Topics to expect in this class:

•     Aspects of early American and Western European medical practices including midwifery and the lessoning effects of witchcraft by the early 1700s along with colonial medical apprenticeships, inoculation practices, discussion of origin of disease and death, quarantine tactics, and interpretation
of divine ‘harms’ by early American societies

•     British American and post-Revolutionary culture and society: women and republican motherhood, war-time efforts as ‘Liberty’s Daughters’, economic, social, and political reforms of the 18 & 19C often times headed by women reform movements (i.e. compulsory education and the end to slavery); colonial and republican practices of drinking and tavern life; effects of the Enlightenment which transformed early American culture, politics, & law and justice;   

•     Aspects of early American labor including indentured servitude from Britain; free European,
Asian, and Latin American immigration; un- free sources of labor with the influx and increased dependency on African slaves. Scope includes a range of economic activities from shipbuilding & mercantile pursuits to craftsmanship, frontier life, and one crop plantation economies.

•     Aspects of technology, architecture, inventions, and commodities connecting the British colonies, the Americas, and West Indies with Africa, Asia, and European nations.

•     The spread of knowledge and ideas with advances in printing, newspaper circulation, ship building, and modes of delivery from 1580s until the late 1870s carrying news while discussing the effects of print during time of war, famine, peace, and prosperity. 

•     Aspects of law, justice, court systems, crime and punishment practices before and after the Salem Witch Trials of 1692; by 1660 forward legal precedent and practices of racial segregation until late 1870s; religion in the American colonies and new Republic effecting social and political aspects of life with the First Great Awakening(1690s-1720s) & Second (1790s-1840s)

•     Aspects intertwined of early American and republican post-revolutionary militarism: conquest, defense, imperialism, colonialism, war and conflict between Europeans and or endemic groups, war-time technology and fighting styles, debt, political divides in philosophies and perspective to revolution, invasion, to civil war and reconstruction.