Announcing a New Course

American History As Told By Contemporaries

I’m launching a new course that I’m calling American History As Told By Contemporaries! Primary sources are the way I like to approach our history when I'm learning or teaching it and I'm very excited to be able to make this available to a wider audience than just fifty people a semester in my university classes. I think it's important to understand that even when we have absorbed a general outline of the important names and dates of U.S. History, we don't necessarily appreciate what motivated the people who made important choices in the past that led to our present, or how people thought and felt who experienced those events.

Primary sources allow us to read the words of people on both sides of issues. That doesn't necessarily mean everybody's position was equally valid. In fact, you'll see several defenses of slavery and arguments for attacking Native Americans among these sources. The point is not to agree with them, but to consider whether some of the people advancing arguments we find outrageous were sincere or were responding to situations we should understand. We will probably continue to consider positions supporting these actions as being extremely flawed, and we may even decide that we think some of the people who advanced them were insincere. But hearing their words will give us some insights as well as some ideas about how to answer their arguments. These skills may be valuable in today's polarized society and politics.

In addition to understanding people on the other side of issues, primary sources also give us a view into the lives and minds of people who may not have been able to contribute their perspectives to many mainstream histories. Too often, history textbooks and the historical explanations that find their way into mainstream media (usually to prop up some political position) present a perspective that not only conforms to what historians sometimes call a "master narrative", but also favors the opinions, attitudes, and agendas of only a small part of the population. Primary sources, if they're chosen carefully, can show us the perspectives of not only elite leaders, but of regular people who also wrote diaries, sent letters to friends and family, and occasionally expressed their opinions in speeches, letters to the editor, pamphlets, or even books. I'll try to present a variety of points of view in the sources I include in each chapter, to give you a more well-rounded understanding of the times they represent.

The format of American History As Told By Contemporaries will take advantage of the features of Obsidian Publish. I'm publishing the narrative descriptions, primary sources, and supporting information on people, places, and events as a series of "Notes" that are linked to each other in a way that is visible in an "Interactive Graph" on each page. You can move from one note to the next by clicking on colored links or on the nodes in the graph. I'll provide a hint of which note to go to next, if you're interested in reading the narrative or the sources chronologically. But you can also navigate on your own, browse, or search for exactly what interests you. Although you can't write to this file because it's a website rather than an actual Obsidian vault, because it's a website you can highlight and annotate it using Hypothesis. And it includes not only text, but images, audio, and video.

I have tried to include a lot of images and maps, because I find they really enhance both my understanding and enjoyment of history. All the images I use are either in the public domain or have a Creative Commons license. I've also included audio files of me reading each primary source passage. I've put them at the top of each page, so you can listen as you read. You can adjust the playback speed to match your reading pace. And I have added videos to each of the narrative notes. The videos mostly match the text of the narrative, but occasionally embellish and add a bit more detail.

I hope this variety of media interests readers and enhances your understanding and enjoyment of the content. As I'm building this out, I'll make a "Chapter" of this course available to my paid subscribers each week for roughly fifteen weeks. As I had originally laid out the Open Textbook on which this course is based, I included a narrative section and between twelve and sixteen source passages in each chapter. I edited the primary sources to be no more than 1,500 words each, so a typical chapter runs between 30,000 and 40,000 words. This is why I've included audios and videos! I'm excited about being able to make this content available in a more accessible format. I hope these features will help the content attract more users, because I think this is not only a better way to understand the American past, but a very useful way to begin thinking about our present and our future.

As I mentioned, I'm making this work-in-progress available to paid subscribers and members of my Obsidian Book Club, who have also made contributions to help me defray the costs of some of these tools and apps. A message with a link will be going out to them separately later today, so if you’ve been on the fence, this might be a moment to join the community! If you're unable to contribute financially to this effort but would really like to try it out, get in touch with me and we'll work something out. Please let me know how the site works for you. I'm curious about your reaction to both the format and the content. Comments, criticism, questions, and suggestions will help me improve this; so please let me know what you think. You can respond on Substack, where I'll be posting an announcement each week I add content. Or you can get in touch with me at danallosso “at” icloud “dot”com. Thanks very much for going with me on this little journey!

--Dan