From Sources to Problems: A Guide to Outside Readings

Abstract

A BY-PRODUCT of the tremendous growth, changes, and stresses of the United States in the twentieth century has been a growing self-consciousness about what it means to be an American. One expression has been a far greater interest in American history, especially now that it focuses on social and intellectual factors, and another has been the rise of a new discipline known as American Civilization, of which the founding of this magazine and of the American Studies Association are two conspicuous manifestations. Large numbers of young men and women are emerging from the graduate schools with glossy diplomas in these fields, the Ph.D.'s in American history reasonably confident as to what constitutes their subject, the others considerably more confused but also more excited about being intellectual pioneers (rather, we hope, than martyrs). But American history and American Civilization are not only areas of knowledge to be investigated by scholars who report their findings in periodicals like this. They are also occupations; the training of these young persons in research method and scholarly content usually leads in practice to the teaching of a survey of United States history or a more advanced course in American social or intellectual history or some sort of introduction to American Civilization or an integrating seminar in American Studies. The moment they find themselves in this situation they encounter a large number of pedagogical problems for which neither their graduate courses nor the scholarly journals have ever given them any guidance. Prominent among these mundane but perplexing matters is the maze of outside read-