SYLLABUS
Course Outline | Historiography Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

The objectives of this course are to acquaint the student with the literature in American Urban History. To accomplish this goal, the student each week is required to read one book and submit a two-page book review. Copies must be made for other members of the class and for the instructor. The student will orally present the book review to the class, which subsequently will critically discuss the review. At the end of the course, a twenty-page bibliographical essay will be turned in, covering all the books discussed in class. The organization of this essay is left up to the student. Lectures will be given to acquaint the students with an overview of American Urban History.

COURSE OUTLINE

Week I.

Historiography

Week II.

The Colonial City.

Week III.

The Commercial City.

Week IV.

The Industrial City.

Week V.

Urban Society.

Week VI.

Urban Minorities.

Week VII.

Urban Politics.

Week VIII.

Urban Services.

Week IX.

Urban Planning.

Week X.

From Suburbs to Metropolis.

 

HISTORIOGRAPHY

Arthur M. Schlesinger

"The City in American History," Mississippi Valley Historical Review (June, 1940), pp. 43-66.

Eric Lampard

"American Historians and the Study of Urbanization" American Historical Review (October, 1961), pp. 49-61.

Roy Lubove

"The Urbanization Process: An Approach to Historical Research," Journal of American Institute of Planners (Jan. 1967) pp.33-39.

Sam Bass Warner

"If All the World were Philadelphia," American Historical Review (October 1968).

John Sharpless and Sam Bass Warner

"Urban History," American Behavioral Scientist (November-December, 1977), pp. 221-244.

Michael Frisch

"American Urban History as an example of Recent Historiography," History and Theory XVIII (no. 3. 1979), pp. 350-377.

Theodore Hershberg

"The New Urban History: Toward an Interdisciplinary History of the City," Journal of Urban History (November, 1979), pp. 3-40.

Kathleen Conzen

"Community Studies, Urban History, and American Local History"in Michael Kammen, ed., The Past Before Us (1980), pp. 270-291.

Michael Ebner

"Urban History: Retrospect and Prospect," Journal of American History (June, 1981), pp. 69-84.

Bruce M. Stave

"In Pursuit of Urban History," in Derek Fraser and Anthony Sutcliffe, eds., The Pursuit of Urban History (1983), p. 424.

THE COLONIAL CITY

Carl Bridenbaugh

Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625-1742 (1938).

Michael Zuckerman

Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (1971).

Kenneth Lockridge

A New England Town: The First One Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts (1970).

Philip Greven

Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (1970).

Jon C. Teaford

The Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 1650-1825 (1975).

Gary Nash

The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (1979).

Sylvia Fries

The Urban Idea in Colonial America (1977).

Stephen Innes

Labor in the New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts, 1690-1750 (1983).

Christine Heyrman

Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690-1750 (1984).

Thomas Doerflinger

A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (1984).

THE COMMERCIAL CITY

Robert Albion

The Rise of the New York Port (1939).

Richard C. Wade

The Urban Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati

Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis (1964).

Raymond Mohl

Poverty in New York (1971).

Michael Frisch

Town into City: Springfield, Massachusetts and the Meaning of Community, 1840-1880 (1972).

Thomas Bender

Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century America (1975).

Stuart Blumin

The Urban Threshold: Growth and Change in a Nineteenth-Century Community (1976).

Roger Lotchin

San Francisco, 1846-1856: From Hamlet to City (1976).

David Goldfield

Urban Growth in the Age of Sectionalism (1977).

Diane Lindstrom

Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region (1978).

Allan Pred

Urban Growth and City-Systems in the United States (1980).

THE INDUSTRIAL CITY

Charles N. Glaab

Kansas City and the Railroads: Community Policy in the Growth of a Regional Metropolis (1962).

Blake McKelvey

The Urbanization of America (1963).

Stanley Buder

Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880-1930 (1967).

Gunther Barth

Instant Cities: Urbanization and the Rise of San Francisco and Denver (1975).

Anthony F. C. Wallace

Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (1978).

Burton Folsom

Urban Capitalists: Entrepreneurs and City Growth in Pennsylvania's Lackawanona and Lehigh Regions, 1880-1920 (1981).

Jonathan Prude

The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and Factory Life in Rural Massachusetts, 1810-1860 (1983).

Raymond Mohl

Steel City (1985).

Raymond Mohl

The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age, 1860-1920 (1985).

Carol Hoffecker

Wilmington, Delaware: Portrait of an Industrial City, 1830-1910 (1974).

URBAN SOCIETY

Stephen Thernstrom

Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City (1964).

Howard Chudacoff

Mobile Americans: Residential and Social Mobility in Omaha, 1880-1920 (1973).

Stephen Thernstrom

The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970 (1973).

Herbert Gutman

Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (1976).

Alan Dawley

Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (1976).

Daniel Walkowitz

Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Coal Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855-1884 (1978).

Thomas Dublin

Women at Work (1979).

Bruce Laurie

Working People of Philadelphia, 1800-1850 (1980).

Sean Wilentz

Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (1984).

Francis Couvares

The Remaking of Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City, 1877-1919 (1984).

URBAN MINORITIES

Oscar Handlin

The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (1951).

Gilbert Osofsky

Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890-1930 (1966).

Kenneth Kusmer

A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland. 1870-1930 (1976).

Thomas Kessner

The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915 (1977).

Herbert Gutman

The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (1976).

Howard Rabinowitz

Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (1978).

Leonard P. Curry

The Free Black in Urban America, 1800-1850 (1981).

James Borchert

Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 (1980)

William DeMarco

Ethnics and Enclaves - Boston's Italian North End (1981).

John Bodnar

The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (1985).

URBAN POLITICS

Seymour Mandelbaum

Boss Tweeds New York (1965).

Zane Miller

Boss Cox's Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Progressive Era (1968).

Melvin Holli

Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (1969).

Bruce Stave

The New Deal and the Last Hurrah (1970).

John D. Buenker

Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (1973).

Leo Hershkowitz

Tweeds New York: Another Look (1977).

Carl Harris

Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921 (1977).

David Hammack

Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (1982).

Jon C. Teaford

The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900 (1984).

William Issel and Robert Cherny

San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power and Urban Development (1986).

URBAN SERVICES

Nelson Blake

Water for the Cities: A History of the Urban Water Supply Problem in the United States (1958).

Roger Lane

Policing the City: Boston, 1822-1885 (1967).

John Duffy

A History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866 (1968).

James F. Richardson

The New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901 (1970).

Carl Condit

Chicago, 1910-1929: Building, Planning and Urban Technology (1973).

Clay McShane

Technology and Reform: Street Railways and the Growth of Milwaukee, 1887-1900 (1974).

Charles Cheape

Moving the Masses: Urban Public Transit in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, 1880-1912 (1980).

Martin Melosi

Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930 (1980).

Judith Leavitt

The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (1982).

Harold Platt

City Building in the New South: The Growth of Public Services in Houston, Texas, 1830-1910 (1983).

URBAN PLANNING

John W. Reps

The Making of Urban America (1975).

Judd Koln

Imperial San Francisco: Politics and Planning in an American City (1979).

Mark S. Foster

From Streetcar to Superhighway: American City Planners and Urban Transportation, 1900-1940 (1981).

Carl Abbott

Portland: Planning, Politics and Growth in a Twentieth Century City (1983).

M. Christine Boyer

Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning (1983).

Christopher Silver

Twentieth Century Richmond: Planning, Politics and Race (1984).

Irving Fisher

Frederick Law Olmsted and the City Planning Movement in the United States (1986).

David Schuyler

The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in the Nineteenth Century (1986).

Marc A. Weiss

The Rise of the Community Builders: American Real Estate Developers, Urban Planners, and the Creation of Modern Residential Subdivisions (1987).

Daniel Schafer, ed.

Two Centuries of American Planning (1988).

FROM SUBURB TO METROPOLIS

Sam Bass Warner

Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900 (1962).

Robert M. Fogelson

The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (1962).

Blake McKelvey

The Emergence of Metropolitan America (1968).

Mark L. Gelfand

A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933-1965 (1975).

Jon C. Teaford

City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1850-1970.

John Mollenkopf

The Contested City (1983).

Roger W. Lotchin

The Martial Metropolis: U. S. Cities in War and Peace (1984).

Henry Binford

The First Suburbs: Residential Communities on the Boston Periphery, 1815-1860 (1985).

Kenneth Jackson

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1985).

Kenneth Fox

Metropolitan America: Urban Life and Urban Policy in the United States, 1940-1980 (1986).