Classes

The American Attic | History and HAA 2414

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2014

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar, taught jointly by Robin Kelsey in the History of Art and Architecture and Jill Lepore in History, is dedicated to developing an undergraduate course on the attic as both a place and a realm of the imagination. Students will explore the historical and aesthetic richness of archives.

Introduction to American Studies | History 1400

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2014

The course is designed primarily for students interested in further study in the field, but all students are welcome. We cover topics, from the seventeenth- to the twenty-first century, in political, social, intellectual, and cultural history. Students read both primary and secondary materials, and receive intensive guidance for their writing. Taught jointly by Jill Lepore (History) and Louis Menand (English). Note: Ninety-minute lecture-discussion, plus one-hour section led by the instructors. 

Historical Methods | History 97

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2013

History 97 is a team-taught introduction to the discipline of history.  Over the course of the term, you will explore the historian’s craft by studying and practicing four methods:  narrative history, biography, intellectual history, and cultural history. After discussing each approach in seminar, you will analyze a collection of primary sources and secondary works, and write your own histories, to be discussed in tutorial.

Dissertations

Semester: 

Offered: 

2012

Click on the word "Dissertations" for a list of current and former doctoral students:

Bell, Richard,"Do Not Despair: The Cultural Significance of Suicide in America, 1780-1840," History.

Carter, Sarah.  "Object Lessons in American Culture," History of American Civilization.

Hanna, Mark G. “The Pirate Nest; The Impact of Piracy on Newport, Rhode Island and Charles Town, South Carolina, 1670-1730," History of American Civilization.

Major Works in the History of American Civilization | Am Civ 200

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2012

A survey of the field, with an emphasis on the range of interdisciplinary methods in the humanities, history, and social sciences.  Required of first and second-year graduate students in American Civilization and open to others by permission of the instructor.

How to Read a Book | History 84e

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2012

This hands-on interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar is for students who want to think about what a book is and how to read one. Readings include historical and literary narratives of reading by Cervantes, Richardson, Franklin, Sterne, Ellison, and Bradbury, together with research exercises in Harvard library and museum collections.  Jointly taught by Jill Lepore (History) and Leah Price (English).

The American Revolution | History 1404

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2012
Course Website

This hands-on research seminar and conference course will take you out of the classroom and into the archives. An intensive study of the political, cultural, literary, and social history of the American Revolution, with an emphasis on Boston from the Writs of Assistance, in 1761 to the British evacuation of the city, in 1776. The class includes field trips to Boston and Cambridge historic sites, archives, museums, and graveyards.

Dickens in America | Freshman Seminar 36n

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2011
Course Website

The seminar investigates Charles Dickens’s visit to the United States in 1842.  Readings will include Dickens’s bitter and controversial account of that trip, American Notes; an American parody called English Notes; Dickens’s American novel, Martin Chuzzlewit; and accounts of his visit by Americans, in diaries, letters, and newspapers. We’ll also read other antebellum travel narratives, including those of Frances Trollope and Alexis de Tocqueville, and, after a field trip, we’ll write some Dickensian travel narratives of our own.

Historical Writing | History 2616

Semester: 

An intensive writing workshop for history graduate students across field groups.  Readings consist of essays on historical writing and samples of particularly effective prose.  The purpose of the readings is to help you think about how and maybe even why you want to write about the past.  The work of the course consists of weekly writing assignments that we will together critique in class, paying special attention not only to standards of evidence and modes of argument but also to plot, character, and storytelling.  

The Election of 1800 | Freshman Seminar 47x

Semester: 

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson ran against the incumbent, John Adams, in arguably the most important presidential election in American history.  Students in this seminar will re-visit the election by researching the debate, state by state, in newspapers, political pamphlets, and the private letters of politicians and political observers.  Meanwhile, as the semester progresses, we will watch the current presidential election unfold, giving us ample opportunity to contrast contemporary political rhetoric with the charged campaigning of two centuries past.