100 Level
100AL1 GLOBAL HISTORY (Koslofsky, C.)
Topic: The First Global Age, 1200-1815
In this course we will study the early modern world from the thirteenth through the early nineteenth centuries - from the era of the Mongols to the French and Haitian Revolutions. In this first global age religion, trade, conquest, and colonization connected all parts of the globe as never before. By 1800, all major areas of human settlement and culture everywhere on Earth interacted with one another – some only barely, others in deep and transforming ways. To learn the content and skills necessary to understand this history, students will read primary sources, write several short papers, and take a midterm exam and a final exam.
106 AL1 MODERN LATIN AMERICA (Davila, W.)
History of Latin America since Independence; emphasis on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba and Mexico.
120 AL1 EAST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS (Fu, P.)
Same as EALC 120
This is a survey of the history of mainly Chinese and Japanese civilizations from 2000 B.C. to the present. In this survey we try to understand the life and values of two Asian countries and, by way of this, also of ourselves. We will look at how different cultural and political forces shaping Chinese civilization, which in turn, shaped many major civilizations in the region, including Japan and Korea. In modern times, with the decline of China as a dominant power in the face of imperialist, we will explore the commonality and differences between China and Japan, and to some extent Korea, in their struggle toward modernization. We will also look at the meaning of the concept Asia itself. Reading includes novels and memoirs.
140 AL1 WESTERN CIV TO 1660-ACP (Symes, C.)
Meets with 141 AL1
Please see course description for 141 AL1.
141 AL1 WESTERN CIV TO 1660 (Symes, C.)
Meets with 140 AL1
Spanning over four thousand years of human endeavor, this course investigates some of the major events, ideas, developments, and crises which shaped societies from ancient Mesopotamia to early modern Europe. It has two main goals: to teach the basic elements of the historian's craft and to further students' understanding of the modern world's debt to the distant past. Interactive lectures will be supplemented by discussion sections focusing on the analysis of primary sources, encouraging a hands-on approach to working with historical artifacts. Evaluation will be based on attendance and active participation in class, two short papers, and the midterm and final examinations.
142 AL1 WESTERN CIV SINCE 1660 (Fritzsche, P.)
Meets with 143 AL1
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.
143 AL1 WESTERN CIV SINCE 1660-ACP (Fritzsche, P.)
Meets with 142 AL1
Please see course description for 142 AL1.
172 AL1 US HIST SINCE 1877 (Roediger, D.)
Meets with 173 AL1
Does anything ever change? In History 172, Professor David Roediger argues that change is a profound and central feature of modern U.S. history and that both popular movements and elites shape that change. How people's everyday lives and their collective activities influenced such change is a central question of the course, which examines the U.S. from the aftermath of the Civil War to the aftermath of the war in Iraq. The ways in which ordinary people, and lived their daily lives--how they worked, formed families, loved, worshipped, had fun, faced discrimination, fought racism, migrated, and learned -- receive emphasis. Towering leaders, profound demands for change, and hotly contested elections are seen as growing out of these everyday experiences. Evaluation is based on two 5- to 7-page papers, an in class essay, participation in sections and two brief objective tests.
173 AL1 US HIST SINCE 1877 – ACP (Roediger, D.)
Meets with 172 AL1
Please see course description for 172 AL1.
200 A INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Wilson, R.)
Topic: Global Environmental History
At its heart, environmental history is the study of the changing relationship between people and their natural environments over time. In this course, we will explore several intersections between these natural environments and major themes in global history, including imperialism and colonialism, industrialization and consumerism, science and environmentalism, and, of course, globalization itself. In exploring these topics, we will also learn, practice, and apply the historian's tools and techniques to investigate the environmental contexts of past human activities, with the aim of better understanding how the natural world can shape human history and how people everyday are shaping their environments. The readings for this course are a combination of primary sources and secondary works on topics ranging from the Columbian Exchange, which brought, among other things, horses to the Americas and potatoes to the rest of the world, to the global dimensions of environmental thinking and action on environmental issues.
200 B INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Ali, T.)
Topic: Commodities, Empire, and Capital
“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.” Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1.
In this course, we will study the histories of a variety of commodities that are part of our everyday lives - agricultural and mineral commodities like sugar, cotton, pineapples, cocoa, silver and oil as well as manufactured and branded commodities, like Heinz ketchup and Singer sewing machines. We will focusing on how the production, consumption and circulation of these commodities link regions and people across space and time, how commodities transformed human lives and ecologies in regions of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands. We will examine how histories of commodities are woven into the histories of European and American imperialism and capitalism and explore how the spread of commodity production and consumption went hand-in-hand with the expansion of western capital and empire. In addition to the texts we read in common, each student will choose a particular commodity to study in greater depth. Through their study of specific commodities, students will be exposed to different methodologies and schools of interpretation.
200 E INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Reagan, L.)
Topic: Vietnam War Era
In this class we will study and research the Vietnam War Era as a way of learning the basic skills needed for the study of history. The class will be studying the War itself to some extent, but also the impact of the war on the United States and the many social movements that arose (or continued) in the 1960s and 1970s, including, for example, the anti-war, free speech, civil rights, women’s liberation, gay rights, anti-ERA movements. All of these changed the culture and politics of the country. We will be closely examining original materials from the era: underground newspapers, army newspapers, posters, photos, personal correspondence, government records—from public hearings as well as those meant to be kept secret, and much more. The class will be part of the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI), http://www.eui.illinois.edu/ and, as such, students will focus their research and writing on the history and memory of the Vietnam War Era at the University—as found in the archives, through oral history, and through various primary sources—and through the eyes of the institution, students, faculty, staff, and/or local communities.
200 H INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Hoganson, K.)
Topic: Thinking Historically About Food
This class provides an introduction to the craft of history, with food as its unifying theme. Readings will touch on a wide variety of topics, including hunger, adulteration, obesity, ecology, nationalism, domesticity, ethnicity, consumption, animal rights, labor, technology, trade, development, colonialism, and war. As this wide range of approaches to the history of food suggests, the course does not aim to teach you a particular narrative. Rather, its goal is to teach you to think like a historian and to develop the skills fundamental to historical practices.
202A AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY (Morrissey, R.)
Same as ESE 202 and NRES 202
Introduction to the historical study of Americans’ relationship with the natural world. Examination of the ways that natural forces help shaped American history; the ways human beings have shaped, altered, impacted, and interacted with nature over time; and the ways cultural, philosophical, scientific, and political attitudes towards the environment have changed in the course of American history, pre-history to the present.
222 A CHINESE THGHT CONFUCIUS TO MAO (Chow, K.)
Same as EALC 222 and RLST 224
This course takes a cultural approach to ideas of major Chinese thinkers from Confucius to Mao Zedong. We will begin with those who belong to the major schools of thought in ancient China: Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism. These intellectual and religious traditions will be examined in their respective historical contexts, paying special attention to their relationships with power in its various forms: social, political, symbolic, and institutional. Contrary to stereotypical accounts, Chinese thought has never ceased to evolve in response to both internal as well as external challenges. Over its long history, Chinese thought often engaged in dialogue with alien cultures. Through complex processes of integration, negotiation, and resistance, Chinese thought, like other aspects of Chinese culture, has continued to expand its horizon. Attention will be given to the impact of contact with foreign intellectual currents on Chinese thought from Buddhism and Christianity in the imperial period to science, individualism, liberalism, democratic theories and Marxism in modern times. Background of Chinese history is not required.
227 A MODERN JAPANESE HISTORY (Wilson, R.)
Same as EALC 227.
This course provides a survey of the past four centuries of history in Japan from the origins of the warrior-dominated Tokugawa regime (about 1600) through the social and economic malaise that has followed the collapse of the 1980s “bubble economy.” Every effort will also be made to introduce you to a variety of historical actors--warriors, farmers, activists, artists, entrepreneurs, politicians--with the aim of showing you the diverse perspectives from which we can view and discuss modern Japan. During this course, you will read a number of written texts, both primary and secondary, and be introduced to a variety of visual sources. By the end, you should gain a better understanding of the origins and changes within modern Japanese society and know how to initiate and carry out your own historical research.
241 A 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.
256 A BRITAIN AND WORLD SINCE 1688 (Poppel, Z.)
Survey of major themes and divisions within the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), with emphasis on events and politics related to empire and colonialism between the mid-1600s and mid-1900s. Students will become familiar with the British Empire and its contradictions, learning and analyzing relevant terminologies, chronologies, problems and sources drawn from African, Asian, American, Mediterranean and Caribbean history. Together we will study how the making of this empire can be found in histories of colonization and decolonization, in imperial myths and in imperial memories, and in the experiences of either daily or long-term catastrophes. Assignments include reading and viewing diverse materials, participating in group discussion, a shorter and a longer essay, a mid-term and final exam.
258 A Savage World: Exploring Violence during the 20th Century (Hayton, J.)
In recent years, historians have increasingly acknowledged that the 20th Century was a period marked by immense violence. During the last century, an unprecedented degree of violence gripped the globe. A number of the most destructive wars in history took place. The world saw multiple genocides, famines, and ethnic cleansings. Tens of millions of people were murdered for political, social, ethnic, and cultural differences. Whole populations and classes of people were destroyed in efforts to remodel society in murderous fits of social engineering. While war and genocide are the most well-known, violence was a pervasive aspect of life throughout the past century, and took various forms such as mass rape, terrorism, decolonization, psychological and institutional coercion.
In "Savage World: Exploring Violence during the 20th Century", we will investigate the place of violence in the past century. Why did humanity experience such tremendous levels of individual and collect violence in the past century? What can violence tell us about politics, culture and society? How was violence mobilized and then instrumentalized? Where do issues of gender, race, class, and sexuality intersect with the question of violence? How did the nature of violence change across states and time? Is violence a matter of ideology? Or are perhaps humans invariably violent? These questions and more will be our focus as we try to come to terms with the violent legacy of the 20th Century.
This course is a general education course for students with an interest in the historical causes and implications of violence. No prior knowledge of violence during the 20th Century is necessary, though previous historical study is obviously helpful.
259 A 20THC WORLD FROM MIDCENUTRY (Georgescu, D.)
This intensive course has two major aims. The first is to engage students in some of the main themes and debates of world history in the second half of the 20th century. The aspects we will address range from World War II and its global consequences, the Cold War, decolonization in the so-called “Third World,” revolutionary efforts in the 1960s and 1970s, political rule and everyday life under communism, women and gender during the Cold War, to ethnic cleansing and genocide in the 1990s. The second aim is to familiarize students with thinking comparatively about these themes and with approaching historical perspectives critically in class debates, film reviews, and essay writing.
260 A History of Russia (Randolph, J.)
In this special 8 week course, students may fulfill their History & Philosophical Perspectives or Western & Comparative Cultures general education requirements by undertaking an intensive study of fundamental debates about the history of Russia, since 1450 one of the world's political and civilizational powers. We will consider such questions as: what drove Russia's late medieval emergence as one of the great modern empires, 1450-1825? How did this political expansion affect the lives of everyday people, across much of Eurasia? What was the relationship between this empire and the great literary and artistic culture created in Russia's 'golden age' of the early 19th century? Why did this same state collapse in the early twentieth century, only to give birth to the world's first socialist state? What sort of legacies, and ambitions, has this past left for the Russia of today? Only a small part of this course will be lecture. Most class sessions will be spent on building basic historical skills, and debating the interpretation of Russia's past, based on a combination of textbook and primary source readings. Materials will include readings, audio files, film and other artifacts of visual culture. Evaluation will be based on short quizzes and writing assignments; no final exam. The instructor, Prof. John Randolph, welcomes questions: please write him at jwr@illinois.edu.
272 A TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA (Schneider, D.)
Twentieth Century U.S. History will examine the past century chronologically and thematically from 1900 to the Clinton presidency. Themes that will guide lectures and discussions will focus on the rise of the United States from a largely regional to a global power, and on the continual internal diversity of the nation. The class will emphasize topics in social, economic, political and cultural history. Readings will include textbook chapters, original documents, web-based materials and memoirs. Two mid-terms and a final as well as a number of quizzes are required. Attendance is mandatory.
276 A AFRO-AMERICAN HIST SINCE 1877 (Cha-Jua, S.)
Same as AFRO 276.
Surveys the African American experience from 1877 to the present or from the Nadir into the New Nadir.
This course examines the interaction between African American’s community-building efforts and post-slavery systems of racial oppression. It surveys transformations of African Americans from sharecropping and apartheid in the South, through migration, urbanization, and proletarianization in the North and West, to contemporary deindustrialization and racialized incarceration. This course explores the processes by which African Americans created and maintained independent institutions and a distinct culture through which they built social movements for equality, self-determination and/or social transformation. HISTORY 276/AFRO 276 chronicles several phases of the Black liberation movement, including the New Negro, civil rights, and Black Power movements. History 254 explores unification and fragmentation among African American people. Consequently, much attention is given to Black workers and issues of class, Black women and questions of gender, and the problems of African American youth and generational conflict.
Black/Africana Studies course. Therefore, we will introduce material from a transdisciplinary perspective. It also means that we will approach the material from the standpoint of the interpretations and interest of African Americans. Our concepts, theories, paradigms, and pedagogical practices will be drawn from the discipline of Africana/Black Studies. HISTORY 276/AFRO 276 is also a
United States history course. It explores an American story, but one told from the underside, a harrowing tale by the survivors of the 500-year-old holocaust of white supremacist terror. It is a tale of critique, of opposition to America as it was and is. It is the story of opposition to oppression, of opposition from diverse currents surging through waves of African American resistance. The wave represented by William Monroe Trotter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Charles Hamilton Huston, Mary McLeod Bethune Ella Baker, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson, Jr. fought to make America fulfill its promise(s), to in the words of African American poet laureate Langston Hughes “To Let America Be America Again” as they fought for inclusion, for incorporation into the United States’
polity and civil society. And for other Blacks, like Rev. Henry McNeal Turner, Marcus Garvey, Queen Mother Audrey Moore, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur and Kwame Toure` (Stokely Carmichael), those who in the words of neosoul artist D’Angelo, resisted “a slice of the Devil’s Pie,” it is a struggle for self-determination, for a return to the continent of their origin or for the creation of an autonomous African American nation. Yet for others, like Peter H. Clark, Langston Hughes, Claudia Jones, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Huey P. Newton and Angela Davis it as a struggle to transform the United States into an equalitarian society free of economic exploitation and racial oppression.
Regardless of the strategy or ideology of particular African Americans, at its core African American history is a struggle for what jazz artist Cassandra Wilson has called “Justice.” The reference to individuals and particularly individuals from diverse political perspectives is deliberate. The multivocal voice of African Americans is central to HISTORY 276/AFRO 276. This course is largely about agency, African American actions on their own behalf. The biographical approach allows us to highlight individual initiative and to interrogate the African American experience from an interior perspective, to examine the intimate Lived experiences of a broad range of African Americans over long periods of time. Some of the people whose lives we explore were “HistoryMakers,” in the sense that they were famous elite actors that left documents registering their contributions and describing their visions.
Others were unsung heroes, those of whom reggae artist Bob Marley claimed, “only the half has been told.” These include local leaders, and Black nationalists and radicals that the State sought to silence andrender invisible. Yet, the bedrock of this course is the exploration of the lived experiences of the Black masses, the unknown people who left few private records and mainly appear in history through public documents. This course combines biographical and structural approaches to produce an understanding the African American experience.
The structural approach used in this course interrogates the dialectical relationship between changing systems of U.S. capitalist political economy, an evolving federal governmental system, the institutions and ideologies of racial oppression, and the self‑emancipatory practices of African American people. It delineates the elements of racial oppression, including the institutional and ideological apparatuses. It also provides a periodization of African American sociohistorical development.
278 A US NATIVE AMERICANS SINCE 1850 (Gilbert, M.)
Same as AIS 278
Overview of the Native American experience in the United States from 1850 to the present. Using lectures, classroom discussions, visual presentations and group projects, the course will explore the major events that altered the environment Native Americans inhabited following the establishment of the United States as a continental power. Course will also examine the ways in which native peoples survived amidst the economic, political, and social forces that were unleashed by the country's evolution into a modern nation state. Readings will include primary documents, Native American commentaries, and secondary works.
281 AL1 CONSTRUCTING RACE IN AMERICA (Burgos, A.)
Same as AAS 281, AFRO 281, and LLS 281.
Course description was not available at time of publication.
283 A ASIAN AMERICAN HISTORY (Yang, C.)
Same as AAS 283.
This class explores the history of various peoples from Asia in the United States and the history of the formation of "Asian American" as a political, cultural, and racial identity. It begins with the history of Asian labor migration and its role in the rise of US capitalism and concludes with contemporary issues in Asian America under conditions of globalization. The story we ultimately tell will be about the long struggle over the ever changing meanings of "Asian American."
286 A US GENDER HISTORY SINCE 1877 (Hustak, C.)
Same as GWS 286
This course examines how gender has been historically defined in relationship to economic, political, social, and intellectual developments. We will consider the constructions of masculinity and femininity in terms of historically specific ideas and practices. Through a focus on the period from 1877 to the present, we will analyze how gender has been subject to historical change in the context of the United States. Throughout the course, we will explore the history of gender across themes of imperialism, war, family, marriage, consumer culture, environmentalism, and science. As we thematically and chronologically explore gender in American history, we will analyze how gender has intersected with class, race, and sexuality.
291 A HISTORY OF THE BIBLE (Price, D.)
Same as RLST 203
This course offers a broad historical survey of the formation and impact of Christian and Jewish Bibles through the centuries.
The course is designed to give students an academic setting for investigating the complex, ongoing history of the Bible. Our two guiding questions will be: How have historical developments informed different versions of the Bible? How have versions of the Bible informed cultural and political developments? Our objective will usually be to compare the different sensibilities and messages of major manifestations of the Bible.
The course is introductory. Therefore basic background information will be provided for each issue considered.
Our survey is divided into three parts. Part I, Bible in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, includes the following topics: Emergence of “authorized” contents for Jewish and Christian Bibles (canonicity); formation of diverse Bibles in antiquity; ancient and medieval interpretation of the Bible (focus on Jewish, with general references to Christian tradition); Bible and “heresy” (with focus on the English Wycliffite Bible). Part II, The Renaissance and Reformation of the Bible, will focus on the Bible in Renaissance humanism; Christian-Jewish relations and the Christian rediscovery of Hebrew; the Reformation and the Bible; Martin Luther’s Bible; Bible as propaganda; history of the English Bible with special focus on the King James Version. Part III, The Bible and Modernity, will consider the following issues: the Bible’s authority in the Enlightenment (Spinoza, Reimarus); Mendelssohn’s Bible and Jewish assimilation; historical criticism and source criticism (historical critique of the canon, J, E, P, D, Q, historical Jesus, Jewish Jesus, Jesus Seminar); the Bible and European missions; new issues for Bible in recent times (fundamentalism, liberation theology, environmentalism, and feminism).
Readings
1. Electronic Reserves. Many of our readings will be delivered via electronic reserves.
2. de Hamel, Christopher. The Book: A History of the Bible. London: Phaidon, 2001
3. Pelikan, Jaroslav. Whose Bible Is It? New York: Viking, 2005.
295 A HONORS COLLOQUIUM (Fritzsche, P.)
Topic: The ‘War to End All Wars:’ World War I, 1914-2014, a Century Later
On the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of World War I, this course will be examine the origins, brutality, and legacy of the war and its political, cultural, and scientific consequences in an interdisciplinary fashion. World War I changed the face of modern civilization by uprooting its certainties and augmenting its horrors. The course will explore this break in fundamental expectation in three ways, (1) by exploring the cultural and political impact of World War I on the twentieth century; (2) by investigating the experience of the war in the years 1914-1918, from its origins to its unforeseen but deadly escalation into the most catastrophic event known until then in modern history; and (3) by analyzing the cultural artifacts by which contemporaries made sense of the cataclysm. Readings will include texts by historians such as Paul Fussell and contemporary observers (Freud) as well as novelists from Ernst Jünger to Ernst Hemingway to Pat Barker.
The basic requirements of the course include class participation prompted by the readings, one short paper (4-5pp each) on one of the supplementary readings assigned over the course of the semester, two 5-minute reports on a recovered “war document” (see syllabus), and engagement in a “debate” in a team of four classmates for the benefit of the seminar (see syllabus). A final modest “capstone” research paper (ca. 10pp) will allow students to undertake their own analyses of how the war embedded itself into a single cultural or political artifact (“Memorial Stadium,” for example, or the gas mask). In this way, students will become the owners of their own interpretations. At the end of the course, students will present their research findings and suggest how those findings illuminate the broader questions under discussion.
300 A TOPICS IN FILM AND HISTORY (Cha-Jua, S.)
Same as MACS 300
Topic: Film and the African American Experience
Explores the representation of African Americans in U.S. film. It explores the conflicting presentation of the Black image, male and female, in film by white and Black film makers and the interpretation of those images by critics and activists from the Blacks initial appearance in U.S. films through the “coon” and race films of the 1910-40s, the racial liberal films of the 1950s-60s, to blaxploitation, to the Black cinema movement of the 1970s-80s, especially the Los Angeles School, the “urban” contemporary moment. Films from The course will examine mainstream “Hollywood” films and works by independent filmmakers, Black and white with a eye toward examining the conflicting presentations of the Black image and exploring how the representation of Blacks has changed over time and across different genres of film. It is especially concerned with how the struggle over the Black filmic image resonates with broader social struggles and issues surrounding African American life and history. Of utmost important, is examining the sociohistorical context, the political, social and economic environment in which film is created, viewed, and understood. The course will also explore the question of Black identity through the treatment of the Black family, religion, and the issues of color, gender, class, sexuality, and their interrelation. An important aspect of the course will be examination of filmmakers’ depiction of movement activists and struggles for social change.
300 B TOPICS IN FILM AND HISTORY (Vostral, S.)
Same as MACS 300
Topic: Film and Gender
Examines women in Hollywood cinema, from directors, to actresses to writers, and also the representations of womanhood on film. Uses gender analysis to understand complexities and ambiguities of film as a medium of popular culture, art, and also social commentary, especially in regards to race, sexuality and also masculinity. Students will participate in choosing films for analysis.
300 C TOPICS IN FILM AND HISTORY (Prochaska, D.)
Same as MACS 300
Topic: History and Visual Culture
This course is situated at the interface between history and visual culture. How does visual history differ from written history? How do visual media – films, photos – as well as the Internet and new social media inform and contribute to history? How do we historians become visually literate? We shall tackle these and other questions not so much by reading abstract theory and boring academic studies; instead, we will actually practice history and visual culture by working on a series of projects that illuminate bigger issues and boost visual literacy. For each unit, students will have an opportunity to work both independently, and in small groups engaging in a set of structured exercises, written and visual research, and presentations with the aim of producing class projects in history and visual culture. Projects range from the visual antics of the activist group Anonymous to protest images of and from the Arab Spring to local colonial visual culture sites from Egypt and Algeria to India and Senegal.
No course prerequisites, no background in media or visual culture are necessary; only a willingness to participate actively and have fun.
314 A MATERIAL CULTURE (Fouche, R. and Weightman, D.)
Topic: The Design, Culture, and Engineering of the Automobile
The automobile has a nearly ubiquitous presence within contemporary societies around the globe. This course will emphasize a comparative approach to understand how the automobile fits into global political, economic, and social institutional structures. We will examine the car from many angles, from questions of technology to those of gender and ethnicity, from management to environmentalism. By embracing the histories of design, business, policy, labor, the environment, technology, and culture, this course seeks a holistic understanding of the role of the car in social and cultural life.
345 A MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION (McLaughlin, M.)
Same as MDVL 345 and RLST 345.
Course description was not available at time of publication.
350 A 19THC ROMANTICISM & POLITICS (Liebersohn, H.)
This course has four interlinked themes: how the Romantic imagination emerged from the age of the French Revolution and transformed European politics; how nineteenth-century thinkers, aided by Romanticism, re-imagined the revolutionary principles of liberty, equality and fraternity; how the nation-state emerged victorious from the arguments over the revolutionary legacy; and how the nation-state became the engine driving the formation of new, global empires. Readings will include Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; J.S. Mill, On Liberty; John Ruskin, Genius of John Ruskin; and Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost.
354 A TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE (Carrington, T.)
A historian's tools are as varied as those of a professional photographer; in fact, like the photographer, the historian uses various lenses to view the past through different filters, from varying angles, and with specific focal points. This course will use the tools -- or lenses -- of cultural history to gain a better view of a period that saw the world start to take on the shapes it has today: the twentieth century. The twentieth century also saw the explosion of many new media of expression, and we will use these to make sense of the dynamics and meanings of this past century's many social, political, and economic changes. As such, students from all backgrounds will become familiar with not only the bevy of tools used by cultural historians -- from novels to diaries to art to music to film to theater -- but also the unique angles these historical lenses make available, including the perception and internalization of modernity and urbanization; gender struggles and the articulation of masculinities and femininities; the intimate and psychological sides of revolution and conflict; generational wars and the rise of youth culture; and other, perhaps less commonly studied phenomena of Europe's twentieth century. Class meetings will feature lecture and discussion of the cultural artifacts students will read, view, and analyze. There will be a midterm and a final, as well as written work in the form of original, creative essays.
369 A SPAIN AND PORTUGAL FROM 1808 (Jacobsen, N.)
This is the second part of the two-semester sequence on the history of Spain and Portugal. Its topic is the development of nation-states since the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian peninsula in 1808 and the collapse of the two absolutist monarchies and empires. Themes include geography and the issue of “national character”; multiculturalism and exclusion; nationhood and world powers; French Revolution and loss of empires; liberalism and a century of constitutional monarchies; Spanish Republic and civil war; Franco's dictatorship; contemporary "European" Spain: from affluence to depression; republic, Estado Novo, the final crisis of Portuguese colonialism in Africa and the democratic revolution in Portugal. The course will stress economic, social, and political structures, cycles, and events. There will be several class meetings dedicated to religious issues and the vibrant world-class artistic movements. The histories of the modern Iberian nations present an exciting counterpoint to standard stories about European civilization and progress based on northwestern Europe.
371 A THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (Morrissey, R.)
In this course we examine this momentous Founding age of American History. We explore the growing estrangement of American colonies from Great Britain and the culmination of this process in the Declaration of Independence. Then we look at the process and controversies involved in creating a new nation, and the United States government.
375 A SOC HISTORY INDUS AM TO 1918 (Schneider, D.)
American Social History focuses both on the history of everyday life and on the larger social changes that affected American society in lasting and profound ways between the 1840s and 1920. This class will pay special attention to the interaction of people from different social classes with each other and to the effects of political and economic developments on the daily lives of ordinary people. Important themes will include: immigration, the growth of cities, the organization of labor, African Americans and industrialization, women workers and mass culture. Prerequisite for this class is a basic knowledge of U.S. history since the mid-19th century. Consistent class participation, two in-class examinations and a paper will be the most important parts of the class assessment
377 A UNITED STATES SINCE 1932 (Mumford, K.)
Topic: Long Civil Rights Movement
This course combines lectures, discussions, and presentations to understand the political, social, and legal history of the United States civil rights movement, from the early stirrings in the New Deal to the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the rioting protests and black victory at the election polls. How can students of history make sense of the movement, understand its culture, diversify its subjects, and reconsider traditional ideas of the movement’s causes and consequences?
396 A SPECIAL TOPICS (Seidelman, R.)
Topic: Debating Israel’s History
Israel’s history is hotly contested. Passionate and varied positions exist on terminology, the causes of historical events and the impact of their outcomes. In this course we will critically examine the depiction of Israeli history in art, film and historiography. We will explore the concept of parallel narratives as it can be found in various aspects of Israeli history: leadership, society, institutions and war. The aims of this course are: 1) to further understanding of Israeli history 2) to sharpen critical analysis skills through close readings of historiography, historical documents and non-textual historical representations. We will explore the impact of various methods of depiction while examining the benefits and challenges that ambiguity poses for the student of history.
396 B SPECIAL TOPICS (Hoxie, F.)
Topic: Public History
How is history presented to the general public? What separates "good" public history from "bad" public history? How is presenting history to the public different from the formal communication typically employed by professional scholars (books, scholarly articles, etc.)? This course will examine several genres historians have employed to present history in the public arena, including documentary films, public memorials, legal testimony in court proceedings and museum exhibits aimed at a general audience. Students will explore and evaluate both the social dynamics affecting public understandings of the past and the specific techniques historians employ to communicate complex ideas and events to a general audience. The course will involve both an exploration of these methods for conveying historical materials to the public and a major collaborative project in which students will work together to produce an online exhibit on a significant event in the history of the University of Illinois.
396 C SPECIAL TOPICS (Barrett, J.)
Topic: The Irish in Ireland and America
The course, which concentrates on the modern period from the Irish Famine (1840s to recent times), is an experiment. It mixes some key themes in Irish history, notably the Famine, Irish nationalism and revolution, the rise of the modern Irish Republic, and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, with a more extensive treatment of Irish immigrants, Irish Americans, and their impact on society, politics, and culture in the US. The course will employ a variety of media and will be assessed on the basis of two essay exams, a paper, and participation in class discussions.
396 E SPECIAL TOPICS (Chaplin, T.)
Meets with GWS 395, Section E, CRN: 57743
Topic: Sexuality in Modern Europe
This course will investigate how scholars of Modern Europe (from the 18thC to the present) have approached sexuality as an object of historical inquiry. What is sexuality? How is it practiced, produced, policed, constructed, represented, liberated, controlled? How do religion, the law, and the media influence the ways that we understand sexual identity and sexual practices? We shall begin by investigating the theoretical questions circumscribing work in this field. Our readings will be structured chronologically and thematically around such topics as pornography and the erotic, queer sexualities, hermaphroditism, prostitution, sex and fascism, masturbation, sexual education, colonialism and sex, sexual revolutions, sex and the Internet, and sex and disease. As well as introducing you to scholarship in the field of the history of sexuality, our course is designed to enhance your research and writing abilities. Thus, in addition to completing regular writing assignments and an in-class multi-media presentation , you will be expected to write a short research paper based on a topic of your choosing drawn from the themes that we will be studying this semester. Our work will include analyses of sexuality in art, literature, music, advertising, and film.
396 G SPECIAL TOPICS (Ali, T.)
Topic: Peasants and Politics in South Asia
This course examines the relationship between peasant producers and political processes in South Asia during the colonial and post-colonial periods, from the late eighteenth century to the present-day. We will look at peasant insurgencies, peasant involvement in the anti-colonial nationalist movements, and the day-to-day relationship between the state and the peasantry in both the colonial and post-colonial periods. In addition to the political thoughts and actions of the peasantry, the course examines how South Asian state administrators, political leaders, and intellectuals thought about peasant producers. The course will also introduce students to the influential subalternist school of South Asian history.
396 H SPECIAL TOPICS (Bucheli, M.)
Topic: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and History
The operations of multinational corporations in poor countries have traditionally been vilified by those who believe they mainly exploit the peoples and resources of those countries, or celebrated by those who believe they bring jobs, development, and prosperity to areas that would not have experienced it otherwise. This course will engage in this debate by exploring the historical expansion of US and European multinational corporations in Latin America and Africa between the late nineteenth century and the late twentieth century. We will focus on the political and social relationships between the multinationals and the domestic societies in sectors such as mining and agriculture. We will also study different theoretical approaches that try to understand the role of multinationals in social and economic development as well as in the creation of a global economy.
400 G2/G4/U3 WAR, SOC, POLITICS, & CULTURE (Reagan, L.)
Topic: Vietnam
For many, perhaps most, Americans, the word Vietnam immediately brings to mind “The Vietnam War” and with it a whole host of images and ideas. Vietnam is not thought of as a country or a people, but as a war. This course will analyze the American War in Vietnam, but we will be investigating much more as well. We will study the American-Vietnam War’s origins, its effects in Vietnam, in the U.S., and around the world along with its ongoing legacies. Unexploded bombs and Agent Orange still threaten and harm Vietnamese and others in the region; American veterans, their families, and children continue to suffer the results of herbicide spraying during the war too. The War’s cultural, economic, and political legacies will be examined as well. Exactly when the war began and even when it ended will be up for discussion just as it is among historians. The course also includes the history and culture of Vietnam prior to the American presence there. We will trace the history of European colonialism in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, and Vietnamese resistance to European colonizers. Finally, the course studies post-war Vietnam. We will look at how Vietnam remembers the same War in its museums and monuments and study the society it has made at the turn of the twenty-first century.
405 G2/G4/U3 HISTORY OF BRAZIL FROM 1808 (Davila, W.)
Examines racial and ethnic diversity, immigration and social change in the largest nation in Latin America. Themes include development, populism and dictatorship.
406 G2/G4/U3 HISTORY OF MEXICO FROM 1519 (Cook, K.)
This course explores the history of Mexico from the first encounters between indigenous peoples, Spaniards, and Africans, to the present. We will trace the social, religious, cultural and political transformations as new societies emerged under colonial rule. We will then examine how these patterns contributed to the formation of the modern nation of Mexico, from the nineteenth-century movements of Independence, to the 1910 Mexican Revolution and beyond. Topics include the role of indigenous peoples and women in the creation of the modern nation, social inequalities, borderlands, struggles for rights, and globalization. Through the lens of primary sources that include novels, essays, letters, newspapers and film, we will analyze how engagement with the past continues to inform and shape Mexican identities.
442 G4/U3 ROMAN LAW AND LEGAL TRAD (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 and popular assemblies, Roman officials and 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 both public and private law, and how legal processes impacted the lives of individual Romans.
445 G2/G4/U3 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND (Symes, C.)
Same as MDVL 444
This course is devoted to some key sources and topics of English history, from the end of Roman rule in Britain (c. 410) to the fifteenth century. Readings and discussions will focus on the formation of a distinctive Anglo-Saxon culture, the continuity and discontinuity of identities and institutions before and after the Norman conquest of 1066, the ongoing tensions resulting from internal and external colonization, and significant cultural and social developments. Recurrent themes include the emergence of distinctive legal and political institutions, the roles of women, the status of commoners, intellectual trends, and the importance of public media for the dissemination of ideas (writing, performance). Students will be expected to read secondary scholarship and primary sources in English, as well as some texts in Middle English; to participate actively in class discussions and exercises; and to write several papers. Graduate students will complete additional readings and a research paper or critical review essay.
455 G2/G4/U3 MODERN FRANCE (Chaplin, T.)
Topic: 1939-Present
For centuries, France has symbolized the height of European culture. Stereotypes about France and the French abound; it is the country of rude waiters, of beautiful women, of magnificent châteaux. France is renowned for its wine, cheese and haute couture, for its intellectuals and films, and for its crowning glory, Paris, often called the “city of lights.” With its revolutionary, intellectual and cultural traditions, France has long influenced and fascinated both America and the world. However, as the twentieth century progressed French dominance waned. How do we explain the changing status of this once invincible nation? From World War II and the Vichy regime, through occupation, collaboration and resistance, from Marxism and intellectual “mandarins” through the politically fragile Fourth Republic, from decolonization and Gaullism through student revolutions and sexual revolutions, from the theoretical battles over feminism, structuralism and post-structuralism, to the geographic battles over immigration and race, from modernization and technological change to globalization, we will study the history of modern France with an aim towards understanding France’s shifting identity in the postwar world. Does France continue to wield influence on the world's stage? If so, how? To what extent are the stereotypes that we hold about France and the French grounded in reality? By examining the events, ideas, people and institutions that have shaped the French nation over the course of the last sixty years, we will formulate responses to these and other questions. In addition to fiction, historical monographs and other texts, the critical analysis of film, music and television will be integral to our work.
461 G2/G4/U3 RUSSIA- PETER THE GREAT TO REV (Steinberg, M.)
Russian politics, society, and culture from Peter the Great’s “revolutionary” efforts to transform Russia into a modern society to the political and social revolutions of 1917. Above all, the course focuses on history as it was lived, made, and experienced by contemporaries and on our own efforts to understand it. Themes include the exercise and justifications of power; the motivations and values of rebels and dissidents of all sorts; artistic expressions; the life and culture of ordinary Russians; and competing ideas about the state, the individual, community, nation, religion, and morality. Most of the readings are primary texts, written by participants and witnesses. Weekly discussions of readings comprise an important part of the course. Requirements also include two take-home examination essays and an in-class final exam.
466 G4/U3 THE BALKANS (Todorova, M.)
Topic: The Balkans Through Literature & Film
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, whose obverse side 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 into nation 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, their state and nation building are major problems of comparative analysis. Other topics cover ethnic conflict and/or accommodation, inter-Balkan relations, and the role of the great powers in the region. Finally, a close look will be taken on contemporary developments in the Balkans, especially the Yugoslav crisis. By reading and discussing fictional work and showing several films by Balkan authors, the course will provide a look also at the intellectual production of the region. Books for discussion are assigned on a weekly basis. Additional texts, maps and other materials will be provided by the professor.
467 G4/U3 EASTERN EUROPE (Hitchins, K.)
Topic: Eastern Europe Since 1919
The region between Western Europe and the Soviet Union /Russia in the twentieth century was (and is) a world of contradictions. We see them in political experiments ranging from liberalism and peasantism to fascism and communism; in the creation of democratic institutions and the failure of democracy; in nationalism before, during, and after Communism; in cultural integration into urban Europe and the persistence of the folk spirit of the village; in strivings to industrialize and the persistence of agriculture; and in the advance of materialism and the deepening of traditional spirituality. Within this broad context, we shall examine society and politics and national identity in the 1920s and 1930s, the nature of the post-World War II Communist regimes, and the transition to democracy and integration into Europe after 1989. We shall also have to decide how, and to what extent, Eastern Europe differed from the West and whether, in the twentieth century, the gap between them was closed. The countries to be studied are Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania.
472 G4/U3 IMMIGRANT AMERICA (Fu, P.)
Topic: Greater China in Illinois: Student Culture and Trans-Pacific Connections
This course is n exploration of the cultural history of Chinese students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the tans-Pacific impacts of this history. The rapidly expanding community of students from Greater China is obvious to any casual observer of the campus life. In 2012, Chinese students are the largest international student group at UIUC. Actually since at least the 1920s, students from Greater China have made a strong presence at the UIUC and, through their work and activities after returning to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, UIUC has established a strong reputation across the Pacific. But what have been the changed experiences of the Chinese students at UIUC and how have their experiences shaped their intellectual outlook and cultural values? In what ways have the strong presence of the students from Greater China impacted the institutional infrastructure and educational values of UIUC? This course also aims to teach students how to do research and to map out the complex history of a relatively little-known aspect of the lived experiences, cultural politics, and educational impacts of students from Greater China in Illinois and the US. Students will read books about Chinese students in the US and Chinese-US relations in the twentieth-century, do research at the University Archive, conduct interviews with Chinese students, faculty and community members, and make a documentary film together.
492 C HISTORIOGRAPHY AND METHODOLOGY (Crowston, C.)
This course is intended to provide honors students with an overview of key traditions, debates and techniques in history. What is the purpose of writing about history? What are "good" and "bad" history? What are the most important problems historians encounter in investigating the past? What research strategies do they use to produce knowledge about the past? This course will not provide definitive answers to these questions, but it will introduce you to a wide range of historians' responses, and hopefully leave you with a better sense of where you stand. We will study a range of readings from different time periods and geographical locations selected to highlight contrasting theoretical standpoints and methodological approaches. We will also explore the excellent resources of our library, including electronic resources and primary source materials. It is intended that the course will strengthen your practical research and writing skills, as well as deepen your understanding of important debates and practices in the discipline of history.
We will explore these issues not only for their intrinsic interest, but also for their relevance to your own research plans, as you prepare to undertake your senior honors thesis. The core assignment of this course will be the writing of a thesis research proposal, due at the end of the semester. You are encouraged to explore the historiography of your chosen field as widely as possible, and to consider the relevance to your own research interests of the topics we will be covering.
495 BH HONORS RESEARCH & WRITING SEM (Hoxie, F.)
Topic: American Lives
Meets with 498 B
See Course Description for HIST 498 B
495 CH HONORS RESEARCH & WRITING SEM (Hitchins, K.)
Topic: Empires: Mongols, Mughals, and Ottoman Turks
Meets with 498 C
See Course Description for HIST 498 C
495 DH HONORS RESEARCH & WRITING SEM (McLaughlin, M.)
Topic: Wealth and Poverty in the History of Christianity
Meets with 498 D
See Course Description for HIST 498 D
495 HH HONORS RESEARCH & WRITING SEM (Prochaska, D.)
Topic: History of the Present
Meets with 498 H
See Course Description for HIST 498 H
495 KH HONORS RESEARCH & WRITING SEM (Smith, M.)
Topic: The Global 1960s from below
Meets with 498 K
See Course Description for HIST 498 K
498 B RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Hoxie, F.)
Topic: American Lives
Meets with 495 BH
Everyone has a story. People love to tell the story of their lives. Libraries hold thousands of volumes in which people tell us how they became who they are (or were). Together, autobiographies can open a unique window on a historical era, telling us something about how big events shaped individual lives. This seminar will explore the past two centuries of U.S. history through reading and discussing several classic autobiographies, beginning with Benjamin Franklin at the time of the American Revolution and ending with a life lived in the aftermath of the Rock and Roll Revolution. Students will also develop an individual research project based on an autobiography that represents a significant chapter in the American history.
498 C RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Hitchins, K.)
Topic: Empires: Mongols, Mughals, and Ottoman Turks
Meets with 495 CH
An investigation of empires through a comparative study of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and his successors, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire in India, and the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia and the Balkans. The formation of empires, the organization of armies and the methods of warfare used, conquests and the treatment of conquered peoples, religious and legal institutions, especially Islamic, and relations with Europe will be compared. Besides surveys of each empire, we shall consider the nature of empires, in general, from Roman times to the twentieth century and shall place our three case studies within that broad context. Readings and discussions and a research paper with emphasis on the art of writing.
498 D RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (McLaughlin, M.)
Topic: Wealth and Poverty in the History of Christianity
Meets with 495 DH
Course description was not available at time of publication.
498 H RESEARCH AND WTITING SEMINAR (Prochaska, D.)
Topic: History of the Present
Meets with 495 HH
This course uses the history of the present (including film) to introduce students to the stakes involved in writing history. Using the present and recent past, we will step behind today’s headlines and research and write individually and collectively a historical genealogy of the present. (In addition, critically viewing films allows visual sources to be combined in the mix with written materials.) The course is organized thematically around key sites of contention with the aim of students developing their own structured historical interpretations of the present in a series of written work, including a final research paper.
498 K RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Smith, M.)
Topic: The Global 1960s from Below
Meets with 495 KH
The Sixties/1960s were filled with conflict, drama, and passion across the globe in which world events held significance across national boundaries and raised questions about the grandest themes: equality and justice, citizenship and democracy, war and peace. By considering the Global 1960s from Below as an historical problem, this course aims to broaden our knowledge of the era by highlighting selected revolutions, ideologies, and cultural phenomena. Revolutionary transformation and liberation are the course's main themes; the objective is to produce a research paper based on primary sources. In order to accomplish this, classes will focus on interdisciplinary methods and theories. Students are expected to be thoughtfully, imaginatively, and actively engaged with readings, lectures, film viewings, musical and performance activities, and discussions.
499 A THESIS SEMINAR (Randolph, J.)
This seminar is required of all seniors in the Honors Program, and is designed to be taken concurrently with History 493 (Honors Senior Thesis). It will meet bi-weekly in the fall semester and will become a weekly writing workshop in the spring. Throughout the year, it will supplement individual students' meetings with their primary advisors. Its purpose is to provide an intellectually supportive environment in which students work together on common methodological problems, share the results of their research, and critique developing projects. Students with questions about this course are encouraged to contact the instructor, John Randolph (Associate Professor, Department of History, jwr@illinois.edu <mailto:jwr@illinois.edu> ).
502 A PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Todorova, M.)
Topic: Comparative Nationalism
Nationalism, an issue that was considered to have passed its peak, now dominates world politics and permeates political discourse. Not only is a thorough grasp of this phenomenon crucial to the understanding of such imposing institutional constructions-in-process as the European Union, it is at the bottom of tensions and conflicts that are garbed in a religious rhetorical veil, and constitute much of the agenda of today’s “war on terror.” What explains the recurrence, persistence and ubiquity of this phenomenon? What are its peculiar manifestations in different historical periods? Which are the main forms of its articulation? How does it differ across geographical borders, class boundaries, gender and generational cleavages?
In its first part, this graduate seminar will focus on the theories of nationalism, and will deal with problems of definition, the ancient or modern origins of nationalism, its main chronological and geographical varieties and the models proposed to describe them, the typology of nationalist movements and, finally, the articulation of the nationalist discourse. The readings draw on a variety of approaches – historical, sociological, anthropological, literary, and psychological -- and aim at providing a solid introduction to the scholarly literature. They are clustered around a list of mandatory books (at Illini Bookstores), supplemented by articles, reviews and discussion that will be available during the course. The second part of the course is supposed to lead to the completion of a paper which can deal with a particular aspect of any one of the world's nationalisms, with its characteristics in a given historical period, or its evolution over time, as well as comparisons between the manifestations of different nationalisms. .
502 B PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Barrett, J. and Koenker, D.)
Topic: Comparative Working Class History
This reading seminar in comparative working class history will embrace several traditional topics -- work, trade unions, strikes and other forms of working class protest, working class politics and culture, but it will also develop several less typical themes – consumption, everyday life, leisure pursuits, and personal as well as collective forms of identity. Although the major emphasis will be on US, Russian, and Western European working class life, we expect to include as well some readings on East Asia, Latin America, and Africa. We also expect to include at least one session specifically on colonial labor. The course is intended for History graduate students who are preparing a field in comparative working class history, but also for students in other fields and other disciplines who have interests in the study of working class life. Professor Koenker is a historian of the Russian Revolution and Soviet Russia. Her current interest lies in consumption, including vacation travel, and she is working on a new project on consumer communism in the Soviet 1960s. Professor Barrett is a historian of the twentieth century US. His past research includes the study of work, racial and ethnic identity in diverse working class communities, and socialism and communism in the USA. His current research includes work on the relations between racial and ethnic groups in the large industrial city and on “blue-collar cosmopolitans.” Assessment will be based engagement in seminar discussions, on two short papers, one probably based on a worker’s personal narrative, and on a longer historiographical paper on a topic chosen by the student in consultation with the instructors.
550 B PROB EARLY MOD EUROPEAN HIST (Crowston, C.)
Topic: Early Modern Economies: Circulation and Exchange of Ideas, Bodies, and Goods, 1600-1800
This course will examine the circulation and exchange of ideas, bodies in early modern Europe. We will focus on networks and systems for the transmission of these items as well as contemporary and historical theories of how and why such systems came into being and evolved over time. We will investigate ways in which these networks both reflected existing social hierarchies and inequalities and helped constitute new groups and relations. The course will also attend to the conceptual and practical overlaps between economic, social and cultural forms of exchange. For example, we will note analogies drawn between the circulation of blood, discovered by Harvey in 1628, and the circulation of money and credit, seen as the “lifeblood” of the nation. We will also examine forms of circulation that stretched beyond Europe, across the Atlantic and to the east.
551 A PROBLEMS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY SINCE 1789 (Micale, M.)
Topic: Varieties of Cultural History
The past generation has seen a stunning expansion in the professional practice of cultural history. This seminar will introduce graduate students to a representative sampling of the best scholarship produced in the past two decades under the cultural history rubric. Each week we will explore a major empirical study that exemplifies a particular conceptualization of cultural history. Our chronological emphasis will remain on modern and early modern Europe with a geographical emphasis on France.
The principal questions underpinning the seminar ask: What are the chief current-day genres of cultural history? Why in recent years has the category of cultural history become so powerful and appealing? How does cultural history relate to and differ from other branches of the discipline, such as political, social, and intellectual history? What disciplinary syntheses are involved in this body of scholarship, and what theoretical positions and methodological strategies does it employ? What is the repertoire of evidence, and of interpretative and analytical categories, being used in the historiography of cultural history?
The weekly themes will most likely include the following: cultural history as the history of mentalités; the cultural history of the self; the study of past political cultures; the cultural history of the social; the cultural history of the book; the cultural history of the senses; the history of culture and race; memory and cultural history; the history of mass culture; the cultural history of the city; cultural history as the history of intellectuals; and cultural history as storytelling.
572 A PROB IN US HIST SINCE 1815 (Hoganson, K.)
Topic: US and the World
This course considers the United States in world context. Readings explore such topics as the Atlantic world, borderlands, expansion, comparative history, cultures of imperialism, transnational activism, migration, Americanization, Orientalism, inter-empires, outposts, occupations, development, militarization, and globalization. We will discuss the spatial turn, various critiques of the nation-centered historiographical tradition, the relevance of postcolonial theory to the United States, and the relation between U.S. history and world history.
The course will be run as a problems class.
572 B PROB IN US HIST SINCE 1815 (Roediger, D.)
Topic: Racial Formation in 19th Century US
This course, taught in a seminar format, centers on the reading and discussion of ten books and several articles. The readings open onto broad questions regarding the ways in which ideas about race, and racist practices, developed out of the experience of settler colonialism as well as out of racial slavery. With exceptions drawn from the writings of Herman Melville, the books are historical, albeit interdisciplinary, in their approaches. Students will report on one book not read by classmates and will lead discussion (with a partner) once during the semester. Short (2-3 pp.) writing assignments accompany those tasks. A longer (15-18 pp.) final paper puts a primary source (or sources) of the student's choosing into dialogue with the historians' works. For that reason the course may also be taken as a research seminar.
575 A PROBLEMS AFRICAN AMERICAN HIST (Mumford, K.)
Meets with AFRO 501
This course examines key writings in African American historiography from emancipation to the late-twentieth century. Reconstruction and disenfranchisement; origins and impact of Jim Crow; debates over leadership, uplift, and respectability, the Great Migration and the New Negro; rise of radicalism and internationalism; postwar urbanization, neighborhoods, and social policy; the southern and northern civil rights movements; black power politics; intersections of race, gender and sexuality; the urban crisis and electoral politics.
591 A HISTORY AND SOCIAL THEORY (Jacobsen, N.)
Topic: Social Theory
Historians need to embed their interpretations of the past within theoretical frameworks, even if we only use them as crutches to give meaning to our interpretations of the data we find in the archives. Without purposeful reflection on theoretical approaches, historians are condemned to employ implicit conceptual approaches without acknowledging them and perhaps without being aware of them. The range of theoretical approaches available to us is broader than ever, and this course will allow us to sample some works especially useful for historians from sociology, political science, political economy, anthropology, feminism and post-structuralist interpretive theory. Some of the readings will not be easy, but comprehending the finer points of these works – in our own readings and in discussion – can be a wonderful, enlightening experience, with impact on our work as historians for years to come. The written assignments, beyond the reflection papers on individual texts, will ask to apply specific theories to specific historiographical issues of the student’s choice.
594 A INTRO HISTORICAL WRITING (Barnes, T. and Fritzsche, P.)
Will help students produce an original contribution to historical scholarship while introducing them to disciplinary issues that concern historians no matter what their interest or level of achievement. This seminar for first-year History Department graduate students is the second half of the introductory graduate sequence and will focus on the process of writing an original piece of historical research.
597 D READING COURSE (Fouche, R.)