HST296e: Class notes, 20-Jan-2005
Introductions, class members
The class is structured to give as much time as possible to the process
of developing the project. We will need to:
- identify a topic
- find/collect the resources
- develop the final project
Week 1: We'll raise some ideas of what historians have done on the
subject or subjects related to rural life in the U.S.
Next week's readings:
Henretta, "Families and Farms: Mentalité in Pre-Industrial
America": when, whether, if farm people turn to profit motive. The
arguments tend to depend on the idealogy of the historian. If
pro-capitalist, the roots are found at Plymouth rock (!), if resistant
to capitalist interpretation, one says, "very recently" or "never." One
indicator might be a double ledger system. For example, early farmers
kept 2 books, income and owed, not together, which implies they were
not looking at profit and loss.
Merchant, Ecological Revolutions:
People's relationship with the land, NE farmers and relationship to
land after replacing indigenes.
Gilmore, Reading Becomes a Necessity
of Life: desription of explosion of printed matter read and
owned by rural people.
Some past projects:
- Rural Electrification in VT Town in 1920s, an oral history project
- Seward Family Farm, archival, oral
- Brookfield farm family diary (where the fathers tended to choose
whatever strange religion was popular at the moment)
- Vermont magazine - advice to farmers, 1900
- Agricultural Magazines
Who we are: Jack, Matt, Sarah, Johannes, Jonathan, Ryan, Tom, Aaron,
Matt, Ed, Trish, Erin, Hannah
hope.greenberg@uvm.edu,
created/updated 24-January-2005
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