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HIST 6338: Issues In Transatlantic History
Instructors: Buisseret, Narrett, Reinhardt, Reinhartz
University of Texas at Arlington
Course Description This course will provide students entering the Ph.D. program with an introduction to Transatlantic History by emphasizing the interchange among the peoples of the continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean from the earliest contacts until the present. Taught by four different instructors, the course will survey the major themes that students will explore in greater depth in the colloquium courses 6301 and 6302.
Goals and Objectives This core course will introduce students to the main concepts in the study of Transatlantic History. Here they will consider the nature of African, American, and European societies on the eve of expansion, study the motivation and the means used by Europeans in their expansion to the New World, and then survey the immediate and long-term effects of the encounters in different parts of the Americas. This course will also examine theories about syncretic developments, variously described as "acculturation" and "creolization."
Examples of Readings
Exploration and Discovery
Natives and Settlers on the Eve of European Expansion
James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America (Oxford,
1992)
J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492-1650 (Cambridge, 1970)
David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the
New World (New York, 1992)
Transatlantic Navigations
Carlo Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and
European Expansion, 1400-1700 (New York, 1965)
J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance. Discovery, Exploration and Settlement,
1450-1650 (London, 1963)
John L. Sorenson, et al., Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas.
2 vols. (Provo, 1990)
History of Cartography
J. P. Cumming, Skelton, & Quinn, eds., The Discovery of North America
(New York, 1972)
Kenneth Nebenzahl, Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries. (Chicago,
1990)
John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers. (New York, 1981)
Migrations and Colonization
Immigration, Cultural Persistence and Change
Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction
(New York, 1986)
Urs Biterli, Cultures in Conflict (Stanford, 1989)
Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange (Westport, 1975)
Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the
Columbian Legacy (New York, 1990)
Slavery & Race
David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York, 1984)
Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro,
1550-1812 (New York, 1968)
Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, The Making of the African Diaspora in the Americas,
1441-1900. (Harlow, Essex, 1987)
Religion and Cultural Identity
Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People
(Cambridge, Mass. 1990)
Howard Mumford Jones, O Strange New World. American Culture: The Formative
Years (New York, 1964)
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’
in the Ante-bellum South (New York, 1978)
Comparative Frontiers
W. J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (New York, 1969)
Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson, eds., The Frontier in History: North
America and Southern Africa Compared (New Haven, 1981)
D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500
Years of History. Vol. 1. Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven,
1986)
David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, 1992)
Into the Modern World
Imperialism
Edward Countryman, Americans: A Collision of Histories (New York,
1996)
Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress (Oxford, 1988)
Daniel R. Headrick, Tools of Empire (Oxford, 1981)
Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993)
Frederick Turner, Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness
(New Brunswick, N.J., 1983)
Revolutions, World Wars and Cold Wars
Caryn Cossé Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole
Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718-1868 (Baton Rouge, 1997)
Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850
(New Haven, 1996)
Theodore H. Von Laue, The World Revolution of Westernization (Oxford,
1987)
Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley, 1982)
© 2002 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Created November 2002.