Professor Payne
Office hours: Wednesdays 1:00-4:00pm and by appointment
Bishop 320
915-7629

epayne@olemiss.edu

LINK TO WOMEN'S HISTORY PROJECT

http://www.outreach.olemiss.edu/media/documentary/women_history

Fall 2009

Elizabeth Payne                                                                                         Tupelo Campus
epayne@olemiss.edu                                                                                  Fall, 2009
Phone:  915-7629                                                                                   

HISTORY 400
   AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH LOCAL LENS

This course invites students to write history.  It introduces students to concepts and methods basic to historical research through looking at and writing about local history. Students will gain competence in using the Internet, archival documents, and oral interviews as basic research tools. As a result of taking this course, students will be familiar with the methodological and historiographical issues necessary for doing original research on topics relating to the history of the United States.

Students will choose topics enabling archival research within one hour of travel from Tupelo. The course is designed to prepare students for hands-on research using a combination of oral interviews, archival collections, and census data.  In addition to the two texts, students will purchase one month’s subscription to ancestry.com after using a 14 trial subscription.  This program enables the student to view an image of the original census entry.

Students should do at least one oral interview and transcribe it.  Students will write a twenty-five page research paper (not including endnotes and bibliography).  The papers should be double-spaced and typed in a twelve-font print without right margin justifications. The paper must be documented with endnotes and bibliography in the format of the Chicago Manual of Style. The University of Wisconsin’s online guide to writing and documentation is especially helpful. Go to http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/, click to “Citing References in Your Paper” and then to the “Chicago/Turabian” style of documentation for the required format of this paper.   Other helpful sites include http://www.libs.uga.edu/ref/turabian.html,  http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html and http://aaweb.gallaudet.edu/CLAST/Tutorial_and_Instructional_Programs/English_Works/The_Writing_Index/Research_Papers_Citations_and_Reference/Chicago_(Turbian)_Style_Guidelines.html.

History 400 is required for all students majoring in history.  Students must achieve a grade of least a C in order for the course to count toward fulfillment of the department’s requirement.

The course grade will be based on the research paper which is determined by the quality of the research, the organization of the material, and the quality of the writing.  Attendance is imperative.  Missing more than one class will reflect negatively in the course grade.   
LINKS

http://www.mdah.state.ms.us/
http://www.rootsweb.com/~msunion/
http://www.olemiss.edu/govinfo/ulgbis/bibinst/hist698.htm
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/
http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women.html
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/files/archives/
http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1150055
http://dohistory.org/home.html
http://www.ucheritagemuseum.com/archives.html
http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/databases/researchtools.html
http://www.dixie.lib.ms.us/page3.html
http://www.li.lib.ms.us/

TEXTS

LuAnn Jones, Mama Learned Us to Work
Strunk and White, Elements of Style

SCHEDULE

            August 27---Introduction to seminar
   
 September       3—Two panel discussions of Tupelo residents on local history
                                 And archival resources
                                  Panel 1:  Robert Jamison, Melissa Holekamp, Jan Willis, and
                                                  Nathaniel Stone
                                  Panel 2—Kenneth McGehee, Dr. Eugene Murphey, Memory Leake,
                                                   Bruce Smith, and Marty Ramage
            
                        10—Meet in Mississippi Room of Lee County-Itawamba Library
         Introduction to sources in the Mississippi Room at the Lee-Itawamba
                                  by Betty Cagle followed by guided browsing

                                 Submit 2-page critique of Mama Learned Us to Work

17—Video Interviews of Annie Ruth Brame (interviewed by Bruce Smith)
          and Betsey Hamilton (interviewed by Elizabeth Payne and Wendy
          Smith)                       
                       
                         22---Submit three-page research proposal including description of project
and rationale for choice.  Proposal should be submitted electronically
by 6:00 p.m. 

                         24--- Peer reviews of proposals and discussion of Mama Learned Us to Work

 
October 1---Each student should bring to class a two-page analysis of the two most
                                    important books written on his or her topic.  Students will make an
 oral presentation on how the books frame the questions for the topic
                                    he or she has chosen.

                                    View “Makin’ Do,” a video documentary

                              8—Submission of outline of project submitted on Monday

                            15---Discussion of progress and problems regarding research
                                    Introduction to historical browser at the University of Virginia

                            22—Individual meetings of students with professor

                            27— Submit 5 pages with notes of research project to professor and
                                     classmates by 6:00 p.m.  The submission can be from any part
                                     of your paper—beginning, middle, or end.

                            29---Peer review and class discussion of submission

      November       3—No class

                            10---Submit first draft of paper by 6:00 p.m.

                           12—Peer review and group discussion of projects

                            19—Individual meetings of students with professors

    December        3—Submission of paper
                                   Oral presentations on conclusions of projects
 

POSSIBLE PROJECTS

Maternal deaths from puerperal fever and tetanus using local genealogical records, census data, records of a local cemetery, and medical data at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed

Establishment of the Lee County Library and Bookmobile Service using oral interviews and file collections at Lee-Itawamba Library

Women’s Basketball in Mississippi comparing selected rural schools with Tupelo through using oral interviews, high schools yearbooks, and the Tupelo Daily Journal

Labor Strife in 1937: The CIO and the Mills using Tupelo Daily Journal, census data, and photographs

The Advent of the Modern Wedding contrasting weddings in the 1930s with the 1950s using oral histories and newspapers

Women’s Wills; Men’s Wills, use of wills in chancery clerk records of one northeastern Mississippi County to determine how men and women wrote wills differently in terms of their heirs, comparing two years, one in the 19th century and the other in the twentieth

Closing Carver High using interviews of teachers and students from the last graduating class of the black high school and Tupelo Daily Journal

Rebuilding after the Tornado using interviews, census data, records of the Tupelo Hardware Company, and Tupelo Daily Journal

Changes in funeral practices, 1930-1960 based on obituaries in the Tupelo Daily Journal, interviews with individuals over eighty and with morticians

History of the Tupelo Central Military Prison, 1862-1864 using John Aughey’s memoir Tupelo, military records, and census

Main Street in 1965:  Avoiding a Boycott by the NAACP using oral interviews and newspaper articles

Lost Towns, using railroad records, diaries, newspaper articles, and census data to document the impact of railroad in creating new towns and precipitating the demise of certain older ones

Child labor in North Mississippi based on photographs taken and information recorded by Lewis Hines in his tour of northeastern Mississippi in 1911 and data from the National Child Labor Commission.  View photographs at http://www.dlfaquifer.org/search?facet=decade&facet_browse=Tupelo%2C+MS&facet_tag=city_state_facet&new_search=1 (Control and click to link)

Study of literary rate of African American and white males and females in one northeast Mississippi county from statehood (1817) to 1980, using census data and newspapers

The Rise of the Catfish Industry in Northeast Mississippi using census data, oral interviews, and newspaper articles

Rural Electrification and Women’s Work using census data, newspaper articles, and oral interviews

The Demise of Domestic Service in the 1960s using census data, newspaper articles, and oral interviews

A Social History of Northeast Mississippi at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century through the diary of Samuel Agnew and the photographs of Frank McKnight

Founding Mothers:  A History of the Aberdeen Women’s Club based on manuscript sources at Evans Memorial Library, newspaper articles and oral interviews

A Biography of W.A. Evans, who provided the Aberdeen library with a wing for African Americans, based on manuscript collections at Evans Memorial Library, oral interviews,
and newspaper articles

The Grange in Northeast Mississippi, using manuscript collections in Evans Memorial Library and newspaper articles

The History of Medicine in Northeast Mississippi, based on newspaper articles and oral interviews

The History of Slavery in Northeast Mississippi, based on oral interviews, census data, and
manuscript collections at Evans Memorial Library and the University of Mississippi

A History of Fairs in Northeast Mississippi, using manuscript collection at Evans Memorial Library, oral histories, and newspaper articles

Selective Sources

            Lee-Itawamba County Library
                        Tupelo Daily Journal, Microfilm, 1873-2006
Mississippi Oral History Program, “An Oral History of Tupelo and Lee County, Mississippi,” V 746, Part I and II, 1999, 2000.
                        Northeast Mississippi History and Genealogical Society Quarterly
Diary of Samuel Agnew, 47 volumes from 1853 to 1902
Files of local Red Cross during Tupelo Tornado, including report of Nell
 Reed
                        Numerous cemetery records
                        Numerous family histories
                        Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi.  Goodspeed Publishing,
                                    Chicago, 1891
            Evans Memorial Library, Aberdeen
                        See attachments

            Oren Dunn Memorial Library, Tupelo
                        Collection of oral histories and photographs of World War II veterans
                        Display of original Lee County bookmobile
                        Display of medical instruments
                        Account books of several Tupelo businesses

            Union County Historical Museum
                        Files on furniture industry and display of furniture made in New Albany in
                        1948 by Futorian Furniture
Photographs and Scrapbooks

Mississippi law did not require the recording of births until November 1, 1912.  Copies of recorded births can be requested at Bureau of Vital Statistics, P. O. Box 1700, Jackson, Mississippi 39205.

The records of the chancery clerk’s and circuit clerk’s offices are a treasure trove for the history researcher.  In each county, the chancery clerk’s office holds marriage records, jury lists and tax records. the circuit clerk’s office holds records of divorces, deeds, and wills.