100 Level
100 LEC GLOBAL HISTORY (Ghamari-Tabrizi, B.)
The main purpose of this course is to explain how the worlds we live in came about. Special attention will be given to the plurality of the “worlds” we live in by emphasizing that the present time was not the inevitable outcome of the unfolding of a presumed progressive internal logic of history. Although we will examine earlier points in the emergence of an interconnected and interdependent world during the long 12th century, the main focus of the class will be on post-17th century and the emergence of a new global world. This course will also highlight struggles and contestations of emerging world-orders in each period, giving voice to historical actors whose presence in history are often neglected.
105AL1 LATIN AMERICA TO INDEPENDENCE (Durston, A.)
This is a general survey of the colonial period of Latin American history, stretching from the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the 16th century up to the independence wars in the early 19th century. Attention will be focused on the relations of power, domination, resistance, and adaptation that developed among indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Africans. The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to the period during which modern Latin America was formed in its basic cultural, social, and racial make-up, while also exploring themes of broad historical relevance such as the nature of colonialism and its effects, particularly in terms of cultural change and identity formation.
120AL1 EAST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS (Chow, K.) Same as EALC 120
This course introduces the distinct as well as shared ideas and institutions of the major civilizations in East Asia: China and Japan. We will focus on two historical processes. First, the making of a cultural system of East Asia before the nineteenth century. We will discuss how China evolved into a major civilization in Asia, creating distinctive ideological, social, political, and economic formations that came to define China, and to a considerable extent Japan, before the nineteenth century. Within the larger context of East Asian culture, we will examine how, despite certain shared cultural elements, indigenous cultures and unique historical developments of these two countries had resulted in contrasting societies in this period. The second process witnessed the decline of China in the nineteenth century as a dominant political and cultural power in East Asia. Our attention will be given to the struggle of China and Japan in response to imperialist intrusion from Europe, and how in the process, each embarked on its unique road to reinventing its own identity as a modern nation-state. In examining these two processes, we will explore issues of critical importance to our understanding of East Asian cultures from contemporary perspective: issues such as identity formation, gender and women, power and knowledge production, racism, and imperialism, etc. Readings include several very interesting literary works and an autobiography. Visual images on CDs and videos will be used in lecture.
140AL1 WESTERN CIV TO 1660-ACP (Symes, C.)
Please see course description for 141AL1.
141AL1/LC WESTERN CIV TO 1660 (Symes,C)
Spanning over three thousand years of human endeavor, this course investigates some of the major events, ideas, and crises which shaped societies from ancient Mesopotamia to early modern England. Interactive lectures will be supplemented by in-depth consideration of primary source materials: texts and artifacts produced by and for the people of this fascinating epoch. Students will learn to analyze and evaluate historical data, and to better understand the institutions, ideologies, and cultures of our own time by studying those of our shared past. They will be required to read carefully, to engage in class exercises and discussions, and to write several short papers. There will be midterm and final examinations.
142AL1 WESTERN CIV SINCE 1660 (Fritzsche, P.)
The political and economic revolutions which changed fundamentally the Western world will be the focus of this course. How do historians account for the tremendous industrial power assembled in a few short decades by European societies, or the dramatic sequence of rebellion and revolution? We will explore the impact of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution on ordinary workers, peasants, and also on the world at large. The course will examine the great burst of intellectual activity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and discuss nationalism, liberalism and socialism. The twentieth century, on the other hand, saw unprecedented destruction and horror. For this reason, we will look closely at the world wars, and at life and society in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. And Europe today? The postwar division of the continent, the "dirty wars" of decolonization, the rise of a consumer society, and the revolutions of 1968 and 1989 provide the course with its final themes. Throughout the course, we will look at the politics of war and revolution, and the accomplishments of philosophers and statesmen, but also pay attention to the lives and beliefs of ordinary people. There will be one midterm and one final, as well as short papers assigned by section leaders.
142H1 WESTERN CIVILIZATION FROM 1660 TO THE PRESENT (Esbenshade)
The West presents itself as the source of all progress and culture, a model for the rest of the world to follow. At thesame time, in the last century it has produced two world wars and the Holocaust, while its wealth coexists with the povertyand misery of the Third World. What is the nature of this Western civilization, and how has it become what it is? Asthe West came to dominate the globe, how did the experience of colonialism and imperialism fundamentally shape the Westitself, and what was the effect of 20th century colonial independence movements? How did the rise of excludedgroups--workers, women, Jews, peasants--and the ambivalent relationship with Eastern Europe figure in? We will end withthe collapse of communism and the position of the New Europe in a globalized world: unified and progressive leader,‘fortress’ against immigrants, or sidekick to a lone superpower? There will be a focus on historical analysis ofliterature and other primary sources, on engaging with standard concepts critically, and on students expressing theirviews in clear, well-argued writing. Students will emerge from the course with an understanding of key concepts of Westerncivilization—the Enlightenment, French and Industrial Revolutions, liberalism, Romanticism, nationalism, socialism,modernism--but also with a sense of the West as a global creation.
143AL1 WESTERN CIV SINCE 1660-ACP (Fritzxche, P.)
Please see course description for 142AL1.
170AL1 US HIST TO 1877-ACP (Edelson, S.)
Please see course description for 171 AL1.>
171AL1 US HIST TO 1877 (Edelson, S.)
History 171 introduces students to the history of the United States from colonization through Reconstruction. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the trends, events, personalities, and ideas that influenced historical experience from a variety of scholarly perspectives. The political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of historical change in colonial British America and the early United States compose the course’s focus. Topics include the settlement of colonies, African slavery, Anglo-Indian relations, the changing American family, work and economic life, and the political backgrounds to the Revolutionary War and the U.S. Civil War. Students will gain familiarity with primary sources as well as secondary interpretations and will be encouraged to work on critical reading and writing skills. This course is designed to provide a foundation from which students can undertake more advanced course work in United States history.
172AL1/LC US HIST SINCE 1877 (Barrett, J.)
A survey of the United States since the late nineteenth century, this course explores the varied ways that Americans perceived and responded to the massive economic, political, and social changes confronting them in the last 150 years. The course is particularly concerned with how common Americans experienced these changes and, indeed, reshaped our society in the process. The twice-weekly lectures provide interpretations of key problems and periods (as opposed to detailed narratives). These aim for a broad overview of political, cultural, and intellectual change, but the emphasis is on social and economic history. In practice, this means more attention to long-term historical change and to conflict along class, racial, gender, and ethnic lines and rather less to presidential administrations. Discussion sections meet weekly to examine the issues raised by the core textbook and several supplementary readings. Assessment will be on the basis of classroom work as assigned by section instructors, two examinations, and a paper. Attendance at lectures is assumed; attendance at discussion sections is required.
174A BLACK AMERICA, 1619-PRESENT (TBA) Same as AFRO 101
Sociohistorical survey of African American experiences from the West African background to North America, from the 17th century to the present.
199 THE UNDERGRADUATE OPEN SEMINAR (Koslofsky)
Students writing senior honors theses in History meet together in this course during the senior year.
200 Level
200A INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Rabin, D.)
Topic: Crime in the Early Modern World
What can the study of crime and punishment tell us about the past and about our present? This course will explore the range of behavior considered criminal in the early modern world (1450-1815) and how those definitions of crime changed over time and place. We will consider how different legal systems prosecuted crime and how those modes of prosecution varied. The class will also examine systems of punishment and how theories about punishment varied depending on religious belief and cultural values. Using a comparative approach we will study crime and punishment in early modern Europe, the near east, and Asia. The readings will include primary sources and published research on various aspects of crime and punishment. Assignments include response papers, a mid-term examination, and a research paper based on primary sources.
200B INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Randolph, J.) Topic: The Enlightenment
Few periods in modern history are credited with as many achievements—and faults—as the Enlightenment. It is regularly praised or blamed for establishing the supremacy of reason in modern life; inciting democratic revolutions; creating modern public culture; justifying European expansion and imperialism; degrading faith; defending the individual; and unleashing modern consumer culture, and materialism. But what is, or was, the Enlightenment? What methods have historians used in writing its history; what have been their chief debates about it; and how has the nature of our understanding of the Enlightenment changed over time? Through primary and secondary source readings, students will gain both an introductory survey of the Enlightenment, and a sense of how historians have tried to describe its history in the past 200 years. In this, the course aims to fulfill the primary purpose of History 200: to introduce students to the methodological decisions historians make when researching and writing history. By regarding a single historical phenomenon (in this case, the Enlightenment) from different historical perspectives, it is hoped, students will develop their own understanding of what history is, and what sort of history they themselves would like to write. This class is therefore intended for majors who are ready to think critically about history. It will be taught in a discussion-based format, with a heavy emphasis on student participation. Assignments will include presentations, short reaction papers, and an end of the semester project.
200C INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (McLaughlin, M.)
Topic: A Thousand Years
How have western societies changed over the course of the last one thousand years? And what has stayed the same? This course will examine the history of the eleventh century in Europe, with a focus on continuities and differences between life around 1000 and life around 2000. Topics to be considered include: family life, commerce, the role of religion in society, class relations, and militarism. Course requirements include participation and leadership in class discussion, and an individual research project.
200D INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Matheson, T.)
Topic: Text, Image, Radio, Television, Film: Popular Culture in Modern European History
Popular culture, from television and movies to comic books, rock music and even graffiti, is often either praised as an expression of democracy, or criticized as an enemy of traditional “highbrow” cultural forms. While popular culture is frequently considered to be a twentieth century phenomenon, its historical roots run deep. This class examines the rise of popular culture in Modern European history. Our class will function on three levels. First, we will begin by defining terms. What is popular culture? How is it related to the mass media? How is cultural “taste” defined? Why is culture an important index of political and social history? Second, we will investigate the history of a variety of cultural forms—from newspapers, photographs and posters to comic books, TV, movies and rap. Third, through our weekly readings we will acquire fluency with the ways in which various historians have addressed popular culture as a topic of historical and sociological inquiry. We will discuss the ideological functions of the mass media, debate how cultural objects can both reproduce and resist social stereotypes, and learn to analyze our own consumption of cultural objects. Throughout, our attention will be focused on how historians of Modern Europe interpret cultural change as well as how they work with and analyze these unique sources. Our course will require engagement with a variety of cultural genres, which may include television, film, theatre, dance, music and art. Assignments will include an image analysis, a film analysis, and an in-class presentation, and will culminate in the writing of a research paper.
200F INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Steinberg, M.)
Topic: Interpreting the Modern City: London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg
The city has long been viewed as one of the key sites and symbols of what humans create, which is to say of civilization. Cities have therefore naturally preoccupied interpreters of all sorts, from poets and painters to historians and cultural theorists. As such, the city serves ideally as a terrain to think about how historians work, how texts and other evidence are interpreted, how history is recorded and written. Modern cities, in particular, have fascinated interpreters trying to map the meanings of the human experience. This course looks at writing about (but also images of) London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, primarily in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These cities were famous for what one historian has called the “dreadful delight” of the modern metropolis. We will immerse ourselves in this history while continually thinking together about the practices and philosophies of historical interpretation. We will examine work on these (and occasionally other) cities by historians but also by interpreters in other disciplines, including literature and art history. We will also explore the use of different types of primary sources, ranging from city newspapers to urban poetry and painting. The course will be run in a seminar format, with a strong emphasis on class discussion. Assignments will include student presentations, short papers, and an end of the semester project (which may focus on a city other than these four).
200G INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Bucheli, M.)
Topic: Latin America and the World Economy
Since their independence in the 19th century, Latin American countries have participated in the world economy. The countries specialized in the production and export of raw materials to the industrialized world, and opened its doors to foreign investors. This was encouraged and endorsed by the local elites of the newly-created countries, who upheld the goals of modernization and progress "through participation in an emerging global economic system. This process of integration, however, was not smooth. The relationship between foreign markets and local societies generated different kinds of conflicts and movements of resistance that shaped Latin America in the 19th and 20th century. This course explores the relationship between Latin America and the world market, attempting to answer the following questions: Was the peculiar insertion of Latin American countries into global capitalist markets to blame for the region's widespread poverty? To what degree did foreign investors change local societies? How has the relationship between Latin American societies, foreign investors, and the world market evolved in the last two centuries?
200H INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Leff, M.)
Topic: Wartime Social Change in the 20th Century
Wartime imperatives reopen essential assumptions that underlie national identity and that give meaning to citizenship itself. War "sacrifices" and subsequent collective memories/memorializations of war bind, divide, and shape "the nation." What do citizens, and what do resident "aliens," owe the state, their communities, their families, and the war dead? This course zeroes in on the home front experiences of the United States in its 20th century wars, but also draws upon comparisons with ramifications of war in societies where the "home front" and the "front lines" are less easily distinguished. We'll track the vigorous historical debates over the integrative and disintegrative effects of war on racial, class, and gender divisions; relationships among peace movements, public opinion, the military draft, conceptions of "loyalty," and restrictions upon civil liberties; the roles of propaganda and film in forging visions of the enemy "other" and of national belonging,; and the effects of economic mobilization on relations among government, corporations, and workers. We'll critique and engage these debates, and students will be expected to help each other--through unremitting class participation and in-depth research papers--to clarify, refine, and deepen understandings of the process of historical argument and interpretation.
200I INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Burgos, A.)
Topic: Integration and America's Game
The integration of U.S. professional baseball has been hailed an important precedent for the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to its impact on U.S. society as whole, historians and other scholars have debated the impact that integration had on Black communities and specifically on the race institutions formed during Jim Crow segregation. This course will revisit debates about baseball integration as a microcosm of broader societal issues. We will consider integration as a process that was neither a guaranteed success nor an inevitable. Course readings will revisit primary source materials that discuss the different actors and communities that campaigned for or against integration as the process unfolded. Assigned materials will offer different interpretations about the actors and their motivations in either supporting or opposing integration. In so doing, we will analyze questions of historical interpretations: How do historians use evidence to build an argument? How do we place historical scholarship in conversation with one another? We will also explore what are the possibilities and limitations of using sport, specifically baseball, as the medium to analyze questions such as integration and racial equality. Finally, this class is intended for majors who are ready to think critically about history. It will be taught in a discussion-based format, with a heavy emphasis on student participation. Assignments will include presentations, short reaction papers, and an end of the semester project.
240A HISTORY OF ANCIENT GREECE (Buckler, J.)
This course traces the rise of Western Civilization, beginning with the early cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The entry of the Hittites, an Indo-European people, into the much older and more sophisticated Eastern cultures is examined. The Bronze Age and the origins of the Greek Civilization, along with the development of Greek political and social institutions, are also treated. The course ends with the Greek victory over the Persian menace, the clash between Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, and the destruction of the classical scheme of things.
Assignments and Examinations: A list of weekly assignments will be handed out on the first meeting of class. Also included will be the dates of the mid-term and final examinations. Various quizzes to be graded will be given at random times during the course. An explanation of how all of these relate to the grad given will likewise be included. Questions on these matters are welcome at any time. Required readings: J.P. McKay, A History of Western Society (8/e) vol. A. (ancient Near East and prehistoric Greece); A.R. Burn, The Penguin History of Greece (a Political guide); S.B. Pomeroy et al., A Brief History of Ancient Greece (social, cultural, and popular issues); W. Hansen, Anthology of Ancient Popular Literature (anthropology and folklore).
241A HISTORY OF ANCIENT ROME (Mathisen, R.)
The course will examine the political, social, economic, religious, and cultural development of Rome and the Romans from the founding of Rome, ca.753 BC, until the fall of the western Roman Empire, ca.AD 480.
247A THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES (McLaughlin, M.)
Same As MDVL 247
An introduction to medieval European history. We will be talking about invasions and conversions, kings and popes, plows and cannons, troubadour poetry and mystical visions, and many other aspects of life in Europe between the fifth and the fifteenth century. Requirements include class participation, a group debate project, ten brief "microthemes," a mid-term and a final exam
250A WAR, MILIT INSTS & SOC TO 1815 (Lynn, J.)
While the human race desires peace today, an iron chain of causation has bound it to the weapons of war for thousands of years. History 250 asks important questions about the armed past: how basic is war to culture, how have humans fought wars since the first tribes began to raid one another, and how have military institutions shaped the societies which they defend? The attempt to answer these questions will benefit students specializing in history or preparing for a military career. But the course is specifically designed to interest a wide range of students who simply want to know more about humankind. This semester we will discuss land and naval warfare during the period from ancient Egypt to 1815, while the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are dealt with in History 251, offered during the spring semester
255A British Isles to 1688 (Ramsbottom)
An introduction to the history of the peoples of the British Isles in the medieval and early modern periods. During these ten centuries, the English kingdom became a centralized monarchy and pursued wider influence over the neighboring countries of France, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. But what was the power of the monarchy based upon, and how secure was it? Was religion the true foundation of civilization or merely an aspect of international and domestic politics? What role, if any, did ordinary people play in a society dominated by lords and prelates? We will address these questions by studying historical sources of several kinds, not only traditional documents but also literature and art. The course will require regular participation in online discussion. There will also be an hour exam, a final exam, and short writing assignments totaling 20 pages.
258A CONTEMP POLITICS IDEOLOGY (Prochaska, D.)
In this course we shall examine the major historical forces--political, intellectual, economic, social and cultural--which have shaped the world in approximately the first half of the 20th century. In other words, the aim of the course is to move behind today's headlines and to offer a series of longer-range, in-depth perspectives on the world we live in. As such, we shall range rather widely over the intellectual landscape drawing on the insights and contributions of other disciplines wherever helpful in addition to history. Moreover, considerable use will be made of films to convey a sense of the present and recent past.
260A SURVEY OFRUSSIAN HISTORY (Randolph, J.)
This course will survey the fundamental periods, questions, and debates in Russian history, 1500-present. In traveling through Russia’s past, we will focus on the clash between the ideal and the real in the making of Russia, exploring both what people wanted (their ambitions) and what they experienced. Assignments will include recent historical writings as well as classic 'texts' of Russian culture including fiction, film, memoir, and art. >
266A SCIENCE IN WESTERN CIV, II (Hoddeson, L.)
This course surveys selectively both the intellectual and social dimensions of the scientific enterprise from 1800 to the present, providing an overview of the evolution of modern science following the revolutionary contributions of Isaac Newton. Topics include the development of scientific disciplines (chemistry, physics, biology), the professionalization of science, the rise of scientific institutions, the experimental and theoretical traditions, scientific revolutions (including those resulting in quantum mechanics and relativity), the emergence of American Science, the rise of industrial research, genetics, the impacts of World War II (including radar and atomic bomb), effects of the Cold War, the roots of “big science,” and the ethics and politics of modern science. Midterm, paper and final are required.
268A JEWISH HISTORY TO 1700 (Avrutin, E.)
Same as RLST 268
This course provides a sweeping view of Jewish political and social history, Jewish religious practices and experiences, as well as the diversity of cultures and peoples that Jews lived among from antiquity to early modern times. Who are the Jews? When and where does Jewish culture and history begin? What types of relationships did Jews and non-Jews have with one another? What were the borders and boundaries between Jews and non-Jews? How were the Jewish people influenced by the “broader” cultures, peoples, and societies? Can we speak of Jewish culture and Judaism in the singular or in the plural? In addition to the lectures that introduce students to the history, culture, and religious practices of the Jewish people, this course incorporates a variety of primary sources such as first-person narratives, legal codes, art, ethical literature, oral sermons, letters, and documentary films. No previous historical background or knowledge of Jewish history is required.
275A AFRO-AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1877 (TBA)
Same as AFRO 275.
History of Africans in the Americas, surveying the African slave trade, slavery in the European colonies of the Americas, early United States slavery, and the Afro-American in the Civil War and Reconstruction.
277A US NATIVE AMERICANS TO 1850 (Hoxie, F.)
Same as AIS 277.
A survey of the Native American experience in North America from the arrival of the Europeans to 1850. The course explores the impact of European expansion on Native American communities, the ways in which Indian people adopted to the growing European presence, and the continuities and inventions that punctuated the indigenous world in this era. The course will focus primarily on those parts of North America that became part of the United States.
280A CARIBBEAN LATINA/O MIGRATION (Burgos, A.)
Same as LLS 280
Evidence of the Latino presence in U.S. popular culture is everywhere. In the past years the nation has been mesmerized by the artistic work of Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and others. On the baseball diamond, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols and other Caribbean Latino players have been at the center of the resurgence of America’s game (baseball). The growing Latino population has also sparked new marketing strategies by major corporations like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and countless others. This interest in capturing the Latino market or fascination with Latinos contributions to U.S. popular culture has been accompanied with popular images that present Latinos primarily as recent arrivals, crossovers, or exotic foreigners regardless of national origins or citizenship status.
This course is geared toward developing a more historical understanding about the place of Caribbean Latinos in U.S. society. Through course materials, class discussions, and lectures we will explore the political and cultural relationships established between the U.S. and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the process of community building for these groups, and the struggles that Caribbean Latinos have had in seeking to establish their place in the United States. A variety of individual and group exercises in addition to written assignments will be used to accomplish other major goals of this course: further developing our ability to think critically, write analytically, and to understand the past in a historically nuanced manner. Graded assignments will consist of response papers, a 5-7 page critical essay, and two exams.
282 NATURE AND AMERICAN CULTURE (Backlund, E.)
Same as LA 242, RST 242, NRES 242
This course satisfies the General Education Criteria for a Western Comparative Culture course.
285A US GENDER HISTORY TO 1877 (Pleck, E.)
Same as GWS 285
This course aims to introduce students to changing ideals and life experiences of American women from the period just prior to the arrival of European explorers to the Civil War. The readings draw on primary sources and historian's interpretations to emphasize the work, family, and political activities of American women, within the context of larger changes in colonial America and the United States. These larger changes include colonialism and European settlement, the role of Enlightenment ideas, the growth of an industrial economy, the expansion of slavery, and the rise of nineteenth century reform movements. Students will learn to think critically about historical arguments and the use of evidence.
295A HONORS COLLOQUIUM (Micale, M.)
Topic: Madness and Society in the Modern World
What is madness? How do we define the normal and the pathological in our mental lives? Who in society is best suited to determine psychological health and sickness? Can the human mind know itself, and how? At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the sciences of the mind--including clinical psychiatry, psychoanalysis, neuropsychiatry, psychopharmacology, and the cognitive neurosciences--claim great scientific authority and exert enormous cultural influence in our society. Yet, these are some of the basic questions in psychological medicine that remain controversial, if not unanswered, today.
This course seeks to explore these and related themes historically. Specifically, we will study the social, intellectual, cultural, and institutional history of psychiatry in Britain, Continental Europe, and the United States from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Topics include the origins of psychiatric humanitarianism; the nature of the "moral treatment"; psychiatric professionalization; the rise of the asylum; degeneration theory in mental medicine; psychiatric autobiography; "the birth of the neuroses;" the advent of medical sexology; the rise of legal psychiatry; early psychoanalysis; and war and psychiatry. Course readings and discussions will be accompanied by a weekly showing of relevant films.
300 Level
305A ANDEAN COUNTRIES OF SOUTH AMERICA (Durston, A.)
This course deals with the Andean region understood as a cultural rather than a geographical unit, focusing on Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. Each of these countries is set apart from most other South American nations by the fact that a large portion of the population shares an indigenous cultural heritage derived from the Prehispanic civilizations of the Andes, if one that has been in close interaction with a dominant society and culture that can be considered broadly “Western” for almost five centuries. This course examines the nature of this “Andean” tradition and its place in the shifting interethnic relations that have organized Andean societies from the Spanish conquest and colonization in the 16th century up to nation-state formation in the 19th and 20th centuries.
340A ANCIENT GREEK STATES (Buckler, J.)
This course begins with an examination of the Greek polis and the life that it nourished. Included is a glance at Greek agriculture and the course of the agricultural year. The flowering of Greek civilization is examined by looking at the individualism of the Lyric poets and the scientific and philosophical thought of the pre-Socratics. The evolution of Sparta as a major and unique Greek state is traced and contrasted with the rise of Athens and the development of democratic government. The course then focuses on the Greek response to the menace of Persia. Athens on the attack--the creation of the Delian League and how Athens reduced the League to an empire are treated in relation to the alienation of Sparta. The course ends with the great clash between Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. One term paper is required.
Required readings: A.R. Burn, The Penguin History of Greece; P.J. Rhodes, A History of the Classical Greek World, 478-323 BC; C.W. Fornara, Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War; W. Hansen, Anthology of Ancient Popular Literature.
353A EUROPEAN HISTORY 1918-1939 (Micale, M.)
Topic: Art, film & Literature in the Age of the World Wars
This course examines a series of major artistic and intellectual works that emerged from and commented upon the world-historical catastrophes of the period 1914-1945 in Europe. We will study texts and topics from Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia, with lateral consideration of the United States.
The course divides into three thematic sections: The Cultural Impact of the First World War; The Rise of Intellectual Fascism; and The Great Critiques of Totalitarianism. Authors and artists include: Paul Valéry, Sigmund Freud,the British war poets, E. M. Remarque, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, German Expressionist filmakers, Ernst Junger, Leni Riefenstahl, Albert Speer, Pablo Picasso, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Charlie Chaplin, George Orwell, Albert Einstein, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, and Hannah Arendt.
367A HISTORY OF WESTERN MEDICINE (Melhado, E.)
Intellectual and social history of medicine in the West from antiquity to the present. Emphasis on theories of disease and therapy; on professionalization and institution building; and on relations of medicine with society and government. Two hour-exams, term paper, final exam.
370A USCOLONIAL HISTORY (Edelson, S.)
As men and women in colonial America witnessed violent encounters between cultures, participated in rapidly changing societies, and struggled to make sense of life and death in a “new world,” they recorded their experiences in writing. This course explores the history of early North America and the Caribbean (ca. 1607-1776) through extended primary readings, first-hand accounts by those who lived in Britain’s American colonies. It is a workshop in the historian’s craft designed to teach students how to read and interpret primary sources as well as a survey of the major events, issues, and actors that define the place and the era. Our readings present a diverse range of voices and perspectives. They include the adventures of Henry Pitman (an English political prisoner transported to Barbados), the gallows confession of Patience Boston (a Native American woman executed for murdering a child in Massachusetts), and the dire warnings of “The Stranger,” who urged South Carolina colonists to take seriously the threat of slave rebellion. Other topics include the origins of racial slavery in the sugar islands, the life of Pocahontas, the journeys of European immigrants, nature exploration on the Indian frontier, the rise of evangelical Christianity, and the military defense of the empire. We conclude with the most important publication of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776). Class meetings feature small group work and student presentations and stress discussion over lecture. Writing assignments emphasize document analysis and interpretation.
372A AMERICA’S REPUBLIC, 1789-1861 (Ratner, L.)
This course focuses on the search for answers to some of the important questions about the history of the American republic from its founding through its early developmental period. Among the questions posed are how, having rejected the authority of government, could governmental authority be re-asserted after the Revolution? Could people accept a nationalist concept of America when for so long they defined themselves by their locality? Why did the American republic become a democracy and how did democracy change the republic? Could republican principles survive in a market-driven society? How did Americans live with the paradox of believing their society was the best ever devised and, at the same time, worried that it would destroy itself? In our search for answers to these and other questions we will examine among other things: the conflict over whether to ratify the Constitution; the development of American politics; the role of war in shaping an American identity; the American pre-occupation with the moral right and wrong of their new society; and the relationship between religion and politics in a society founded on the principle of separation of church and state.
377A UNITED STATES SINCE 1932 (Leff, M.)
This course follows American responses to domestic and foreign challenges, from capitalism's seeming economic collapse in the 1930s to post-WWII visions of an American Century to post-9/11 efforts to shape a new world order through a war on terrorism. A course covering the past three-quarters of a century amply illustrates James Baldwin's claim that "the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do." This course therefore confronts such subjects as the social movements (with special emphasis on Black Freedom struggles) that sought to bring change; the presidential leadership strategies (from Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt through George W. Bush) that sought to direct and/or control it; the evolving manifestations and distributions of power in American society; the effects of anti-communist crusades at home (McCarthyism) and abroad (origins, evolution, and transformation of the Cold War); the long-term impact of the New Deal welfare state and cultures of consumption; and engagements with American dilemmas of race, ethnicity, feminism, and the culture war legacies of the 1960s. Assessment will be based primarily on a midterm, a final, participation in class discussion and a website discussion board, and a 10-page argumentative research paper, each asking students to stake out their own positions on the historical issues threaded through the course.
396A THE U.S. IN THE WORLD (Esch, E.)
Recently both critics and supporters of the United States have begun to use the word "empire" to describe what the U.S is and does. In this course we will explore the meaning of empire to historic understandings of the development of what we now call the United States of America. We will consider the relationship of ideas, geography, borders, immigration, culture, economies and the military to the expansion of power. White supremacy - which describes historic attempts to exclude people deemed non-white from full political and social equality in the U.S. - will be a central concern in our examination of how the U.S. has related to the people of the world over time and as it increased its political and economic dominance around the globe. We will pay particular attention to the role of racial classification in organizing relationships between people both within and beyond the official borders of the United States.
400 Level
426 EARLY MODERN JAPAN (Toby, R.)
Same as EALC 426
Japan, reunified in 1600, after over a century of civil war and overseas adventurism, began an era of unprecedented internal and external peace, of cultural and economic development. In the first century of the “Great Peace,” population doubled and commerce boomed, creating an advanced urban society. The first half of the 17th century was perhaps the greatest boom in city-building the world had yet seen: by 1700 five of the world’s largest cities were in Japan, and Edo (now Tokyo) was the world’s largest city, with over a million residents. Peace, urbanization, and population growth, brought commercialization—an early form of capitalism, some would say—and remarkably prolific cultural production, in literature, drama, and the arts, that for the first time joined all regions and social classes in a common national culture. In the early-modern age Japan began to become a “nation” in the modern sense. “world within walls,” as it has been called, a “closed country” nation with its head in the sand for 200 years, until “opened” by Commodore M.C. Perry? Or had Japan found new ways to control foreign threats, establishing a “new world order” of its own, a sort of “controlled openness,” as recent scholarship seems to suggest? Japanese intellectuals, and the people at large, were intensely conscious of, and interested in, the world around them.
This was also an age of great cultural ferment in Japan, as Buddhist paradigms were largely set aside for Confucian ones (both originally foreign ideas) only to discover through Confucianism new, nativist visions, and a new sense of national identity. The spread of prosperity and literacy even turned some philosophers into what we might today call “popular culture” heroes: A 1685 tour-guide to Kyoto offered something like a Mansions-of-the-Stars guide to philosophers’ houses, and the grave of one scholar appeared on every tourist map of Edo, like Elvis’s Graceland.
History/EALC 426 examines the emergence of this unified national, cultural, social and economic “Japan,” from the end of the civil wars in the late 16th century, to the demise of the early-modern order in the mid-19th. We will combine lectures and discussions with readings of materials written by contemporary Japanese, and pay particular attention to the rich and varied visual record of the age. Course requirements include lectures, class discussions and readings. All readings are in English. There will be a midterm, a term paper, and a final examination.
439 THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE (Todorova, M.)
This course introduces the history of one of the great imperial formations of the early modern and modern period, which had long-standing repercussions on the development of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. It covers the whole span of Ottoman history, and will pay special attention to some of the following problems: the political rise of the Ottoman state since the thirteenth century and how it became an empire, its social and administrative structure, the classical Ottoman economic system, Ottoman impact on the societies, politics, economies and cultures of Byzantium and the medieval Balkan states, the spread of Islam in Europe, the transformations of the Ottoman polity and society and aspects of what has been conventionally named as Ottoman decline, the Eastern question in international relations, the modernizing reforms of the nineteenth century, and the spread of nationalism as a prelude to the final demise of the supranational empire in the twentieth century.
443 BYZANTINE EMPIRE AD 284-717 (Mathisen, R.)
This course will focus on the role played by law, broadly writ, in the Roman world, and at what the law tells us about Roman political, administrative, and social institutions. It will look at how the law was administered and at the role of the Roman Senate, Roman emperors, and barbarian kings in the promulgation of law from the Republican era on into the Byzantine period and the barbarian successor states. It will consider how laws and law codes came into being, how different types of legal documents evolved, the mechanisms by which legal documents were issued, and how legal rulings were put into effect.
444A EUROPEAN EDUCATION TO 1600 (Michalove)
Same as EPA 403 and MDVL 403
Cultural history of western European educational practice with special focus on Classical Greece, the Hellenestic world, Rome, early Christianity, the middle ages, the twelfth century renaissance, scholasticism and the fourteenth century renaissance. Same as EPS 403 , and MDVL 403. 3 undergraduate hours. 2 graduate hours. Prerequisite: Completion of campus Composition I general education requirement
466 SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE (Esbenshade, R.)
The political, economic, and cultural development of the Rumanians, South Slavs, Greeks, and Albanians; the impact of Ottoman rule; the rise of nationalism and the formation of national states; and the Orthodox Church. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college history or consent of instructor.
466 G4/U3 SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE (Esbenshade)
This course covers the history of the creation and development of the independent Balkan states (Greece, Serbia, Montenegro,Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and later Yugoslavia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and partly Turkey)during the 19th and 20th centuries. This process, the obverse side of which was the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire,can be approached as a case study of the larger and general process of dissolution of multinational empires intonation-states that dominated much of Europe's experience in this period. Special attention is given to Balkan nationalism,its roots, evolution and various manifestations. The modernization of the rural societies of the Balkans, theirstate and nation building are major problems of comparative analysis. Other topics cover ethnic conflict and/oraccommodation, inter-Balkan relations, and the role of the great powers in the region. Finally, a close look will betaken at contemporary developments in the Balkans, especially the Yugoslav crisis. Works of fiction by Balkan authors willbe read and discussed, and several films by Balkan directors shown. Readings will be assigned on a weekly basis, and classparticipation will be vital. Additional texts, maps and other materials will be provided by the professor.
478 BLACK FREED MOVE, 1955-PRESENT (TBA)
Same as Afro 474.
Presents the struggle of African Americans for self-definition, self-development, and self-determination from the inception of the civil rights movement to the contemporary period. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: AFRO 101, HIST 276, or consent of instructor.
481 US INTEL CULTR HIST FROM 1859 (Oberdeck, K.)
Same As RLST 479
This lecture/discussion course surveys the development of modern American culture since the mid-nineteenth century. It focuses on the relation between national cultural trends and cultural diversity across lines of class, ethnic, gender and region; the impact of Darwinian ideas on Protestant religious traditions and concepts of racial and ethnic difference; the changing role of intellectual "experts"; the significance of popular and mass culture; the influence of social and political reform movements; the meanings of "modernism" and "postmodernism". Course materials include primary written documents from American intellectual and cultural life as well as videos from American film and TV history and images from the popular and fine arts. There will be two papers, one in-class midterm and an in-class final exam. Class attendance and participation are required and encouraged
482 SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES (TBA)
Same as AFRO 460
Examination of slavery in the U.S. using primary sources (slave narratives, songs and tales, plantation records, laws and newspapers) from the 18th century through emancipation.. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: AFRO 100 or AFRO 101 and one 300-level AFRO course.
495 HONORS SEMINAR (Koslofsky, C.)
Topic: Diaries and Daily Life in the Early Modern World: Working with Ego Documents
In this honors seminar we will study daily life and personal writings ("ego documents") in the early modern period (1500-1800). We'll start with the memoirs of Glückel of Hameln (1646-1724), a successful Jewish merchant and mother of fourteen children, and the autobiography of Johann Dietz(1665-1738), a Pietist Lutheran, army field doctor, and royal barber-surgeon. After examining the attitudes toward God, money, love, and marriage presented in these two texts, we will then research and analyze a wide range of other early modern ego documents, search for evidence on early modern daily life.
The Dutch historian Jacob Presser coined the term "ego document" to describe texts written in the first person singular ("I", "Ego") that reveal the personal thoughts and feelings of the author. For the early modern period, these texts include diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, letters, and travel journals. Historians today use these texts to research an extraordinary range of topics. In recent years, the early modern autobiographical writings of the French journeyman Jacques-Louis Menetra (1738-?), the English minister Ralph Josselin (1617-1683), and the Dutch schoolmaster Willem van den Hull (1778-1858) have been published and analyzed extensively. A small set of ego documents is well known, but scholars realize that a vast range of unidentified and unread texts remains. Ego documents can tell us a great deal about daily life. The history of daily life has emerged as a new field of historical research in the last few decades. Oriented by the basic parameters of daily time and space, historians have examined seasonal and daily routines, cultures of food and drink, the place of clothing and fashion, and attitudes toward childbirth, sexuality and death - to mention only a few of the topics within the history of daily life.
498A RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Chandra, S.)
Topic: Loss, longing and absence: narrating the partition of Pakistan and India
The creation of the independent nation states of Pakistan and India marks the most violent legacy of British colonialism in the Indian subcontinent. Yet historians have struggled (and often failed) to narrate the brutal events surrounding partition in 1947. Their failures stand in stark contrast to the poignant success of fiction, poetry and personal narratives in remembering and representing the events of 1947. We will, in this writing and research seminar, explore “fictional” and ethnographic accounts of the partition to explore critical questions on the discipline of History. Why do we need narratives of continuity to preserve the past? What is the role of literary romanticism in determining South Asian postcolonial identity? If History seeks to naturalize the nation-state, why is the trauma of national invention beyond the domain of historical investigation? Who seeks to remember suffering, and for what purposes? This course will be especially relevant to those interested in the method of history, particularly those students curious about the intersection of historical and literary styles of analysis.
498B RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Matheson, T.)
Topic: Making Sex, Making Selves: the Body and Sexuality in Modern European History
This course will investigate how scholars of Modern Europe (from the 18thC to the present) have approached the body and sexuality as objects of historical inquiry. What is sexuality? How is it practiced, produced, policed, constructed, represented, liberated, controlled? Has it changed over time? How do society and culture influence the ways that we understand embodiment? We shall begin by investigating the methodological and theoretical questions circumscribing work in these fields. Our readings will be structured thematically around such topics as sexual orientation, pornography and the erotic, colonial/postcolonial sexual economies, prostitution, sexology and sexual norms, reproductive technologies, disabilities, surgical interventions, masturbation, eugenics, eating disorders and bodily control, sexual education, and bodily adornment and mutilation. As well as aiming to give participants an introductory understanding of this genre of historical investigation, our course is designed to enhance your research and writing abilities. The core assignment is a substantial research paper based on sources similar to those we will be studying this semester. Thus, in addition to reading the assigned material, you will be expected to devote significant time to your own research, and will be guided in finding suitable primary and secondary sources for your final paper. Our work may include analyses of the body and sexuality in art, literature, music, advertising, and film.
498C RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Esch, E.)
Topic: The Car in The American Culture
Drive thru. Drive in. Drive by. Road trip. Road film. Road rage. Each of these terms came into existence in the second half of the 20th century to describe cultural and social phenomenon in the United States. All of them have had profound impacts on how we live what we do, what we consume and how we do it. In this course we will explore the way that these and other aspects of car culture have shaped U.S. history and possibility since the advent of the car. From the creation of highways and suburbs to environmental regulations to the debate over SUVs and oil, cars are intimately related to the larger political economy of the U.S. How people relate to cars has always been shaped by geography, race, gender and age, each of which will be incorporated in our discussions.
498F RESEACH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Prochaska, D.) Topic: History and Film
In this course students will utilize films as primary historical sources, secondary sources, and as supplements to written historical sources in order to prepare research papers on topics at the intersection of film and history. In the first part of the course we will develop a framework for evaluating historical films, which students will then apply to a set of historical films. Working with the instructor, students will conduct extensive, in-depth research on the historical contexts relevant to their individual topics. Students will be encouraged to conduct research on world cinemas outside Hollywood, and on films pertaining to global history and the history of colonialism.
Course prerequisites are my History 200, or History 258, or History 259 or History 352
498H RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Avrutin, E.) Topic: Jewish Autobiography
Autobiographies claim to tell objective first-person stories about past events and individual and collective experiences. Life narratives appear to be simple reconstructions and remembrances of past events. But these apparently transparent first-person narratives are in fact quite complex, and have bewildered historians, literary theorists, and cultural critics. This course explores a series of fascinating first-person Jewish narratives from 18th- and 20th-century Russia, Germany, America, and Poland. How does the larger social and political context influence individual Jewish experience and narrative? What roles do gender and class play in the construction of Jewish autobiographies? Topics include the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, the meanings of Jewishness, the role of memory, the politics of trauma, and the problems of using first-person narratives as a historical source.
498I RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Pedrotty, K.)
Topic: Investigating Narratives of Modern Tourism in the United States and Europe
How do historical sites, public memorials, theme parks, museums, and guidebooks work to craft historical narratives of peoples and places through tourism? How are tourist’s experiences shaped by their assumed and ascribed identities as members of certain genders, races, nations, religions, or minority groups? How and why has tourism been used as a tool for economic development, national integration, or religious regeneration and by whom? Through an examination of these questions and many more, this research and writing seminar will introduce students to modern tourism as an historical problem. The reading assignments will be designed to guide students toward exploring three primary and inter-related concepts in their own research on tourism: identities, power, and the production of historical narratives. We will pay careful attention to the ways in which tourism and cultural heritage resources have been used by individuals, organizations, and governments to create and disseminate specific images, messages, and narratives, especially those dealing with an idealized past. An additional feature of the course will be the student’s introduction to several different types of primary sources specific to the study of tourism and travel, including travelogues, guidebooks, oral histories, comment books, pamphlets, posters, and other propaganda.
498J RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Levine, B.)
Topic: THE CIVIL WAR ERA IN THE U.S., 1820-1880
This course is designed to develop familiarity with the methods and tools of historical research and the skills of historical writing. The seminar focuses upon the Era of the U.S. Civil War – defined, for our purposes, to span the decades between 1820 and 1880 (from the origins of the sectional conflict through the end of Reconstruction). The output of scholarly writing on the Civil War era and its multiple facets and implications has been enormous during the last few decades. New questions arise and controversies proliferate steadily. By the end of this quarter, each student will be expected to have completed one research paper, based largely upon primary sources, that addresses some aspect of tthis crucial era in the history of the United States.
498K RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Rosenow, M.)
Topic: The Labor Question: Work, race, Gender, and the Making of Modern America
In the last decades of the 19th century it seemed the United States was held captive by a central problem: “the labor question.” People from all stations of life debated the proper relationship between workers and employers, the implications of wage labor on individual freedom, and industrialization’s effects on traditions of democracy. Those who struggled with the nature of labor also grappled with issues fundamental to the future of the country. From acceptable forms of protest to the role of women in society, from the “Americanization” of immigrants to the attempted exclusion of people of color, physical and cultural boundaries were defined and redefined through issues of work and community. This course explores the period 1877 to 1924—commonly referred to as the Gilded Age and Progressive era—from the perspective of common people. It focuses on working people and their experiences; questions of power at home, in the workplace, and in public; the production of cultural representations and their deployment; and intellectual, cultural, and physical acts of resistance. The course critically evaluates the turning points of the period, investigate roads not taken, and recuperate important, but downplayed, histories of the United States.
500 Level
501A SEMINAR IN MILITARY HISTORY (Lynn, J.)
Topic: War, Society, Culture, and Gender
This seminar will approach the history of the conduct of war and of military institutions in a broad context. While this seminar is not limited to approaches that emphasize culture and gender, students with interests in these fields are more than welcome. Students who want to pursue a topic outside the expertise of Professor Lynn [early modern European military history, South Asian military history, war and culture, and, currently, women and warfare, 1500-1815] will have to arrange with their advisors to supply a second reader appropriate to period and area. Consult with the professor concerning proposed topics of study.
502B PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Hoddeson, L.)
Topic: Oral History as a Research Tool
This graduate seminar explores the practical and intellectual issues of using interviews as a research tool in the writing of history. The advantages of offering "living sources" a voice in historical reconstructions include the opportunity to write histories that are more complete, colorful, and sensitive to personal factors than studies based on documents alone. Oral narrative can amplify historical accounts with personal connections, motivations, and other information. Moreover the process of doing interviews often helps historians find references or documents not yet deposited in archives. For the historian a major disadvantage -- and a challenge -- of using interviews in dealing with the distortions of human memory.
Assigned readings and seminar discussions during the first half of the course will address issues of historiography, human and historical memory, and interviewing technique. Through analysis of historical works based on oral history we will study conceptual and practical consequences of offering living sources a voice in the interpretation of events. The second half of the seminar will be focused on student interviews and reports oriented toward writing seminar papers. Students will learn how to prepare for interviews, how to compose dynamic questions keyed to documents, and how to direct interviews so as to jolt memories and probe social masks. We will also discuss interpretation of interviews, equipment, interviewing etiquette, ethics, transcription, and the legalities of releasing interviews.
Students will be required to: (1) carry out reading assignments and participate in class; (2) prepare, conduct, transcribe, and secure release of at least one well-researched interview relating to a research topic of their choice; (3) critique interviews conducted by other members of the seminar; (4) report in class on their oral history project; and (5) write a seminar paper incorporating material from their interview. Students can select their project from any area of history in which interviews are of use.
502C PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Rabin, D.)
Topic: Britain and the Global 18th Century
In the eighteenth century Britain's national identity was intertwined with an "imperial destiny" as was its economic and daily life. This course interrogates the formation of those national and global identities in the eighteenth century. The readings, cultural studies of geography, race, sex, gender, religion, and law, will explore the global eighteenth century and the formation of the British Empire. Our geographical range will include the British Isles, India, North America, and the Caribbean. We will also read major theoretical works that inform studies of race, gender, and culture in and beyond eighteenth-century Britain. The readings will draw from history, anthropology, and English literary studies. The interdisciplinary approach will allow us to engage various theoretical and methodological perspectives as we explore this topic. In addition to leading weekly discussions, assignments will include two 5-page critical reviews and a longer historiographic essay (15-20) pages.
521A SEMINAR IN CHINESE HISTORY (Chow, K.)
Same as EALC 522
Topic: Cultural and Intellectual Transformation of Ming-Qing China in Global Context This course introduces students to recent scholarly works on the approaches, methodologies, and major issues in the study of Chinese thought and culture in the Ming (1368) and the Qing (1644-1911) periods. Works are selected from various disciplines and fields of study, covering a wide range of issues critical to our understanding of the social and cultural transformation of China in the Ming-Qing periods. We focus on two themes: first, the major socio-economic forces behind the transformation of cultural production and intellectual practices, and second, problems and issues in the production of knowledge and discourses pertaining to cultural and intellectual practices. For the first theme, we will examine works dealing with the global context of Chinese history, the impact of intensified commercialization on print culture, consumption, urban life, women culture, kinship practice, the production of knowledge and the distribution and exercise of power. For the second theme, students will read works on the development of intellectual discourses, the issue of cross-cultural translation, and the production of knowledge involving Christianity and imperialism. Participation in discussion is required and students are responsible for presentations. There will be written assignments and a final seminar paper.
527A PROBLEMS IN JAPANESE HISTORY (Konishi, S.)
Same as EALC 527
Topic: Transnational Approaches to Modern Japan
This course examines various cultural approaches for the study of international history involving early modern and modern Japan. May be repeated to a maximum of 8 hours if topics vary. Prerequisite: Graduate standing in HIST, EALC, or other related discipline and reading knowledge of Japanese, or consent of instructor.
551A PROB IN EAST EUROPEAN HISTORY (Todorova, M.)
The goal of this graduate seminar is to serve as an introduction to the complex historiography of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe in the context of this course is understood as East-Central Europe and Southeastern Europe (the Balkans). Russia, given that it has a hefty presence in the curriculum, is not included. We will explore mostly English-language historiography but will try to inform each other about work done in the region. Different approaches will be covered (socio-economic, political, cultural and intellectual history, the Annales paradigm, anthropology, political science, etc.) as well as central themes (modernity, modernization, economic and social structure, nationalism, socialism, war, violence, representation).
The format of the course will consist of class discussions on readings, book reviews and a final historiographical research paper.
Readings include (but are not confined to): D. Chirot, ed. The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe; Deak, Gross, Judt, eds. The Politics of Retribution in Europe; P. Sugar, Peter, ed. Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century; G. Ekiert, The State Against Society; T.Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds; K. Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next; I. Berend, History Derailed; Bucur & Wingfiled, eds., Staging the Past; S. Ramet, Thinking About Yugoslavia; Barkey & Mark Von Hagen, eds. After Empire; L. Wolff, Larry, Inventing Eastern Europe: M.Todorova, Imagining the Balkans; T.Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations.
551B PROB EUROPEAN HIST SINCE 1789 (Fritzsche, P.)
Topic: Problems in Modern European History, 1789-1989
This course will examine the major conceptual building blocks of European history: the nature of historical change; the salience of ideology; the coherence of class; the public sphere; the legacies of the nation; colonialism and postcolonialism; the notion of modernism and modernity; the seizures of history by war, revolution, and genocide; and the possibilities and limits of representing historical catastrophe. The main activity will be critical discussion and debate around the key texts in order to explore how they work and what they illuminate. New historiographical perspectives will be combined with a series of classic texts including Francois Furet, Lynn Hunt, James Chandler, E.P. Thompson, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Christopher Browning, William Sewell, Eric Weitz, and others. Assignments will include a series of short historiographical essays.
572A PROB IN US HIST SINCE 1815 (Levine, B.)
Topic: Core Readings in American History
This course has two interconnected purposes. It aims to introduce students to ways in which scholars have identified and analyzed some salient subjects, themes, and questions in the history of the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. Simultaneously, it showcases disputes among historians and changes that have taken place over time in the ways that historians have approached and re-defined those subjects, themes, and questions. The course thus combines consideration of specific topics under review each week with an ongoing study of the intellectual evolution of the historical profession itself (and some of the factors that have influenced that evolution).
572B PROB IN US HIST SINCE 1815 (Espiritu, A.)
Topic: Colonialism and Empire
Transnationalism, alongside of “global” discourses, has emerged in the last two decades as an important problem of contemporary knowledge production, and has increasingly become a concern of historians. In this course, with a critical though not exclusive focus upon the history of the United States, we will grapple with the complex questions raised by transnationalism. Did transnationalism come after the constitution of nations or was it one of the nation’s essential preconditions? How has transnationalism shaped the construction of national, race, gender, and sexual ideologies in the USA and other empires? Is transnationalism, as pilgrimage, tourism, exile, or diaspora, a necessarily liberating predicament, or does it in fact reinforce neo-imperial and neo-colonial structures? How has the act of claiming America obscured transnational, transborder, & transoceanic processes? And finally, how have transnationalism and empire raised fundamental questions about sovereignty and modernity in the twenty-first century?
572C PROB IN US HIST SINCE 1915 (Pleck, E.)
Topic: US Gender and Women’s History
This course is especially designed for students preparing a prelim field in gender history who are seeking an overview of the field of U.S. women's and gender history. This course will emphasize classics in the field of women's history usually found on every prelim list. The classics tend to be concerned with the following eras and topics: the cult of domesticity; slavery; Civil War and Reconstruction; Progressive era reform; woman's suffrage; the 1950s; and second wave feminism. More recently, there is much more writing in women's history about empire; sexuality; men's history; and the body. We will read some new works in these areas. Requirements for the course will include a book report and a literature review on a topic of your choosing.
573A SEMINAR AMER HIST SINCE 1789 (Barrett, J.)
Topic: Immigration, Race, and Class in 20th Century America
This will be a research seminar in American social history of the twentieth century with a special emphasis on class, race, and ethnicity in working-class populations. We will focus on the historical experiences of common people -- at home, in the workplace, or in the community. Projects focusing on women's, family, urban, intellectual and cultural, and other types of historical research are welcome as long as they focus on non-elites. My own interests at the moment involve the personal dimensions of American labor radicalism in the twentieth century / ethnic and racial identity and relations among workers from diverse backgrounds / and cosmopolitan experiences and outlooks among workers. I am also interested in religious belief, the nature of emotional bonds, and generational conflict within immigrant wage earning families. There are several goals in the seminar: The first is to develop an impression of the key historiography up to this point. This reading part of the seminar will be concentrated early in the term with most of the remainder of the term set aside for research and writing. A second goal is to consider some new conceptual approaches, not in the abstract, but as they might be implemented with new sources and research methods. The course also aims to introduce students to the research process itself -- choosing and refining a topic; developing analytical questions to frame your work; identifying and securing sources; writing and revising one's work; criticizing and helping others with theirs. We will be looking at a wide variety of sources and methods by visiting parts of the library and other research venues and by talking with colleagues who have particular research skills. The ultimate aim, of course, is to produce a substantial, original research paper that will be shared with others -- in the seminar itself, at a conference, or even eventually through publication.
In order to equip students with the information they need to do their research and writing, we will meet twice each week, once at the scheduled meeting time and once at a mutually convenient time in the evening, for the first several weeks of the term. From that point on, students will be working on their own, though I will meet with you individually to discuss your projects. The group will reassemble around the middle of the term to discuss research proposals and again toward the end of the term to discuss rough drafts. Although we have a wonderful research library and other resources on campus, it may be necessary to do some traveling and to use inter-library loan. We will discuss these and other scheduling problems early in the term, but students should be thinking about them and developing a topic, in advance of the seminar.
Grades in the course are based not only on the final paper, but also on one's role in the collective work of the seminar -- discussions of the literature, sources, and methods and constructive criticism of one's own and other students' work. Shorter written assignments will include ideas for research topics, research proposals, bibliographies, and critiques of others' papers. These exercises will constitute steps toward the final paper. Please be prepared to work collectively by sharing ideas and sources and reading one another's work seriously. Final drafts of all papers will be due during the final exam period at the end of the semester and, in the interests of the students involved, I will not provide extensions on the deadlines.
I will be glad to discuss your research interests with you before the beginning of the fall semester.
573B SEMINAR AMER HIST SINCE 1789 (Hoxie, F; Farnell, B)
Meets with ANTH 516FH
Topic: Writing Ethnohistories :Research and Composition with Nontraditional Sources
This seminar will explore the use of anthropological and historical methods in the construction of historical narratives. While focusing initially on native North America, the course will be valuable to people who are interested in the histories of peoples in any location or who wish to investigate new historical methodologies. Students will begin the course with an intensive period of reading and discussion before shifting to individual research projects.
573B Reading Course (Chandra, S)
Meets with GWS 590SC
Topic: Imperialism and Sexuality
The kamasutra, the hottentot venus, the harem, the sotadic zone, A.I.D.S… How did the ‘east’, the ‘orient’ and the ‘non- west’ become synonymous with sex, sexuality and sexual desire? Why did the production of these associations and images increase with European and US imperial interests around the world? What is the role of sexuality in supporting imperial power regimes, internationally as well as ‘at home’? And finally, what structures and forms of social organisation become normative and desirable in this global division of sexual labour? This course uses a variety of sources – films, novels and history – to examine the generative relationship between imperialism and sexuality over the past three hundred years. Focusing on the European interaction with India, east and south Africa, and on the United States’ increasing interest in ‘South Asia’ we examine how transnational racism produced the sexual instability of the brown and black body, how present day globalisation depends on knowledge of the inequitable and repressed nature of non-western sexuality, and why the imperial nation-state ensures that its subjects compulsorily forge heteronormative alliances.
597RR Reading Course (Ross)
Topic: Legal Cultures of Early America
This seminar will explore the social and intellectual history of American law in the colonial period. While we will pay some attention to the development of legal rules and institutions, we will concentrate on legal culture—on that configuration of values and habits of mind that shaped the operation of the legal system and informed how colonists understood the law’s purposes and meanings. In so doing, the course will stress the multiple roles of law: as a way of resolving disputes, distributing resources, channeling politics and social development, shaping personal identities, and creating authoritative categories of knowledge.
The seminar is organized into four main parts. The first section charts how colonization produced divergent regional legal cultures in the seventeenth century Chesapeake and in Puritan New England. The second looks at the regulation of slavery and of gender relations. The third returns to the problem of seventeenth-century legal culture, exploring not regional variation, but the important and distinctive characteristics of that legal culture evident throughout the American colonies, characteristics that lent it a flavor or style. Finally, the fourth section asks how and why the legal culture of the eighteenth century displaced that of the seventeenth. Stronger imperial oversight, the growing importance of trained lawyers, and the expansion of population and commerce are all considered as causes of this transformation. The seminar ends by asking if there is a rubric that aptly describes the course of colonial legal development from 1600 to 1760—perhaps modernization, or anglicization, or the formalization of informal law?
597S READING COURSE (Burton, A.)
Topic: Approaches to History
This required course for entering history graduate students offers an initial foray into historiography, methods, and conceptual approaches for students in all fields. Assigned materials, class discussions, and assignments will prepare students for the second-semester required research seminar.