This site contains a wide variety of materials pertaining to regional history, including summary versions of some of the interpretive material presented in lectures . Two paperback books for the course are available for purchase at the University Book Store. The remainder of the readings consist of eleven different selections, which are chapters, articles, and excerpts from a variety of primary sources and secondary materials. Additional readings will be mentioned throughout the course, and you should feel free to inquire about them. Schwantes's textbook also contains a useful bibliography.
Some memorization is involved, as is close and careful reading.
It is also important to link past events and trends with present-day conditions. Historical thinking also requires that one try to understand past events and trends from the different points of view that people living at the time had, and to recognize that those points of view from the past are generally substantially different from our own today. On at least one occasion, students must write a short paper about the primary-source documents they are readings. Students are also asked to read and write about secondary sources , i.e. the writings of several historians who have themselves used primary sources to construct arguments about the past. Finally, the course requires that students write their own research papers, based at least in part on the reading of primary sources, to demonstrate their own abilities to read sources critically and to think and write historically .