History 201 – The Craft of History, Research

Jeff Roche
TT 9:30-10:50
Kauke 142

This is a course about the rise of corporate capitalism in the United States in the years after the Civil War. It begins with the origins of industrial capitalism, particularly around the construction of the nation’s transportation infrastructure, traces the rise of corporate capitalism, the rise and decline of labor, the emergence of a consumer economy, and concludes with the development of a dominant form of financial capitalism of the end of the twentieth century. It is a Craft of History course and a Writing Intensive Course. Much of the class will be devoted to demonstrating the research and writing skills of the professional historian. Mastering the historiography of a subject, the search for primary sources, the analysis of primary sources, the processing of all sources, the construction of a research project, and transforming data into writing. All of the assignments are designed around teaching students how a historian thinks – as a reader, a scholar, a researcher, and a writer.

The class will be built around a set of workshops and short lectures on process and framing. We will be conducting research into the private/business papers of one of the nation’s most important business people. C.W. Post who was instrumental in developing techniques of modern marketing, product-development, corporate image, corporate structure and shaping a form of business conservatism that would dictate the emergence of corporate capitalism over the twentieth century.

As a writing intensive course, we will be focused primarily on the proper construction of the paragraph as the fundamental unit of nonfiction writing. Toward that end, our lessons will revolve around the transformation of factual information into writing that is clear, consise, and convincing.