HIST35 History of Emotions Assignment

HIST35 History of Emotions Assignment
HIST 3560 History of Emotions
Second Midterm Essay REVISED
Death, Mourning, and Grief
QUESTION ONE
Some historians, like Drew Gilpin Faust, have argued that the Civil War was a pivotal historical event that permanently changed (i.e., we did not go back to the way things were before) the way Americans responded to death, mourning, and grief. Other historians, like Mark Schantz, make an argument for continuity rather than wholesale change. Schantz argues that Victorian views of death, mourning, and grief were already in place by the time of the war (1861-65), such that the massive death toll of the Civil War amplified, rather than significantly changed, Victorian views and behavior.
This question asks you to describe grief in the colonial period and the Victorian period, focus in on grief in the aftermath of the Civil War, and then wade into the Faust/Schantz debate.
· Colonial period: Set forth views and practices around death, mourning, and grief in the 17th-18th centuries. (The colonial period, for our purposes, ranges from the Puritan times in the mid-17th c. to the early national period, in the first quarter of the 19th century.) Hint: while grieving the death of children is a part of this story, don’t make it the central focus.
Sources to use: – https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/topic_display.cfm?tcid=72
· Word doc of : grief colonial period (death