NORTH CAROLINA HISTORY [COURSE NUMBER]
North
Carolina
History
[Course
Number]
[SEMESTER, YEAR]
[MEETING PLACE AND TIME]
Course
Description
This course surveys the history of North
Carolina from pre-colonial Native American
civilizations though the end of the twentieth
century.
We will examine the broad trends of United
States history as they manifested in North
Carolina. This local study approach will help
you build the analytical tools to understand
history in context. For example, how did
Native Americans in the area that would
become North Carolina experience the
effects of European settlement? Was their
experience unique to their location? Or to
offer another example, North Carolina was a
site for crucial moments in the civil rights
movement, including the lunch counter sit-in
in Greensboro and the founding of the
Student
Nonviolent
Coordinating
Committee. Why did these events take place
here and not elsewhere? What social,
political, and economic contributed to their
occurrence, and what was their effect
outside of the state’s borders?
In order to answer these questions, we will
trace the history of North Carolina though
scholarly writing; historical newspapers,
journals, letters and other documents;
documentaries; and oral histories. You will
also conduct your own research projects on
some aspect of North Carolina history,
discussing historians’ analysis and your own
primary source research findings.
All students will learn to analyze historical
documents and critically read historical
narratives wherever you encounter them,
whether authored by historians or by
journalists, bloggers, documentary makers,
or artists. In addition to these skills, students
preparing to teach North Carolina history will
develop a basic understanding of the
resources, especially web-based materials,
available for classroom use and learn to
evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of
these collections.
Objectives
Students will have acquired or improved their
proficiency in the following competencies:
1) primary source analysis;
2) critique of scholarly books and articles;
3) persuasive, evidenced-based writing.
INSTRUCTOR
Elizabeth K. Brake, Ph.D.
[Contact Info]
Office Hours:
Teaching Assistants
[Name}
[Contact Info]
[Name}
[Contact Info]
By the end of this course, students will
understand:
1) the major trends of American history as
they manifested in North Carolina;
2) how events taking place in North Carolina,
or the actions of North Carolinians,
contributed to historical contingencies and
outcomes within a broader regional and
national history;
3) the diverse racial, ethnic, and religious
groups that make up North Carolina and how
they have participated in the history of the
state;
4) social and political history specific to
North Carolina.
CONTENTS
Description and Objectives: 1
Assignments and Evaluation: 2
Readings: 3 – 5
Additional Course Policies: 6
NORTH CAROLINA HISTORY [COURSE NUMBER]
Assignments
Primary Source Analysis: (15%)
3-4 page primary source analysis, due at the
end of the third week of class
Forum/Blog Posts and Class
Participation (15%):
Course attendance is required. More than 3
absences for reasons other than religious
holidays, documented university activities
(i.e. sports, debate, etc.), or serious illness
will result in the lowering of class
participation. [University-specific regulations
regarding attendance here.]
Using the course site, you will write forum
posts (approx. 200-250 words) on the week’s
reading, lectures, or other multimedia
materials. These short posts should reflect
on the reading or lecture by answering
questions that I post in the forum description
or by discussing some other aspect of the
week’s materials you find compelling or
puzzling.
You are required to post a minimum of 2
times per week. One post must start a new
conversation, and one must take the form of
substantive engagement with a class-mate’s
post. Please remember to employ the same
etiquette in forums as you would in the
classroom itself.
Forum posts will not be graded individually;
however, completing your posts is an
essential component of your class
participation grade.
Furthermore, the
prompts I provide for each forum are of a
similar nature to questions I will ask on the
midterm and final exams. If you keep up
with your forum posts and take them
seriously, you will be well-prepared for the
exams.
The week’s two forum posts must be complete
by midnight Saturday of each week. Any posts
after that time will be counted with the
following week. In other words, you cannot
“bank” blog posts ahead of time, nor can you
catch up several weeks of posts at the end of
the semester. Regular and prompt posting is
an essential facet of your class participation
grade.
Research Project (30%):
Students will conduct research into a topic of
North Carolina history of their choice.
Projects must include readings from the
scholarly literature on your topic and employ
primary source research from the collections
of the university library, local history
resources, or from the digital collections of
other university libraries across the state.
(Links to available resources will be available
on the course site.)
Students may choose one of the two
following options for presenting their
research.
Option 1
You may work alone to craft a traditional
research paper of 10-12 pages.
Option 2
You may choose to work in groups of 2 -3 to
research and present your findings. Research
products could take a variety of forms,
including but not limited to:
2
3) Video or web-based documentary, plus
paper supporting your analysis and choice of
documentary materials (10 page max)
4) Other possibilities might occur to you and
may be pursued with the approval of
instructor.
All projects, regardless of which option you
take, must be discussed with the instructor
or your TA and approved by the end of the
fourth week of class. This includes topic,
research plans, group formation, and
intended product.
Exams (20% each):
The mid-term exam will consist of 5 short
paragraph answer questions (to be chosen
from among 8) and one essay (to be chosen
from among 2 questions.) The midterm will
take place during class on [Date].
The final exam will consist of 10 short answer
questions (to be chosen by the student
among 15 questions) and two essays (to be
chosen from among 3). This exam will be
cumulative for the entire semester. The final
exam will take place on [date and time] at
[location]. You may only reschedule your
final exam in accordance with university
policies.
ASSIGNMENT DATES AT A GLANCE
Blog posts: Weekly by Saturday, 11:59 pm
1) Primary or secondary education teaching
materials on a topic in North Carolina history,
which should include: an analysis of the topic
in paper form; selected primary sources and
an analysis of those sources; suggestions for
further reading and additional source
materials (20 pages max)
2) A presentation to the entire class,
including: brief lecture on your topic; audio
or visual sources, and an analysis of those
sources. Student taking this option will be
required to submit their lecture materials, in
paper form, for grading after the
presentation. (20 minute presentation and
12 page paper max)
Primary Source Analysis: [DATE]
Research Paper: [Final Due Date]
Project Approval: [DATE]
Draft: [DATE]
Midterm Exam: [Date]
Final Exam: [Date]
Evaluation
Components of the Grade
Please see rubrics for grading papers and class discussion available on the course site to learn how I will evaluate your work.
Exam Grades
An important note about exam grades: While I will grade papers using an alphabetical system (A, A-, B+, etc.), exams must be graded numerically.
This might require fractional grades (an A- grade on a short answer question might translate to a 4.5, for example.) In such cases, your grade will
always stand as the decimal, and I will not round up an individual answer grade or the exam total grade to the nearest whole number.
Late papers will receive a deduction of 1/3 letter grade per day late.
NORTH CAROLINA HISTORY [COURSE NUMBER]
3
Readings
The following books are required. They are available through the university book store and on reserve in the library:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Lindley S. Butler & Alan D. Watson, eds., The North Carolina Experience: An Interpretive & Documentary History, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press,
1984)
William Powell, North Carolina Through Four Centuries, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1989)
Harriet A. Jacobs, and Jean Fagan Yellin, ed., Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1987)
Robert Korstad and James Leloudis, To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s
America, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010)
All readings not required for purchase are available on the course site or though the links provided in this syllabus.
Week 1
North Carolina, Native Civilizations, and
Colonial Encounters
H. Trawick Ward & R.P. Stephen Davis Jr.,
Time Before History: The Archaeology of
North Carolina, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press,
1999), Introduction;; Ch. 5, “The Woodland
and Mississippian Periods in the Appalachian
Summit Region: The Search for Cherokee
Roots,” and Ch. 7, “The Contact Period:
Tribes, Traders, and Turmoil,” pp.1-5, 138193 and 229-276.
Week 2
North Carolina and a Young Nation
Eric Hinderaker, At the Edge of Empire: the
Backcountry in British North America,
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2003), chapter 3,
“New Horizons,” and chapter 4, “Clash of
Empires,” and chapter 5, “Backcountry
Revolution,” pp. 73-160.
William S. Powell, North Carolina through
Four Centuries, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press,
1989), Chapter 11, “A Jeffersonian Republic,”
and Chapter 12, “A State Asleep,” pp. 228252.
Thomas C. Parramore, “The Tuscarora
Ascendancy,” North Carolina Historical
Review, 59:4 (Oct 1982): 307-326.
James H. Merrell, “The Indian’s New World:
The Catawba Experience,” The William and
Mary Quarterly, 41:2 (Oct 1984): 537-565
Alan D. Watson, “The Regulation: Society in
Upheaval,” in Butler & Watson, with
associated documents 5.1-5.10, pp. 101-124.
Butler & Watson docs, 1.1, “Thomas Harriot
Describes the Algonquian Indians;: 1.2, “The
First Englishmen Reach and Describe the
Cherokee in 1673;” and 1.3, “John Lawson
Describes the Siouan Tribes.”
Don Higginbotham, “Decision for
Revolution,” in Butler and Watson with
associated documents, 6.1-6.10, pp. 123-146.
[Local resources]
Week 3
North Carolina and the British Empire
Harry L. Watson, “Old Rip and a New Era,” in
in Butler & Watson, with associated
documents, 10.1-10.9, pp. 217-240.
Lance K. Greene, “Ethnicity and Material
Culture in Antebellum North Carolina,”
Southeastern Archaeology 30:1 (Summer
2011): 64-78.
NORTH CAROLINA HISTORY [COURSE NUMBER]
Week 4
Week 5
North Carolina in the Antebellum Era
North Carolina and the Civil War
William S. Powell, North Carolina through
Four Centuries, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press,
1989), Chapter 18, “The Coming of Civil
War,” pp. 328-348.
William S. Powell, North Carolina through
Four Centuries, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press,
1989), Chapter 19, “Civil War,” pp. 349-379.
Karen M. McConnell, Janet S. Dyer, and Ann
Williams, eds., A Life in Antebellum Charlotte:
The Private Journal of Sarah F. Davidson,
1837, (Charleston: History Press, 2005),
pp.67-85
Stephen A. Ross, “To ‘Prepare Our Sons for
All the Duties that May Lie before Them’:
The Hillsborough Military Academy and
Military Education in Antebellum North
Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review,
79:1 (2002): 1-29.
Harriet A. Jacobs, and Jean Fagan Yellin, ed.,
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by
Herself, (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1987), pp.. 5-159.
Katherine A. Giuffre, “First in Flight:
Desertion as Politics in the North Carolina
Confederate Army,” Social Science History
21:2 (Summer, 1997): 245-263.
Week 6
North Carolina and Reconstruction
Laura F. Edwards, Gendered Strife and
Confusion: The Political Culture of
Reconstruction, (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1997), Introduction, pp. 1-23, Ch. 1
“You Can’t go Home Again: Marriage and
Households,” pp. 24-65; “’Privilege’ and
‘Protection’: Civil and Political Rights,” p.
184-217.
Allen W. Trelease, “Reconstruction: The
Halfway Revolution,” in Butler & Watson,
with associated documents 13.1-13.6 pp.
286-307.
Paul D. Escott, “Unwilling Hercules: North
Carolina in the Confederacy,” in Butler and
Watson with associated documents, 12.112.12 , pp. 263-283.
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
North Carolina and Jim Crow
North Carolina and the New South
North Carolina and Progressivism
Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow:
Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in
North Carolina, 1896-1920, (Chapel Hill: UNC
Press, 1996), chapters 1, “Place and
Possibility,” 2, “Race and Womanhood,” 4
“Race and Manhood,” 8, “Women and
Ballots,” pp. 1-90 & 203-224.
Jacquelyn Hall, et.al., Like a Family: The
Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World, Part
1 “Cotton Mill People,” pp. 3-182.
Lu Ann Jones, Mama Learned Us to Work:
Farm Women in the New South,” (Chapel Hill:
UNC Press, 2002), chapters 4, “Professional
Paradoxes,” and 5, “Women in the Middle,”
pp. 107-170.
Timothy B. Tyson, “The Ghosts of 1898,” The
News and Observer, (Nov. 17, 2006): 1-16,
available online from the News and Observer.
“The North Carolina Election of 1898” The
North Carolina Collection, UNC University
Libraries. Browse cartoons and documents.
Choose 5 cartoons and 1 document for
discussion in groups in class.
IN CLASS MIDTERM THIS WEEK
Robert Rodgers Korstad, Civil Rights
Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle
for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century
South, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003),
Chapters 2, “Industrial and Political
Revolutions,” 3, “Winston-Salem, North
Carolina: Country Small Town Grown Big
Town Rich – and Poor,” and 4 “R.J. Reynolds
Tobacco Company: A Moneymaking Place,”
pp. 41-119.
Selected oral history interviews (TBD) from
the “Piedmont Industrialization” subcollection of the Southern Oral History
Program Collection, 1973-2013, Collection
number 04007, Southern Historical
Collection, Chapel Hill, NC.
Johanna Schoen, ”Fighting for Child Health:
Race, Birth Control, and the State in the Jim
Crow South,” in Catherin McNicol Stock and
Robert D. Johnston, eds., The Countryside in
the Age of the Modern State: Political
Histories of Rural America, (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2001), pp. 113-133.
James L. Leloudis, Schooling the New South:
Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina,
1880-1920, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1996),
ch. 3, “Servants of the State,” &ch.5 “Rubes
and Redeemers,” pp. 73-106 & 143-176.
Selected primary documents on 4-H Clubs
and the NC Extension Service
NORTH CAROLINA HISTORY [COURSE NUMBER]
Week 10
Week 11
5
Week 12
North Carolina and the New Deal
North Carolina and Civil Rights
North Carolina and the War on Poverty
Sarah T. Philips, This Land, This Nation:
Conservation, Rural American, and the New
Deal, (New York: Cambridge, 2007) chapter
2 “Poor People, Poor Land,” re the TVA, pp.
83-120 & 132-139.
William Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights:
Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black
Struggle for Freedom, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1980), Part 1, “Years of
Protest,” pp. 11-154.
National Emergency Council, Report on
Economic Conditions of the South,
(Washington, D.C.: The White House, 1938),
pp. 1-2, 5-20, 29-48, 53-56. Online at
Internet Archive
* “Negroes’ Sitdown Hits 2 More Cities,” New
York Times, Feb. 9, 1960
Robert Korstad and James Leloudis, To Right
These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and
the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in
1960s America, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press,
2010), chapters, 1, “Battle Lines”, 2,
“Alliances,” 3, “Citizen Soldiers,” & 5,
“Fighting for the High Ground,” pp. 11-164,
231-286.
*“Negro Sitdowns Stir Fear of Wider Unrest
in South,” New York Times, Feb. 15, 1960
Documentary: “Change Comes Knocking:
The Story of the North Carolina Fund”
Jonathan Daniels, A Southerner Discovers the
South, (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1938), chapters 4-7, pp. 34-72.
Selected oral history interviews (TBD) from
the “Rural Electrification” sub-collection of
the Southern Oral History Program
Collection, 1973-2013, Collection number
04007, Southern Historical Collection, Chapel
Hill, NC
[Visit to Fontana Dam site?]
Week 13
*Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) Founding Statement
*“At the Mercy of Local Customs, Chain
Officials Cite Southern Plight,” The
Washington Post, Times Herald, March 2,
1960
All front page articles, The Carolina Times,
Durham, NC, A.0pril 6 and April 13, 1968.
*available on course site
Week 14
North Carolina and the Sunbelt
Wrap-Up
Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority:
Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2006), Part II “Revolt of the Center,” pp. 121222.
In-class Presentations of Research Projects
Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to
Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic
Development, and the Transformation of the
South, 1938-1980, (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1994), Introduction, “Becoming
Economic Problem No. 1,” Chapter 6,
“Missiles and Magnolias,” pp. 3-38, 135-173.
Mark St. Germain, playwright, Joseph Megel,
director, “The Best of Enemies,” Man Bites
Dog Theater, Durham, N.C., December 2013.
Preview performance and cast discussion
available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpFjBlAl
yKs
NORTH CAROLINA HISTORY [COURSE NUMBER]
Additional Course Information
Academic Integrity
The [university-specific honor code] is in effect at all times in this class. Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated and will be dealt with according
to university procedures.
[Links to institution specific policies and resources]
Students with Disabilities
I will be happy to make arrangements with students as needed in conjunction with the Disabilities Office.
[Links to institution specific policies and resources]