James McWilliams

HIST 1310 | America to 1877
This lecture-based course surveys the major themes and events in American history from the pre-Columbian era to Reconstruction. An overview of the overlapping political, cultural, social, and intellectual trends in American life encourages students to learn a critical approach to understanding change over time. Based in the premise that a diversity of voices has articulated the past, students will explore the broad contours of historical development through a wide range of perspectives.

HIST 1320 | America From 1877 to the Present
This lecture-based course surveys the major themes and events in American history from Reconstruction to the present. An overview of the overlapping political, cultural, social, and intellectual trends in American life encourages students to learn a critical approach to understanding change over time. Based in the premise that a diversity of voices has articulated the past, students will explore the broad contours of historical development through a wide range of perspectives.

HIST 3342 | Social and Intellectual History of the US
The course surveys the defining trends in American social, intellectual, and cultural life as America evolved from a settlement society into a powerful nation. Special attention is paid to the issue of how Americans envisioned themselves, their culture, and their leaders, and how they turned those visions into "usable myths" that are still with us today. There are no exams but students can expect several formal writing assignments. An emphasis on clear and concise historical writing will be especially enforced.

The American Revolutionary Era
This course examines the American Revolutionary Era (1763-1789) through a scope wide enough to include the British colonial and early American periods. Weekly lectures, primary documents, and five secondary texts place the pivotal events of the Revolutionary generation into a larger context of historical change. Wednesdays will consist of lectures. Mondays will be dedicated to discussion of the assigned readings for that week.

HIST 5313 | Graduate Seminar in Early American History
This reading seminar introduces graduate students to a small sampling of the most influential and innovative scholarship done by historians of colonial British America over the past thirty years. Meetings will focus on a selection of defining historiographical questions, themes, and problems raised by a generation of American historians who have collectively reinvigorated the study of colonial America (after decades of neglect). While we will closely study the work of individual historians, I hope that we will also draw larger conclusions about the North American societies (society?) that comprised the first British Empire.

HON 1390 | The Evolution of American Culture (1587-1850)
This course, originally designed by Dr. Bill Liddle (professor emeritus), explores the pivotal changes and continuities in American culture from its British American inception to the eve of the Civil War. Through an interdisciplinary look at social structure, political theory and practice, religion, literature, and economic development, you will interpret and synthesize a very large amount of information. Generally speaking, our goals in this class are to become critical readers, analytic thinkers, and concise writers. The experience of meeting these expectations might very well be the most demanding academic challenge that you have yet encountered. In mastering them, however, you will equip yourself with the skills to make your tenure at this university, and in the Honors Program, an intellectually rewarding one.