HISTORY 340

Critical Periods in American History

Roger Williams University

12:00  M, W, F

CAS 123

Spring, 2001

Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D.

Office:  CAS 111

Hours:  9-10:  M, T, Th, F

or by appointment

Phone:  (254) 3230

For MONDAY, April 23

    READ: in Reich,

    Chapter 20, Education in Colonial America, pp. 224-235

    You'll notice that I've varied the sequence a little here... I gave you primary sources in class on Wednesday the 18th, and I'm sending you to the secondary sources afterwards. I wanted to try having you encounter materials without the bias of an interpreter. 

    I have yet to mount the website for last week.  Until I get that accomplished, here are links to the documents I passed out.

    for New England's First Fruits (Founding of Harvard)

    for Thomas Shephard's letter to his Son at Harvard

    for Massachusetts Bay School Law of 1642

    for Harvard Regulations, 1642 and 1700

    for The Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647

    for Curriculum of the Boston Latin Grammar School 1712.

WEB RESEARCH

Here is a list of American Universities which trace their beginnings to the Colonial Era. Chose one or two of them and see what you can find about them during their

formative years.

    Harvard

    William and Mary

    Yale College

    College of Philadelphia

    College of New Jersey (Princeton)

    King's (Columbia)

    College of Rhode Island (Brown)

    Queen's (Rutgers)

    Dartmouth

    A general survey of American Higher Education

A quartet of Colonial Colleges.  Above, Harvard (left) Brown (Right) 

Below, William and Mary (left) Rutgers, Right.

For WEDNESDAY, April 25

    We'll meet here and then go across the hall for another web tutorial. There is some software which I will want to introduce to you which is not loaded on the machines there, and because we're guests I'm not going to be able to load it. What I want you to do is download them to your own computers prior to class Wednesday, play with it at home in order to familiarize yourself with the general concepts, and then I'll try to use it with a ZIP drive on one of the university machines. If this doesn't work, it doesn't work. An experiment for us all.

         For recording sounds and converting them to files which can be uploaded: download the "jukebox" at http://www.musicmatch.com/home/

         For editing and converting visual files to different formats, download Irfan view at

         http://www.ryansimmons.com/users/irfanview/english.htm

         Neither of these is the best available. Both are the best available FREE. (Irfan view may be the best viewer available, though it's editing tools are pretty elementary.

For FRIDAY, April 27

    READ: in REICH:

    Chapter 17, The Colonial Town: pp. 187-198

    I've been emphasizing size (or rather, lack of it) so far. I'll be talking about the planning and a bunch of other things. 

The principal colonial cities (towns, really, in terms of our concept of size, were

Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Charlestown, South Carolina.  Important from a planning point of view was Savannah Georgia, which represented the latest in English thought when it was laid out in 1732.  Each of the links above brings you to a short narrative about one of these towns.  Look at them all, but download the ones for Philadelphia and bring them with you to class.  (One is reached by clicking on the town map bellow.

To the left, Philadelphia, and below, New Amsterdam.

Above, Philadelphia, Right, New Amsterdam, Below, Boston