When you click the Amazon logo to the left of any citation and purchase the book (or other media) from Amazon.com, MIT OpenCourseWare will receive up to 10% of this purchase and any other purchases you make during that visit. This will not increase the cost of your purchase. Links provided are to the US Amazon site, but you can also support OCW through Amazon sites in other regions. Learn more.

Suggested Paper Topics

First Paper

Write a review of: Richter, Daniel. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780674011175.

The challenge here is to summarize the book carefully and accurately, and then to evaluate it. The historians who wrote "blurbs" on the back of the paperback edition praise the book to the hilt. They say it "frees us from the blinders of a European perspective on the early American experience" (James Merrill), "radically shifting our perspective on the past," and also that the book "is essential to understanding our place in time on this continent" (Alan Taylor). Of course, the purpose of a "blurb" is to sell books. Does Facing East from Indian Country measure up to that praise? Why or why not?

Quote critical passages that demonstrate the author's purpose (always providing page citations) and also to support your evaluation of the book. In any case, make sure that you understand what the author was attempting to do and describe what he says with scrupulous accuracy. You don't need to agree with everything a book says, but you do need to be exact in describing what it says before evaluating it.

Second Paper

The second paper should focus on: Handlin, Oscar. Boston's Immigrants, 1790-1880: A Study in Acculturation. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780674079861.

The book focuses on immigrants, particularly Irish immigrants, to 19th-century Boston. When first published in 1941, the book was recognized as a pioneering work and it remains the fullest study of its subject. Still, its interpretation --- which, in short, sees the Irish as victims of circumstances beyond their control and as a people whose miserable poverty changed Boston for the worse --- is out of step with more recent interpretations of immigrants, which, like interpretations of the enslaved, are much more upbeat. They stress, for example, immigrants' strength in adversity, their creative adaptation to the New-World circumstances in which they found themselves, and their critical contributions to the community that became their home.

Start your paper with a succinct summary of Handlin's argument, citing critical passages to demonstrate his point of view. Then ask if the book includes evidence that might have sustained a more positive interpretation such as that summarized above. Or do you think Handlin's view of the Irish is justifiably different from other, more positive interpretations, as described above? If there seems to be adequate evidence in the book for a more positive view of 19th-century Boston's Irish, why might Handlin have taken the position he took? You cannot, of course, be expected to give a definitive answer to that question, but you might speculate a bit. Finally, is the book still worth reading, or should I assign something else next year?