Welcome to The American Story

The American Story is the website of Stephen Berry, Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. It was created in large part to serve as a convenience to its creator and his students. Others are welcome but caveat visitor: occasional unfinished pages and links that go nowhere are par for the course.

Why "The American Story"?

Much of the data that come to us in our lives—from sermons and novels, gossip and fairy tales—come to us as stories. When we look at our own life, then, it is only natural that we should understand it, shape it, dream it as a story—or as a series of them, stories that match different parts of so many others we have read and heard, but that are also uniquely our own. Given that story-telling is such an essential and organic part of our present lives, it is a wonder that narrative and story-telling have in some ways lost their privileged place in the discipline of history. Of course, the discipline of history is a large umbrella, capable of sheltering a vast array of approaches and views. The American Story, then, seeks to promote teaching and research in the narrative tradition, while recognizing that other traditions are not only valid but make a more informed and nuanced narrative possible.