Academics
AP U.S. History Summer Reading 2008
We are delighted that you have chosen to take Advanced Placement U.S. History next year. We are asking you to read two books this summer in preparation for this class:
John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America
The Mary Rowlandson and Mary Jemison accounts in Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives
These deal with themes of family, religion, gender roles and expectations, political rivalries, trade, and cross-cultural interactions in the context the American frontier. John Demos’s book is an historian’s recreation of one woman’s experience as a captive, while the Rowlandson and Jemison accounts are primary sources written by Colonial women and describing their own experiences.
In addition to reading these works, we would like you to write a three-to-four-page essay (double spaced) in which you address the following:
- What does Demos's account reveal about the world views of the New England Puritans and the Kahnawake Indians during this time period? What cultural values mattered most to each group? To what extent were the two groups' value systems irreconcilable? Compatible? What was the significance of Eunice Williams's decision not to return to AngloAmerican society?
- What do the captivity narratives reveal about the world views of the three groups—the colonists, the Narraganset, and the Seneca? What cultural values mattered most to each group? To what extent were their value systems irreconcilable or compatible? In what ways were Rowlandson and Jemison similar or different? What other observations can you make about cross-cultural interactions between Native Americans and whites?
This essay will be due on the first day of registration in the fall and should be typed and double spaced. Please use the Chicago Manual of Style for any citations in your essay (see Diana Hacker’s Writers Guide). There will also be a short reading quiz on basic factual material in the first week of classes.
Our hope is that these works and the process of writing this essay will help you begin to think about how historians analyze primary sources in order to create an interpretive narrative. We hope that you enjoy this project, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts when we return in the fall!
Your Teachers,
Robert J. Naeher
Carol Bendall
Ruth Burday
