Month / February 2020
Some useful links/resources
1) Emory United States History Guide Use the left-hand menu to get to “Primary Sources,” and from there, choose an era to find links to news databases. From the “Newspapers” section you can find ProQuest Newspapers and ProQuest Historical Newspapers, which cover the more recent past and the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. You can also find the database we looked at in class this week, American Historical Newspapers. Newspapers.com has also become a very good database. Additionally, you can find databases for periodicals (magazines) further down this page.
https://guides.libraries.emory.edu/main/united-states-history
2) Emory Libraries US History specialist Dr. Bruchko’s contact information for help with research: https://libraries.emory.edu/contact/staff-directory/bruchko-erica.html
3) BBC Timeline of North American/US History Excellent timeline that lays out major political and cultural events since the Colonial Era.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-16759233
4) Library of Congress, Chronicling American History: Recommended Topics List Offers short summaries and research suggestions for each topic.
https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/index.html
5) Reader’s Companion to American History Fairly comprehensive alphabetical collection of short articles on a large range of events, people, and themes in US history. Offers linked topics at the bottom of each page.
http://discovere.emory.edu/discovere:default_scope:01EMORY_ALMA21199990510002486
6) Encyclopedia of American Studies Similar resource as above, but puts topics in a cultural scholarship context.
http://discovere.emory.edu/discovere:default_scope:01EMORY_ALMA51352796310002486
7) American History Now Very useful for getting ideas about what topics recent historians have written on. The first half is an overview of history by era and the second half is an overview by themes.
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/emory/detail.action?docID=714507
8) Oxford Research Encyclopedias: American History Huge collection of topic articles, summaries of literature, and further reading
https://oxfordre-com.proxy.library.emory.edu/americanhistory/
9) Oxford Companion to US History
10) EBSCOhost American History & Life
11) Oxford Encyclopedia of American Political and Legal History
12) A Companion to American Cultural History
13) Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History
14) Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History
15) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
https://login.proxy.library.emory.edu/login?qurl=https://oxfordre.com%2famericanhistory
16) Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture
17) A Companion to 19th-Century America
18) Reader’s Companion to the American Presidency
19) International Encyclopedia of Political Science
20) Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History
21) American Immigration: A Student Companion
22) Project MUSE
https://login.proxy.library.emory.edu/login?qurl=https://muse.jhu.edu%2f
23) JSTOR
https://login.proxy.library.emory.edu/login?qurl=https://www.jstor.org%2faction%2fshowBasicSearch
Assignment 2: Comparing New York Times Commentary on Communication Revolutions, a Century (Plus) Apart
For the second primary source assignment, read the two articles linked below and, in your post, explore how their discussions of the impact of technology compare and contrast. As you read, think about how communication and information are closely overlapping concepts. The railroad, the electronic telegraph, and internet are all technologies that, at their heart, allowed for more rapid communication and linked together society in a new way, while provoking a lot of discussion about just how things were new.
Some questions that might help guide you, suggested but not required: What powers or changes in society do each author attribute to communications technology? How would you describe the overall tone or attitude about the effects of new technology in each piece?
Beyond the themes these articles address, you can also think about the language at a more basic level: What kind of words are used and can this tell you something about the broader culture that each piece emerged out of?
Finally, say something–at least briefly–about how themes presented here relate to our readings and/or class discussion on the history of information.
Good luck!
GEORGE STEPHENSON’S CENTENARY. (1881, Jun 09). New York Times (1857-1922) https://login.proxy.library.emory.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.emory.edu/docview/93891411?accountid=10747
Friedman, T. L. (2013, Jan 30). It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as much as I.Q. New York Times (1923-Current File) https://login.proxy.library.emory.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.emory.edu/docview/1814951850?accountid=10747