HUM 2450.B01/B02 Assignments
06/29-07/02/04 (Week 1)
Assignments can be updated at needs/speed of the class; you will be notified of
updates by e-mail, and are responsible for checking the page after notification.
Click on links for online readings.
for TUESDAY June 29
-- Course greeting & introduction; beginning visuals
for WEDNESDAY June 30
-- online notes for this section available now!
-- Pohl Ch1. 14-41, 44-47
for THURSDAY July 1
-- Pohl Ch.1 54-72
Online readings:
-- Columbus, letter to King & Queen of Spain [1494]. This letter indicates some of the thinking behind European colonization and exploitation of the "New World" that would continue for centuries.
-- Capt. John Smith, Description of New England [1616]. John Smith's description of New England to financial investors and interested parties back in England shows how Europeans continued to frame the "New World" in their own terms, and for their own religious and economic uses.
for FRIDAY July 2
-- online notes for this section available now!
-- Pohl Ch.1 54-72
Online readings:
-- New England Primer [1683]. This Primer, which went through several editions over decades, was used by young English-descended colonial students in New England. The images and text in the primer served not only to educate children in the basics of reading, but also conveyed religious and moral messages in keeping with colonial American society.
-- Cotton Mather, "The Devil in New England" [1692]. Cotton Mather, who served as a judge in the infamous 1692 Salem witch trials, was a Presbyterian minister from Boston. This text, an excert from his Wonders of the Invisible World in which he "proved" the existence of witches and the devil, is an example of the kind of hellfire-and-brimstone sermonizing that pervaded much of colonial New England at the time. It reveals the Puritan belief in the continual proximity of the Devil and other supernatural forces to colonial civilization. A hoot.
-- Johnathan Edwards (no, not the t.v. "psychic") "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (excerpt) [1742]. If you thought Mather was fun, wait until you read Edward's treatise from fifty years later. Now this is hellfire-and-brimstone! Edwards, a clergyman from Connecticut who was fired by his Northhampton, Massachusetts, church in 1750 for being too strict with his congregation, began the "Great Awakening" of fundamentalist religion in New England through writings such as this which introduced the now famous concepts of the elite, predestination, and grace.
»» Links:
Schedule for
Week 2
Back to HUM 2450.B01/.B02 Mainpage