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Department of History  
History 361: History of Violence in America
Winter 1997
     [See also History 367, periodically offered in the Spring term]

Roberta Senechal
Office: 31A Newcomb Hall
463-8456 (office) (804) 295-7153 (home)
e-mail: senechal.r@wlu.edu
Hours: TTh 12-1, W 11-3, or by appointment

Required books:

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum. 1974. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of  Witchcraft.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Jack K. Williams. 1980. Dueling in the Old South: Vignettes of Social History. College Station:  Texas A & M Press.

Gerald W. Mullin. 1972. Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia.   New York: Oxford University Press.

Paul Gilje. 1987. The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763-1834.   Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Scott Ellsworth.  1982. Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Baton Rouge:  Louisiana State University Press.

W. Fitzhugh Brundage. 1993. Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930.   Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Michael Novack. 1978. The Guns of Lattimer. New York: Transaction Press.

Sanyika Shakur. 1993. Monster: Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member. New York: Penguin.
 

Required articles (on reserve at the library)

Donald Black.  "Crime as Social Control."  American Sociological Review 48 (February 1983): 34- 45.

Donald Black.  "The Elementary Forms of Conflict Management."  In Donald Black, The Social  Structure of Right and Wrong (San Diego: Academic Press, 1993).

Donald Black.  "The Epistemology of Pure Sociology."  Law & Social Inquiry 20 (Summer 1995):  829-870.

M.P. Baumgartner.  "Social Control from Below."  In Donald Black, ed.  Toward a General Theory  of Social Control, Volume 1: Fundamentals.  Orlando: Academic Press, 1984.

Roberta Senechal de la Roche.  "The Sociogenesis of Lynching."  In W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed.  Under Sentence of Death: Essays on Lynching in the South.  Chapel Hill: University of  North Carolina Press, 1997 (forthcoming).
 

Course description

     This course is a broad, selective, topical survey of some of the major forms of violence in America's past, and will emphasize the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in particular.  We will focus on both individual and collective violence and the conflicts generated by some of the major social divisions that evolved with urbanization, industrialization, westward expansion, and the growing diversity of populations.  Finally, the course will explore the use of social theory in addressing violent conflicts in the past.

Course requirements

     There will be one midterm and a final examination.  In addition, you will research and write an essay on a violent incident.  I will hand out a brief guide to assist you in researching and writing this paper.  It should be at least ten pages in length and will be due on Thursday, March 27.

     We will discuss each reading assignment in class on the day it is scheduled.  Each student will prepare ahead of time three questions which will be used as the basis of class discussion.  Finally, although attendance is not mandatory, it is of course expected, and your presence (or absence) plus your level of class participation will be noted and may affect your grade, though no fixed percentage of the grade has been assigned for these.

Schedule

Jan. 7-9  Introduction and theoretical considerations.
   Read: Donald Black, "Crime as Social Control," for Thursday, Jan. 7. 

Jan. 14-16  Conflict in Colonial New England
   Read: Donald Black, "The Elementary Forms of Conflict Management," for Tuesday, Jan. 14.
   Donald Black, "The Epistemology of Pure Sociology," for Thursday, Jan. 16.

Jan. 21-23  Colonial America, continued.  Violence in the antebellum urban North.
   Read:  Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, for Tuesday, Jan. 21.

Jan. 28-30  Antebellum North, cont'd.
   Read Paul Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy, for Tuesday, Jan. 28.

Feb. 4-6  Discipline and Rebellion: The Southern slave system
   Read: M.P. Baumgartner, "Social Control from Below," for Tuesday, February 4, and Gerald Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, for Thursday, Feb. 2.

Feb. 11-13  The antebellum South and honor
   Read: Jack Williams, Dueling in the Old South, for Tuesday, February 11. 

 **** MIDTERM EXAMINATION -- THURSDAY FEBRUARY 13 ****

Feb. 25-27  The postbellum South and lynching
   Read: Roberta Senechal de la Roche, "The Sociogenesis of Lynching," for Thursday, February 27.

Mar. 4-6  The postbellum South, continued
   Read: W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South, for Tuesday, March 4.

Mar. 11-13  The Wild West?  Patterns of frontier violence

Mar. 18-20  The West, continued: Labor violence
   Read:  Michael Novack, The Guns of Lattimer, for Thursday, March 20. 

Mar. 25-27  Anti-black violence in the North
   Read:  Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land, for Tuesday, March 23.

March 28-30  Honor and violence revisited: Gangs, Prisons
   Read: Sanyika Shakur, Monster, for Tuesday, March 28.
 

FINAL EXAMS BEGIN APRIL 5
 

 
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