More than anything else, history is about reading, and reading is what we'll do in this course. We have LOTS of readings to tackle. However students, like historians, have limited time to read. Fortunately, there are some basic reading strategies that all historians employ making their reading more efficient, enjoyable, and useful. Take a look at this website below which highlights some of these strategies.
Readings:
Taylor, American Colonies (Introduction and Chaps. 1-2)
Online sample of American Colonies:
Points of Entry:
"Exploring the Early Americas" Exhibit
Pre-contact Meso-America
"Longue Duree" conference paper
Comparative view of the Americas:
Hopi Oral History:
Thoughts and Questions for Discussion:
The goal of this week's readings is to introduce you to colonial North America from multiple (and very wide) angles. In particular, Taylor discusses the need to expand our timeline and geographic framework when exploring early America. He also mentions how recent scholars have highlighted the history of race, gender, the environment, and the Atlantic World in order to deepen our understanding of the colonial past.
To kick off the discussion, I'd like to propose a few questions:
What were your perceptions of colonial America on day 1 of this course?
How does adding an "s" to colonial America change the colonial narrative?
How does adding "pre-contact" history change the early American narrative?
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ReplyDeleteAdding an "s" to colonial America changes the colonial narrative. Pluralizing America exemplifies the fact that many different peoples lived in the Americas, and they all had different histories and different understandings of the land and it's uses. Through differences in culture and religion of these various peoples in America, they even had different interpretations of the same events in history. An example of this would be the mass deaths of Native Americans from European diseases. Natives saw it as sorcery by the Europeans, and Europeans saw it as God's wrath against the savages for resisting Christianity.
ReplyDeleteDay 1 Colonial America provoked thoughts of settling starting in the east, basically the arrival of the Europeans and settlements. When you add the "s" on the end of the phrase it changes the entire meaning. To me this means that there were many Americas and the America each settler knew was entirely different than another’s. They all have different accounts of the events during this period as well as beliefs and purpose in life. They were all affected in very different ways. By adding "pre-contact" history you actually get a very different account. We always heard history as it started on the east but pre-contact tells us the opposite. You also get a different description of environment before it was changed by the things brought by the Europeans.
ReplyDeleteOn the first day of class my perception of American colonial history was that the history was contained to the area that is now the United States. The reading this week showed me that the story of the American Colonies is intricately tied to what happened in the world. Before this reading I had no idea that what the Portuguese were doing in West Africa had anything to do with why America was "discovered" and colonized. I really enjoy this approach because it has given me the opportunity to understand the American colonies in the context of world history.
ReplyDeleteWhile we have been talking about the Native American history, with the use of oral history to tell their history. We have been told that these stories of the Native Americans past is their history with a little imaganiation to it. When we watched that movie all i could think about was a book i read over the summer by Erich von Däniken, "The Chariots of the Gods". In this book he establishes a theory called the Ancient Astronaut Theory. The theory covers the idea of Aliens coming to Earth before modern times and influencing many different cultures around the world. If you are interested in the idea or theory try reading the book, you could even find the history channels special on it, or look on online. As we begin to look into the cultures of the Native people of the New World, I'm interested to see if this theory will apply to the material.
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