The Course: HIS112: 19th Century U.S. History

Most people have heard the common adage about history, “The best prophet of the future is the past.” Students in Dr. Aaron Astor’s HIS112: History of the U.S. in the 19th Century course learn that the cliché is true.

In a world where being an informed citizen and person makes an enormous difference in one’s life, learning about and understanding history is vital, according to Astor, assistant professor of history.

“In order to make decisions about the future, you’ve got to understand the past,” he says.

This understanding is especially important when the history is of one’s own country. One might expect college-aged citizens of the U.S. to understand the subject matter pretty well. Asked if this is the case, Astor succinctly replies: “Nope.”

Many college students know far too little about the relatively recent, fast-paced transformation of their country, he says, adding that his HIS112 seeks to correct that.

Taught during the College’s Summer Institute this year, HIS112 is an intensive three-week period of learning about what historians refer to as “the long 19th century” of the U.S. – a massive time of transformation from the ratification of the Constitution to the onset of World War I.

Astor says it is always difficult to cover a lot of information in a short amount of time, but he believes this course is particularly suited for a shorter session. “This has been a useful intellectual exercise for me to group the themes together,” he says. “The big story about the 19th Century is the growth of America from a small, agrarian republic to a major industrialist, capitalist world power.”

The first section of the course covers the early republic and antebellum America. In this section, Astor says he hopes to foster “an understanding of the different paths of development: a northern path based primarily on capitalism and a southern path on plantation slavery.”

Next, the course moves into the Civil War and Reconstruction – “the rebirth of the country through cataclysmic war and reconstruction,” the professor explains.

This upheaval, while it seems distant, is not simply a part of the past. Astor says he emphasizes how this time period brought about “the recreation of the American republic as one based upon the ideals we now take for granted: equality, citizenship and individual liberty.”

Astor describes the focus of the third and last section as “the development of the modern, more urban, more capitalist American society.”

To make the course more than just a run-through of history (and to make the history more relevant to students), Astor adds assignments and discussions that make it truly unique.

First, he considers U.S. history and development on the local scale to reflect what his students learn about changes on the national level. In “a focus on local history,” he considers how East Tennessee is an example of a geographical region that did not fit into northern or southern paradigms. He also examines how local towns echo a larger trend of American growth, such as Knoxville’s process of becoming “a major textile center.”

Astor also emphasizes active history in the course. In a short essay assignment, he has students analyze and interpret a primary document from the 19th century.

“I usually ask students a series of targeted questions about those documents, so they can use those primary sources to uncover a story about a particular era,” he explains. “That’s what actual historians do.”

Because the majority of students enrolled in HIS112 this summer are pursuing teacher licensure and taking the course as a state requirement, Astor emphasizes the methods of teaching history. Assignments such as creating history lesson plans for children add to the course’s uniqueness.

“Not only are these students going to be teaching social studies, but as teachers in general, this [course] will help them to become truly informed citizens able to make critical analyses of the American experiment and hopefully to pass it on,” he says.

In the end, no student in this course will leave it without looking at history as something both vitally important and interesting.

“Studying history is not about accumulating facts,” the professor says. “Good history is about learning how to ask very smart questions.”