American Microstudies

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This research seminar asks students to practice American Studies on a "micro" scale. Students will be introduced to the method of microhistory. Microhistory looks at a single person, object, place, or event and asks big questions. It takes a single and specific unit of analysis and connects it with much wider and broader contexts. Thinking micro is in fact an ambitious attempt to rewrite the macro. The historian Linda Gordon studied an abduction of orphans by vigilantes in 1903 to write a wider history about early twentieth century immigration, race, and the American West. Timothy Gilfoyle wrote the story of a single pick pocket (thief) to illuminate the inner workings of the nineteenth century urban underworld. Jim Murphy rewrote the history of the American Revolution by writing about the event from the perspective of a boy. Microhistory is a way of asking big questions in small spaces. Students, in consultation with the instructor, will write a microhistory of the topic of their choosing. After consulting key studies that use this method, and canvassing the articles that lay out how to think like a micro scholar, students will practice it for themselves.