything.

Edited by author 12-11-2007 07:12 PM
sorry if there are any spelling problems, especially with names. i spell phonetically. or close to it.

review notes:
Periodization (dividing up)
 -precontact
 -early colonial (jamestown 1607, eurpeanization 1689 - 92)
 -late colonial (-1763, proclamation line,natives lose ability to play european powers against each other, as GB has all)
 -revolutionary period 1763 - 1776 - 87-1789
 -early national 1789ish - 1845ish
 -civil war era 1845-1877
 -"gilded age" 1877-1896, mckinley presidency, realignment, international thinking.... dated variously
 -progressive era 1896-1918 dated variously
 -20s
 -depression/new deal 1932 - 1940
 -ww2 1939-45
 -sixties 60-73
 -cold war 1945-1989

have professional historians from progressive era onward.

essay might have relationship between periods and historians interpretive schools. be aware of overlap of schools.
banning rev and earl national
calloway gilded
bowley twenties--60s
poland ww2 on


new left includes, given agency, voice, etc: african americans, women, labor, immigrants

 
exam, people to look at:
will not include "the recent trends"
heroic patrician: irving, weams (where did they come from, where did they get ideas, etc)
scientific nationalist: baxter adams, heart, wilson
progressives: becker, beard, mary beard (one of the first to say women matter), turner (one of most important ever, somewhat transitional btw SN)
anti-progressive: hoffstadr, hartz, boorstin
"new" historians: bailyn, wood

hoffstadr denies that class issues are a causal issue in anything... all leaders, jefferson + hamilton, are wealthy elites, just with some different values. arguing about details, not basic structure. small town elites control the conversation, meaning immigrants, poor, and big town elites. anything that doesn't support that viewpoint gets supressed, sometimes violently. winner take all system prevents anyone outside never gets a serious place.

gattis - others say that movement occurs slowly... shifting the concensus. workers rights, 8 hr day wouldn't happen in the gilded age.. but eventually caught on.

cooley vs board of wardens 1851 -1890s - statement about balance between state and federal regulatory power, state rights case. decided by taney court. strict constructionist... decided dred scott. in cooley, court balances: interstate commerce is province of fed gov't, but there is a certain point where state and local gov't have an interest and can control reg... ie board of wardens and having a philly pilot. where fed chooses not to regulate, state and local can take over. -> anti-dumping statutes, etc. makes fed take over more, as states aren't very good.

no more than 20/45 of short answers from before midterm, some guarnari, books, assigned biographies


look at guanari and historians lead to depression arguments, all play some sort of role, but all fairly different.

Course reflection:
I came into this course expecting to learn approximately the same things I did in HST-24, US Social and Intellectual. This however, was pleasantly not the case. In addition, i was happy to find that it didn't exactly bear resemblance to the other US history courses I have taken, either. The study of schools, specifically, is what made this class unique. I had heard of them and read from most, but the discussion on their differences and how they were brought about made them more real. The differing interpretations of historical events should be something obvious, but the extent to which these interpretations can change over time is sometimes stunning. It highlights the extent to which not just historians, but people in general are shaped by their current surroundings.

I thought it was interesting to read about democratization and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. This was interesting to me because I could relate this to things that were happening in China at the same time. In 1989, the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, had hundreds of protesters for democracy killed. He tightened social policies because he did not want the Glasnost and Perestroika that Nikita Kruschev implemented in the USSR. It is interesting to see how much communism around the world died at this time, but China still remained a communist state. One of my favorite things during this class was relating the material to things I had learned in US Government and World Politics.

Edited by author 12-11-2007 03:22 PM
It appears as though I'm one of the last to post on this but here's my course reflections:
I've never had a course that dealt with historiography until this term, when in fact I had two, but it was a nice respite from the high school courses that were merely repetitive dates. It was interesting to look at the different interpretations and schools of history, each that offer differing ways of perspectives on writing about events and history.
The Gaddis book drew many points together and supplements many points well. It paints an interesting picture of the sometime difficult job of the historian to attempt to explain history for us, the reader. I especially enjoyed the sometimes almost derogatory address of the social sciences considering that's what I switched my major from...Also it came in handy for an essay that I wrote on historiography for my exam this morning.

I would also like to make a post that I was out of town and didn't post for the week. The week of 11/5, we read articles by Roosevelt and Muir, both on conservation issues. Both pieces address conservation of American materials and resources but in very different ways. Roosevelt addresses natural resource conservation from an economic point of view. Issues such as the nation's waterways are addressed, not for environmental issues but rather for economic purposes. Muir addresses forests and trees. He does not address the economic issues but rather sticks to more of a moral argument.
Interestingly enough, Roosevelt argues that it is the responsibility of the current generation to conserve resources in order to not deprive and degrade the future generations. After reading Emperors in the Jungle, I wonder how Roosevelt would argue the issue of environmental conservation with all of the environmental issues that as stated in the book took place druing the building of the Canal in Panama.

Q: How should we study the conservation part of our notes?
What and who is important to know? Because my notes are all over the place
for that section.

------------

A: A good question for the study session. Think of this as involving three phases, each of which carries within it several different dimensions or viewpoints.

Phase one involves the different and competing ideas about the relationship between humans and nature in the abstract, including (a) dominion over nature (2) Enlightenment "gardening" of nature (3) Romanticism's belief in a wild, rugged, "authentic" nature untouched and distinct from humans, and (4) The ordinary experience of farmers and city dwellers of nature as a dangerous and capricious force.

Phase two involves the first formal discussions of environmentalism and the mid-to-late 19th century efforts to formulate state environmental policy and regulation. This is where our discussions of the Marsh report on deforestation, the Timber and Stone Act, Water policy and the Army Corps, etc, come in.

Phase three involves Progressive Era legislation to create the national park system and the national forest system. Here the contrast between Muir's "nature as God's temple" ideal competes against Roosevelt's pragmatic "manage nature to assure its bounty of human uses."

Fill these in with dates and policies, and connect them to other developments (urbanization, industrialization, transportation, nationalization, rationalization and managerial regulation) and you'll be well on your way.

Dr. Benson, I have a question.
How should we study the conservation part of our notes?
What and who is important to know? Because my notes are all over the place
for that section.

This class has taught me a lot about the shortcomings of the discipline of history and also about the continued need for it. It has caused me to think a good deal about our time in history and what it will look like to future generations. What are our cultural blind spots that historians 100 years from now will censure us for? Gaddis was a refreshing read because he talked about the difficulties of moral judgments, and yet he emphasized their importance. Historians should censure us for our misdeeds as a country. We should look back in our history and recognize the good and bad deeds - not with an air of superiority, but with a recognition of the possibility that we could fall into those same errors if we do not learn from those before us.
This course has reminded me that our country's history is not a simple subject to study. Too often I just think of the stories I learned when I was in elementary school. It has shown me how deep our cultural myths (the Jeremiad, especially) run. It has been helpful to learn about the different schools of historians since they influence our ideas about America so much. One thing I haven't liked is that as soon as you get into a topic you're interested in, you have to move along to the next thing. But I guess that's just the nature of the class.

I know this entry for a course reflection is long overdue, but as they say better late than never. Also I just wanted to say that this course has shown me specific events and people that I hadn't studied before in a U.S. History course. But more importantly, it has opened my eyes to broader ideas and ways of thinking that both are incorporated in, and go beyond, the topics covered in this course.

Before this class, I had never before put any considerable thought into basic types of human interactions that this class has highlighted. This discussion board has been both a medium and a source of inspiration for my broader thinking- which has allowed me to ponder things such as the reasons for the countless differences that lead to disagreement and conflict, as well as diversity and individuality. It has given me new insight into the origins of humanity, basic characteristics of humans, how humans interact with other humans, and how man perceives and interprets their environment.

And it's how this period of history are presented and emphasized that really make you think more into how and why these events occurred, as opposed to the typical grade schools courses that only seemed to focus on names and dates. Guarneri's book that this class focused on most also lets you know that American history, just like that of any other country, isn't independent of the global history and that every event in American history has influenced another country's history or occurred by the influence another country had on America. So I must say I have learned a lot from this American History course- both objective and subjective in nature.

Well, this is REALLY late, because I didn't see that we had to post our "final reflections," but better late than never I suppose.

I think the biggest way that this class has changed my perspective on all of history, not simply American history, is that I now have a much deeper understanding of the need for historiographical analysis. Understanding the sources of our historical narrative is one of the most important jobs of historians and of educated people in general. This is why I chose to write my research paper on a historiographical topic, and that exercise in particular furthered my understanding of how historians' biased opinions and attempts at objectivity can lead us to see things in our past that were not actually there or neglect to observe things from our past that were in fact there.
Gaddis's book really drove this point home for me (although I was, of course, insulted by his sometimes unmerited attacks on the social sciences), because it appropriately showed the need for history as a guidebook for the future as well as proving that history can be misleading and misused, as it is something that "we can only represent" rather than recreate.

Katie Sichau[4:58:49 PM] has joined the chat.
Lloyd Benson has joined the chat.
Lloyd Benson[4:59:40 PM]: Hi Katie! You are the first in.
Katie Sichau[4:59:57 PM]: Hi Dr. Benson!!
Lloyd Benson[5:00:13 PM]: How are you, and how is the study work going?
Katie Sichau[5:01:23 PM]: pretty well, i have a biology final tomorrow and i started history yesterday
Lloyd Benson[5:02:02 PM]: Good luck with the Bio class!
Katie Sichau[5:02:09 PM]: thank you
Lloyd Benson[5:02:35 PM]: Want to start with general questions about the exam format, or perhaps clarifications of things in your notes?
Katie Sichau[5:03:03 PM]: is there is going to be along essay? like the midterm or will it be shorter?
Lloyd Benson[5:04:05 PM]: There will be two essays, each comparable to the midterm, or modestly shorter.
Katie Sichau[5:04:28 PM]: what topics should we focus on that for?
Lloyd Benson[5:06:00 PM]: The long essay will use major course themes (see http://facweb.furman.edu/~bensonlloyd/hst21/h21intro.htm) and will focus on the books, particularly, but not exclusively.
Lloyd Benson[5:06:54 PM]: See my message from the other day for things to look for in the Guarneri text, too. (I'll dig for the text of this in a minute, too.)
Katie Sichau[5:07:24 PM]: ok that seems like a good starting point.
Lloyd Benson[5:07:40 PM]: Here's the text from the other day:
Lloyd Benson[5:08:02 PM]: When reviewing the Guarneri book, pay close attention to his "Getting Started on Chapter XX" questions, on his "Timelines," and on his chapter headings and subheadings. The book is really good about labeling its subcomponents and paragraphs. These paragraphs are likely to be summary interpretations of causal factors specific to a particular moment (i.e. "Political Obstacles to Socialism," on p. 197), itemizations of consequences or policy outcomes (i.e. "achievements of Progressivism," pp. 203-204), or international comparisons (i.e. "Great Depression and New Deal: Global Patterns and Changes," pp. 205-206. These should already be in your handwritten notes from the book. Some people find it helpful to look at these, close there eyes, and self-check from memory. (e.g.: [Close eyes] "Q: What are the key 'accomplishments of Progressivism,' according to G?" "ANS: [recall these from memory]" [Open eyes] "Okay, I remembered six of the eight or so he lists, let me look them over again.") To the extent to which these topic headings connect to our course themes or to the schools of history we discussed, they will deserve more attention than things that are less related to the themes. Because this text is so short you should have no trouble rereading the whole text and refreshing your memory before the final.
Lloyd Benson[5:08:50 PM]: Much of the emphasis in these long essays will be on materials since the midterm.
Katie Sichau[5:09:14 PM]: ok, thank you.
Lloyd Benson[5:12:01 PM]: For the big books, review each chapter, (the "any book in an hour" method is perfect for this) and ask yourself what the author's thesis/point is. Then pick out one or two episodes or landmark "decision-points" in the chapter that seem most important. For these example episodes, figure out when they happened, who the key players were, what factors shaped their decision-making, and what the outcomes were.
Lloyd Benson[5:13:36 PM]: Do you have specific questions from your notes? Questions about historians? Differences in historical schools?
Katie Sichau[5:15:25 PM]: with Carnegie and the social darwinism, how are they connected? just that social darwinisim was survival of the fittest and Carnegie had to keep up with the best in order to stay in business??
Lloyd Benson[5:16:12 PM]: [Reaching for Guarneri, and browsing through the index to share specific page numbers.....]
Lloyd Benson[5:18:03 PM]: Great question. Guarneri discusses this on pp. 174 and 217, and works in Carnegie from pp. 173-178.
Lloyd Benson[5:19:17 PM]: As I see it, Carnegie developed his notions of business competition first through experience, and only later came to see how closely his attitudes came to match the social theory.
Lloyd Benson[5:20:13 PM]: That said, the theory of Social Darwinism only came into people's minds in an age of great business competition and great inequities of wealth and poverty.
Lloyd Benson[5:21:26 PM]: In that sense, Carnegie's Social Darwinism is a rationalization after the fact, but a rationalization built on a theory whose base was in capitalist competition. It was a feedback loop, in a sense.
Katie Sichau[5:22:54 PM]: ok, that helps, definitley.
Lloyd Benson[5:23:01 PM]: Not everyone agreed, of course, most notably the Social Gospelers from a religious perspective, Populists from an agrarian perspective, and Socialists from a secular industrial working-person's perspective. The Progressive movement built on all of these.
Lloyd Benson[5:24:03 PM]: That was a really good question about a pivotal person who advocated a pivotal theory.
Katie Sichau[5:25:42 PM]: another question: in my notes i have that the modern timber industry still benefits from this work around. but i dont have what the work around is. what is it?
David Samuelson has joined the chat.
Lloyd Benson[5:25:57 PM]: Hi David, welcome aboard!
David Samuelson[5:26:12 PM]: Glad to be here...I was formulating some questions...
Lloyd Benson[5:26:14 PM]: Q: another question: in my notes i have that the modern timber industry still benefits from this work around. but i dont have what the work around is. what is it?
Bynum Jaeger has joined the chat.
Lloyd Benson[5:29:09 PM]: The Timber and Stone Act of 1878 intended to preserve "small scale" producers rights. It limited the amount of land any one person could buy. Companies circumvented this by working behind the scenes to scavenge people to "claim title" as fronts for the companies. The government thought some individual was making the timber claim, but in reality all the actual claim work funneled right to the companies, several of which still exist today.
Lloyd Benson[5:29:24 PM]: Hi Bynum! Welcome aboard. David and Katie are here, too.
Lloyd Benson[5:30:21 PM]: Most of the people officially listed in the title books were literally drunks and sailors found by companies on the docks in San Francisco. Or at least that's what the histories claim.
David Samuelson[5:30:41 PM]: haha. i remember your saying that in class...
David Samuelson[5:32:04 PM]: Sorry, I haven't gotten to study this stuff yet, so I don't have any questions right now. Also, I'm in the middle of something for another class.
David Samuelson has left the chat.
Lloyd Benson[5:32:39 PM]: Over the years there have been many attempts to revise these timber and mining claims so that resource extraction that takes place on land held in common by the American people ("aka" the public domain) ends up being profitable to the people of the U.S. Sometimes that has worked as intended, sometimes not.
Lloyd Benson[5:33:18 PM]: Bynum, any questions about the exam format? About things in your notes that need clearing up?
Bynum Jaeger[5:33:26 PM]: How much of an emphasis will be placed on information from the 1st half of the semester?
Lloyd Benson[5:35:00 PM]: In the two essays the weight of the questions will focus on books and other reading assignments we have covered since the midterm. The short answers will be about 55-65 percentish material since the midterm. Any historians we covered any time during the term may be included in the test.
Bynum Jaeger[5:35:01 PM]: sorry that Im being quiet, just reading over the previous conversation.
Lloyd Benson[5:35:27 PM]: No Prob. That was a good way to start.
Katie Sichau[5:36:10 PM]: for the previous material, where does the midterm stuff end in the notes?
Lloyd Benson[5:36:30 PM]: [Checking the schedule.....]
Lloyd Benson[5:37:15 PM]: Anything Civil War or before was on the first midterm, if I remember correctly.
Katie Sichau[5:37:26 PM]: ok
Katie Sichau[5:37:27 PM]: thank you
Lloyd Benson[5:38:32 PM]: On the other end, since we didn't talk about Postmodernism I won't be asking you any questions about the PM historians or interpretations listed in the field guide to historians and schools.
Lloyd Benson[5:40:23 PM]: You may find it helpful to sketch out two timelines (mentally or literally, it's up to you) that you place side to side. One would be a straight chronology of history, grouped into periods. The classic post-Civil War periods are as follows:
Lloyd Benson[5:40:52 PM]: (Note some overlap in starting and ending dates)Reconstruction (1862-1877)
Lloyd Benson[5:44:17 PM]: Oops. (Reconstruction, 1862-1877; Gilded Age, 1877-1896; Progressive Era, 1896-1918; The Twenties (1918-1932); The Great Depression (1929-1941); WW 2 (1939-1945); the Cold War (1944-1989); and then a decadish grouping of domestic politics and society, meaning "The Fifties" (1945-1960) The Sixties (1960-1973) The Seventies (1968-1980) The Reagan Era (1980-1992) and we didn't get any further than this.
Lloyd Benson[5:45:18 PM]: For each of these eras, identify the key events and decision-points (just as when studying the books) using the timelines in Guarneri and in class handouts/DB postings to figure out the biggest of these events.
Lloyd Benson[5:47:24 PM]: Then, in the second timeline, list the historians and interpretations that match up with them. Note that interpretive historical schools tend to overlap, too. This means that progressive interpretations (Schlesinger's Age of FDR, for ex.) were produced well after the first Consensus historians began publishing. Likewise, Hamby's new deal consensus argument was generated well after the New Left school had taken over a dominant voice in the profession.
Bynum Jaeger[5:47:41 PM]: Why did you say historians named the "Reagan Era" after President Reagan? I thought you said that has since beome a historical "no-no".
Lloyd Benson[5:47:42 PM]: Then think about how the two timelines link with each other.
Lloyd Benson[5:48:35 PM]: Good eye! Yes, the so-called "Presidential synthesis" has serious limitations. Yes, historians still talk about the "Reagan Era' as a cohesive block of time.
Lloyd Benson[5:50:44 PM]: Why is that? I would propose an hypothesis that Reagan's ability to tap into unmet populist needs and to empower many groups who had been feeling less central to the dominant conversation in America, gave politics and social life a grassroots "Reagan" style that extended far beyond politics.
Lloyd Benson[5:51:20 PM]: Reagan, then, was a catalyst for all kinds of people to redefine what they thought or to reclaim a polirical voice.
Lloyd Benson[5:52:03 PM]: [Looking up in the index to see what, if anything Guarneri says about Reagan....]
Lloyd Benson[5:53:50 PM]: Guarneri's interpretation (pp. 260-261) of Reagan's role in ending the cold war is to stress other factors, without dismissing the other arguments entirely. How "integratively complex" of him!
Katie Sichau[5:55:31 PM]: thank you dr. benson for answering my questions, this helped alot. i have to get going to dinner but thank you!
Lloyd Benson[5:55:36 PM]: Incidentally, I would encourage everyone to study these later chapters of Guarneri, even though the flu but a big dent in our post-WW 2 class time discussions. His treatment of globalization in these chapters is vitally important in framing every other "US in global context" argument he makes in the other parts of the book,
Lloyd Benson[5:56:08 PM]: You are welcome. I appreciate how willingly everyone in the class engaged with these materials.
Katie Sichau has left the chat.
Lloyd Benson[5:57:00 PM]: Bynum, although the session officially ends in four minutes, I'll stay logged on until your most pressing questions are answered.
Bynum Jaeger[5:57:50 PM]: Im going to study for my other test, but thank you for being available to answer questions. I will see you at the study session.
Bynum Jaeger has left the chat.

I know this is a little late, but I want to share my reflections on this past term. I really enjoyed the new perspective that this class gave to the study of American History. All of my other history classes, both at Furman and during high school, have used the same approach. It was challenging and interesting to study the historians of every age and how the historical events of their time influenced the way they wrote. My research technique has been changed for the better, along with what I study and how I go about doing it. This course gave me a glimpse of something bigger than what my other courses have emphasized, something more global and universal. American history is not solely just American. We have been influenced by others, and in turn influenced other nations. This course was interesting, challenging, and a very worthwhile experience.

I too was fascinated by the study of historians and differing historical interpretations. Connecting events from different times and across the globe was also eye-opening for me. As we talked about so often in this class, my previous studies of history had been compartmentalized or, as Andrew said, studied “in a vacuum.” This study of U.S. history in a global context helped to demystify ideas of American exceptionalism.
The research paper was useful in improving my research abilities. I didn’t even know there was a third floor to the library until a few weeks ago when I had to get a book from there. It also helped me learn to be selective when choosing sources: learning to choose authoritative sources on my subject.

I guess pressing "tab" sends you to the submit button instead of indenting for a new paragraph...
    The most interesting interpretation we discussed this term was the States' rights argument formed from an anti-slavery perspective. I had never thought about it being a right to not have slaves and to refuse to allow them within a state's borders.
   While I learned a lot, I was frustrated by the difficulty of not being able to see where the course was going at any particular moment. As I was thinking about this, I realized that the course was only loosely organized on a chronological basis; the emphasis was not on the dates and dead people, but on the way people told stories about them. That realization doesn't make it easier for me to organize things in my own mind, but it does force me to take a new perspective on life and to recognize that the way I see the world around me leaves out lots of other perspectives. Thus, whether I'm working through my own issues or studying the events of the past, I can now see the importance of looking for other perspectives and narratives.

    I had a lot of fun writing my paper. It was a lot of work, but it was fascinating to see the variety of interpretations of a single idea: The American Revision of Classical Republicanism. While it had its roots in the English Commonwealth, the framers made numerous adaptations to it so that it fit the cultural context and was salient in an otherwise divisive environment.

Edited by author 12-08-2007 03:13 PM
The way in which we studied history in this class was completely different than the high school history I had studied. Mostly, high school history consisted of dates and political history with the ubiquitous yet occasional "flapper"-like culture-based paragraphs.

This class, on the other hand, studied history in a way that I never had imagined. Not only did we study the context of American history in the international setting with Guarneri, but also we payed close attention to cultural phenomena (radio) and historiography, explaining why certain aspects of history are explained the way they are. The classmate biography allowed us to think like historians.

The term paper was at least twice as long as any paper I've written in high school, which probably speaks more about high school, but it allowed me to do more of my own research as well as develop my own thesis. For most of my high school papers, research consisted of going to Wikipedia, reading the article, then clicking on some of the references and suggested reading, but with this class, I had access to articles in highly regarded journals, primary sources, and even newspaper columns that could tell me what the people of a certain time were really thinking.

Finally, I came to understand how most people prefer historical arguments.. . in an integratively complex fashion. I agree, arguments that takes multiple sources into account is better.

Its been really interesting to see how every age writes its own history and how the history of one age is often a reaction against that of the previous. The example of Parson Weams and Washington Irving making a hagiography of American History, and then the backlash against founding legends by the scientific historians is really of how goals define what is written.