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University of Illinois Department of History

Fall 2008 Course Guide

• 100 Level
• 200 Level
• 300 Level
• 400 Level
• 500 Level

100 Level

100 1  GLOBAL HISTORY

(Ghamari-Tabrizi, B.)

The main purpose of this course is to explain how the worlds we live in came about. Special attention will be given to the plurality of the “worlds” we live in by emphasizing that the present time was not the inevitable outcome of the unfolding of a presumed progressive internal logic of history. Although we will examine earlier points in the emergence of an interconnected and interdependent world during the long 12th century, the main focus of the class will be on post-17th century and the emergence of a new global world. This course will also highlight struggles and contestations of emerging world-orders in each period, giving voice to historical actors whose presence in history are often neglected.

 

110AL1  HISTORY OF AFRICA 

(Brennan, J.)

This course offers a survey of Africa's history from human origins to the present day. We will examine the development of agriculture, cities, religion, technology and trade in pre-colonial Africa. We will then examine the growing Islamic presence in Africa after ca. 700, and the effects that the growing European presence had upon much of the continent after ca. 1500 through the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, agricultural exchange, and growth of Christianity, with an emphasis on African appropriation and agency. We then turn to the commercial and religious revolutions of the 19th century that upset social orders across the continent. The course explores the origins and effects of European expansion into Africa during this period, culminating in the 'Scramble for Africa' during the late 19th century. We next examine the decades of colonial rule during the 20th century and the wide-ranging economic and social transformations that it brought. We conclude with a survey of post-colonial Africa. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and films, we will examine the continuities and changes in African culture, economy, and society.

 

120AL1   EAST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS

(Chow, K.) 

Same as EALC 120

This course introduces the distinct as well as shared ideas and institutions of the major civilizations in East Asia: China and Japan. We will focus on two historical processes. First, the making of a cultural system of East Asia before the nineteenth century. We will discuss how China evolved into a major civilization in Asia, creating distinctive ideological, social, political, and economic formations that came to define China, and to a considerable extent Japan, before the nineteenth century. Within the larger context of East Asian culture, we will examine how, despite certain shared cultural elements, indigenous cultures and unique historical developments of these two countries had resulted in contrasting societies in this period. The second process witnessed the decline of China in the nineteenth century as a dominant political and cultural power in East Asia. Our attention will be given to the struggle of China and Japan in response to imperialist intrusion from Europe, and how in the process, each embarked on its unique road to reinventing its own identity as a modern nation-state. In examining these two processes, we will explore issues of critical importance to our understanding of East Asian cultures from contemporary perspective: issues such as identity formation, gender and women, power and knowledge production, racism, and imperialism, etc. Readings include several very interesting literary works and an autobiography. Visual images and videos will be used in lectures.

 

140AL1  WESTERN CIV TO 1660-ACP 

(Crowston, C.)

Please see course description for 141AL1.

 

141AL1  WESTERN CIV TO 1660

(Crowston, C.)

This course will survey essential developments in Western Civilization from Antiquity through the seventeenth century.  It will focus on the evolution of political institutions from the city-states of Ancient Greece, through the Roman Empire, the feudal system of Medieval Europe and, finally, the emergence of nation-states in the seventeenth century.  We will also study the philosophies or religious beliefs that helped men and women understand their society and the world, as well as the social structures and conflicts that characterized different periods of history. In particular, we will examine how relations with "outsiders" - such as Jews, Muslims, the New World, and women - contributed essential new ideas to Western Europeans and helped them define their own identity. In the process, we will gain a new understanding of the cultural fusions and conflicts that continue to define our world. Lectures will be supplemented by in-depth consideration of primary sources materials produced by the people of this fascinating epoch. Throughout the semester, you will be required to read carefully, to attend class, to speak out in discussion section and to complete all written assignments.

 

141JR  WESTERN CIV TO 1660

(Ramsbottom, J.)

 “Western Civilization” refers to the history and culture of Mediterranean peoples that later influenced the development of Europe up to the 17th century.  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.  We will also study the origins of principles that are sometimes identified as distinctively “Western”:  rational inquiry, an emphasis on legal rights, and institutions of representative government.

Readings generally include a textbook, an anthology of primary sources, a collection of historical debates, and a short biography.  Students should be prepared to do a little writing every week and to work effectively in small groups.  Two hour tests, a short paper, and a comprehensive final exam.

 

142AL1  WESTERN CIV SINCE 1660     

(Chaplin, 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.

 

143AL1  WESTERN CIV SINCE 1660-ACP

(Chaplin, T.)

Please see course description for 142AL1.

 

170AL1  US HIST TO 1877-ACP    

(Hoxie, F.)

Please see course description for 171AL1.

 

171AL1  US HIST TO 1877    

(Hoxie, F.)

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 naïve 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 or American Indians, African Americans or other people of color.

*Third, they promoted economic opportunity for all while protecting the economic privileges of the few. Inequality flourished in a nation founded on a faith in equality.

*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 seek to understand 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  

(Leff, M.)

This course begins with the aftermath of the Civil War and ends with today's news.  Through readings, media presentations, twice-weekly lectures, and discussion sections, it surveys the major trends and events in the making and remaking of the American nation, including the diverse ways that Americans saw their world, responded to it, and tried to change it.  Given that, as Eric Foner argues, “no idea is more central to American identity—that is, Americans’ conception of themselves as a people and a nation—than freedom," struggles surrounding unfulfilled ideals and applications of "freedom" will anchor the course.

 

199TH  UNDERGRADUATE OPEN SEMINAR 

(Rabin, D.)

For history senior honors thesis writers only. 

 

200 Level

 

 

200A  INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION    

(Rabin, D.)

Topic: Gender and Crime in the Early Modern World

What can the study of crime and punishment tell us about the past and about our present? This course will explore the range of behavior considered criminal in the early modern world (1450-1815) and set it beside a study of gender to examine the ways in which definitions of crime intersected, shaped, and were shaped by notions of femininity, masculinity, and gender. We will consider the importance of legal codes to early modern conceptions of order and lawfulness and study how different legal systems enforced the law. The class will also examine systems of punishment and how theories about punishment varied depending on religious belief and cultural values. Using a comparative approach we will study crime and gender in early modern Europe, the near east, and Asia. The readings will include primary sources as well as a range of scholarship on these questions. Assignments include response papers, a mid-term examination, and a research paper based on primary sources.

 

200B  INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION    

(Brennan, J.)

Topic: European Image of Africa

Travel writing about Africa has played a major role in how Westerners have understood the continent and its inhabitants. This course explores how writers from Europe and North America have understood Africa by examining travel accounts from the eighteenth century to the present. As we read these accounts, we will be asking the following questions: why did these authors come to Africa, and with what expectations? How did these expectations shape their writing, or did these expectations change? How do these accounts fit with Africa’s historical development over this period? In what ways has the genre of travel writing changed over this period, and how has it remained the same? We will answer these questions by reading travel accounts, novels, and secondary materials, as well as watching a few videos in class.

TENTATIVE READING LIST:

Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

Sven Lindqvist, “Exterminate all the Brutes”

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Graham Greene, Journey Without Maps

Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the Sun (excerpts)

 

200C  INTRO HIST  INTERPRETATION     

(Chandra, S.)

Topic:  India and South Asia in the Wider World       

Disrupting traditional boundaries fostered by national, cultural and even historical identifications, this course situates ‘India’ and ‘South Asia’ in a wider world of trade, architecture, music, labour, sexuality, religion and activism.  The major and over-lapping themes that structure our exploration will be the Indian Ocean trading world, Islam, the British empire, and diaspora.  Within these, we will discuss how the movements of goods, practices, peoples, ideas and meanings traveled far beyond the geographical boundaries of ‘India’ and present-day South Asia.  We will use a vast array of sources: memoirs, government records, films and novels.  Critiquing the urge to shrink dynamic historical change into the ‘box’ of national identification, the course encourages students to think creatively about the interplay between historical interpretation and methodology.

 

200D INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION 

(Chaplin, T.)

Topic: The History of Human Rights

In the aftermath of the Holocaust and World War II, human rights became an increasingly important global concern. International political bodies like the United Nation’s Human Rights Council and non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were constituted to denounce human rights violations and to monitor, document, and publicize their abuse. But what are “human rights”? How did they come to be understood as a fundamental element of political morality, one that is inextricable from notions of personal dignity and worth? This course explores how civil, political, economic, social, and cultural constructions of human rights—often understood as inalienable attributes of human nature—are actually historically produced. We will begin with a brief investigation of how renaissance concepts of humanism and humanitarianism informed the elaboration of Enlightenment theories of natural law that underpin human rights norms. We then turn to nineteenth century debates on slavery and imperialism, seeking to understand how nascent concepts of human rights were deployed both to support and combat these practices. The bulk of our course will focus on the ways in which the tragic consequences of twentieth century European history—war, genocide, colonialism, refugee displacement, politicized sexual violence (rape as a tool of warfare) and conflicts over national sovereignty—have shaped contemporary understandings of human rights. Our goals are both scholarly and activist, and include the research and writing of a short paper on some aspect of human rights in historical perspective.

       

200E  INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION

(Edelson, S.)

Topic: Mapping the New World: Cartography and Colonization in Early America

As Europeans ventured across the Atlantic to claim American territory, they made maps of their conquests.  Their work was both an accomplishment of Enlightenment art and science and a tool that advanced the strategic and economic interests of empire.  Surveyors and cartographers charted coastlines, traced the courses of rivers, and depicted ranges of mountains; they imagined the shape of a continent they never fully understood and marked ocean routes to and from valuable West Indian islands.  These images made it possible to visualize their own empires and gauge the threats posed by neighboring Native Americans as well as rival Europeans. In this course we will come to terms with the geography of colonial America and learn how to "read" and interpret maps as historical artifacts.  Students will research and explain important early maps individually, consulting originals in the Rare Book Room and Map Library.  Together, we will produce a course atlas that will interpret the key maps of North America and the Caribbean in the era of colonization.

       

200G  INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION    

(Roediger, D.)

Topic: Herman Melville’s America

This seminar introduces students to the social history of the antebellum U.S. and the Atlantic World through reading and writing on the works of the great U.S. creative writer of that period, Herman Melville. Melville’s many works address maritime labor, women’s factory work, changing sexuality and gender roles, empire, race, and slavery and slave revolts, among much else. They are read in juxtaposition with other primary sources and the writings of historians. The course requires active participation in discussion and a series of short papers building to a longer one.

 

200H  INTRO HIST INTERPRETATION

(Kim, J.)

Topic: Women and Gender in East Asia to 1945

While the rise of women’s history and feminist theory in the 1960s and 1970s fostered more general reevaluations of social and cultural history in the West, such progressions have been comparatively modest in East Asian Studies. To introduce one of the larger challenges in current East Asian historiography, this course investigates the roles of Chinese, Japanese and Korean women within premodern societies, and aims to gauge the ways in which gender roles were influenced—or not—by modernization. These three countries share the tradition of Confucianism which, though varying in degree, largely affected the way women’s lives were shaped in the past. Historical studies of women and gender in East Asia will be analyzed in conjunction with theories of Western women’s history to encourage new methods of rethinking “patriarchy” within the East Asian context. By tracing the lives of women from various socio-cultural aspects and examining the multiple interactions between the state, local community, family and individual, women’s places in the family and in society, their relationships with one another and men, and the evolution of ideas about gender and sexuality throughout East Asia’s complicated past will be reexamined through concrete topics with historical specificity and as many primary sources as possible.

 

221A  MODERN CHINA    

(Chang, J.)

Same as EALC 221

        This course will lead us to an exploration of a culture and society very important in our global age. In this exploration we try to understand the life, history and values of the Chinese and, by way of this, also of ourselves, while appreciating the complex contexts of its enormous changes to become one of the most important economies of today. This course is a general introduction to the major themes of the Chinese Revolution from the 1840 to the present, emphasizing the interplays between politics, idea and culture in shaping the tumultuous history.  The themes will include the rise of an autonomous intelligentsia, the tension between cultural integrity and Western ideologies, the conflict between democratic participation and the tradition of centralized control, and the representation of national identity in high and mass culture.

 

247A  MEDIEVAL EUROPE     

(McLaughlin, M.)

Same as MDVL 247

An introduction to medieval European history. We will be talking about invasions and conversions, kings and popes, plows and cannons, troubadour poetry and mystical visions, and many other aspects of life in Europe between the fifth and the fifteenth century. Requirements include class participation, a group debate project, ten brief "microthemes," a mid-term and a final exam.

 

250A  WAR, MILIT INSTS & SOC TO 1815  

(Lynn, J.)

While the human race desires peace today, an iron chain of causation has bound it to the weapons of war for thousands of years.  History 250 asks important questions about the armed past:  how basic is war to culture, how have humans fought wars since the first tribes began to raid one another, and how have military institutions shaped the societies which they defend?  The attempt to answer these questions will benefit students specializing in history or preparing for a military career.  But the course is specifically designed to interest a wide range of students who simply want to know more about humankind.  This semester we will discuss land and naval warfare during the period from ancient Egypt to 1815, while the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are dealt with in History 251, offered during the spring semester

 

253A  ENLIGHTENMENT TO EXISTENTIALISM     

(Micale, M.)

This course is a lecture survey of the leading movements in thought, culture, and style in Europe, inclusive of Britain, from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-twentieth century. Topics include the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Marxism, Darwinian evolution, Modernism, Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein, World War One and intellectual life, and French and German Existentialism.

 

255A  BRITISH ISLES TO 1688 

(Ramsbottom, J.)                                                                        

Same as MDVL 255A

An introduction to the history of the peoples of the British Isles in the medieval and early modern periods.  During these ten centuries, the English kingdom became a centralized monarchy and gained widespread influence over the neighboring countries of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and France.  But what was the power of the monarchy based upon, and how secure was it?  What role, if any, did ordinary people play in a society dominated by lords and prelates?  We will address these and other questions by studying historical sources of several kinds.  The course will require regular participation in online discussion.  There will also be an hour exam, a final exam, and short writing assignments totaling 20 pages.

     

255DIS  BRITISH ISLES TO 1688    

(Ramsbottom, J.)

Same as MDVL 255DIS

In a small seminar setting, we will consider the peoples and cultures of the British Isles from the era of Stonehenge to the beginnings of global empire. Using primary documents, we will discuss the changing nature of religious practices, from the medieval Church up to the Protestant Reformation, and the revolutions of the seventeenth century. And at each stage in the story, we will consider the impact of ?historical? events on the common people.

 

260A  SURVEY RUSSIAN HIST

(Tartakovsky, D.)

This course will explore one thousand years of Russian history.  Beginning with Kievan Rus,’ we will move on to the Mongol domination, the growth of Muscovite power, the rise of Imperial Russia under the Romanov Tsars, and the Soviet experiment.  We will finish by looking at the course taken by Russia after the Soviet collapse, appreciating the influence of the Russian past on the contemporary political reality.  We will focus on specific periods while keeping in mind broader issues in Russian history, such as the growth of empire and mulitethnicity, efforts at state centralization and modernization, and relations with the West.  We will consider some debates over historical interpretation, keeping in mind that history is not simply a series of facts but an ongoing conversation.  In addition to historical texts, we will seek better understanding of Russian culture through novels, memoirs, art, music, and film.

 

264A  TECHNOLOGY IN WESTERN SOCIETY    

(Fouché, R.)

This course will examine the ways technology has developed over time, and how those changes have affected societies in different parts of the world.  The primary emphasis will be places on understanding the evolving cultural contexts of technological change. Topics covered include the power, manufacturing, railroads, emergence of engineering professions, corporate R&D, household technology, technology of modern warfare, consumer electronics, and video gaming.  Some of the questions examined by this course include: What is technology? How do technologies develop? To what degree are technologies a product of the culture in which they develop? How are technologies propagated? How have people thought about technology in different places and periods?

 

269A  JEWISH HISTORY SINCE 1700    

(Tartakovsky, D.)

Same as RLST 269

During the “long” nineteenth century (from the French Revolution to World War I), Jewish life, culture, and religion in Europe underwent tremendous transformations.  Welcomed by some Enlightenment philosophes, Jews emerged from their “ghettos” and began to participate in European life and culture.  Jews entered politics, achieved emancipation, obtained better living conditions, and gained a greater level of social integration into European bourgeois society.  These achievements varied greatly from place to place, however, and were strongly opposed by many Europeans.  The emergence of racial nationalism toward the end of the 1800s promised to exclude Jews from national public life despite the changes and sacrifices many had made for acceptance.  The growth of right-wing mass politics after WWI further undermined many gains painfully achieved by previous generations.  Jewish responses varied greatly, but ultimately the Holocaust destroyed Jewish civilization in Eastern Europe and permanently shifted Jewish world geography and culture.  This course will delve deeply into these historical topics and ask, what did it mean to be a Jew in the modern world?

 

272A  TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA

(Espiritu, A.)

This course is a survey of the political, economic, cultural and social history of the United States in the twentieth century. It will cover such topics as the Spanish-American War, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. However, the great events of the century will also be approached from more personal levels. The course will examine the viewpoints of historical actors on important national debates as well as autobiographical perspectives of women, racial minorities, and immigrant groups.

 

275A  AFRO-AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1877 

(Holmes, K.)

Same as AFRO 275

This course surveys the history of Africans in America from the colonial period through the end of the Civil War.  Key topics will include: The African slave trade, slavery in the European colonies of the Americas, African Americans in the early Republic through the Civil War and the historical origins of contemporary African American cultures and identity.

 

277A  US NATIVE AMERICANS TO 1850

(Gilbert, M.)

This course is a survey of Native American history to 1850. In addition to incorporating primary and secondary sources, this course will examine Native American history through Native and non-Native perspectives. Special emphasis will be given to the concept of tribal sovereignty, the "Native voice," and the ways in which Native nations responded to both colonial and American powers. Furthermore, this course will provide an historical foundation by which a critical evaluation of Native American history can be understood.

 

279A  MEXICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY   

(Cordova, C.)

Same as LLS 279

This course examines the history of Mexicans/Mexican Americans/Chicana/os in the United States from the U.S.-Mexican conflict in what is now the Southwestern United States to the present. We will attempt to understand the past through an interdisciplinary lens – through art, literature, film, poetry, geography, economics and revisionist histories. We will focus on understanding how these histories influence contemporary Chicano/Chicana life and experience, especially since the development of the Chicano Movement on the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 

280A  CARIBBEAN LATINA/O MIGRATION

(Burgos, A.)

Same as LLS 280

Evidence of the Latino presence in U.S. popular culture is everywhere. Audiences have continued to be mesmerized by the artistic work of Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and others. On the baseball diamond, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols and other Caribbean Latino players have been at the center of game’s resurgence. The growing Latino population has sparked new marketing strategies by major corporations like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and countless others. Interest in capturing the Latino market or fascination with Latino/a contributions to American culture has been accompanied with popular images that present Latino/as primarily as recent arrivals, crossovers, or exotic foreigners, regardless of national origins or citizenship status.

       

282A  NATURE AND AMERICAN CULTURE    

(Stewart, Wm.)

Same as LA 242, NRES 242, RST 242.

See RST 242.

The course develops an appreciation and critique of cultural meanings related to American natural landscapes. Traditional perspectives including colonial American, romantic, and science-based conservation are characterized, as well as revisionist themes that criticize wilderness, align with gender and ethnic perspectives, and point towards a land ethic for everyday living. The implications of diversity in cultural meanings toward nature support concepts related to community-based conservation that fit a multicultural society.

 

289A  HISTORY OF RELIGION IN AMERICA    

(Ebel, J.)

Same as RLST 235. See RLST 235.

The purpose of this course is to examine the religious history of the lands that have become the United States and the people who have become known as Americans.  We will do this using texts written by and about women and men of all races and creeds, living in the many worlds “Americans" have inhabited, and considering the things and thoughts they used to render those worlds meaningful.  This course will emphasize the diversity of American religion, the discord caused by and present in American religion, and the many instances of dialogue that have been a part of America's religious history.

 

295B  HONORS COLLOQUIUM    

(Leff, M.)

Topic: The Fear Factor: Race, Immigration, and Hunts for “Un-Americans”

This Campus Honors Program seminar explores U.S. struggles over national inclusiveness, "American identity," and the meanings and limits of "liberty" since the late 19th century.  We'll approach, and seek to contextualize, post-9/11 racial, immigration, and civil liberties conflicts through an intensive analysis of a series of case studies that raise issues of citizenship, "insider" versus "outsider" status, racial hierarchy, and "subversion": the “Reconstruction” period (1865-1877); World War I and images of the "enemy"; the 1919-1920 Red Scare and immigration restriction; the incarceration of Japanese-Americans and other actions at odds with World War II’s reputation as “The Freedom War”; McCarthyism and the civil rights movement; and resentments generated by the African-American Freedom Struggle and other protest movements in the late 1960s.

This seminar offers a chance to "do" history and to develop a sense of historical context by considering both historians' opposing interpretations and a range of related primary sources. In addition to exploring these sources, members of the seminar will complete a number of short and medium-length reviews and essays staking out their positions on major issues of the course.

 

300 Level

340A  ANCIENT GREEK STATES    

(Symes, C.)

The course will focus on “ancient Greek states” in two related senses:  both the institutions of the individual poleis that formed the building blocks of this civilization and the states of mind, cultures, and interactions fostered by these societies. This examination of ancient Greek civilization will begin with the earliest evidence to be gleaned from archeological investigations and oral history (epic poetry) and will conclude with the codification of Greek learning and literature in the library of

Alexandria during the third century B.C.E, with some consideration of this legacy’s reception by the Roman Empire and down to the present day.  We will pay special attention to the emergence of Greek identities in opposition to external threats from other civilizations (notably the Persian Empire), the hegemony of Athens in the fifth century, the clashes among individual states and their colonies during the Peloponnesian War, the emergence of Thebes and Macedon as dominant powers, and the broadening of Greek influence through the campaigns of Alexander.  The instructor will frame each topic with a brief lecture, but classes will be driven by discussion of primary sources.  Students will be required to read carefully, to take an active role in discussion and other classroom exercises, to write several short papers, and to take midterm and final examinations.  

 

345A  MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION

(McLaughlin, M.)

Same as MDVL 345, RLST 345

Economy, society and culture in Europe during the High Middle ages (11th through 14th centuries): this course focuses on the relationship between medieval social and economic structures, and such cultural manifestations as epic and romantic literature, gothic and romanesque architecture, scholastic theology and monasticism.

 

346A  THE AGE OF THE RENAISSANCE

(Price, D.)

Same as MDVL 346 and RLST 346

This is an introduction to the cultural history of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We will begin with some background study of the political and cultural meanings of the term “Renaissance.” This will involve an assessment of how learning, science, technology, and new cultural ideals changed art.

From there, we will proceed to an in-depth study of the social and political contexts for Renaissance culture. We will consider the nature and the purposes of the arts in three different types of settings: at the imperial court (Charles V), at papal courts (emphasis on Julius II, Leo X, and Clement VII), and in independent cities (Florence and Nuremberg). Our goal here is to learn about the major sources of patronage as well as the social and political functions of art; the focus on specific settings will also help us appreciate cultural diversity and distinctiveness.

We will conclude with a consideration of some cultural tensions in the Renaissance, including a few issues that were profoundly problematic (Christianity and humanism; Renaissance learning and Judaism; and the status of women in the context of the elevation of “man”).

Readings/materials on electronic reserve.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Second edition. Translated and edited by Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton.

More, St. Thomas. Utopia. Second edition. Translated and edited by Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton.

Najemy, John M. 2006. A History of Florence, 1200-1575. Oxford: Blackwell.

Rice, Eugene F., Jr., and Anthony Grafton. The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559.  Second Edition. New York: Norton, 1994.

Optional

Burke, Peter. The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy. Second Edition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999.

Paoletti, John T., and Gary M. Radke. Art in Renaissance Italy. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 2002.

Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Edited by Stanley Wells. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. 

 

353A  EUROPEAN HISTORY 1918 TO 1939    

(Micale, M.)

This course examines a series of major artistic and intellectual works that emerged from and commented upon the world-historicalcatastrophes of the period 1914-1945 in Europe. We will study texts and topics from Britain, France, Spain, Germany,Austria, Italy, and Russia,with lateral consideration of the United States.

The course divides into three thematic sections: The Cultural Impact of the First World War; The Rise of IntellectualFascism; and The Great Critiques of

Totalitarianism. Authors and artists include: Paul Valéry, Sigmund Freud,the British war poets,E. M. Remarque,Otto Dix, George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, German Expressionist filmmakers, Ernst Junger, Leni Riefenstahl, Albert Speer, Pablo Picasso, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Charlie Chaplin, George Orwell, Albert Einstein, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, and Hannah Arendt.

 

361A  EURO THGHT & SOC SINCE 1789

(Liebersohn, H.)

Same as SOC 368

Rapid change has been the story of European history since the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.  Political revolutions, technological innovation, scientific discovery, population explosion, the creation of new urban centers - it is a list of difficult, at times unmasterable challenges.  In their effort to preserve intellectual order amid the chaotic forces of modernization, European intellectuals have tried to develop theoretical overviews that could predict or control the future movement of history, or - if this was impossible - make it more bearable by making it more understandable.  In this course we will look at a few of the key themes that have emerged from the challenges of industrialization, political revolution, and globalization.  In some weeks we will read theorists, and in other weeks we will turn to fiction and other artistic forms of expression that contain insights into the structures of modern social life. This is an advanced history class and presupposes a basic knowledge of modern European history.

 

370A  US COLONIAL HISTORY    

(Edelson, S.)

As men and women in colonial America witnessed violent encounters between cultures, participated in rapidly changing societies, and struggled to make sense of life and death in a “new world,” they recorded their experiences in writing. This course explores the history of early North America and the Caribbean (ca. 1607-1776) through extended primary readings, first-hand accounts by those who lived in Britain’s American colonies. It is a workshop in the historian’s craft designed to teach students how to read and interpret primary sources as well as a survey of the major events, issues, and actors that define the place and the era. Our readings present a diverse range of voices and perspectives. They include the adventures of Henry Pitman (an English political prisoner transported to Barbados), the gallows confession of Patience Boston (a Native American woman executed for murdering a child in Massachusetts), and the dire warnings of “The Stranger,” who urged South Carolina colonists to take seriously the threat of slave rebellion. Other topics include the origins of racial slavery in the sugar islands, the life of Pocahontas, the journeys of European immigrants, nature exploration on the Indian frontier, the rise of evangelical Christianity,

and the military defense of the empire. We conclude with the most important publication of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776). Class meetings feature small group work and student presentations and stress discussion over lecture. Writing assignments emphasize document analysis and interpretation.

 

374A  CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION    (Sampson, R.)

The Civil War, which claimed the lives of over 600,000 soldiers and changed the nature of the Union, is a defining event in United States history. The Era of Reconstruction which followed has been returned to again and again by generations of historians seeking to understand it and its ramifications. This course will begin with the residue of the Mexican War, continue through the disputed presidential election of 1876 (an election like 2000 in which the popular vote winner was not sworn in as president) and the subsequent abandonment of Reconstruction. Presented in primarily a lecture format, the course will also include discussions of readings and three books--one on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, another on the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and the third, a novel based on one Northerner's experience attempting to build a new life in the Reconstruction South. While some Civil War battles will be covered, the primary focus of the course is on the social, political, and economic issues surrounding the period, especially the rise of the anti-slavery movement, the abolition of slavery, and the successes and failures of Reconstruction.

 

375A  SOC HISTORY INDUS AM TO 1918  

(Schneider, D.)

American society has often been described as open and flexible by outside observers.  On the other hand, Americans themselves have often experienced U.S. society as rigidly divided by class and race.   How can the two views be reconciled?  How cohesive can a society be if  its people are a diverse lot, driven by highly individualist motives?  This class will try to provide some historians’ answers to these questions.  We will examine how various  social divisions and cohesions developed during the  twentieth century  by studying some of the most important developments of the last century in the United States:  the 1920s, the Great Depression, World War Two, the Civil Rights Movement, the 1960s and the transition to a post industrial consumer society.  The class will use extensive readings from scholarly texts in history, economics and sociology to popular non-fiction, internet resources, music and visual materials.  Active participation, a research paper (with presentation) and two in class examinations will be required.

 

396A  SPECIAL TOPICS    

(Chandra, S.)

Topic:Postcolonial/Queer

Amongst the greatest convictions of European colonial regimes around the world was that sexuality indicated important information about the cultures of specific societies.  Bringing newly established binaries between hetero and homosexual to fabrications between western and non-western, reproductive and non-reproductive, colonialism made possible a lasting partnership between race and sexuality on a transnational level.  Ironically, anti-colonial movements rarely sought to reject these convictions, hence extending the mutually reinforcing relationship between race, sexuality and imperialism.  Indeed, the modern nation state - the most visible outgrowth of the history of colonial racism - compulsorily enshrines heterosexuality at the heart of its existence.

What is the relationship between heteronormativity, nationalism and imperialism, and why does it continue to produce its own un-named beneficiaries and minorities on a global scale?  In other words, how do racialisation/s and sexuality inform one another in a wider world of continuing imperial interactions?  Is ‘same’ sex desire always and already opposed to imperialism?  Can sexual minorities reject the everyday imperialisms that govern them? Using an array of primary sources from 200 years in colonial and postcolonial history, also novels and films, this course will provide students with the opportunity to confront debates on colonialism, institutions of knowledge production, gender, sexual difference, nationalism, imperialism and marriage.  The course requires a final 20 page paper based on original research.

 

396B  SPECIAL TOPICS    

(Reagan, L.)

Topic: Medicine’s Moving Pictures

Americans have been learning about sickness and health, disease and death, doctors, nurses, and quacks by going to the movies since the start of the twentieth century.  As such, medicine’s moving pictures–film, television, and video–are valuable sources for analyzing what people were being taught through popular visual media as well as how movies were used by public health agencies and medical experts.  Some of the health topics to be covered include venereal diseases; polio; black physicians on film; newsreels; breast cancer and prudery; and HIV/AIDS in the soaps.  Yet these visual materials are not only about medicine, they shed light as well on the development of mass media and on the time in which they were produced.  Some films which appear to be about dentists, for example, were arguably not about teeth at all but about war, segregation, and racial supremacy.  The course will also examine the significance of medical matters to the history of film and television and to the development of genre as well as production, content, and audience reception.  Students will be expected to read scholarly texts on visual culture, to view historical films, and to develop their own skills in analyzing visual materials as well as related texts.  Students will write research papers based on analysis of film/tv/video selected in consultation with the professor.

 

400 Level

401G4/U3  History of Terrorism

(Lynn, J.)

Terrorism is one of the great challenges of our times. This lecture/discussion course will explore the phenomenon through the ages. Although most Americans see Terrorism as a new form of violence, it has a long history. We will examine different varieties of Terrorism, from strategies of terror used by states as part of warfare to suicide bombing perpetrated by Islamic extremists today. Students will be expected to be active participants in this learning experience. Every Friday will be devoted to a discussion of war and terrorism reported in the New York Times, as the class uses the past to interpret the present.

 

405G2/G4/U3  HISTORY OF BRAZIL FROM 1808   

(Schneider, A.)

There is a long-standing adage in Brazil that Brazil is “the country of the future!”  Often, however, the utterance of this expression is followed with the ironic caveat: “… and always will be.”   This survey course examines the politics, economics, and culture during the past two centuries of this, perhaps, ever of-the-future country.    Beginning with the arrival of the Portuguese Court in 1808 through the 2002 election and current administration of Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva, the course emphasizes the changes as well as the continuities of political structures and the forms of social organization over time.  Readings and lectures will guide students through specific questions and debates regarding the formation and development of the Brazilian nation-state and a “national” culture.  The key topics and themes that thread throughout the course include:  authoritarianism and accommodation, race, slavery and its legacy, immigration, labor, social mobilization, and democratization.

 

420G2/G4/U3  CHINA UNDER THE CH’ING DYNASTY    

(Chow, K.)

Same as EALC 420

This course addresses several fundamental questions in modern Chinese history concerning political and ethnic identities, women, tradition, and the modalities of modernity. What was the impact of the Manchu regime on the course of Chinese history in the late imperial period? How did the Manchu rule change the social, economic, political, and intellectual landscapes of China after a period of more than half a century of profound economic, intellectual, and cultural developments in the late Ming? Why did the Manchus, a small ethnic group, succeed in conquering the vast Chinese empire, and how did they maintain their control for over two and a half centuries? Were the Manchus engulfed by the powerful cultural tradition of China (sinicization)? What was this cultural tradition? How important was it in creating a sense of "Chineseness" and a "Chinese" life style for several hundred millions of people living in different dialectal and ethnic communities?

Was the Manchu state just another imperial regime in the "dynastic cycle"? Or when the Qing attempted to change its bureaucratic practice in order to cope with a host of problems created by population explosion, it was knocking at the door of modernity? Was Qing China confronted with a similar array of problems shared by the most advanced European states in the same period? How successful was the Manchu government in its attempt to deal with the problems of food supply, depletion of natural resources, peasant rebellions, and its senile Manchu warriors? Were women subjected to even more oppression under the Qing? Why and how did the Manchu regime fail to meet the challenges from within the Chinese society and from the intrusion of Western imperialist powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Finally, why did the Chinese abandon the imperial system they had embraced for over two thousand years? To answer these questions, we will investigate broad trends of change in politics, population, the economy, thought, culture, social structure, and the relationship between the state and national and local elites. Class participation is crucial and students need to have some background in Chinese history.

 

425G4/U3  CLASSICAL CHINESE THOUGHT 

(Chow, K.)

Same as CWL 478, EALC 476. See EALC 476.

If the intellectual cultures of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Christian religion have given shape to what is known as the European civilization, the various classical traditions of ancient China played a similar role in laying the cultural foundations of China. This course will examine in depth the major intellectual and religious traditions of ancient China from the twelfth century B.C. (the Shang dynasty) through the third century when the Han dynasty collapsed. We will study the major thinkers of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, etc. In addition to the study of the peculiar and common issues, and the shared concerns of the major thinkers, we will examine issues that concern us today. For example, we will analyze texts for issues that bear upon gender relations, cultural identities, and the relationships between self, family, and society. We will also address specific questions regarding difference factor in Chinese culture. For example, did ancient Chinese develop logical methods of thinking? What is the impact of the characteristics of the peculiar writing system on Chinese thinking? This is a lecture course. Students are required to read translations of the original texts. Participation in discussion sections is essential. Students who have taken a 100 or 200 level course in Chinese culture or history are eligible to enroll. There will be a mid-term, one 5-6 page paper, one 15 page term-paper, and a final.

 

426G4/U3  EARLY MODERN JAPAN     

(Toby, R.)

Same as EALC 426
Japan, reunified in 1600, after more than a century of civil war and overseas adventurism, began an era of unprecedented peace at home and abroad, of cultural and economic development. In the first century of what contemporaries called the ‘Great Peace,’ population doubled and commerce boomed, creating an advanced urban society. The first half of the 17th century was perhaps the greatest boom in city-building the world had yet seen: In 1600 there were only two large cities; by 1700 five of the world’s largest cities were in Japan, and Edo (now Tokyo) was the world’s largest city, with over a million residents. 

Peace, urbanization, and population growth, brought commercialization—an early form of capitalism, some would say­—and remarkably prolific cultural production, in literature, drama, and the arts, that for the first time joined all regions and social classes in a common national culture. It was in the early-modern age that Japan began to become a ‘nation.’

Yet 250 years of peace came at a price, and prosperity was not shared equally across society:restricted social mobility, rural and urban oppression, and new forms of economic exploitation—to which peasants and urbanites alike sometimes responded with protest and violent resistance.Internationally, the new regime placed new, severe restrictions on international intercourse.But was this a ‘world within walls,’ as it has been called, a ‘closed country’ nation with its head in the sand for 200 years, until it was forced ‘opened’ by Commodore M.C. Perry?Or had Japan found new ways to control foreign threats and overseas trade, establishing a new system of ‘controlled openness,’ as recent scholarship seems to suggest?Japanese, both intellectuals and people at large, were intensely conscious of, and interested in, the world around them.

This was also an age of great cultural ferment in Japan, as Buddhist paradigms were largely set aside for Confucian ones (both originally foreign ideas), only to discover, in part through Confucianism, new nativist visions, and a new sense of national identity.The spread of prosperity and literacy even turned some philosophers into what we might today call ‘popular culture’ heroes: A 1685 tour-guide to Kyoto offered something like a Mansions-of-the-Stars guide to philosophers’ houses, and the grave of one scholar appeared on every tourist map of Edo, like Elvis’s Graceland.

History/EALC 426 examines the emergence of this unified national, cultural, social and economic ‘Japan,’ from the end of the civil wars in the late 16th century, to the demise of the early-modern order in the mid-19th.We will combine lectures and discussions with readings of materials written by contemporary Japanese, and pay particular attention to the rich and varied visual record of the age.

Course requirements include lectures, class discussions and readings.All readings are in English.There will be a midterm, a term paper, and a final examination.

 

435G4/U3  MIDDLE EAST 1566-1914   

(Cuno, K.)

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.

 

442G4/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.

 

445G2/G4/U3  MEDIEVAL ENGLAND    

(Symes, C.)

Same as MDVL 444

A course devoted to the main sources and problems of English history, from the end of Roman rule in Britain (c. 410) to the fifteenth century. Readings and discussions will focus on the rise of a distinctive Anglo-Saxon culture, the continuity and discontinuity of identities and institutions before and after the Norman invasion of 1066, the governmental and legal innovations of kings from Henry I to Edward I, the cultural and social changes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the political and military upheavals of the fifteenth. Related themes and topics will include the development of law, the role of women, the changing status of commoners, intellectual trends, and the importance of public media for the dissemination of ideas. Students will be expected to read primary materials and some secondary scholarship in English (and some in Middle English), to write several papers, to participate actively in class, and to take midterm and final examinations.

 

448G2/G4/U3       VICTORIAN BRITAIN    

(Warren, J.)

This course will examine major social, political, and cultural trends in Britain’s “imperial” century, from the Irish Act of Union in 1801 to the second South African War (1899-1902) and the death of Queen Victoria (1901). We will examine how imperial economic interests, colonial conflict, industrialization, Irish nationalism, immigration, and imperial feminism all contributed to shaping the narrative of Victorian society and parliamentary politics in the “Age of Reform.” A particular emphasis will be placed on how changing constructions of urban space, citizenship, “freedom,” labor, and the civilizing mission -- constituted by ideas about race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, and nation -- defined and redefined Britons in the Victorian period.

 

458A3/A4  CHRISTIANS AND JEWS 1099-1789     

(Price, D.)

Meets with RLST 458. See RLST 458.

This course examines the complex relations between Christians and Jews in Europe from the high Middle Ages through the Enlightenment. Among our topics are the religious and social roots of medieval persecutions of Jews; the history of Jewish banishments; construction of myths to foment hostilities; Renaissance humanism (especially the Christian absorption of Jewish scholarship); the impact of the Christian reform movements—both Protestant and Catholic—on the status of Jews; mercantilism and re-admissions of Jews; and the emergence of a discourse of religious tolerance in the Enlightenment.

Readings include:

Source materials and essays on electronic reserve

Foa, Anna. The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Translated by Andrea Grover. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Gerber, Jane S. The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience. New York: The Free Press, 1994.  ISBN 0-02-911574-4

Glick, Leonard B. 1999. Abraham’s Heirs: Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-2779-3 (paperback)

Glückel of Hameln, Memoirs, translated by Marvin Lowenthal (New York: Schocken, 1987). ISBN 0805205721

Hsia, R. Po-Chia. The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Europe. Yale UP. Paperback. ISBN: 0300047460

Hsia, R. Po-Chia, and Hartmut Lehman, eds. In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. Cambridge UP. Paperback. ISBN 0521522897 (Readings from this will be on electronic reserve)

Israel, Jonathan. European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750. 3rd edition. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1998. ISBN 1874774420

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Nathan the Wise, translated and edited by Ronald Schechter. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. ISBN 0-312-40152-3

Lewis, Bernard. Cultures in Conflict. Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Age of Discovery. Oxford UP. Paperback. ISBN 0195102835

Reuchlin, Johannes. Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books. New York: Paulist Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8091-3972-3

 

460G2/G4/U3  RUSSIA TO PETER THE GREAT

(Randolph, J.)

This course will survey the basic periods, and fundamental debates, in Russian history, 800-1725. Topics to be covered include the political and cultural legacy of the Kievan state, the Rus principalities under Mongol domination, origins and expansion of the Muscovite state, Ivan the Terrible and the Time of Troubles, social development and church schism in the 17th century, and finally the origins and execution of political and cultural reform under Peter the Great. Since much of the Russian history of this period is highly controversial, posing great challenges to historians both conceptually and in terms of sources, the stress in this course will be placed on how historians have tried to assemble and understand this past. Readings will include a textbook overview, specialist readings on the problems we examine in close detail, and primary sources ranging from chronicles and legal codes to birchbark letters, baroque poems, and writings by religious dissidents.

 

466G4/U3  SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE    

(Hitchins, K.)

Topic: 1700-1918

A study of political and economic development and of changes in social structure and intellectual and cultural lifeas the region moved from medieval to modern forms and made the transition 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 southof the Danube (the Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Albanians) and to the north (the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia; Transylvania) in the eighteenth century; 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. All of this leads to a consideration of fundamental questions:Why did Southeastern Europe follow a course of development different from that of Western Europe? Are we justified in treating the region as distinct from the rest of Europe; and, if it is distinct, what were the qualities that defined it? There will be ample readings, and a research paper.

 

478 1G/1U  BLACK FREED MOVE 1955-PRESENT     

(Lang, C.)

Same as AFRO 474. See AFRO 474.

The Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s comprise one of the most transformative moments in modern U.S. history.  This course provides a narrative and interpretive overview of the postwar Black Freedom Movement (1955-75), framing it within the national and international contexts in which it occurred.  Using readings, film, classroom discussion, music, and intensive writing, this course explores several questions: What is a social movement, and how are social movements important to societal change?  How were "Civil Rights" and "Black Power" similar and distinct phases of struggle?  What role did class, gender and generation play in struggles for Civil Rights and Black Power?  How did black activists benefit from the active support of allies from other racial/ethnic groups?  And finally, what are the contemporary legacies of this period?

 

495A  HONORS SEMINAR    

(Melhado, E.)

Topic: American Health Policy from the Progressive Era

Origins and development of health care policy in the United States from the late-nineteenth century.  Impact of scientific medicine on conceptions of public responsibility for health; character of reform movements calling for collective provision for health services, personnel, and facilities (as opposed to traditional public health concerns); development of health insurance, both private and public; impact of political, social, and economic factors on expectations about health services and the extent of public and private responsibility for them; the role of the social sciences in giving form to health policy agendas; rise of the economizing model of the health sector and the transformation of expectations about the responsibilities of individuals and government; impact of the new model on the concerns of policymakers and on issues before the public; the shift to market-based medicine and its implications for the structure of health services and the accessibility of health care to various segments of the population.

Course requires a substantial term paper, written in a series of steps.  Preparation of the paper confronts issues raised by writing the history of public policy (selection of audience, disinterestedness of analyses, acquisition of perspective on recent events, use of sources, forms of scholarly apparatus).

Class sessions will focus on discussion of either selected readings or students' reports of progress in selecting paper topics, identifying the audience, finding and analyzing sources, dealing with methodological issues, and composing text.

 

495U3  HONORS SEMINAR    

(Liebersohn, H.)

Topic: Gift Giving

Ever since the publication of Marcel Mauss’s book, The Gift (1925), scholars have commented on the functions and meanings of gift-giving.  Around the world, from remote antiquity to the present, people have made gift exchange a vital network that holds society and culture together.  Gifts include tribute to rulers, tokens of political alliance, artistic patronage, and charitable giving as well as the presents that we associate with birthdays and holidays.   We will be looking at gifts in a wide variety of societies across time and space, trying to understand why they have been such an enduring and widespread part of world history.  Readings will include: Homer, the Odyssey, Natalie Z. Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, and of course, the book that started it all – Mauss’s The Gift.

 

498A  RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR 

(Burgos, A.)         

Topic: Baseball and Integration

The integration of U.S. professional baseball has been hailed a watershed moment in the quest for Civil Rights and social justice. In addition to its impact on U.S. society as whole, scholars have debated the impact that integration had on Black communities, specifically on the race institutions formed during Jim Crow segregation. This course will consider integration as a process that was neither a guaranteed success nor inevitable, and will revisit debates about baseball integration as a microcosm of broader societal issues about integration in American everyday life. Course readings will include secondary source readings and engage primary source materials to discuss the different actors and communities that campaigned for or against integration. Requirements include regular attendance and participation in seminar sessions, several response papers (3-5 pages) and a final research paper (20-25 pages). In order to achieve this task, we will become more familiar with analytical concepts such as hegemony, social construction, and racialization, among others. Participants will apply these analytical tools in original research dealing with primary sources in a topic that examines issues of race, culture, gender and labor (or any intersection thereof) chosen in consultation with the professor.

 

498B  RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR

(Crowston, C.)

Topic: The French Revolution

Description not available at time of publication.

 

498C  RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR

(Fritzsche, P.)

Topic: On War: Soldiers’ Reflections

This course will examine how soldiers have reported on war and testified to how it transformed them.  What was it like to learn how to kill and to learn how to see death.  What sort of bonds of intimacy were created on the front and how did relations with the homefront thicken or fray?  What sort of creature was war?  We will concentrate on key nineteenth and twentieth century texts at the beginning of the class; students will then prepare their own examination of a single soldierly text as the basis of their research paper.   While texts will be drawn from modern Europe and the United States, and, with a single example, Japan, research papers could range more broadly in time and space.  From World War I to the Persian Gulf War, soldiers’ writings will include texts by Jünger, Remarque, Mailer, Timm, Reese, Ooka, O’Brien, and Swofford.

 

498D  RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR

(Hoganson, K.)

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. This original research paper is the heart of the class and considerable class time will be devoted to the research and writing process.

 

498E  RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR    

(Mills, B.)

Topic: Myth, National Memory and the United States in the Age of Lincoln

Investigates how the myths associated with Abraham Lincoln shape our understandings of citizenship, racial identity, social mobility, and nationalism in the antebellum United States.

 

498F  RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR

(Schneider, A.)

Topic: Dictatorships and Democratization in Latin America

This research and writing seminar examines the period of the military regimes and re-democratization in the Southern Cone of Latin America (especially Argentina, Brazil, and Chile), roughly from 1960-2000.  The course aims to engage students with debates in social science research about the collapse of democracy, the military in politics, the Cold War in Latin America, the forms and consequences of repression and resistance, and the role and outcomes of human rights claims in the larger processes of re-democratization.  Students will gain experience reading a range of primary sources that inform these debates and will develop and write their own original research papers based on them.  Special problems with writing the history of this period (such as access to material and the stakes in historical truth-telling) will be discussed throughout the course.

 

498J  RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR

(Roediger, D.)

Topic: Life and Work of CLR James

This seminar course surveys the exciting transnational life of the great Trinidadian historian, pan-Africanist, revolutionary, philosopher, novelist and sportswriter, C.L.R. James. Active in the U.S., Britain, the West Indies and Africa, James has close to many of the central events and processes in the world’s history from the 1930s until the 1980s. His writings and other sources will form the basis for the series of short papers, and one longer one, that the course requires. Active seminar participation is required. 

 

498K  RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR    

(Fraser, E.)

Topic: Muscles, Missiles, and Kitchen Debates:Gender, Politics, and Culture during the Cold War

Why did McCarthyism associate homosexuality with communism in the 1950s? In what ways was successful Western espionage linked to notions of masculine virility in the James Bond books and films? Why were kitchens the central point of debate between Nixon and Khrushchev at a 1959 summit?

This course will explore the notion of the "Cold War" as a period of global history, using gender analysis as a key tool for rethinking politics and culture in the twentieth century. Focusing primarily on readings on the Soviet Union, the United States, and Europe, students will explore themes such as masculinity and presidential power, shifts in family ideologies that accompanied the nuclear age, gendered language in war and diplomacy, and the role of rising affluence and consumerism in international politics.

 

500 Level

500A  PROBLEMS IN MILITARY HISTORY    

(Lynn, J.)

This problem course will sample the approaches and issues currently debated in military history.  It is not devoted to an exhaustive exploration of the literature surrounding one major question, but rather it is intended to prepare students for the preliminary examinations.  The books to be studied will be chosen from the reading list for those exams.  Prior approval before registration is required.

 

502A  PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY    

(Fritzsche, P.)

Topic:  Origins of Historical Knowledge

This course will examine the conditions which enable the production of various kinds of history from autobiography to national narratives to alternative subversions.  We will consider the distinction between history and memory, and go on to explore how history gets conceived and written.  Is history the production of exiles, strangers, and outsiders?  How does it create and destroy subjects?  What sort of tropes, figures, and circumstances produce historical knowledge?  We will look at literature, rumors, ghosts, collections, textiles, autobiographies as well as classical historical narratives.  What are the conditions of historical experience in a globalized world?  Can the end of history be imagined?

 

502B  PROB IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY    

(Toby, R.)

Topic: Visual Culture

“A picture” may be “worth a thousand words,” but it is never self-evident which thousand words those might be. Pictures, that is, are representations that must be “read” with the same critical care given to “written” texts:  Who is the “author” (“artist”; “producer”)?  What was the context of production and reception? What conventions of representation are built into the work?  What are the limits of “empirical” and “semiotic” reading of the visual? Initial examples will be taken from the rich archive of visual production in early-modern Japan, but students will be encouraged to pursue the historical reading of the visual in their own areas of geographic, chronological, and thematic interest.

“Picturing the Past” is a research seminar focused on the theory, problematics, and practice of interrogating visual artifacts (paintings, prints, photographs) as “historical” document or source. We will begin with a series of theoretical and methodological readings from history, art history, visual psychology, and criticism, before proceeding to implement those insights in individual research projects employing visual or pictorial “evidence” in historical interpretation.  The instructor has focused in his own research on the “reading” or “textualizing” of Japanese painting, print, and book illustration.

Students will research and write original papers in their respective areas of specialization in which they explore the possibilities of reading the visual as historical text.  All joint readings will be in English; students are encouraged, of course, to use materials in any appropriate language in their research.

 

504A  SEMINAR IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE    

(Fouché, R.)

Topic: Science and Technology Studies

This seminar will explore major themes, methods, and approaches in the history of science and technology.  The first third of the course will be devoted to a critical examination of the texts, theories, and arguments that were important for the historical development of science & technology studies.  The second third will concentrate on become conversant in the theoretical and conceptual issues that specifically inform the history of science and technology.  The final third of the course will focus

on crossing disciplinary boundaries and investigating how history can be a powerful resource in understanding the relationships between science, technology, and culture.

 

507A  PROB IN LATIN AMERICAN HIST    

(Jacobsen, N.)

Topic: Revolutions and Civil Wars in Modern Latin American History

With the rise of the new historiography about nation-state formation, state-civil society relations, social movements, hegemony, and the public sphere, a reevaluation of the revolutionary traditions in Latin American history is under way.  This course will ask questions such as the following: How were people mobilized for revolutions? How were they organized? What was the relationship between revolutions, civil wars and notions of constitutional government? How did popular groups (Indians, Afro-Latin Americans, workers. artisans, small farmers) participate in revolutions? What role did associations, Catholic and Protestant churches, parties, social networks and clientele groups play? What ideologies did the revolutionaries embrace? Which revolutions contributed to advancing the material welfare or the rights of popular groups and which did not? Does the distinction between “social” and “political” revolutions still make sense today?

We will discuss such issues first through theoretical literature about revolutions, and then by readings about a broad gamut of revolutions and civil wars from the revolutions of independence to the 19th century civil wars and revolutions in Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Peru, and the 20th century revolutions in Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.

 

519A  COLONIALISM AND POSTCOLONIALISM    

(Lugo, A.)

Same as ANTH 504. See ANTH 504.

This seminar takes the position that the history of colonialism matters in the present. In this light, we will examine the politics of academic representations of past and present colonial encounters as well as the particular political relationships of the disciplines of anthropology and history to both colonialism and the postcolonial moment. The course considers contemporary theories of “the colonial” and the “postcolonial” as well as the literature that takes exception to the generalities of those theoretical and discursive frameworks.  Although highly interdisciplinary, the bulk of the reading will be historical and ethnographic investigations of colonialism, postcolonialism, and decolonization, published, for the most part, during the last two decades.  We will be reading a variety of case studies about different historical moments (in the case of Latin America, starting in the sixteenth century) in distinct “sub-regions” of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Reading requirements are heavy. At least one course in social and /or cultural theory is an assumed prerequisite for this seminar.  One of the major purposes of this particular class is to critically and productively assess the state of the art of colonial studies (as manifested in the required readings and vis-à-vis original research papers written by the seminar participants), in order to explore the degree to which the students’ own intellectual, academic, and social thinking (in other words, the students’ own production and consumption of power/ knowledge) is “already” informed by the history and politics of empire, postcolonialism, and decolonization. We will also consider, therefore, not only how the latter’s power matrices affect and effect people’s (“colonizer”, “colonized”, and “postcolonial” subjects) everyday lives and their respective, inter-related subjectivities, but also how current and future social projects in the academy (anthropology, history, literature, cultural studies, ethnic studies, etc.) and beyond are produced under the shadows of specific colonial encounters.

 

520A  PROBLEMS IN CHINESE HISTORY    

(Fu, P.)

Topic: Globalization, Regionalization and Chinese Popular Cultures     

Same as EALC 520

Focusing on popular cinema and television, this course explores the issue of Greater China's ((i.e., China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) negotiation between modernity and tradition in its century-long search for integration with the global order. The course will cover the period from the 1930s to the present. Our goal is not to provide answers to the questions, but to question the answers. Through this learning process we hope to broaden and deepen our inquiry into the intricate interrelations of globalization, regional political economy, national culture, and cultural identity in Greater China.

 

535A  PROB IN MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY    

(Cuno, K.)

Topic: Core Readings in Middle Eastern History

Meets with History 536A

This readings course will explore a variety of approaches to and topics in the history of the early modern and modern Middle East. It presumes that students will already have a basic knowledge of the period and area.

          

536A  SEMINAR IN MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY    

(Cuno, K.)

Topic: Research Seminar on Middle East History

Meets with History 535A

This course will meet with Hist 535A at first to discuss some broad historiographical issues, but the main activity will be the researching and writing of a paper. For advanced students.  

 

543A  SEMINAR IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY    

(Mathisen, R.)

Topic: History and Material Culture in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

This seminar will investigate the manifold ways in which material culture can help us to reconstruct the history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in conjunction with the analysis of textual evidence, and will cover the roles, for example, of numismatics, epigraphy, palaeography and codicology, iconography, and archaeology.

 

551B  PROB EUROPEAN HIST SINCE 1789

(Hitchins, K.)

Topic: Nation-Building in the Balkans 1919-1960

The internal political, social, economic, and intellectual development of Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania and their place in the international political system; ideas of national identity and theories of development; involvement in the Second World War and  consequences; Communist parties and the nature of Communist systems; and continuities and disruptions between the interwar decades and the early Communist era.

 

570A PROB IN AMERICAN HIST TO 1830    

(Hoxie, F.)

Topic: American Indian History as Colonial History

Over the past generation, a new historical literature has emerged that explores the impact of colonialism on both colonized peoples and the societies that came to dominate them in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  This scholarship has also been inspired by widespread interest in postcolonial studies, the use of anthropology in historical writing, and the persistence of neo-colonial systems of domination across the globe.  As a consequence, historians of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Pacific have produced a remarkable (and vast) literature on the "cultures of colonialism" at many times and in many places.

At the same time, the field of Native American history has emerged in the United States as a distinctive area of study. Scholars have moved beyond critiques of federal Indian policy or hermetically-sealed histories of individual tribes to explore the complexity of the encounters that occurred from the sixteenth century onward as Europeans mounted their invasion of the Americas.  New work engages issues such as the persistence of Native identities through time, the agency of Native actors in history, and the complex relationship between Native and national histories.

                                                                                                         This seminar will explore the possibility of linking these two traditions of scholarship by, first, exploring some recent key texts in the literature on colonialism, and then by exploring the possibility of using some of the themes suggested by colonial and postcolonial scholarship to write a new chapter in the history of Native America.  Among the topics to be explored will be empire and Indians, gender and colonialism, settler colonialism, tribal persistence and reinvention, imperial ideologies and Indian law, and the popular culture(s) generated by colonial relationships.  Students will be expected to keep up with an ambitious and wide-ranging reading list, to assist in leading discussions, to write a series of short reviews and to prepare a historiographic essay on a theme related to the course materials.

 

572A  PROB IN US HISTORY SINCE 1815

(Espiritu, A.)

Topic:  Transnationalism

Meets with GWS 590EM

Transnationalism, alongside of “global” discourses, has emerged in the last two decades as an important problem of contemporary knowledge production, and has increasingly become a concern of historians. In this course, with a critical though not exclusive focus upon the history of the United States, we will grapple with the complex questions raised by transnationalism. Did transnationalism come after the constitution of nations or was it one of the nation’s essential preconditions?  How has transnationalism shaped the construction of national, race, gender, and sexual ideologies in the USA and other empires? Is transnationalism, as pilgrimage, tourism, exile, or diaspora, a necessarily liberating predicament, or does it in fact reinforce neo-imperial and neo-colonial structures?  How has the act of claiming America obscured transnational, transborder, & transoceanic processes? And finally, how have transnationalism and empire raised fundamental questions about sovereignty and modernity in the twenty-first century?

 

572B  PROB IN US HIST SINCE 1815

(McDuffie, E.)

Topic: The History of 20th Century Black Women's Activism

        This is a readings class in the history of twentieth century African American women's activism and their involvement in social movements. We are concerned with appreciating their critical roles in building, sustaining, and leading all-Black organizations such as the Women's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention, National Association of Colored Women, Universal Negro Improvement Association, Black Panther Party, National Black Feminist Organization, and Combahee River Collective as well as interracial organizations like the Communist Party, USA and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. This class will be grounded in social movement and Black feminist theory. We will analyze how Black women activists formulated Black feminist, transnational, diasporic frameworks to understand the global nature of racism, economic inequalities, sexism, and in some cases homophobia.

We will examine how gender, race, class, sexuality, femininity, masculinity, age, and culture have structured social movements and positioned black women and men within them. In addition, we will focus on how black women's activists have grappled with black nationalist discourses, which have often narrowly defined the struggle for black liberation in masculinist terms. We will also examine the transformative effects of activism on Black women's subjectivities. Interdisciplinary in approach, we will use the latest scholarship from the fields of History, Women's Studies, Sociology, and Political Science as well as memoir and fiction to explore these issues. Students will be required to write an interpretative essay as their final project. If successful, this class should be very useful for students interested in researching and teaching in the fields of Black Women's Studies, African American History, and African Diaspora Studies.

 

575A  PROBLEMS AFRICAN AMERICAN HIST    

(Lang, C.)

Topic: Problems in African-American History

Same as AFRO 501

This problems course provides an overview of the historiography of the postwar Civil Rights-Black Power movements (1955-75). It engages major themes and debates in contemporary Black Freedom Studies, especially with regard to gender, class, regional foci, international dimensions, and historical periodization. This course also assesses frameworks that historians and social scientists have used to analyze black social movements, in terms of their origins, evolution, internal practices, strategies and ideologies, decline, and political uses as history.

 

597S   READING COURSE  

(Koenker, D.)

Topic: Approaches to History

This required course for entering history graduate students offers an initial foray into historiography, methods, and conceptual approaches for students in all fields. Assigned materials, class discussions, and assignments will prepare students for the second-semester required research seminar.

         

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