100 Level
100 GLOBAL HISTORY (Stewart)
This course will be mainly dedicated to in-coming freshman students, but will include places for upperclass education students. We will begin with trying to understand what makes up 'world history', the difference between 'world' and 'global' and what makes up the 'global' past. We will conclude with the issues that have made 'global' a controversial word. The first set of 'worlds' we will look at are those that date from the 7th century CE, but the main focus of this course will be from the time old worlds began to collide on a global scale, from the 17th century onwards. What are the common historical forces and processes that impacted the lives of native Americans and Chinese peasants in 1600? African urban dwellers and European farmers? How did these change during the next 400 years? What are the ways societies have organized themselves and interacted with each other since we entered a 'global world?' How and why have 'national' cultures been constructed? How have they tried to protect themselves and how have they been eroded? How do people respond to shrinking worlds? In the arts, poetry, musics? How have universal quests: for trade, to confront disease, for ideological dominance, agricultural surplus, religious superiority and energy resources formed our global community? Grading will be based on a mid-term and final, in-class quizzes and projects, an out-of-class essay and attendance at lectures, including five assigned meetings on Wednesday afternoons at 4.00 p.m. (for all Global Studies courses).
106 MODERN LATIN AMERICA (Jacobsen)
This course will draw out some threads in the dramatic and conflictive development of Latin American nations between the Wars of Independence and the present. What happened to black slaves and Indians after the overthrow of colonialism? How can we explain the many revolutions and military dictators? Did export agriculture and dependence from industrialized nations impoverish Latin America? Did "Uncle Sam" help or hinder development and democracy among his southern neighbors? What are the origins for the huge cities that dominate most Latin American nations today and how do people cope with them? Have Latin American men become less "machista" over the past two centuries, and how precisely has this affected women? What is the role of the Catholic church and popular religiosity, and will Latin America "turn protestant" any time soon?
These and other issues will be explored through lectures and discussions in this class.
120 EAST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS (Chow)
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: the making of a cultural system of East Asia when Japan was under the influence of Chinese culture. We will discuss how, before the nineteenth century, despite certain shared cultural elements, indigenous cultures and unique historical developments of these countries had resulted in contrasting societies. The second process witnessed the decline of China in the nineteenth century as a dominant political and cultural power in East Asia. Attention will be given to the different paths each of these countries had taken in its attempt to build a modern state in response to the profound challenge and intrusion of European imperialism. One of the important objectives of this course is to challenge many of the stereotypes about the cultures and histories of East Asia. Readings include several very interesting literary works and an autobiography.
140 WESTERN CIV TO 1660-ACP (Symes)
Please see course description for 141AL1.
140 WESTERN CIV TO 1660-ACP (Symes)
Please see course description for 141AL1.
141AL1 WESTERN CIV TO 1660 (Symes)
Spanning nearly three thousand years of human endeavor, this course surveys the major developments, crises, events, and movements that shaped societies from ancient Mesopotamia to early modern England. In essence, students will learn to analyze the key problems and processes that shaped the modern world, and to better understand its institutions, ideologies, and cultures. 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 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.
141AL2 WESTERN CIV TO 1660 (Ramsbottom)
"Western Civilization" refers to the history of European peoples and to related cultures around the world. This course takes us from the very beginnings of large-scale society, through the rise and fall of classical empires, to the emergence of a militant Christianity in medieval Europe and its interaction with other cultures.
Today "Western Civilization" has also come to mean a set of principles: the struggle of social groups for legal recognition, reliance on scientific and rational inquiry, and the attempt to balance the power of the government with the individual's right to conscience. How different from this were the lives that people lived in the past?
Readings include a textbook, primary sources, and a couple of paperbacks. Students should also be prepared to do a little writing every week.
142 WESTERN CIV SINCE 1660 (Matheson, T.)
This course is intended as an introduction to the major questions and concepts in modern European history from the late seventeenth century to the present. Over the course of the past three and a half centuries, European development (cultural, economic, political, and intellectual), has had an enormous impact on shaping the world we live in today. European history has also been vital to the creation of what we think of as identity: how we define and describe ourselves, and how we define and describe others. This semester, while learning how events, ideologies, and isms (nationalism, imperialism, fascism, feminism, etc.) have contributed to the evolution of European history, we will be paying particular attention to the exploration of one central concern: the construction of our own uniquely modern identities. What motivates us to act in the ways that we do? What kinds of experiences have led us to adopt particular political and religious beliefs? What types of knowledge guide our perceptions concerning others and ourselves? Our goal will be to learn what it means to think historically about the connections between the development of modern Europe and the development of the modern individual. The historical analysis of music, art and film as well as textual sources will be integral to our work.
143 WESTERN CIV SINCE 1660-ACP (Matheson, T.))
Please see course description for 142AL1.
170 US HIST TO 1877-ACP (Hoxie)
Please see course description for 171AL1.
171AL1 US HIST TO 1877 (Hoxie)
A survey of American history from the first encounter between Native Americans and Europeans until 1877 when the American Civil War was finally resolved at the end of the reconstruction era. During this three-hundred year time period European travelers transformed themselves from nave adventurers into Americans who called the continent their homeland. At the same time all of the peoples of North America--those who came freely as settlers, those who were already resident there and those who came as slaves or indentured servants--gradually came to see their settlements as part of something called The United States of America. How did this happen?
This course will explore two major questions. First, how was it that the unstable settlements Europeans founded along the Atlantic became a nation? Through lectures, readings and discussions students will explore how his transformation and re-definition took place.
Second we will ask, why did the nation that emerged in North America develop a distinctive culture? Why is it not like countries with similar histories; countries like Canada, Australia, Argentina or South Africa? To answer this second question, students will pay special attention to four paradoxes that mark the American past. First, early settlers in North America favored democracy, but defended both slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans. Second, they created a system of self-government for men but not for women. Third, they promoted economic opportunity for all while protecting the economic privileges of the few. And fourth, they celebrated the beauty of their new homeland while desecrating its resources and hunting many of its creatures into extinction. This course will examine these puzzling aspects of American culture and the struggles they inspired. We will search not only for the sources of these paradoxes, but for evidence of their impact on the creation of a distinctive national culture. Students will embark on this search with the assistance of a textbook, a collection of primary documents, and a few additional readings. Students will take a midterm and a final examination and write one interpretive essay.
172AL1 US HIST SINCE 1877 (Barrett)
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 late 19th and 20th centuries. The course is particularly concerned with how common Americans experienced these changes and, indeed, helped to create such change. 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.
198RB FRESHMAN SEMINAR (Burkhardt)
Topic: Historical Perspectives in Science, Technology and Society
In this seminar we will examine selected episodes in the history of science and technology as a means of raising questions relating to the interrelations of science, technology, and society today. We will look at four main historical areas: the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, the Darwinian Revolution of the 19th century, science and the Second World War, and the modern relations of science and technology. Included among our specific topics will be the science and politics of the case of Galileo, the social background to Darwin's theory of natural selection, the importance of World War II for American science, and public views of the promises and perils of modern biotechnology.
Requirements: This is a course for Chancellor's Scholars (students in the Campus Honors Program). Others may enroll with the consent of the instructor and the Director of the Campus Honors Program.
Hist 199 Sec 1 (meets with GWS 199 Sec 1) Undergraduate Open Seminar
Topic: The World, according to gender
How has gender shaped the world as we know it? Is it possible that large global developments actively create and support the knowledge, social organization and practice of gender? This seminar course will analyze cross cultural encounters and processes of global change through the lens of gender and sexuality. Recognizing that gender is culturally produced, we will study how historically shaped notions of gender were determined in the context of world historical and cross cultural social change. We will then analyze the process by which 'global' cultural formations were themselves created and sustained by gender. The course will examine the processes of exploration, travel, slavery, colonialism and conversion to view the integral role played by cultural notions of gender. This will provide us with a fresh perspective on the effect of trans-national, global social change and with that to arrive at historically sensitive, critical understandings of the relationship between culture and power in the rapidly globalizing world that we all inhabit.
199&TH UNDERGRADUATE OPEN SEMINAR (Michalove & Lynn)
For senior honors thesis writers in history. Students must be concurrently enrolled in Hist 493. Departmental authorization is necessary to register for this class.
200 Level
200A INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Hoxie)
Topic: Natives and Newcomers
Across the globe, indigenous peoples struggle to be recognized by the modern nation states that surround them. Conflicts between natives and newcomers in North America and the Pacific-Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii-are among the most interesting examples of this phenomenon. In these predominately English speaking societies, encounters between European settlers and indigenous peoples have produced a huge outpouring of commentary and self-reflection. Because all of these places are governed by functioning constitutional democracies, debates over the justice and meaning of European expansion as well as the possibility of a meaningful multicultural future are very much alive. This course will examine the process of English exploration and settlement and trace the ways in which conflicts between natives and newcomers have been evident in the arenas of law, politics, social life, literature, and popular culture. We will investigate these arenas in an effort to understand more clearly the challenges they present to the project of historical interpretation. How can we record this transnational process of exploration and conquest fairly and accurately? For whom do write and whose interests do we serve as we do so? Can historical writing serve a plural society? Must historical writing follow western standards of scholarship? If not, by whose standards should historical writing be judged? Questions such as these will be explored through readings, discussions, and through a series of research exercises that will expose students to the breadth of this historical topic.
200C INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION (Millward)
Topic: Likely Laborers: American Indians, Indentured Servants, African Slaves
When Europeans “discovered” and later settled in North America, they were faced with similar questions. Who should populate the territory, and, even more importantly, who should do the work in the new land? Should it be the indigenous inhabitants? Should it be their own subjects who agreed to serve as indentured servants for a period of years in return for safe passage from Europe? Or, should it be African chattel slaves? Why was one group more likely laborers than the others? What particular advantages and disadvantages did each population present in solving demands for labor? What were their experiences? With these questions in mind, this course is designed to assist students in learning how historians do what they do: that is research, interpret and analyze historical evidence. We will read primary and secondary sources that interrogate exactly how and why indentured servitude and slavery developed in America. We will also address how the experiences of indentured servants as well as Indian and African slaves shaped what becomes the United States.
225 SOUTHEAST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS
Same as ANTH 286 and ASST 286
Overviews the cultural and institutional history of the Indianized states and Vietnam, with attention to dominant commercial, political, religious, artistic, and social traditions of Southeast Asia.
240 HISTORY OF ANCIENT GREECE (Buckler)
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. Textbook: J. P. McKay, A History of Western Society, vol. A.; A. R. Burn, The Penguin History of Greece (Penguin Books), plus other individual assignments. One mid-term, and one final exam.
241 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.
245 WOMEN & GENDER PRE-MOD EUROPE (McLaughlin)
Same as GWS 245 and MDVL 245
An introduction to some major issues in the history of women and gender from the fifth to the sixteenth century. Among the subjects to be discussed are the impact of class on gender roles, women's work and access to property, the relationship between the public and private spheres of life, women's roles in the conversion of Europe to Christianity and in The Reformation, and the connection between the misogynist tradition and pre-modern women's sense of self.
250 WAR, MILIT INSTS & SOC TO 1815 (Lynn)
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 defended? The course is specifically designed to interest a wide range of students who want to know more about humankind. This semester we will discuss land and naval warfare during the period stretching from ancient Egypt through the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, while the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are dealt with in History 251, offered during the spring semester
258 CONTEMP POLITICS IDEOLOGY (Prochaska)
Topic: Twentieth-Century World History
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 slides and especially films to convey a sense of the present and recent past.
265 SCIENCE IN WESTERN CIV I (Melhado)
A broad exploration of the emergence and development of modern science and the modern scientific world view in the period from Copernicus to Lavoisier. Course treats the role of intellectual, cultural, and social factors in the rise of modern science, as well as of extra-scientific trends, including magic, religion, and technological change. Topics include ancient and medieval precedents; the work of major figures such as Galileo, Kepler, Harvey, Newton, and Lavoisier; the philosophies of Bacon and Descartes; the magic of Paracelsus; as well as patterns of professionalization and institutionalization from the 17th century. Requirements include two hour-exams, short paper, and final exam. Regular attendance is expected.
269 JEWISH HISTORY SINCE 1700 (Sutcliffe)
Same as RLST 269
The history of the Jews in modern Europe embraces both some of the greatest achievements and the most calamitous failures of cross-cultural symbiosis. The history of the survival of Jewish culture in Europe, and its adaptation in changing circumstances, presents a fascinating study of the adaptability and resilience of a civilization. The vicissitudes of the Jews' status and treatment in European societies reveals a unique insight into the responses of European states and peoples to the challenge of pluralism. This course will explore both the internal dimension of the European Jewish experience and the wider question of the role and significance of the Jews in European political and cultural history.
We will cover a period of three centuries, from the beginnings of the modern age in the eighteenth century up to the present. Topics will include the development of Jewish Hasidism, Orthodoxy and Reform; the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Jewish emancipation; the rise of political antisemitism, Zionism, Jewish radicalism and mass emigration; Nazism and the Holocaust; and Jewish life in Europe since 1945.
275 AFRO-AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1877 (Edwards, B)
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.
282 NATURE AND AMERICAN CULTURE (Stewart, W.)
Same as LA 242, LEIS 242 and NRES 242
The course develops an appreciation and critique of the history of cultural meanings related to American natural landscapes. Traditional perspectives including colonial American, romantic, and science-based conservation are characterized to develop "use vs preservation" as a dominant framing of debates about nature. Contemporary themes aligned with gender differences, Latino/a, African-American and Native American idealized landscapes also are developed. Concepts related to the Anglo myth of "pristine nature" are critiqued using gender, race, and class as a basis for understanding. The use of fiction novels, landscape art, and photography facilitate explanation of cultural heritage and societal connections to nature. The implications of diversity in cultural meanings toward nature support community-based conservation and citizen empowerment as the final concepts of class. Both midterm and final papers provide students opportunities to explore and develop their own land ethic by linking personal values to cultural meanings of class discussion. Exams are a combination of multiple choice and essay format. Field trip required.
285 US GENDER HISTORY TO 1877 (Hoganson)
Same as GWS 285
Starting in the colonial period and continuing on through Reconstruction, this course will introduce students to the study of U.S. womens and gender history. We will investigate how beliefs about womens proper roles and capabilities changed over time, and we will pay close attention to real womens lives, which often were at odds with prevailing ideologies. Throughout the semester we will question how womens experiences particularly in the realms of work, family, community, and political activism -- varied according to race, ethnicity, class, and region. As part of this endeavor, we will pay some attention to the history of men and masculinity. Beyond conveying a sense of what happened, this course aims to develop students analytical skills and understanding of the craft of history through primary and secondary readings, lectures, class discussions, and papers.
295LH HONORS COLLOQUIUM (Hoddeson)
Topic: Memory & the Construction of Identity & Culture
Memory is fundamental to the construction of identity, indeed of culture itself. Without memory, knowledge cannot extend over generations, even minutes. In a time when scholars are pursuing links between collective and individual trauma, or the relationship between post-traumatic stress and the so-called recovered memories in studying events such as the holocaust or September 11th, memory issues often take center stage. The subject has long been an active concern in different disciplines, including history, cognitive and neuro-psychology, medicine, computer science, literature, and a number of the arts. Only recently have a handful of scholars begun to offer interdisciplinary consideration to such topics as external memory (e.g., archives, museums, and monuments), computer memory, collective memory, nostalgia, the role of narrative in memory, memory distortions, extraordinary memory, forgetting, trauma, repressed memory, autobiographical memory, memory and the self, motor and performance memory, and the biology of human memory.
This course is designed as a participation-intensive seminar that offers undergraduates the opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary study and research involving memory. Most of the early classes will be devoted to discussing a particular memory theme based on assigned readings. Later classes will focus on student research, presented initially to classmates and later to the attendees of an informal student memory conference open to the public. Class visits are planned from other faculty who work on memory in different disciplines.
Students will write a short essay on one of the readings and a longer paper on their research project. Their research project, on some question of memory that interests them (e.g., the formation of a "flashbulb memory" by an event such as September 11, or "repressed" memories of early trauma, perhaps created artificially through interview questions) will be the most time-consuming part of the student's course work. Students will be evaluated on the basis of their research project, presented in written and oral form, their shorter essay, and their engagement in class discussions.
300 Level
300PF TOPICS IN FILM AND HISTORY (Fu)
WSame as CINE 300
Topic: Pan-Chinese Cinemas: In Search of Modernity and Globalization
This course deals with the varied and interconnected histories of Chinese cinemas in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and diasporic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and North America from the 1920s to today. It approaches Chinese cinemas as both a social practice and a part of the modern urban popular cultural experiences in a period marked by wars, revolutions, and economic transformation. The rise of cinemas in China were embedded in a historical context of imperialism and nationalism, and their developments have been interwoven with a vision for cultural modernity and a global audience. These contexts and visions define the themes for this course. Course requirements include research paper, film reviews, and class presentations.
340 ANCIENT GREEK STATES (Buckler)
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. Textbook: A.P. Burn, The Penguin History of Greece, and C.W. Formara, Archaic Time to the End of the Peloponnesian War; final examination.
364 TECHNOLOGY IN WESTERN SOCIETY (Hoddeson)
This course explores technology as a transforming force in modern society. We will examine a number of technologies -- including the stirrup, heavy plow, iron stove, telephone, bomber plane, telephone, radio, television, transistor, computer, and atomic bomb -- that opened new realms of human possibility, while closing others. We will analyze how such innovations, as part of technological systems, affected society and culture, restructuring economic and political life and realigning values. The later part of the course will focus on America's transformation from wilderness to metropolis and take a critical look at the popular myth of "technological progress" in the age of nuclear power and electronic information.
Besides mid-term and final exams, students will write a short paper and a somewhat longer paper on particular technologies of interest to them.>
370 US COLONIAL HISTORY (Jennings)
American history doesn't start in Philadelphia in 1776. It also doesn't start at Plymouth Rock in 1620, Jamestown in 1607, or the Caribbean in 1492. This course will examine the experiences of the men and women who lived in North America before 1763. The course begins with Native and European life in the fourteenth century, and ends with the Seven Years' War, a global, imperial conflict that pitted Great Britain against France. History 370 will touch on the establishment of English colonies and institutions, but will look closely at under-appreciated areas of colonial history, including early Spanish-Native interaction, the experiences of enslaved women and men, and French and Native life in Illinois. As the semester progresses, students will get a feel for the stunning diversity of colonial life as we range throughout the colonial American world, looking at art and architecture, listening to music, and reading firsthand accounts of colonial life in combination with interpretations by leading scholars.
375 SOC HISTORY INDUS AM TO 1918 (Jaher)
Topics emphasized: business, family, labor and class structure. Popular culture and social values as reflective of the social system.
396FJ SPECIAL TOPICS (Jaher)
Topic: History of Modern Israel
A History of Modern Israel from the 1880s to the present, featuring the emergence of Zionism, the formation of the State of Israel and the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
400 Level
413 THE HORN OF AFRICA (Crummey)
The Horn of Africa contains diverse peoples and cultural traditions. Prominent among them are the peoples who make up Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a long national tradition, which has been continually re-shaped through its interactions with the other peoples of the region. The earliest states in the Horn were city states and they date to the first millennium BC. The Empire of Aksum succeeded them and dominated from the White Nile to South Arabia until the rise of Islam. It then refocused its attention on the rich agricultural lands which lay to its south. In 1270 a new dynasty claiming descent from Salomon and Sheba seized the Ethiopian throne, created a large indigenous empire, and patronized a remarkable flowering of the arts. This dynasty and empire survived many changes into the late nineteenth century when today's Ethiopia took definitive shape. The course will examine the main stages of the history of the Horn, paying particular attention to the Ethiopian state. It will emphasize developments in the later twentieth century when revolution abolished the monarchy, famine called in question inherited modes of livelihood, and a variety of forms of nationalism challenged boundaries throughout the region and the internal composition of its states. Course requirements include participation in organized class debates, a mid-semester exam, a research paper, and a final.
422 SOC-ECON HIST MODERN CHINA (Fu)
Same as EALC 421
Although the title is social-economic history of modern China, this course is on the interplay between politics and culture in shaping the development of China from 1800 to 1980. During this tumultuous period, one revolution followed another, and the socio-cultural life was torn by constant conflicts between old and new. In this course, we will explore both the different modes of historical narrative of modern China and the different ways Chinese people responded to and grappled with their history. The course will be divided into two parts: lectures and class presentations. In lectures, we will focus on such themes as imperialism and semi-colonialism, modernization and nationalism, culture and control, the conflict between democratic participation and political centralization in the Nationalists' and Communists' nation-building projects. And for class discussion, all students are required to read novels, memoirs, and movies.
435 TRANS OF MIDDLE EAST 1566-1914 (Cuno)
Did the Middle East really decline, and how did it become modern? During the four centuries before the First World War the Middle East witnessed the transformation of the classical Ottoman order, the re-ordering of government and society, and, after 1800, the steady growth of European influence in the economic, political, and cultural spheres, culminating in the establishment of colonial rule over much of the area. Toward the end of this era, a debate arose among Middle Eastern intellectuals over the causes of their backwardness and its possible remedies, contributing to the rise of new religious, social, and political movements which have continued to the present. We will be examining these developments in the context of ongoing social and economic changes, in the region consisting of Egypt, Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, Iran, and Turkey. Grades are assessed on the basis of written work, including short weekly essays, a term paper, and mid-semester and final exams, plus attendance and participation in discussion. Readings include textbooks, scholarly articles, and translations of original works.
447 BRITIAN STUART AGE 1603-1688 (Hibbard)
"Stuart Age" refers to the royal family, but the 17th century saw two decades in which the rule of that family was contested, civil war broke out, a king was executed, and an "Inter-regnum" (1649-60) occurred. We will explore the political, religious, social and economic background to those momentous events; the rapid growth of radicalism in mid-century and its surprisingly rapid disintegration; and how the new "public spaces" opened up in mid-century made the later Stuart period (1660-88) very different from the world before the war. Course requirements include a book review, participation in a debate, and the midterm and final examinations.
465 HISTORY OF BIOLOGY (Burkhardt)
Same as IB 494
A selective survey of the development of biology from antiquity to the Human Genome Project, stressing not only conceptual developments but also how the concepts and practices of biology have related to particular social and institutional contexts. Topics include: biology and the mechanical philosophy of the 17th century, Darwin and Darwinism, genetics and eugenics, the science and politics of animal behavior studies, women in biology and biologists' assessments of "woman's place in nature," and the politics of modern biotechnology.
466 SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE (Hitchins)
A study of political and economic development and changes in social structure as the region moved from medieval to modern forms and mentalities and from Ottoman Turkish domination to independent statehood. Among the subjects to be investigated are: Ottoman institutions and the effects of Ottoman political and economic predominance north of the Danube (the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia) and to the south (the Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Albanians); the rise of national consciousness, the emergence of modern elites, and the struggles for independence and the processes of nation-building in the nineteenth century; the role of the great powers (the Habsburg Monarchy, Russia, France, Great Britain, and Germany) in the region; and ideologies of development (liberalism, conservatism, agrarianism, and socialism) and the acceptance and rejection of "Europe" as a model. Certain fundamental questions will be addressed, among them, why did Southeastern Europe follow a course of development different from that of Western Europe and are we justified in treating the region as distinct from the rest of Europe?
472 IMMIGRANT AMERICA (Espiritu)
A survey of 20th century immigration to the United States, with a particular focus on migrants from Asia and Latin America. The course will cover international contexts for migration, race, class, and gender issues, and the national debates on immigration.
473 CRISES OF POLITICAL TOLERANCE (Leff)
This discussion class investigates the character of American political tolerance and freedom in times of crisis, through a series of case studies: images of the American "enemy"; the Red Scare after World War I; the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II; McCarthyism (the anchor for the course); and the resentments generated by protest movements in the late 1960s. The post-9/11 "war on terrorism" brings into urgent focus issues of citizenship, subversion, civil liberties, and the imperatives of imposed political orthodoxy and unity raised by these case studies. Analyses of contemporary events will therefore be used to help frame historians' opposing interpretations and a range of primary sources: propaganda posters, several feature films of the times, and a photocopies documents collection of public opinion polls, internal government memoranda, Congressional hearings and speeches, and magazine articles. In addition to exploring these sources, students will complete an in-class exam, two 7-10 page analytic essays, and additional assignments staking out their positions on major issues of the course.
498A RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Crummey)
Topic: The Environment and Social Change
This undergraduate research seminar explores the constantly changing relations between people and the environment. These relations are more complex and multi-sided than generally anticipated. We will read J. R. McNeill's Something New Under the Sun. An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World to establish a theoretical and comparative context for the individual case studies, which the seminar participants will take up. While McNeill takes a global approach, the seminar will pay particular attention to how global forces played themselves out nationally in the United States, and regionally in Illinois. Case studies may take up a wide variety of topics, of which the following are a few examples: land use and landscape change; global warming; energy policy; waste generation and disposal; environmental justice. Student papers will be expected to be based substantially on primary sources. The seminar will also emphasize the development of papers through a process of group discussion and the re-writing of drafts.
498B RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Hoganson)
Topic: Local History in Global Context
This seminar will introduce students to historical writings on local history, global history, and the connections between them. We will consider the tremendous impact of international affairs (broadly conceived) on the daily lives and consciousness of ordinary people and evaluate the extent to which local life has had implications extending far beyond the nation. In sum, this seminar will question the extent to which local histories have not been local at all. It will investigate ways of situating local history in the context of world history.
Although the assigned readings will touch on various parts of the world and provide conceptual approaches to understanding globalization, we will pay particular attention to central Illinois and UIUC. This emphasis on our own locality will carry over from the group discussions to the research component of the class. Students will be required to write a paper, based on primary and secondary sources, that explores a local history topic from a world history perspective.
498C RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Mathisen, R.)
Topic: Roman and Barbarian Coinage
The course will cover the development of Roman and barbarian coinages beginning with the origin of Roman coinage in the third century BC and continuing through the creation of coinages by the western European barbarian barbarian (Visigothic, Ostrogothic, Burgundian, Vandal, Frankish, and Anglo-Saxon) successor states in the fifth through seventh centuries AD. Classroom procedures will focus first on a chronological discussion of the coins themselves, and then on various methods of studying and interpreting them. Particular emphasis will be devoted to the role of coins as an element of material culture, and to looking at coins in both their economic and symbolic roles. Students will have the opportunity to be involved directly with actual ancient coins, and each student ultimately will prepare a research paper on a particular type of Roman or barbarian coinage.
498D RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Prochaska)
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.
498F RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (d'Erizans, A.)
Topic: Ordeal of Fire: Total War and its Aftermath
Millions upon millions of people experienced the unimaginable and unprecedented power, totality, disruption and destruction of the two World Wars, the topic with which this course will attempt to wrestle with. The First and Second World Wars, separated from one another by a mere generation, unleashed severe rupture, dislocation and disorientation for all those who they affected, insuring that the world was indeed a much different place once the cannons were silenced. We will examine the impact of both the First and Second World Wars on a wide variety of historical subjects in order to determine not only the manner in which war altered their material lives and surrounding physical world but also how the conflicts altered them mentally and psychologically.
498I RESEACH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Scarboro, C.)
Topic: Geographies of Europe
Outside the conveniences of maps and ideas of tectonic plates Europe has never been a fixed space but rather always resides within the flexible and permeable boundaries of convention. Who belongs to Europe, who is excluded, and the consequences of this demarcation have changed dramatically over time. This course is designed to investigate the creation, transformation and enforcement of these boundaries of Europe.
498J RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Elizabeth Esch)
Topic: The U.S. Empire at Home and Abroad
These days both supporters and critics of the United States of America have begun to use the word "empire" to describe what the U.S is and does. This course 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, culture, economies and the military to the expansion of power. 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.
500 Level
501 SEMINAR IN MILITARY HISTORY (Lynn)
This seminar will explore the attitudes, assumptions, and expectations held toward warfare and militaries by different cultures over time. Relevant subjects include: expectations concerning battle, concepts of combat as a personal test, tolerance of losses suffered and inflicted in fighting, attitudes regarding violence toward civilians, tolerance or condemnation of rape in war, etc. Examination of the lives and beliefs of common soldiers and the role of women within militaries are of interest here. With proper arrangements, there is no limit as to the time period or geographical area that can be studied.
502AE PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Espiritu)
Topic: Empire, Slavery and State: Filipino History in Global Perspective
Understanding of Philippine history is becoming increasingly important in light of contemporary global developments. While the "First World" has seen the rise of flexible capitalism and as new Asian "tigers" like China, Taiwan, and Singapore have developed transnational systems that maximize their position in international trade, the Philippines has paradoxically increased its export of labor and professional personnel while increasingly attracting outsourcing ventures. Next to Mexico, the Philippines is the world's second largest exporter of foreign workers, with remittances totaling $8 billion, a significant proportion of the country's gross national product. Filipinos today are found throughout East and Southeast Asia, Australia, the Pacific Islands, the Middle East, Europe, and North America.
Yet, while there are numerous studies of contemporary Filipino migration, there have hitherto been few searching analysis of the colonial and post-colonial histories of the Philippines and the cultural consequences of Filipino migration. This course will attempt to remedy these gaps through a survey of Philippine history that focuses on the global, transnational, and migrant dimensions of the Filipino past. It will survey critical aspects of Filipino history throughout the 20th century - the Philippine anti-colonial struggle against Spain, the Spanish-American and the U. S. - Philippine Wars, the American encounter with slavery, the formation of the colonial state, the rise of colonial modernity and expatriate Filipino cultures in the Pacific Islands and the United States, the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, and the rise of peasant insurgencies in the post-war era. These topics will be explored in a comparative and transnational dimension that connects Philippine history to the histories of the Spanish, American, and Japanese empires, histories of nationalism, race, and gender, and worldwide experiences of slavery, state formation, and cultural change.
502AS PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Sutcliffe & Hartnett)
Topic: Atlantic Enlightenments: The Flow of Ideas Between Europe and America in the Revolutionary Era, c.1750-c.1800
The foundation of the United States was perhaps the most emblematic achievement of the European Enlightenment. For many Americans, and some Europeans too, it was only in the New World, free from the burdens of theocracy, aristocracy and oppressive government, that the Enlightenment vision of a rationally ordered and progressive polity could be realized. However, the Enlightenment was an immensely variegated movement. Which strands of European thought influenced the American revolutionaries - and did the interpretation and significance of these thinkers change as their ideas crossed the Atlantic? Events in North America were also avidly followed in Europe, and made a profound impression on intellectual life in Britain and France in particular. This course will attempt to trace these flows of transatlantic intellectual exchange, asking equally how America was shaped by European thought and how western Europe responded to America in the revolutionary era.
This course is thus an exploration of the intellectual dimension of the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world. "Atlantic Studies" is currently one of the fastest-growing historiographical subfields, and is at the forefront of challenges to the traditional insularity both of early American history and Europe-centred Imperial histories. The course is equally suitable for Americanists, Europeanists and specialists on Empire: all these fields are very valuably deepened through an Atlantic perspective. While the focus will be on the later eighteenth century, participants specializing in earlier or later fields will be welcome in their written assignment to apply the perspective of intercontinental intellectual exchange to their own areas and periods of interest.
Primary readings will include, from the European side, selections by Cesare Becaria, Jeremy Bentham, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Voltaire, the Abbé Raynal, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others; and, from the American side, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Gardiner, Thomas Jefferson, David Rittenhouse, Benjamin Rush, Thomas Paine, and others. These will be supported by a range of secondary readings, focusing on historiographical classics in Atlantic- and ideas-oriented early American history (by historians such as Bernard Bailyn, Henry May and Garry Wills), and on pioneering and influential recent work in Atlantic history, by David Armitage, Linda Colley, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, and others.
When applicable this class will meet with a parallel seminar taught by Stephen Hartnett (Speech Communication). The seminar will thus have specialist input both from a Europeanist and an Americanist, and will also explicitly explore interdisciplinary contrasts between History and the more rhetoric-focused approach of Speech Communication.
502CC PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Crowston, C. & Chandra, S.)
Topic: Universal History and Its Discontents
This course will study the role of chronology, territoriality and narrative as tools of historical understanding and as crucial components in the construction of historical knowledge. We will examine how oppositions like West/non-West, modern/pre-modern, history/tradition have shaped historical understanding and the formation of the historical discipline itself. Critically examining the relations implicit in these oppositions, and the manner in which they have been imagined and deployed, we will question how history might look different if we moved beyond and outside them. The course will focus specifically on the movements of goods, people and ideas across the premodern and modern worlds, in and between Europe and Asia. In addition to reading primary and secondary sources in transnational and global history, we will engage a variety of theoretical literatures. A central aim of the course will be to shape questions for research and teaching in global history.
502FW PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Wilkins)
Intensive comparative examinations of particular issues in the histories of multiple countries, cultures or periods; emphasizes methodology, the discipline of comparative history, and the nature of historiography in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary context.
502KH PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Hitchins
Topic: Comparative Nationalism in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
A study of the nature of nationalism based on a comparison of nation-building in the Habsburg Monarchy (Romanians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slpvaks, Poles, and Ukrainians) and in Southeastern Europe (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, and Greeks) with a similar process in Central Asia (Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and, if there is interest, the Uighurs of Xinjiang). Attention will be given especially to theoretical questions about national consciousness, and nationalism, the role of intellectuals and peasants in the process of nation-building, and the relationship between nationalism and religion (Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Islam). Readings will be in English, and if desired, other languages.
502PF PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Fritzsche)
Topic: History and Memory
This is an interdisciplinary, comparative course. Themes will include the rise of historical consciousness; the presence of the past; commemorative politics; the Holocaust; nostalgia; forgetting; attics; quilts; collecting; antiques; and museums, and will embrace private and public spheres, and will pay special attention to literary genres of remembrance.
The course will be run both as a problems and a research course; topics will be drawn primarily from modern Europe and the United States, and emphasize theoretical and methodological approaches.
502PF1 PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Fritzsche & Harris)
Topic: Suburban Space, 1945-1960
Meets with LA 590
LAWN RANCH HOUSE SPLIT-LEVEL HI-FI HIGHWAY SUBDIVISION BACKYARD MARTINIS 1950S TELEVISION HOOLA-HOOP ELVIS CHEEVER"THE SWIMMER" LEVITTOWN PICTURE WINDOWS BOMB SHELTER FUTURAMA RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS COLD WAR DINERS BOWLING ALLEYS TRAILER PARKS SANDRA DEE TUPPERWARE FAMILY TOGETHERNESS PRIVACY NIKITA KRUSCHEV BIKINI DRIVE-IN INTERCOMS POLIO EPIDEMICS BARBIE MOTOR COURT PARK FOREST TRADING STAMPS LAWN MOWERS PESTICIDES CREDIT CARDS WHITE FLIGHT ORGANIZATION MAN TAIL FINS LAWN RANCH HOUSE SPLIT-LEVEL HI-FI HIGHWAY SUBDIVISION BACKYARD MARTINIS 1950S TELEVISION HOOLA-HOOP ELVIS CHEEVER "THE SWIMMER" LEVITTOWN PICTURE WINDOWS BOMB
This interdisciplinary graduate seminar explores the spatial and cultural dimensions of suburban space in the United States from 1945 to the present. Our primary focus will be the house, the garden, and the neighborhood, examined from a historical perspective, and through the use of a wide range of primary and secondary visual, material, and literary sources. But we will also investigate the suburban dreamscape. We welcome graduate students from a wide range of disciplines including history, sociology, landscape architecture, architecture, art history, geography, and urban planning. We will examine the ways race, gender, class, national identity, and self-fashioning (among others) have shaped the suburban spaces we have inhabited and constructed over the past half century, and we will inquire into the ways in which such spaces construct culture.
507 PROBLEMS IN LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY (Jacobsen)
Topic: POLITICAL CULTURES IN MODERN LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY
During the past fifteen years there has developed a lively debate about the nature of power, the public sphere, civil society and political representation in the formation of Latin American nation states. To simplify, this debate pits Gramscians against Toquevillians, those stressing hegemony, repression, resistance, negotiation, state power and against those stressing emancipation, the rise of associational activities and popular participation in the political arena. The permutations of this debate (and that between structuralists and post-structuralists) will provide the red thread through our discussions in this course. Specific issues to be discussed include public ritual and discourse, political mobilization (from force and clientelism to grass roots organizing), suffrage and electoral campaigns, the growth of civil society, competing nationalisms and regionalist fragmentation, the trajectory and meaning of democracy in Latin America, and disciplining campaigns of the state. The construction of race and gender as determinants of political cultures will also be discussed, but not foregrounded to the degree it was in my fall 2003 course. We will focus on urban spaces, and will dedicate one session on the inscription of power in urban spaces and the symbolic representation of power.
The class will meet Mondays, 1-3 pm, in room 221, Gregory Hall.
542A PROBLEMS IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY (McLaughlin)
Same as MDVL 542
This semester, the course will examine the role of religion in medieval European society and culture, through shared readings and individual explorations. Topics to be addressed include conversion and apostasy, the construction of religious community and difference, the relationship between religion and embodiment, and sacred texts, literacy and orality.
551B PROB EUROPEAN HIST SINCE 1789 (Matheson, T.)
Topic: Problems and Directed Readings in Modern European History, 1789-1989
This course is intended as an introduction to graduate study in Modern European History. Our goal is to become familiar with a selection of the major theoretical and methodological debates that have shaped the field, to sharpen our abilities to identify and critique historiographical arguments and to develop an awareness of the issues and topics now influencing new directions in historical research. Pervasive thematic concerns include: modernity and modernizaton; paradigms and peculiarities; identity and difference; continuity and rupture; nationalism and transnationalism; and time, space and culture. Necessarily partial in scope, our syllabus will draw on both classic texts and recent scholarship. Readings may include works by Roger Chartier, Franois Furet, Lynn Hunt, Peter Sahlins, E.P. Thompson, Anna Clarke, Edward Said, Elizabeth Thompson, Stephen Kotkin, Daniel Goldhagen, Christopher Browning, Stephen Kern, T. J. Clarke, Modrus Eksteins, Geoff Eley, Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau, Robert J. C. Young, Kristin Ross and Padraic Kenney. In addition to sharing the responsibilities for introducing weekly discussions, assignments will include weekly one-page response papers, a 5 page critical review and one longer historiographical essay (12-15) pages, which may be submitted in two drafts.
560A PROBLEMS IN RUSSIAN HISTORY (Koenker)
This readings seminar will examine key historical and historiographical issues of the 70-year history of the Soviet Union. Weekly discussions will be based on extensive common and supplemental readings, including both new work and "classics". We will consider substantive, methodological, and theoretical aspects of the field. Topics to be addressed include: the 1917 revolution, Civil War, NEP, identity-formation, the Communist party, Stalinism, gender, collectivization and peasants, industrialization and labor, the terror, ethnicity and nationalism, war and Cold war, cultural revolution and popular culture, the thaw phenomenon, and the everyday life of developed socialism. Four papers will be required, including one on one of the weekly discussion themes, two analyses of particular primary sources for Soviet history (novels, memoirs, reportage), and one scholarly book review. Ability to read in Russian is expected for those specializing in Russian history, but not necessary for others.
572A PROB IN US HIST SINCE 1815 (Reagan)
Topic: US Core Readings.
This course is designed to introduce students to core questions and debates in United States History. The goal is to create a critical and stimulating discussion of American historical scholarship. In this course, we will be engaging with problems and questions that have driven generations of historians of the U.S. as well as more recent topics that have sparked new insights and new debates. Readings will range from the colonial period through the twentieth century. Gaining knowledge of the content of American history is only part of the point of the class. We will gain a sense of how historians' interpretations of the past have changed over time by reading and comparing a selection of older texts as well as current historical work. Throughout the course we will be analyzing how historians have done their work, what questions they have asked-or ignored, the historical methods and sources used, how historians construct historical arguments, and the theoretical underpinnings of historical research.
The course will also include an introduction to the major references for secondary literature and archival materials in American history and probably a library field trip.
Corn, newspapers, desire, paranoia, whiteness, cotton, slavery, germs, the Communist Party, children, laws, guns, gender, welfare, war, the vote, and much more will be part of our conversation.
573A SEMINAR AMER HIST SINCE 1789 (Barrett)
Topic: Race, Class and Ethnicity in Twentieth-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. We will focus particularly on the historical experiences of common people -- at home, in the workplace, or in the community. In addition to more traditional labor history topics, it is possible to do political, immigration and ethnic, women's, family, urban, intellectual and cultural, and other types of historical research while still focusing on non-elites. My own interests at the moment involve the social and ideological bases of American labor radicalism in the twentieth century / ethnic and racial identity and relations among workers from diverse backgrounds / and the cosmologies of common people. 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. The reading part of the seminar will be concentrated early in the term with 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, and 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 other students' papers. The 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.
590 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY (Symes)
This seminar examines changing conceptions of history and the historian's craft from antiquity to the present. Its goal is to familiarize future historians with the many different ways of writing history, while at the same time exposing them to some of the great achievements of historical interpretation. Emphasis will fall on the role of the historian in society, as a commentator on contemporary events or as a teller of stories about the past; the problems of objectivity, motive, and evidence; the powerful influences of religion and chauvinism; and the impact of methodologies borrowed from philosophy, anthropology, and literary theory. Readings will be drawn from the works of Herodotus and Thucydides, the historians of ancient Rome and China, the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, Machiavelli and Vico, the European historians of the nineteenth century, W.E.B. DuBois, and a number of contemporary scholars.