Mastodawn

US History I: We'll spend all of our session unpacking the Columbus letter of 1493. Pre-work was not just reading the source but marking it up: I asked them to mark up things thought were interesting/surprising, things they thought were important, and things that might give us a sense of what Columbus thinks the place where he lands, the people they interact with, etc.

It's our first real primary source of the semester, so we walk through key questions to ask of a source and especially talk about perspective and subtext. Our discussion should lead us to the conclusion that, from the moment he arrives, Columbus is interested in his new surroundings as property and potential value, labor, etc.

We end by talking about what isn't in the source -- who isn't heard from -- and why it's important to not just gather multiple sources, but multiple diverse sources. (In our next session, they read some indigenous perspectives on Euro arrival in the Americas.)

#Teaching

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Trevor Burrows Sep 3, 2025

TBH, I kind of dislike spending so much time on Columbus, for all the obvious reasons, but the students usually engage with the source pretty well and it's a great one for deeper digging. And along with some other sources over the next few classes, it lets us consider how collections of sources might steer narratives.

So it pays off in the long run...

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Trevor Burrows Sep 3, 2025

Historical Research and Writing:

Our first case study! Students read Trent McNamara's "The Celestial Commons: Heaven and Earth in the Early United States" (JAH December 2024). We'll use it to identify some key research-related vocabulary and to ask, what makes good historical research good? What makes historical research unique from other disciplines?

I switch up the article every semester. I've had some hits and some misses. I thought this was a fascinating article but am thinking it might be a bit too abstract (?) for them. Eager to see how they do.

(That's the other goal of the exercise, for me, is to hear how they engage with something at this level of scholarship. Helps me know where they are, but I never want to scare students off if they found the article to be overly difficult, boring, etc.)

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Trevor Burrows Sep 3, 2025

It's a great article, btw, about early Americans understanding of the heavens as a real in-between place connecting the earthly plane to the divine, something accessible to all by sense and so sort of democratic ( thus "the celestial commons"). I'm reading Gordon Fraser's *Star Territory*, too -- have never thought much about impressions of the sky during this period, really fun stuff.

Will come back and share what's going on in Public History today in just a bit.

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Trevor Burrows Sep 3, 2025

Lastly, in Public History this week we are comparing two recent treatments of Midwestern history: the introductions from Lauck's *The Good Country* and the intro from Hoganson's *The Heartland*. Today is Lauck.

Midwestern history is providing the general theme for the exhibit we'll build, although students will flesh out something more specific as the course proceeds. It's broad enough to encompass a lot of interests, but focused enough to give us some shared readings and questions. Discussion today should reflect this. We'll ask questions like: "Does the Midwest have a particular identity? Does it have a particular history? What even *is* the Midwest?"

Comparing these two introductions gives us an entry point to various ways of thinking about the MW and Midwestern history. From here, students will select some readings around a theme that is of interest to them, and that eventually provides a lot of the reading and a few activities for parts of week 3 and 4.

Busy day, but lots of good stuff!

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