History 203 Dimensions of History Roger Williams University Fall, Semester, 2001

Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D. Office:  Feinstein 111 Hours:  M, T, Th, F  9:00-10:00 Phone 401 254 3230

After the Fact:  The Art of Historical Detection James Davidson and Mark Lytle New York:  McGraw-Hill, 2000

Assignments for the week of September 25, 2001

For Tuesday, September 25     Read, in Davidson,          Chapter 1: Serving Time in Virginia, pp. 1-22.     There are at least three theoretical concerns which form the central focus of this chapter. First is the question of historical reconstruction. How can a historian accurately reconstruct what happened in a place as removed in time and circumstance as Jamestown is. This reminds us of some of the points Schlabach made in the essay I assigned last week. Among the problems are understanding and trusting the documents we read. What tests does Davidson recommend in considering the record left by John Smith. (If you're a sports fan, the baseball report is pretty hilarious).     Second, consider the question of point of view. (I'll abbreviate that as POV from now on). What are the limits on the POV of contemporary accounts?  Can we generalize this limitation to extend to other historical circumstances?     What are the advantages of substitution our POV in place of that of those contemporary to the event under study? What are the disadvantages? What is the difference between the POV of the "man on the street" and the POV of academics like ourselves? How can we borrow from other disciplines like Sociology?     The topic to which these theoretical concerns are addressed is the labor problem and the death rate in Jamestown during the first fifty to sixty years of settlement. Try to follow the train of questions as the authors try to reconstruct what may have happened.

For Thursday, September 27     Read, in Davidson,          Chapter 2: The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem, pp. 23-47     If understanding the situation in Jamestown is complicated by the lack of reliable first hand information, perhaps the opposite problem exists in considering witchcraft in Salem. In Jamestown, the subject is vast and the information slim, in Salem, the area is small (a single village) and the record vast. We have a fairly thorough account of what happened, and a many competing explanations of why it happened. POV is plural not singular, and when historians rely on insights from contemporary scholarly disciplines they have many from which to choose. As you read this essay, be aware of how many different disciplines are used, why we seek to use them in our day and age (the Puritans "knew" what was happening, didn't they?). Note, too, that the end result is a reaffirmation of the concept of multiple causes... something which Schlabach emphasized in our prior readings.

Diary of Internet Research.     Now I want you to begin keeping a serious record of the research you are doing. For each reading assignment select a sampling of persons, places, and things, and extend your investigation beyond the materials Davidson provides. We've done a little work on this in class, (remember the grid, with primary, secondary, and visual columns) Using a variety of search engines, seek to find as much as you can. BOOKMARK what you find, and store the URLs on one of the free Internet sites. Also write them down. (An easy way for you to do this is to have your word processor and browser running simultaneously and copy and paste from one into the other).       We may not finish Chapter 2 in Davidson, but I want you to do the preliminary work regardless of how far we get in Chapter 1.