Note: If you have a disability, please let me know early in the semester if I can help to accommodate your needs.

SEE: A Guide to Local History Sources on the Web.
 

SCOPE AND PURPOSE
Public history students who specialize in archives administration, museum studies, or
historic preservation all learn theory and methods that are appropriate to each area.  Yet they
share a common ground with other public historians in the United States: all eventually conduct
research in local history using a variety primary and secondary sources.  For this reason, public
history students should know how to study the history of different localities, including frontier
towns, 19th and 20th century urban immigrant neighborhoods, rural areas, small cities and towns,
and suburban communities.  They must also learn the methodologies and sources that can be used
for studying these localities. This course is intended to help meet these needs.

 This course will explore the history and methodology of local history in the United States.
It is intended to provide graduate students in history, library science, architecture and urban
planning, urban studies, sociology, and other fields with opportunities to become familiar with the
sources used in studying local history.  Students also will gain practical experience in conducting
local history research.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

Research Methods in Local History seeks to help students:

    1.   To acquire an understanding of the variety of local history.
    2.   To acquire an understanding of  the history and methodology of local history.
    3.   To acquire and demonstrate proficiency in conducting local history research.

REQUIREMENTS

You should master the required readings, and come to class prepared to discuss them.  You must
participate in class discussions in order to get engaged in discussions about local history, and,
more important, to participate actively in your own education.  There also are other requirements:
 

1.   A critical book review of Don Harrison Doyle’s The Social Order of a
      Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-70 .  In the first paragraph,
      the review should discuss the book’s scope, purpose, and thesis.  Then,
      summarize the book’s contents as you also analyze how–and how well–the
      author supports his main arguments.  Finally, analyze the sources the author
      used in one of the chapters.
               Length: 6 pages maximum
               Due: February 15

 GRADING
          Class participation: 30 percent
          Book review and summaries: 30 percent
          Research paper: 40 percent

Class Participation

Class meetings are designed to raise questions and to clarify information about public history.
Because most of you seek careers in public history, course content should help you to become better
prepared for your work.  Hence, you are expected to attend class regularly, to have read
assignments before coming to class, and to participate in discussions about reading assignments
and issues and questions raised by class members.  By attending class “regularly” I mean that
you should attend every class.  Period.  Yet I do realize that you may have to miss class because of
illness or other unavoidable life incidents. I will not take attendance, nor do I need to know the
reason for absences.  I assume that if you do miss class you must have a pressing need to do so.  I
also assume that if you do miss class you will learn what information and insights you missed.

Participating in discussions means that you should contribute ideas, understandings, and
questions about class topics that help to clarify and advance the subject under discussion.  What
you say in class should reveal a sound understanding of  the readings and other course material..
You should feel free to question, defend, and criticize any aspect of course content.  If you do not
understand what you read or what others say in class, please ask for clarification.  Overall, your
class participation will be evaluated by the quality of your participation, not by how frequently you
talk.

Book Review
The review will be evaluated according to how well it identifies the scope, purpose, and thesis of
Doyle’s book; how well it summarizes the book’s content; and how well it analyzes the sources
Doyle used in one of his chapters.  Generally, the review should conform to conventions for
writing reviews that appear in major history journals.

Synopsis of Readings
These will help you prepare for class discussions, They should succinctly summarize the key points
of the readings.

Final Paper
This paper will be evaluated according to how well you make use of the available sources.
This means that you should demonstrate your ability to use the sources mentioned in the assignment
 in order to answer questions about this piece of local history.

REQUIRED CORE READINGS

These books are available at the UWM Bookstore, but you may find cheaper copies at Amazon
and other outlets.

     1.   Don Harrison Doyle, The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois,
             1825-70  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983.  

     2.   Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented
             Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and became the World’s Most Notorious Slum.  New York:
             Penguin Plume Books, [2001] 2002.

     3.    Oliver Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and
            Immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

     6.       Gayle Graham Yates, Life and Death in a Small Southern Town.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana
             State University Press, 2004.

 

Note: Instead of reading the six books in order, we will alternate discussion of the books and
articles with consideration of research sources in order to give you more time to read the
assignments.

          1/25      INTRODUCTION
                        Distributed for Feb. 2: Tolan’s Riverwest.

          2/2       LOCAL HISTORY, COMMUNITY HISTORY, AND METHODOLOGY:
                     APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF LOCALITIES, AND INSTRUCTIONS
                     FOR THE CLASS ASSIGNMENT.

                Part I:
                    What indeed is local history? In the introduction to On Doing Local History, Carol
                    Kammen says, “I see local history as the study of past events, or of people or groups,
                    in a given geographical area–a study based on a wide variety of  documentary evidence
                    and placed in a comparative context that should be both regional and national.”  Yet in
                    Community and Social Change in America,  Thomas Bender argues that Americans often
                    confuse “community” with a geographical locality “when they wistfully recall or assume a past
                    made up of small-town communities.  This social memory has a geographic referent, the town,
                    but it is clear from the many layers of emotional meaning attached to the word community
                    that the concept means more than a place or local activity.  There is an expectation of a special
                    quality of human relationship in a community, and it is this experiential dimension that is crucial to
                    its definition.  Community, then, can be defined better as an experience than as a place.”

                    These two authors do not have the last word on what constitutes local history, community,  and
                    community history, but they do serve as significant points of departure for this course.  The study
                    of local history (in Kammen’s terms) may reveal the existence of many communities
                    in Bender’s sense) within a single geographical area.  In this class, we are interested in
                    learning how to study both local history and community history.  The assignments below
                    will help to get us thinking about this process.

                Assignment:
                         1.   Read the following and come to class prepared to discuss the various ideas
                                about local and community history. Consider these questions:  What is local
                                history?  Does it differ from community history?  What is the value of local
                                studies?  What is the relationship between local history and national history?

                        2.   Write a 1-2 page summary of what you think are the major points of each
                              reading. (Write 1-2 pages for all readings, not 1-2 pages for each.)

                Readings
                         1 .  Carol Kammen, in On Doing Local History: Reflections on What Local
                               Historians Do, Why, and What It Means (Nashville: American Association
                                for State and Local History, 1986),”Introduction,”  “Local History and
                                Local Historians”(chapter 1), and “The Local Historian” (chapter 4). On
                                Reserve.

                         2.   Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (Baltimore:
                               Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), “Introduction” The Meanings of
                               Community” (chapter 1), and “Community in American History” (chapter
                               3). On Reserve.

                         3.    Tom Tolan,  Riverwest: A Community History.

                Part II:What Are the Methodologies for Studying Local History?
                     In this segment, we will consider the role of historiography in shaping local history
                     studies, the differences  between academic and non-academic local studies, and the
                    common procedures historians use in conceptualizing and conducting a local history project.

          2/8  19TH CENTURY COMMUNITY FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT:
                    AN EXAMPLE OF WRITING FRONTIER COMMUNITY HISTORY
                    This book relates the origins and development of Jacksonville, Illinois, to the
                    historiography of frontier communities.  It provides a good example of the
                    methodology of a community historian.  What questions does Doyle pose to frame
                    his study?  Why does he think these questions are important?  What sources does he
                    use to try to answer them?
                    Assignment:
                    Don Harrison Doyle, The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville,
                    Illinois, 1825-70.

          2/15   VISUALIZING COMMUNITY SPACES AND COMMUNITIES: THE
                    VARIETIES OF MAPS

                     Meet in the American Geographical Society Collection Library for hands-on assignments
                    reading birds-eye view maps, panorama maps, Sanborn maps, plat maps, and many
                    others.

                   DUE: REVIEW OF DOYLE’S BOOK ON JACKSONVILLE

          2/22   THE 19TH CENTURY EARLY URBAN IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOOD:
                    AN EXAMPLE FROM FIVE POINTS, NEW YORK CITY

                    This week we shift our focus from frontier communities to the teeming multi-ethnic,
                    mixed-class  urban neighborhood of early to mid nineteenth-century industrializing
                    America.  What questions shape this study?  How does Anbinder answer them?
                    What are the strengths and limitations of his approach to community history?  In
                    fact, what does “community mean to him?
                      Assignment:
                    Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood that
                    Invented Tape Dance, Stole Elections, and became the World’s Most Notorious
                    Slum.

                            Film: Excerpts from "Gangs of New York"

          3/1     PUBLISHED SOURCES (PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES,
                    GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS, EPHEMERA, CITY DIRECTORIES,
                    COMMERCIAL HISTORIES)

       3/15      USING CENSUS SCHEDULES AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS IN
                     STUDYING LOCAL HISTORY                        

       3/22      SPRING BREAK

          4/5       STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT RECORDS: VITAL RECORDS,
                      PROPERTY, TAX, PROBATE, ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS–AND
                      MUCH MORE
                      Assignment:
                      Kenneth J. Winkle, “The United States Census and Community History,” The
                     History Teacher 28 (November 1994), 87-101. (Distributed in class.)

                     Meet in the UWM Archives to examine samples of these and related sources.

          4/12    STUDYING SMALL TOWNS AND CITIES IN PRINT AND IN FILM:
                     LANCASTER, OHIO, AND COLCHESTER, ILLINOIS, AS CASE STUDIES
                     Academic historians have paid little attention to small towns and cities, although
                     popular histories of these localities by local residents have exploded since the nation's
                     sesquicentennial.  For many, small towns are the epitome of the tightly-knit, homogeneous
                    community in which people seem drawn together by kin networks and common purpose. Are they?
                    The fictionalized small-town life portrayed by such writers as Sherwood Anderson, James Joyce,
                    William Faulkner, and others suggests otherwise.  What insights does Gayle Graham Yates contribute
                    to our understanding of local history and the history of small town life?

                     How does the history of small towns and cities differ from the histories of rural and urban areas?
                     We’ll explore this and related questions as we discuss Halwas’s book about small-town life and
                    critically analyze a film about a small city--Lancaster, Ohio--that is closely based on
                     David Contosta’s Lancaster, Ohio, 1800-2000, a book we used in last year’s class.

                      Assignment:
                     Gayle Graham Yates, Life and Death in a Small Southern Town.

   4/19          MANUSCRIPT SOURCES AND ORAL SOURCES

    5/3        VISUAL AND MATERIAL SOURCES

   5/10      REPORTS ON CLASS PROJECTS

                        DUE: FINAL RESEARCH PAPER
 

If you have questions, please contact Michael Gordon.