Book Review (select one)

By completing a series of focused readings, analytical writing assignments, and discussions of primary and secondary source material, students will engage with these broad concepts and questions and develop their ability to think and write critically and historically. Our common readings each week will consist of a selection of primary source documents, a section of an important scholarly monograph touching on the theme, and selections from important works on the topic excerpted in the ?Major Problems in the Early Republic? textbook. The required texts are:

– Sean Wilentz and Jonathan Earle, eds., ?Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787-1848?, 2?nd? ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2008.

– Rachel Hope Cleves, ?Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America?. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

– Richard S. Newman, ?The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic?. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

– Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, ?The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears?. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.

– Amy S. Greenberg, ?A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico?. New York: Vintage Books, 2013.

– Each student will select ONE of the scholarly monographs read in class and write a 4-6 page review of the book. Papers should summarize the book’s main argument, compare it to other texts we’ve read and discussions we’ve had in the course, and discuss the significance of the book to our broader understanding of the history of the early American republic.