HST296A: Class notes, 19-Jan-2005

Week 1: Introduction

Community Studies is a relatively new field, rescued from antiquarians and genealogical studies and growing in the 1960s and 70s. We'll be starting with a classic: Powell's Puritan Village.

Research Paper: for grad students the length should be 20-22 pp. It is not necessarily the study of a particular community, rather it is the study of how we create community/how communities are created. What is a community, what are the bonds, how do communities react to a crisis, or how do communities connect within themselves and with other communities.

A few quick paper ideas:
 - creating virtual communities through 19th cent. literature/periodicals (Godey, of course)
 - creating imagined communities: Alice and middle class white suburbia, or how about the American Dream
 - creating virtual communities by creating real spaces: Olmstead, perhaps

We'll approach communities through a variety of themes: family, deviants, sub-community, wartime, the west/prairie, 19th cent., urban. (see syllabus)

We'll visit Special Collections on March 9 for resources, esp. for papers.

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hope.greenberg@uvm.edu, created/updated 19-Jan-2005
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