Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Berks · Courses
HIST
269 courses with the subject HIST, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
HIST 100Ancient Greece3
The Greek world from the earliest Aegean cultures to the death of Alexander the Great and the beginnings of Hellenistic civilization. CAMS 100 / HIST 100 Ancient Greece (3) (GH;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. The course presents a survey of ancient Greek history and culture beginning with the Bronze Age palace-states of Crete and Mycenae, examines the emergence of Greek city-states, notably Athens and Sparta, traces their transformation through conflicts among themselves and with the Persian empire, and describes their eventual eclipse by the kingdom of Macedon. Since this course treats the beginnings of historical writing among the Greeks, students learn to evaluate diverse historical texts and their relationship to legend, myth, and poetry. The nature of historical thought itself is emphasized throughout the course. Also emphasized is the debate between the egalitarian Justice of democracy, the sober wisdom of oligarchy, and the overwhelming power of monarchy, as experienced by the Greeks down to the end of the fourth century B.C.E.
History of the Roman Republic and Empire from the origins of Rome to the disintegration of the Empire. CAMS 101 / HIST 101 The Roman Republic and Empire (3) (GH;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements and fulfills 3 credits of the General Education-Humanities (GH) requirement. The course provides an introduction to the ancient Roman empire: how that empire came into being, how it evolved, how it came to govern much of the Mediterranean and European world, and how that empire declined. The course demonstrates the social and legal structures employed by a past society to govern an ethnically and religiously diverse population. The course also introduces students to the sources of our knowledge of the past, and illustrates how these sources are to be critically evaluated. This course complements other courses on the ancient Mediterranean world (such as HIST 100 / CAMS 100) and is a prerequisite to more advanced (400-level) courses in ancient Mediterranean history.
Ancient Israel names the land and people of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), and it provides important background for the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Yet, ancient Israel remains difficult to approach historically, perceptible in biblical texts received only through centuries of later transmission and archaeological data often lacking names, voices, and stories. This course will explore the history, society, and culture of ancient Israel in its West Asian context from ca. 1200-330 BCE through a variety of evidence types, with the goal of probing what everyday life was like for people. Attention will be given to such issues as: social and historical setting, archaeology, comparative ancient Near Eastern sources, gender and sexuality, law, ritual, historiography, scribalism, ethics, Israelite religion, food, political ideology, post/de-colonialism and empire, apocalypticism, race and ethnicity, disability, death and afterlife, and more.
HIST 103The History of Madness, Mental Illness, and Psychiatry3
More than perhaps any other set of human afflictions, the phenomena that have gone under the names of "madness," "insanity," "lunacy," and "mental illness" have historically provoked a wide variety of often contradictory reactions. Those who have been in the throes of "madness" have described experiences ranging from an ecstatic sense of holiness to being beset by undeniable impulses to feelings of unending despair. Observers have sought explanations for the behavior of "touched" and "crazy" individuals by invoking such things as sin, destiny, heredity, moral degeneracy, upbringing, trauma, fatigue, and body chemistry. Those afflicted have been admired, pitied, mocked, hidden from public view, canonized, imprisoned, restrained, operated on, sterilized, hospitalized, killed, counseled, analyzed, and medicated. Why? This course will examine the ideas that have shaped European and American perceptions of madness, insanity, and mental illness. This course will be an introduction to the modern history of "madness" in the Western world. In particular, we will examine the ideas that have shaped European and American perceptions of madness, insanity, and mental illness; the changing experiences of those afflicted; the development of those professions designed to look after those deemed mad, insane, and mentally ill; and the social and cultural assumptions behind treatments, policies, and public opinions.
This course will track the history of Egypt, the first nation state in the world, covering a time span of over 3,000 years. The investigation of the history will focus primarily on the major players (i.e. the pharaohs themselves) and the political events that shaped their reigns. Its history involves not only the Nile Valley, but also that of the entire northeast African continent and lands of Western Asia. The magnificent ruins and artifacts that have survived offer the student a visual examination of the ancients and will provide illustration to a great extent of the specific time periods and dramatic incidents. The student will also be confronted at every turn by textual sources (in translation) and the archaeological evidence. The latter will be addressed at length with introduction to archaeological expeditions. This will serve to teach the student the contribution of archaeological method and interpretation in the knowledge and understanding of the history of the Near East.
This course examines the development and history of the Byzantine Empire from the decline of the Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. As the Roman Empire disintegrated, the West slowly developed into smaller kingdoms, while the East survived in a unified empire centered on Constantinople. Modern scholars call this eastern empire, and its culture, Byzantine. This course examines the process by which the Latin imperial culture of Rome was transformed into a profoundly Greek culture, which for centuries represented the model against which other civilizations ¿ the various kingdoms of the Latin West, the Islamic caliphates of Damascus and Baghdad, and the Slavic chieftaincies of eastern Europe ¿ measured themselves.
HIST 106Early Modern Empires of Islam: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals3
This course examines the history of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, from their origins to the Safavid Collapse, a historical time period covering approximately 1300 to 1722. Each week, the class will focus on a major turning point or theme using a combination of regional case studies and primary sources. In the process, students will be exposed to ongoing historiographical debates about a variety of events and trends in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal history. Topics covered include war, diplomacy, urbanism, architecture, science, religion, technology, and art. This course focuses on and examines how the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal states evolved in a changing global context.
HIST 107 / MEDVL 107 examines the history of Europe from c. 300-c. 1400 CE. The many themes of this course include: the development of political, judicial and diplomatic institutions; the role of religion, especially that of Christianity in all its forms - orthodox, heretical, and popular - as a significant element of medieval society; the development of royal houses; and changes in economic and social life of medieval Europe. Within these primary themes, the course addresses many subjects, including the development of both secular and ecclesiastical authority, various efforts to control or wield violence, and the importance of a number of agricultural and economic changes that transformed Europe.
The course examines the social and political history of the "Crusades", one form of holy war in medieval Europe, the Levant, and North Africa, focusing primarily on the period from the 11th through the 14th centuries, but also offering background to, as well the history of later repercussions of, the "Crusades". This warfare of the Central and Late Middle Ages, later called "Crusades", were fought in many geographical regions, including the Levant, the Baltic, the Iberian peninsula, southern France, and North Africa. The course addresses various elements of this kind of medieval warfare, and examines how such "crusading" evolved with complex political, religious, and economic origins.
HIST 109Introduction to U.S. Environmental History3
This course explores the major themes of U.S. Environmental History, examining changes in the American landscape, the development of ideas about nature in the United States, and the history of U.S. environmental activism. Throughout the course, we will be exploring definitions of nature, environment, and environmental history as we investigate the interactions between Americans and their physical worlds. HIST 109 provides an introduction to environmental history as a field of scholarship that examines changing relationships between human beings and the natural world. Environmental history centers on the examination of various questions about such relationships, including exploring how natural forces shape history, how humankind affects nature, and how those ecological changes then reciprocally influence human life. Major themes of the course include: (1) recognizing that American history has a natural context; (2) that relationships between nature and culture change over time; and (3) that knowledge about nature is socially constructed and historically contingent.
HIST 110Introduction to Global Environmental History3
This course provides a broad introduction to the history of human relationships with nature throughout the world. The human relationship with the natural environment the world of plants, animals, and microbes, of air, water, and land is an important historical subject. History 110 provides a broad, thematic description and analysis of major global trends and shifts, with an emphasis on contemporary issues and problem solving. The most important goal of the course is to provide students with the historical context necessary to construct a thoughtful appreciation of the environmental dilemmas of our time. Ecology has contributed a great deal to historical understanding in terms of specific examples or case studies; however, it has also begun to reconstruct the overall structure of the history that we teach. History 110 seeks to leverage this new paradigm by encouraging students to break down the barriers that often divide the humanities and the sciences. This course utilizes environmental science to demonstrate and explain specific human tendencies. Finally, this course is structured to help students better situate the history of the United States in a more global centered view of both the past and contemporary environmental concerns. Particularly in relation to contemporary environmental issues, History 110 will make clear that many environmental problems are local in neither their construction nor impact. The course will focus on several critical points, including: How has the non-human world shaped the course of human history? What were the environmental impacts of historic changes in the ways humans produced and consumed resources? What ideas shaped the ways different groups of people defined and used specific resources? What role have science and technology played in changing popular attitudes about the human place in the world?
This course is a historical analysis of agriculture and food production in the United States. It includes examination of the history of food production and consumption patterns, the food industry, food marketing, and the politics and regulation of the American food system. This course explores the food system as a nexus that brings together history, technology, and culture in ways that have significant impacts on human livelihoods and wellbeing. A core theme of the course will be consideration of questions about food ethics and the challenge of improving the sustainability of food systems including the need to maintain or increase improvements in productivity while also addressing social effects and reducing environmental impacts of food production.
Practicing as a historian outside traditional classrooms opens up worlds of diverse professional opportunities. This course is designed to introduce students to that broad world, allowing for learning and experimentation. The course teaches theories of public history practice, audience development, collection management, interpretation, organizational management, finance, and other pillars of practicing history with and for the masses. The course will consider both the past and future of the field. Students should encounter public history at work in society. There are various ways to achieve such aims, including interaction with practicing public historians through field trips and/or in class, preparing a grant application, and presenting a modest public history project in class.
This course offers a comparative survey of baseball history from its origins in the nineteenth century to the present. The course uses the broad cultural and geographic diffusion of baseball over time to examine the diverse and changing social, economic, and political meanings of this activity in different cultural settings, emphasizing the ways in which a common activity may acquire unique meanings in different cultures. Although North America, Cuba, and Japan demand attention as the most striking examples of baseball's pervasive impact, the course will also consider baseball as a global phenomenon, for example, exploring the minimal impact or failure of baseball promotions in many European and African societies.
HIST 114NHistorical Perspectives on HealthCare Innovations3
This course will explore how historical context influenced major innovators in health care. It will pursue the general education objectives of 1) integrative thinking, and 2) social responsibility and ethical reasoning. GH learning criteria will include: 1) knowledge of major cultural current issues and developments through time, 2) competence in critical thinking about topics in the humanities, and 3) familiarity with groups, individuals, ideas, or events that have influenced the experiences and values of different communities. GS learning criteria will include the abilities to: 1) describe the ways in which many different factors may interact to influence behaviors and/or institutions, 2) explain how social science researchers work to better understand and address world problems, and 3) recognize social, cultural, political and/or ethical implications of work in the social and behavioral sciences.
Chronological and topical survey of the story of Jewish life in America. We will trace the social, religious, cultural, and political developments in the Jewish community from the Colonial Period to the present. Topics to be covered include immigration, acculturation, ethnicity, gender, politics, and communal and religious innovation. While "knowing the facts" is obviously important to historical understanding, this course helps students develop critical thinking skills. These skills include: close and thoughtful reading and analysis of primary and secondary sources; looking for a broader coherence or "order" to the material; independent analysis and effective articulation (both in writing and in class discussion) of well-reasoned, well-crafted conclusions and interpretations and arguments (conclusions/interpretations/arguments which are supported by specific factual evidence derived from a variety of sources). The three specific course objectives underscore its scholarly dimensions: (1) Students will gain a knowledge and understanding of the relationship between the experiences of members of the American Jewish community and United States history as a whole. (2) Students will gain an understanding and knowledge of the political, economic, and social processes that shaped the American Jewish experience. (3) Students will learn how to "think historically" by placing documents written in the past in their historical contexts, and to consider the relationship of the past to the present. By the end of the course students will: Demonstrate an understanding of the chronology of American Jewish history. Demonstrate an understanding of the diverse experiences of different groups of Americans. Demonstrate an understanding of the social, political, and ideological structures that shaped the American Jewish experience and continue to shape the modern United States.
HIST 116NFamily and Gender Roles in Modern History3
This course explores the transformation of modern families in the "Western" world, beginning with the basic context and elements of families as early as sixteenth-century Europe and Colonial America. The course has a primary focus on marriage, parents and children, and gender in the context of the history of family, family life, and gender roles in the United States. The course focuses on the social history of families, encompassing the ever-changing elements of sociological, political, and gender history within American families.
HIST 117 / WMNST 117 provides students with an overview of the most important historical developments in the history of women in the United States, including women's actual experiences as members of a class, a race, and an ethnic community, the progress women have made as individuals, workers, and citizens as well as the opposition they have faced. While ¿knowing the facts¿ is obviously important to historical understanding, this course helps students develop critical thinking skills. These skills include: close and thoughtful reading and analysis of primary and secondary sources; looking for a broader coherence or ¿order¿ to the material; independent analysis and effective articulation (both in writing and in class discussion) of well-reasoned, well-crafted conclusions and interpretations and arguments (conclusions/interpretations/arguments which are supported by specific factual evidence derived from a variety of sources). The three specific course objectives underscore its scholarly dimensions: (1) Students will gain a knowledge and understanding of the diverse experiences of different groups of American women. (2) Students will gain an understanding and knowledge of the political, economic, and social processes that shaped the history of women in the United States. (3) Students will learn how to ¿think historically¿ by placing documents written in the past in their historical contexts, and to consider the relationship of the past to the present. By the end of the course students will: Demonstrate an understanding of the chronology of United States women¿s history. Demonstrate an understanding of the diverse experiences of different groups of American women. Demonstrate an understanding of the social, political, and ideological structures that shaped the history of American women and continue to shape the modern United States.
Modern Jewish history is a complex and fascinating story. Some scholars depicted it as a long period of suffering and isolation that culminated in the Holocaust and only ended with the founding of the state of Israel. In recent decades a more balanced perspective has found wide acceptance. Today scholars highlight Jewish agency and different conditions in the various places Jews settled without downplaying anti-Jewish prejudice and violence. A recurring theme in this course concerns the relationship between individual Jews and Jewish communities, and on a broader level, the perception and treatment of Jews by societies and states. As Jews in Western and Central Europe "left the Ghetto" around 1800 and became citizens of states, they redefined their relationship to Jewish communities in strikingly different ways. Some Jewish women and men emerged as agents of change, others resisted change. We will explore Jewish "responses to modernity," ranging from assimilation, Zionism, and socialism to migration. While many Jews in Western Europe and the United States prospered, the lives of Jews (and their neighbors) in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire were shaped by social and economic crisis (albeit not constantly and not everywhere). For the twentieth century the course will concentrate on three major events that had a dramatic impact on Jews, especially in Europe: the First World War and the collapse of the large multiethnic Empires in Eastern Europe, the Holocaust and the founding of the first modern Jewish state, Israel.
This course is a survey of the development of gender roles from the pre-modern to modern period. In this course, students will examine the gender roles, relations, and identities among several cultures and among groups within them. Students will look for and try to understand the significance of the intersections between gender, race, class, and sex and better comprehend the cultural conflicts that arose when these groups interacted. Generally speaking, students will see how gender drove history through the twentieth century, resulting in our modern ideas of gender.
This course traces the history of modern Europe, beginning with a brief contextual background of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. The course then focuses primarily on the political, economic, and social developments in Europe from rise of the European nation state during the nineteenth century through the present day. The course examines several broad topics, including the political and ideological developments of this period in European history; the origins and enduring impact of two World Wars; the developments of totalitarianism, fascism, socialism, and democracy in Europe; and Europe's political and economic roles in the modern world.
This course focuses on the history and historiography of the Holocaust from 1933-1945. In addition to cultivating intellectual skills, such as critical analysis and concise presentation, the primary purpose of this course is to provide an in-depth overview of the Holocaust. The course will touch on various aspects of the Holocaust, including the function of the "Ghettos", the role of the mobile killing units, extermination camps, Jewish resistance, the role of the Allies, Holocaust trials, and the question how the Holocaust can be compared with other genocides. The course will analyze the Holocaust using historical, literary, and philosophical approaches.
The main goal of this course is to think through and understand major developments, ideas and issues in natural philosophy. "Natural philosophy" is the premodern term for science. The term "science" began to acquire its modern meanings around 1840. The geographic focus of this course is the Mediterranean region and Europe, but we will also investigate early science in China, the Indian subcontinent, and the Islamic world. The temporal coverage of this course is vast: from about 10,000 years ago to the 19th century. As is common in history courses, it will be essential for us temporarily to set aside modern and contemporary biases and ways of thinking. Our goal is to understand the world as ancient and premodern people did. Issues of religion will constantly make appearances in this course. If you have studied world religions already, that is great, but if not, the books and lectures will provide the essential points as we go along. You should also use Wikipedia or similar reference tools to look up any key term or concept that does not make sense to you, whether with respect to lectures or the books. It is your job to make an active effort to master the material. This course is ideal for anyone pursuing a scientific or technical major, but anyone should benefit from it. We will be exploring some of the most important issues that have shaped our world, key developments in the human capacity for creating knowledge and useful technologies, and, in some cases, innovative solutions to vexing problems. We will also examine some of the ways that social institutions, belief systems, and paradigms (models) have helped both to organize and to constrain human knowledge. If all goes reasonably well, this course will enhance your knowledge and open your mind to hitherto unfamiliar ways of thinking and approaches to problems.
A history of science and culture from the scientific revolution to the present. HIST 123 examines the intellectual, social, and cultural history of science from the Scientific Revolution to the present. The course covers a range of theoretical and applied disciplines, including engineering and medicine. In addition to major discoveries and new ideas, methods, and tools, the course examines the effect of social conditions on science as well as the impact science has had on society. Scientific developments in the Western world, broadly defined, constitute the organizing framework of the course, but the course also examines science in non-Western cultures
This course explores the history of health, illness, and medicine in western society from Ancient Egypt through the modern world. Relying on both primary and secondary sources, the course examines major developments in the understanding of health, illness, medical treatment, and medical practice in western society from Ancient Egypt to the present. The course will explore such themes as the changing status of medical practitioners, the experience of patients in different historical settings, artistic depictions of illness and healing, and the increasingly prominent role of medicine in public policy in order to better understand the links between medicine and its social, cultural, intellectual, and political contexts.
HIST 125NHistory of Infectious Disease and Epidemiology3
Infectious diseases once thought to be nearly eradicated have seen a resurgence in recent years. The majority of the cases arose from people who deliberately chose not to vaccinate their children against these disease. Even in the twenty-first century the nature of disease and how to prevent it is not merely a matter of science, but an issue laden with cultural, political, and religious concerns. This course charts the history of disease both as a subject of scientific inquiry and a cultural and religious phenomenon. We will begin with early Greek and Egyptian attempts to understand disease as a foreign entity attacking the body and end in the twenty-first century with current ideas surrounding the use of antibiotics, vaccines, and emerging threats throughout the world. Along the way we will discuss the impact of significant epidemics - for example, Bubonic Plague, Syphilis, and Influenza - as well as changing scientific thinking of both how to deal with disease and how to understand the natural world. In tandem with the historical background key scientific ideas necessary for studying disease - including current understanding of the microbial world, microscopy techniques, and modern gene theory - will be presented to the students through classroom instruction and virtual laboratories.
This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of Latinas and Latinos in the United States. The course includes a historical overview of the major events in the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America that led to the creation of Latina/o communities in this country. Students will examine the formation of racial and class hierarchies within U.S. Latina/o communities; the processes of (international and regional) migration; gendered hierarchies and responses to sexism; and the complexities of U.S. Latina/o identity.
This course will investigate the development of mathematical thought in multiple Afro-Eurasian cultures from the Bronze Age through the early medieval period, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India, China, and the Islamic world. Math will be examined as a cultural product, with specific developments contextualized in the generating civilization's history, socio-political structures, economic systems, artistic and literary movements, and prevailing religious and philosophical ideas. Students will investigate the ways in which specific aspects of a culture influenced the development of specific ideas about, approaches to, and techniques regarding number and mathematical processes. Key themes in this respect will be what social forces encourage the development of practical or theoretical mathematics; how a society determines what is truth; the conception of abstract ideas such as zero and negative, infinite, and irrational numbers; the social status of mathematicians and their relationship with political and social authorities; and what social forces hinder the development of practical and/or theoretical mathematics. Students will also consider how the availability of certain mathematical knowledge enabled the development of particular social systems, architectural achievements, and more. Key themes in this respect will be the mathematical needs of specific political systems (such as the accounting involved in imperial administration), legal systems (such as fair division of goods), and religious systems (such as the calculation of accurate systems of time). At the same time, students will draw connections across time periods and cultures by examining the interactions between civilizations and how those interactions influenced the development of mathematics as a human endeavor. Key themes in this respect will be understanding what political, economic, and other forces cause cultures to come into contact or seek out contact; and how the exchange of knowledge shapes both the receiving culture and the study of mathematics as a whole. As part of this course, students will study both specific mathematical ideas (e.g., number systems, deductive reasoning, geometric algebra, and the motivating problems that spurred development) and the specific ancient and medieval cultures named above.
This course will examine the "world" of chocolate throughout human history. First cultivated by the ancient peoples of the Americas and then manufactured by Europeans and Pennsylvanians alike, chocolate has played a privileged role as a luxury good. An interdomain course, "Chocolate Worlds" is interdisciplinary, taught by faculty in the departments of Plant Science, Anthropology, and History. As a team we investigate the how diverse societies have differentially interacted with this crop. Rather than be organized chronologically, this course will be divided into course Units, such as the history of cocoa uses and cultivation, cocoa plant science and farming issues, chocolate making and markets, and the state of the global chocolate industry. The course's lectures and assigned readings work in concert equally directed by scientific inquiry and the queries of the social sciences and humanities. Assignments will address real world questions relating to contemporary cocoa cultivation and production, and its role in international development and social justice. As a class we will take field trips to sites such as local chocolate manufacturing facilities and cocoa research sites and laboratories. The learning objectives of this course include students' broad knowledge of cacao production, its history, and ethnical issues surrounding its cultivation in today's global economy. Additionally, students will gain an historical appreciation for the role this crop his played in diverse human societies and a scientific understanding of its genetic structure.
HIST 130Introduction to the Civil War Era, 1848 through 18773
Survey of the causes and consequences of America's deadliest conflict, the Civil War, from the end of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848 through the end of Reconstruction in 1877. This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. HIST 130 is a general survey of the American Civil War Era that satisfies the Gen Ed GH requirement. Course content features the causes of the war, the conflict itself, the consequences for the meaning of freedom in the United States, and the continuing relevance of this conflict today. Students will become familiar with American slavery; Northern and Southern social, cultural, political, and economic composition; the military progress of the war; problems on the home front; the struggle for emancipation; and the creation of a new nation based on free labor.
This course provides a general introduction to two very different modes of thinking about race and slavery in the United States between the 1770s and the 1860s. The first half of the class will present historians' interpretations of the lives of slaves, the politics of slavery, and the Civil War. The other half of the class is devoted to examining cinematic and artistic treatments of slavery and the Civil War. Overall, the course will focus on the differences and tensions between historians' methods and ways of knowing about and understanding the world, versus the essential truths that artists try to present in film while focusing on the specifics of slavery and the Civil War in the United States. Rather than privileging one way of knowing over the other, the course will focus on the strengths and limits of each. In addition, the course will examine how collective historical memories concerning race, slavery, and the Civil War are created and contested. The first half of the class offers an historical analysis of the history of slavery in the United States between the American Revolution in the 1770s and the American Civil War in the 1860s. The second part of the class will focus on cinematic presentations of slavery and the Civil War. The second part of the course will NOT focus on using historical facts to evaluate a film's fidelity to history as a scholarly discipline. It will instead examine film as art, as a commercial endeavor, and as a cultural product. It will then explore how different filmmakers portray slavery and the Civil War in different genres; how films reflect the period of their production and the personality of their producers; the commercial demands of filmmaking and how that limits subject matter; and how films shape collective historical memories. Students will also learn the basics of film criticism.
HIST 134Great Britain and Ireland in the Early Modern World3
This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of Latinas and Latinos in the United States. The course includes a historical overview of the major events in the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America that led to the creation of Latina/o communities in this country. Students will examine the formation of racial and class hierarchies within U.S. Latina/o communities; the processes of (international and regional) migration; gendered hierarchies and responses to sexism; and the complexities of U.S. Latina/o identity. HIST 134 provides a survey of the history and cultures of Great Britain and Ireland from 1400 to 1800. The course particularly focuses on the diversity of English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish cultures and customs, their influence on early forms of nationalism in the British Isles, and their importance in the formation of the modern British nation-state. The relationships between English and Scottish protestants, the importance of translating the Book of Common Prayer from English to Welsh, and the influence of Irish-born families of English descent on the governance of early modern Ireland were all key elements in the emergence of an empire under the authority of an English dynastic state whose practical control over the territories it claimed to govern often remained quite limited. Through an examination of primary and secondary historical sources. students will consider the dynamism of this process, involving complex interrelationships, rather than the simple supremacy of one ethnic group over another.
How can we approach North Korea beyond the narrow lens of immediate security concerns? How can we move past Cold War narratives about this socialist country, which persists in a post-Cold War world? How do we write cultural and social histories that transcend the usual top-down focus on the Kim family and the state? And how do we challenge the dominant view of North Korea as an isolated exception in global history? This course addresses these questions by examining North Korea's history, moving chronologically from its colonial origins to its present-day context in the post-Cold War era, yet with thematical variances. Rather than interpreting North Korea's historical developments solely as top-down products of the Kim family or state control, we will pay more attention to how a wide range of North Korean individuals have shaped their history through daily practices in their home, workplaces, schools, and leisure venues. By focusing on these everyday dynamics, the course seeks to challenge the stereotypical image of North Korea as a monolithic "totalitarian" state. By shifting the focus in this way, students are encouraged to engage with the political and social complexities of the socialist country beyond the constraints of the Cold War framework.
This course offers a global history of World War One (WW I), allowing students to study not only military and political elements of the war, but also what this conflict meant for entire societies. Attention will be paid to a variety of topics, including army and battle dynamics, decisions of various states and empires, and consequences on the "home fronts"--including, for instance, labor conflicts, welfare programs, food insecurity, breakdowns of imperial rule, refugees, and mourning. Chronologically, the course also includes background on the decades leading to the war (from c. 1890), as well as the "war after the war" (ending in 1925). Students will analyze a variety of primary sources, including official and private written sources, visual materials, music, and material culture and surviving artifacts.
HIST 140The History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1917-Present)3
This course covers the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how the issues at stake changed over time, up to the present day. The course situates the conflict in the history of the Middle East and the larger context of international relations, including the Cold War and the end of the Cold War. Topics include regional warfare and its significance, efforts at peacemaking, and social, economic, and cultural developments among Israelis and Palestinians.
This course is an introductory survey, including political, social, economic, and cultural development of Kievan, Muscovite, and Imperial Russia. Tracing the history of Russia from the ninth to early twentieth century, this course examines the central role of the people, politics and culture at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. Particular topics include the rise of the Kievan State, the Mongol rule, the rise of Muscovy, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, relations with Western Europe up until the end of imperial Russia under the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II. It offers a basic knowledge of the cultural, political, economic, artistic and historical background of this vital region of the world.
This course examines the development of communism, one of the most powerful ideologies to have developed in modern history. This course first explores the writings of Marx and his advocates, notably Engels and Lenin, in order to understand why the first communist regime emerged in the unlikeliest of places: Russia. This course then examines the developments of communism through the evolution of the Soviet Union, the formation and development of the Communist bloc, the impact of Chinese communism, and the impact of Communist ideologies in other areas of the world, such as Cuba.
This course studies the developments of right-wing totalitarianism in the twentieth century with special emphasis on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which provided the roots for fascist developments in the modern world. The course concerns itself with understanding the social, political, and economic contexts of fascism, its governing assumptions, ideals, and values, how it worked in practice, and its consequences and historical implications. Another focus will be on the question of why these illiberal, anti-democratic, and ultimately murderous regimes appear to have appealed to many groups during the 1930s and 1940s, not only within Italy and Germany, but also within broader European society.
History 144 provides an in-depth study of World War II, which brought many new aspects to modern warfare: civilians were the majority of casualties, deliberate air attacks were made on cities, research brought the advent of new technologies, and several of the global belligerents represented the participation of militaristic totalitarian states where dictators had risen to power with considerable popular support. Thus, topics of the course include: the origins of the war; political and economic struggles leading to the conflict; actions of both Axis and Allied military forces; broad violence in the forms of rape and genocide; and the aftermath of the struggle.
This inter-domain course integrates historical (GH) study of the Holocaust with sociological (GS) perspectives on the Holocaust and human rights. Topical content begins with historical antisemitism ("the longest hatred") and elaborates the history of the Holocaust in German and in Europe. A second half of the course explores consequent definitions of genocide and human rights, globally established by the United Nations through international law. Post-war campaigns to reduce prejudice and to raise 'Holocaust consciousness' are presented along with sociological insights into problems of persecution through eugenics, xenophobia, and racialized inequalities. Survivor testimonies underscore the value of resilience and the ethics of standing up against injustice, including discrimination or persecution based on cultural or another group identification.
This course examines the complex history of Penn State. The time period covered extends from mid-19th century origins as the Farmers' High School to the highly complex, multi-faceted, modern "research university" of the early 21st century. The course will study closely: the conduct, leadership, perspectives, and educational visions of notable presidents, administrators, and faculty (such as George Atherton, Edwin Sparks, Ralph Hetzel, Milton Eisenhower, Eric Walker, Jesse Arnelle, Howard Davidson, Della Durant, Seth Williams among many others); various dimensions of student life (including student protest and the demise of loci parentis); race and gender relations; athletics; and the challenges of university life, research, admissions, co-education and achieving diversity in the post-World War II era. The Penn State experience will be examined in the context of larger historical developments in American higher education, student life and attitudes, and the broad political / economic / social and legal environment. Comparisons will be made to other colleges and universities. Using primary and secondary historical sources, this course pursues a distinctly historical angle; particular emphasis will be placed on chronicling and evaluating change over time and thoughtful consideration of a diversity of voices and perspectives
This course provides a chronological survey of the creation, evolution, and impact of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA's origins begin with its World War II forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), followed by the Agency's formal creation in 1947, at the commencement of the Cold War. In subsequent decades, American presidents deployed the CIA to bolster the cause of containment. Like its predecessor, the OSS, the CIA embraced the dual missions of conducting espionage and engaging in covert actions to promote America's Cold War priorities. The Agency's secret efforts to secure U.S. global interests often conflicted with the country's stated democratic ideals and students will learn how this history fostered negative perceptions of American power in many areas of the world. During the Cold War, the CIA's clandestine campaigns in other countries included covert payments to political parties, labor unions and front groups. In some non-western countries, it also utilized violent methods, supporting efforts to overthrow left-wing governments and at times even sponsoring assassination attempts. Revelations of these activities spurred efforts to limit the agency's activities in the 1970s, but renewed controversy emerged after 9/11 and in response to the CIA's role in the War on Terror.
This course offers an introduction to the history of the United States in the 1960s. The dual goals of this course are to instill a particular body of knowledge - in this case, America in the 1960s, and to provide students with tools that will help formulate interpretations of this crucial period in U.S. history. Topics covered will include the leadership of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon; the struggle for civil rights for people of color; the emergence of student movements across the country; the steady escalation of US involvement in Vietnam; shifting relations across gender lines, and particularly the rise of the modern feminist movement; and, finally, the growing influence of popular culture, such as music, literature, and film.
HIST 151NTechnology and Society in American History3
This course examines the development of technology in the United States from the colonial period to the present, and places into a historical context the reception and influence of these technological developments on the social, economic, and political life of the United States. The technologies serving American society--past and present--range widely and include, for example, new harvesting techniques, railroads and motor vehicles, assembly-line mass production, and electricity and its multiple dependent technologies. Technologies have always influenced, and been influenced by, human societies; this course examines how technologies and Americans have interacted and influenced each other.
Chronological and topical survey of the history of African Americans from the colonial period to the early twenty-first century. This course covers major themes in African American history including the societies and cultures of Africa, the Middle Passage, the Colonial experience, slavery, abolition, and the quest for freedom, Civil War and emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, African American cultural expressions, WWII and the seeds of Civil Rights, the Freedom Movement, Black politics and White backlash. While "knowing the facts" is obviously important to historical understanding, this course helps students develop critical thinking skills. These skills include: close and thoughtful reading and analysis of primary and secondary sources; looking for a broader coherence or "order" to the material; independent analysis and effective articulation (both in writing and in class discussion) of well-reasoned, well-crafted conclusions and interpretations and arguments (conclusions/interpretations/arguments which are supported by specific factual evidence derived from a variety of sources). The three specific course objectives underscore its scholarly dimensions: (1) Students will gain a knowledge and understanding of the relationship between the experiences of African Americans and United States history as a whole. (2) Students will gain an understanding and knowledge of the political, economic, and social processes that shaped African American history. (3) Students will learn how to "think historically" by placing documents written in the past in their historical contexts, and to consider the relationship of the past to the present. By the end of the course students will: Demonstrate an understanding of the chronology of African American history. Demonstrate an understanding of the diverse experiences of different groups of Americans. Demonstrate an understanding of the social, political, and ideological structures that shaped African American history and continue to shape the modern United States.
HIST 153 provides students with an overview of the most important historical developments in the history of America's Native people, including first contact with Europeans, diplomacy and war, assimilation and cultural traditions, military service and the rise of Native casinos. While "knowing the facts" is obviously important to historical understanding, this course helps students develop critical thinking skills. These skills include: close and thoughtful reading and analysis of primary and secondary sources; looking for a broader coherence or "order" to the material; independent analysis and effective articulation (both in writing and in class discussion) of well-reasoned, well-crafted conclusions and interpretations and arguments (conclusions/interpretations/arguments which are supported by specific factual evidence derived from a variety of sources). The three specific course objectives underscore its scholarly dimensions: (1) Students will gain a knowledge and understanding of the diverse experiences of different groups of Native people. (2) Students will gain an understanding and knowledge of the political, economic, and social processes that shaped Native American history. (3) Students will learn how to "think historically" by placing documents written in the past in their historical contexts, and to consider the relationship of the past to the present. By the end of the course students will: Demonstrate an understanding of the chronology of Native America history. Demonstrate an understanding of the diverse experiences of different groups of Native peoples. Demonstrate an understanding of the social, political, and ideological structures that shaped the history of Native peoples and continue to shape the modern United States.
This course examines major developments in the history of modern American business and industry from the colonial period to the present. History 155 introduces students to a number of the main themes, concepts, and events comprising American business history. Although the course has a pronounced big business/large corporation focus, it nonetheless provides a broader perspective than simply one of selected corporate histories. Indeed, the course treats the conduct of business as an integral element of American society and culture. Topics to be discussed include the colonial commitment to commerce, the effects of new technologies, the emergence of modern large-scale industrial production and the changes it brought to business management, and the importance of world events and American businesses.
HIST157 shows that, without railroads, the United States would not have become the United States. It provides a panoramic view of 200 years, from the earliest rail lines to the current day and shows how the rail industry affected everything, from the economy to daily life. One of the course's central objectives is to demonstrate how these changes were experienced differently by different communities and social groups.. The first half of the course investigates how and why the American rail network was built and how the public and government reacted to the changes it brought. It reviews the financial, geographical, and legal resources needed to build the first rail lines and why they proved to be superior to roads and canals. During and after the Civil War, the building of the transcontinental lines relied heavily on federal aid and the labor of minorities (including African American, Irish, and Chinese). Although many Americans initially embraced the railroad industry, after experiencing improvements in their local economies and lifestyles, many turned against it in the late nineteenth century. Hard economic times turned labor against management, farmers against the industrial centers, nativist Americans against immigrants, and so on. After two decades of protest, the reformers of the Progressive era passed sweeping legislation to regulate the industry. The second half of the course studies how railroads declined during the twentieth century and how government regulations were relaxed. In addition to the challenges of two world wars and The Great Depression, it explores how railroads experienced new economic and technological pressures. These include competition from motor vehicles and airplanes, which led railroads to lose most of their passengers and much of their freight. The change from steam to diesel locomotives brought difficulties for rail communities and rail workers. The course investigates how demands made by labor often served to alienate public opinion. Although streamlined passenger trains briefly regained public enthusiasm, this soon dwindled in the post-WW2 years, as Americans embraced the automobile and the airplane. By the 1970s, railroad troubles were extreme enough to test America's sense of balance between free enterprise and government aid. Despite public criticism, the federal government intervened, to create Amtrak and then Conrail. The final sections of the course investigate how the relaxation of federal regulations led to a partial rail renaissance. It shows how freight service has been a great success but why inter-city passenger service continues to be unattractive to many American citizens and investors.
HIST 158 examines the immigrant experience in North America since 1607. The course explores the various ways in which immigrants of diverse backgrounds experienced life in British North America and the United States, a study that includes an examination of immigration memoirs, policies, responses to immigration, and immigrant culture in different parts of the United States. In addition, the course will critically examine popular representations of immigrants and encourages an analysis of the resulting minority groups, their reception, assimilation, and persisting identity.
Chronological survey of the History of the FBI since its founding in 1908, focused on the evolution of Federal law enforcement, bureaucracy, the increasing power of the Executive branch, the targeting of various minority groups, civil rights and civil liberties issues, and the growth of a national security role for the federal government over time. In its long history the FBI has intersected with a wide variety of groups and issues, and this reality will further expose students to the histories of African Americans, gays and lesbians, women's groups, Latinos, Native Americans, war protesters, students, various political dissenters, immigrants, targeting of morality, obscenity, and labor organizing. Because the FBI is responsive to both the political and policy interests of presidents and the influences of American society, students will come to appreciate the influences that politics has on bureaucracy and law enforcement, as well as the different social, political, economic, and cultural influences that each historical time period have exerted on the FBI to help shape its priorities and structure.
HIST 161The Battle of Gettysburg in American Historical Memory3
HIST/AMST 161 examines the history of the Battle of Gettysburg, as well as the political and social factors that have shaped perceptions of the Battle of Gettysburg as one of the Civil War's decisive battle and as a national symbol that has transformed over time. The variety of historical sources used in this course will aid students in learning how to understand and interpret history and in encouraging them to develop a critical method by which to evaluate primary and secondary historical sources.
HIST 162NThe Pursuit of Happiness in American Life: Historical Literature and Modern Practice3
When Thomas Jefferson elevated one pursuit to stand with life and liberty as inalienable rights, he eschewed others. The Declaration of Independence features the pursuit of happiness rather than that of amusements, consumer goods, status, money, or ease. Happiness carried a history of deeper meanings in philosophy and religion. In 1776, "happiness" peppered discussions of individualism, rights, civilization, economics, and government, and echoed Ancient Greek dialogues about virtue and civil society. In America, "happiness" joined the religious language of salvation, rapture, and joy to define states of grace. By the twentieth century, happiness became suspect as the term frequently represented a superficial type of enjoyment in needless consumption manipulated through marketing. As happiness came to be twined with wealth and goods, so too did it align increasingly with success in all pursuits. Happiness became a form of winning and a status marker whose overt pursuit was as likely to lead to psychological and social problems as to health. We open with ancient philosophers and modern positive psychologists. The pursuit of happiness reached zenith speed in the history of American literature. From transcendentalists, to pragmatists, self-help, children's fantasy, psychoanalysis, or post-modernism, genres fell out of themselves in the pursuit to merely understand happiness. Novels, poems, memoirs, films, popular psychology, medical literature, memes, and blogs addressed happiness from nearly every conceivable angle to explore strategies such as choosing positive thoughts; stilling thoughts; cultivating enriching interests and habits; influencing our moods and emotions; and optimizing strategies for securing the resources, skill-sets, possessions, and relationships that encourage happiness. Some of these achievements aligned with health and economic benefits and introduced limitations in access or cultural relevance. Bio-behaviorists are exploring correlation vs. causation and ways of assessing social and individual well-being. Bringing modern bio-behavioral methodologies into the chronological narrative creates unprecedented opportunities for integrative study. Experiential elements of wellness fulfill goals of General Health and Wellness, identifying "wellness as a positive state of well-being, not merely the absence of disease." Students will learn the most promising research on generating tangible, healthful benefits in individuals and communities and be introduced to sources for further learning, continuing to learn and pursue long-term happiness.
This course explores Asian histories through film. We will watch and analyze Asian films for the light they cast on numerous problems of modern life and historical interpretation in selected Asian countries: How have Asians depicted their own histories? How have they dealt with war, revolution, and social and cultural change? What have been the effects of major historical events and transitions on individuals, families, societies, and states? Approaching film as documentation, interpretation, commentary, propaganda, nostalgia, vision for the future, and reflection of social norms and problems, we will also consider films as products of specific historical environments: why did certain movies appear when they did? Through this course, students will gain a visual introduction to Asian cultures and societies, explore their histories, and learn to read films as both interpretations and products of history.
This course will study the history of Brazil, the only Portuguese-speaking nation in Latin America, from the colonial to the present period. We will examine Brazil's transformation from Portuguese colony to the seat of a nineteenth century transcontinental empire ruled by the only European monarch to rule from the Americas, and discuss developments such as plantation slavery and industrialization that transformed Brazil into an international powerhouse. We will examine political, economic, cultural and racial movements and institutions that defined Brazilian history during the empire, the first republic, the Vargas era, and the military dictatorship. We will conclude with a look at Brazil's struggles with democracy from the 1980s to the present as well as the rise of contemporary populist leaders, Brazil's struggles surrounding policing, political corruption, affirmative action, and its hosting international sporting events in the twenty-first century. This course is designed to introduce students to the making of the modern Brazilian state focusing on the period from the rise of the Brazilian Empire in 1808 through the modern day. We will survey major historical trends in Brazilian society, from its roots as a Portuguese colony and its role at the center of slavery and the slave trade in the Americas to its distinctive patterns of independence and nationhood. Brazil's experience as an independent nation during the nineteenth century (it became the only long-term monarchy in the Americas) offers an interesting point of comparison to the history of republican nationhood elsewhere in North and South America. We will also examine the challenges of state and nation building during the nineteenth and early twentieth century as well as the challenges associated with late industrialization and state-sponsored development.
HIST 165Islamic States, Societies and Cultures c. 600-15003
This course introduces students to the history and culture(s) of the Islamic world from c. 600-1500. The course develops a historical framework for understanding developments in religious and legal thought and practice, science, medicine, and technology, philosophy, and the arts. Students will learn about culture through lecture and discussion and through examination and analysis of a variety of texts and examples of material culture from different periods and regions.
WMNST/HIST 166 History of Sexuality (3) (GH;US)This is a 100-level course on the history of sexuality, spanning several centuries and a wide range of contexts. The study of sexuality offers a particularly good lens for developing students' analytical ability to think historically about something that is often considered both natural and exclusively modern. Topics will include the role of religion, medicine, law, and politics in controlling and shaping sexuality; change and controversy over birth control, abortion, and gender roles; the connections between prescriptive literature and lived experience; the origins and meanings and racial violence in the context of ideas about sexuality; the concept of respectability; and the experiences and conflicts that have shaped the emergence of modern lesbian, gay, and trans identities. Students evaluate large questions about sources, methods, and analysis that historians face, including: How do we recover stories of private life, from societies and eras different from our own? How does our own understanding of what sexuality "is" complicate our historical exploration? What can we learn about gender and sexuality, repression and resistance, deviance and acceptance, identity and community from studying persons of nonconforming gender from the past? How has racism been employed to justify particular reproductive and sexual practices, as well as to limit claims to sexual respectability? To what extent is the study of sexuality inherently a study of gender, sex roles, and feminism? While focused primarily on the United States, the course will offer students opportunities to examine these questions in other, transnational contexts.
The Indian Ocean has been a zone of human interaction for several millennia facilitating the circulation of individuals, ideas, commodities and technologies from the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions to as far as Southeast Asia. This course introduces students to the growing historical field of the Indian Ocean world and to the usefulness of studying oceans as a useful category of historical analysis. It will examine the dynamism of the Indian Ocean world by exploring themes like trade, migration, slavery, piracy, European expansion, and various kinds of cultural exchange across this vast body of water. The course will also introduce students to a variety of primary sources including travel narratives, personal accounts and diplomatic correspondences.
This course will introduce students to major themes in the history of ancient and medieval South Asia, a region that is now made up of the nation-states of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Students will gain a firm understanding of the key political, economic and socio-cultural traditions and practices that shaped the formation of diverse social groups, sectarian and religious communities and political institutions in the region. While developing a chronological perspective on the history of pre-modern South Asia, this course will encourage students to look beyond the modern nation-state boundaries in order to gain a firm understanding of the region's shared political and cultural past in the period up to 1500. Students will learn to critically read primary sources and secondary literature, to identify historical arguments and take a position in a scholarly conversation in written assignments.
This course surveys the development of civilization in Japan from ancient times to the present. Among the key goals of this course is to discuss what is distinctive about "Japanese civilization." As a survey of Japan it includes topics such as external relations and cultural exchanges with Japan's neighbors and the world more broadly; the nature of indigenous beliefs, Shinto and Buddhism; the making of the Japanese bureaucratic state and gentry society; the rise of the commercialized economy; the growth of Japanese culture; Tokugawa Japan, It offers a basic knowledge of the cultural, political, economic, artistic and historical background of this vital region of the world.
This course examines the long history and culture of Vietnam with a focus on Vietnam's anti-colonial and independence movements of the 20th century. Among the topics covered are Vietnam under French colonial rule, the rise of nationalism and communism, Vietnam during WWII, and the multi-decade struggle for independence in the fifties, sixties and culminating in the departure of American forces in 1973. Vietnam's recent economic rise and emergence as a commercial power is also covered. It offers a basic knowledge of the cultural, political, economic, artistic and historical background of this vital region of the world.
This course provides students with an overview of the most important historical developments and external relations of China, Japan and Korea from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century. As a comparative survey of China, Japan and Korea it includes topics such as external relations and cultural exchanges; early Chinese dynasties; Confucianism, Daoism, Shinto and Buddhism; the making of East Asian bureaucratic state and gentry society; the rise of Ming-Qing commercialized economy; the growth of Japanese culture; Tokugawa Japan, and the role of Korea in East Asia. It offers a basic knowledge of the cultural, political, economic, artistic and historical background of this vital region of the world.
This course is a comparative survey of the internal developments and external relations of China, Japan and Korea since the early 1800s. Topics include interaction with the West, internal rebellions and reforms, the importance of certain key figures, the changing roles of women, student protests, and current social problems. Considerable focus will be placed on the transition from imperial to constitutional governments, rise of nationalism, World War II in the East Asian context and the phenomenal role China, Japan and Korea have played in shaping the post-World War II world. It offers a basic knowledge of the cultural, political, economic, artistic and historical background of this vital region of the world.
Survey of cultural, institutional, and political history from ancient times to the present. HIST 176 Survey of Indian History (3) (GH;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course surveys the history and civilization of India or South Asia from the earliest times to the modern period. The goal of the course is to enable students to form a comprehensive conception of the various facets of Indian or, South Asian civilization in a historical context. This course is an excellent foundation for the history of modern India and also complements a variety of existing courses on the history of the non-western world. In addition to satisfying the GI requirement, HIST 175 satisfies the general credit requirements for the history major or minor, including the 'non-western' component of the major. Non-majors may use this course to satisfy a general education humanities selection. Typically, students will be evaluated on in-class quizzes, written exams, participation in class discussions of assigned readings and critical reviews of books. This course is offered once every year and has an enrollment of 50 students.
This course looks at Southeast Asia from the rise of early empires to the present. Beginning with the great empires of Southeast Asia this course surveys the rise of Southeast Asian politics, culture and society before examining the colonial period when the region was dominated by European imperial powers, and concluding with the formation of the modern-day nations of Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. As part of this discussion, issues of Indianization, colonization, life under Japanese during World War II, and the way in which Cold War politics shaped the region. By the end of the course, students should have a firm understanding of changes in Southeast Asia and be able to assess these historical factors that shaped the current societies.
This course examines the history of Latin America from c. 1450 to 1820, a period encompassing Iberia and the New World before and after the conquest; the course is a survey of three centuries, from the initial encounter on New World soil of Iberian, African, and native cultures and races, to the birth of independent culturally- and racially-mixed nations. Historical topics include the conquest of the New World, the development of colonial institutions and their impact on indigenous cultures, the maintenance of slavery and forced labor systems, the development of multi-ethnic communities, and the origins of independence movements. We will also study colonial-era documents produced by or about the people who lived in colonial Latin America (what historians call primary sources), including Spaniards and Portuguese; African slaves and free blacks; Mayas, Nahuas/Aztecs, and Incas; mixed race peoples called castas; wealthy and poor; and women, men, and children. Particular emphases of the course focus on various patterns of conquest and cultural encounters, the processes of colonial rule, the nature of interaction between social groups, and the cultural impact of the colonial experience upon all colonial Latin America's peoples.
This course examines the history of modern Latin America from the period of independence in the early nineteenth century until the present day. Students will learn about the geographic and political development of the region, the development of various economic models, and the widespread extraction of labor focusing on This African slavery and Indigenous exploitation. The course examines significant events and historical trends in local, national, regional and global contexts. The goal of this class is for students to think critically and analytically about important issues and themes in Latin America, and to understand how historical events have shaped this region. We will look mostly chronologically at important historical themes such as social, economic, gender, and racial conditions, as well as politics, focusing on events throughout select Latin American nations and regions. The course will focus on the following periods: the Independence and post-Independence period of the Spanish Americas (1810-1850); the period of Brazilian Empire (1808-1889); the integration of Latin America into the modern world economy (1850-1914); the rise of oligarchic and military governments (1914-86); Latin America and the US in the Cold War (1945-1989); and concludes with the recent rise of the Populist New Left and the Conservative Right backlash and violence that has recently threatened many nations of Latin America. This course fulfills the requirements for Bachelor of Arts: Humanities (BA), International Cultures (IL), General Education: Humanities (GH) and fulfills the requirement for Latin American Studies Major and Minor as well as the general credit requirement for the History Major.
Historical survey of the evolution of warfare in the ancient Mediterranean region from prehistoric times to the Later Roman Empire. CAMS 180 CAMS (HIST) 180 Ancient Warfare (3) (GH;IL) Warfare has occupied a central place in the civilizations of the Mediterranean from the earliest times. The prehistoric origins of warfare is a hotly debated topic and constitutes the starting point for this course. Most scholars are agreed that military culture grew in step with sociopolitical development over the course of the third millennium BCE. In the following centuries, the Egyptians, and later the Assyrians and Persians, took great strides in developing sophisticated tactical systems, using infantry, chariotry, and cavalry. These matters occupy a little over the first third of the course. Across the Aegean Sea, Bronze Age (Mycenaean) Greece was ruled by elites occupying massively walled citadels, their leaders buried surrounded by their weapons. But how did these warriors fight? Do the epic poems of Homer memorialize Bronze Age combat? In the Archaic Period (700-500 BCE) infantry warfare in Greece was transformed by the appearance of the heavily-armored infantryman (the hoplite), deployed in a tight formation (the phalanx). The processes involved in the appearance of this kind of warfare, its nature, and its affects on Greek society and culture will be the focus of our attention for the second third of the course. On the periphery of the Mediterranean basin stood a variety of warrior cultures (the Scythians, Celts, or Germans). Numerous warrior-dominated polities vied with each other in Archaic Italy, but one of them, sitting on a ford of the river Tiber, ultimately rose to be the greatest military power produced by the ancient Mediterranean world: Rome. The Roman legions first won and then ensured the security of a Mediterranean-wide empire that stood for 700 years and evolved ultimately into world's first standing army of professional volunteers. The Roman military system holds our attention for the final third of the course. The course defines warfare broadly to include both tactical and strategic, as well as cultural and ideological, matters. Even this canvas is too vast to be surveyed in all its richness, so the major themes explored are: (i) what is war, where does it come from, and how did it change as civilization spread?; (ii) in what ways did warfare develop in the periods under study, in terms of strategy, tactics, and weapons technology?; (iii) how do different warfare practices reflect essential facets of the various cultures under consideration?
The course offers a survey of the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam to the present day. The course introduces students to structures of power, society, and economy in three distinctive periods: 1) the rise of Islam and the caliphal era; 2) the pre-modern Ottoman era; 3) the modern era. The course also introduces students to some of the art, architecture, and literature of each period. Students will thus gain some depth in each period of history and acquire a broad view of change over time.
HIST 182Asian Trade: Economy, Industrialization and Capitalism in Asia3
An historical overview of economy, industrialization, globalization and capitalism in Asia from the 16th century to present. ASIA (HIST) 182 Asian Trade: Economy, Industrialization and Capitalism in Asia (3) (GH;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. Asian economies have experienced spectacular growth in the second half of the 20th century. But this growth is part of a longer story of Asian commerce and trade and its relationship to and integration with (and, in some cases, isolation from) global patterns of exchange. Moreover, these exchanges are best understood alongside the politics, society, and culture--sometimes local, sometimes regional--that shaped trade and business in entrepots, capitals, and hinterlands throughout Asia. This course begins with a historical exploration of the economic development and social change and ends by asking what lies in store for one of the world’s fastest growing economic regions. By offering a historical frame for Asian economic experience , students will gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of prevailing theories that tend to overstate centralized control, market mechanisms, and cultural determination. Asian economies and markets are quite diverse, consisting of emerging and mature markets, making it difficult to view them through a single lens. As a result this course seeks to introduce students to a variety of conceptual frameworks in these countries. Examinations of the major economic players China, India, and Japan form the backbone of the course, but the precise geographic emphasis will vary with instructor, and may also include discussions of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, and other Asian states. Themes of the course will vary depending on instructor, but may include industrialization, sustainability and the environment, gender and labor, protest and political reform, and consumerism and advertising, among others. The course will also offer a general introduction to economic theories that underpin the concepts of globalization, capitalism, and socialism as they are understood in an Asian context. This course is intended as an introduction to Asia for those with particular interests in Business, Economics, Global Studies, Labor, and/or Government. Through weekly readings, films and class discussion students will be introduced to the development of Asian economies in the global context.
This course tracks the changes in East Asian gender roles, relationships, and family life from 1800 to the present, placing private life at the center of the history of China, Japan, and Korea. Among the topics covered are the examination of gender and family life in early modern East Asia, considering topics such as marriage customs, the cult of female chastity, birthing practices, male-male sexuality as well as tracing the remarkable shifts in gender and private life in East Asia beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing to the present. The course will likely also cover issues such as women's liberation, changing expectations for courtship, marriage and sex, homosexuality, cross-dressing and androgyny, gender and revolution, and the state's role in regulating sex and procreation.
This course examines will explore the origins, nature, and consequences of World War II in the Pacific. Moving beyond the common American focus on the war as a U.S.-Japanese conflict, it will explore the different nations, political movements, ideologies, and empires that clashed across. Asia-Pacific from 1931 to 1945. Topics include the culture and society of modern Asia in the periods immediately before, during and after the Pacific War. This course looks at social and historical roots of the war across Asia from the 1890s to the present to better understand the causes of the war and the affect it had on people throughout Asia.
Taking cross-cultural communication and connectivity as its central themes, this course explores the central role that the silk roads and Indian Ocean maritime routes have played throughout Eurasian history. The course provides a historical survey of the land and sea routes and networks connecting Europe and Asia, the peoples and cultures that flourished along these routes, and a variety of exchanges that took place by way of these routes.The course develops insight into trends and patterns over a long period of history, from ancient to modern times; the course also focuses on distinctive periods of history when patterns were disrupted and reformed, and when relationships changed among the peoples and states involved in the silk roads and maritime routes.
This course examines the historical, cultural, and ethnic dimensions of Taiwan over several centuries to the present day. Taiwan's rich history and important economic role in contemporary East Asia clashes with its exclusion from international organizations like the UN and WHO and resultant international isolation. This class will examine the history and culture of Taiwan to better understand how it got here and where it might go. Topics covered will include the Dutch incursions in "Formosa," Japanese colonization, years of military dictatorship and cross-straits tension, rebirth as one of the four "Asian Tiger" economies, and its current rowdy democracy and warming ties with the People's Republic of China. We will also explore the literature, film, and culture of this multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural island.
Few places generate as much curiosity, interest, or controversy, in the Western mind than Tibet. This course examines Tibet from a variety of perspectives from Tibet's political unification under a single ruler in the seventh century up to Tibet's incorporation into the People's Republic of China in the latter half of the twentieth century. Adopting a Tibet-centered focus, this course examines three core dimensions of Tibet namely its people, its religion and its strong sense of place to allow for a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of Tibet to emerge. No background or specialized knowledge about Tibet is expected though a willingness to read primary documents on a variety of religious, ethnic and political themes will be quite useful. In this course students can expect to gain an appreciation for how religion, history and politics contribute to contemporary portrayals of Tibet, Tibetans and their society.
This course introduces students to the peoples and places of the contemporary Middle East. The course engages students in discussion of themes that are pertinent to the region and to contemporary issues, including demographic change, youth culture and university life, human rights issues and activism, the trauma of war, effects of globalization, ecology, and the environment. Exploring the Middle East in the present with attention to historical context, students will examine a variety of sources, including news media, novels, stories, poetry, films, soap operas, blogs and vlogs.
The course is an introduction to the history of Africa south of the Sahara from the origins of humankind to roughly 1750 with a focus on common themes in the cultural and historical development of African societies. Themes include (but are not limited to): Ancient Egypt, Africa's place in the Greco-Roman world, Early African Christianity, Islam in Africa, European contact, and the Atlantic Slave Trade
This course offers an overview of the history of Africa from 1750 to the present. The course introduces students to the diversity of Africa's geography, demography, and history and investigates the experience of modern history through specific, regionally distinct, examples. Students will learn about structures of power, society, and economy in the colonial and post-colonial era in comparative terms, and about a variety of cultural forms and expressions.
This Honors course offers an overview of the history of Africa from 1750 to the present. The course introduces students to the diversity of Africa's geography, demography, and history and investigates the experience of modern history through specific, regionally distinct, examples. Students will learn about structures of power, society, and economy in the colonial and post-colonial era in comparative terms, and about a variety of cultural forms and expressions. The honors course takes time to go into greater depth in a few selected topics, with attention to primary sources, historical method, and historiographic trends.
This course covers the history of modern Iran from the late nineteenth century to the present day. The course examines significant events and historical trends with attention to local, regional, and global contexts, and examines causes and consequences of policies, protests, and revolutions from a variety of sources and perspectives. Through class lectures and discussions, and reading and written assignments, students will learn important terms, concepts, contexts, individuals, and events. They will learn to identify and analyze trends and patterns in Iran¿s history, make meaningful comparisons, locate specific events in meaningful context, and explain their significance. By the end of the course students will be able to explain current events in terms of Iran¿s long history of revolution as well as in terms of the more immediate history of the Islamic republic. Students will be able to discuss how the modern history of Iran is an example of larger historical trends of the twentieth century.
Jerusalem, a city sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is often depicted as the spiritual and physical center of the world. Throughout its 5000-year history, Jerusalem has attracted diverse cultures, empires, and peoples who have vied for control of this city that is both religiously significant and a very ordinary site of urban life. Jerusalem: Sacred and Profane surveys the archaeological, religious, cultural, political, social, and historical record of Jerusalem in the ancient, medieval, and modern periods. We will explore a series of themes in the city¿s history: the built urban environment, political power in and over the city, sacred sites and pilgrimage, the everyday experiences of Jerusalemites, the changing cultural meanings of the city across various religious and national traditions, and war, violence, and memory in the urban landscape. The significance of Jerusalem's past, its impact on contemporary society and politics in the modern Middle East, and differing visions for this contested city's future are examined in light of various interpretations of the historical evidence.
HIST 195Genocide in Global perspectives: Twentieth Century and beyond3
The history and memory of the Holocaust, the Armenian, Cambodian and other forms of genocide are often taught separately in different disciplines. This course will examine them together through the various ways different societies dealt with, experienced and understood these. Using the extensive literature on the history of genocide this course further suggests ways in which these tragic events affected and were entangled by each other's. Specific content will vary according to individual instructor, but topics may include victim cultures, ethnic cleansing, trauma, human rights, dark tourism, memorials, architecture as well as the general impact of these tragedies on global politics, or the way the memories of the tragedies were entangled with the civil rights and other struggles in American and global history.
HIST 203NHistory of Monsters, Aliens & the Supernatural3
HIST 203N course considers the role of the supernatural and otherworldly forces in a variety of human societies. The course focuses on narratives of the supernatural/anomalous, as well as the social power that such stories can afford their tellers, who may include poets, writers, filmmakers, journalists, and camp counselors, among many others. Students will read and analyze texts from history, folklore, anthropology, and popular media. A primary tool for describing and understanding the supernatural in human history is ethnography; as such, ethnographic texts dealing with the supernatural will also form an important component of the course, and students will have the opportunity to conduct ethnographic research of their own. In all cases, supernatural beliefs will be considered in their social contexts, rather than as texts divorced from the lives of groups and individuals.
HIST 210Freedom's First Generation: African American Life and Work, from the Civil War to World War II3
HIST/AFAM 210 explores the context and events that shaped African American life during the post-abolition period from the U.S. Civil War until WW II. The course begins with a comparative examination of the decline of African slavery and of emancipation throughout the Americas, and then focuses on Black lives in the United States. The course explores a wide range of topics, including: Black identity in the U.S., the criminalization and disposability of Black bodies, Reconstruction, Jim Crow Laws, lynching, forced labor, the rise of African American leadership, gender and reproduction under slavery and in freedom, the development of protest strategies, the impact of industrialization and urbanization, and the significance of African American culture and art.
HIST 211Slavery and Freedom in the Black Atlantic3
This course examines the history of African and Afro-descended people throughout the Atlantic world from the 15th through the 21st centuries. Historical topics include African societies before and after the advent of European trade systems, the Atlantic Slave Trade, the role of enslaved Africans in the conquest, establishment, and independence of the Americas, and the role of free and freed Afro-descended people in resistance, in service, and as citizens of American colonies and nations. This course compares and contrasts the systems of slavery that appeared throughout the Americas, the resistance that developed against these systems, and the nations that developed out of these institutions.
A natural disaster is the result of a natural hazard impinging upon human society. In this course we examine seismicity as a geophysical phenomenon and as a natural hazard that interacts with the built environment and the social structures of human societies. Whenever possible, we approach this subject historically. Among other topics, we examine the history of how earthquakes have been understood as well as the impact of earthquakes and seismicity on the history and development of certain societies. Our specific perspectives include: Earthquakes as understood by modern and contemporary earth science Major conceptions of earthquakes in the past Impacts of seismic hazards on the built environment of past societies Impacts of seismic hazards on politics, economic development and social policies of past societies Seismic hazards, earthquake-related technology, and contemporary societies By examining earthquakes in these ways, the study of earthquakes becomes a vehicle for enhancing skills in analytical reasoning. In particular, this course focusses on applications of modern scientific analysis and the approaches commonly employed in historical investigation. Specific skills addressed in this course include, processing and quantifying information, problem solving using evidence and sound reasoning, and expressing ideas with clarity. Immersion in the study of earthquakes affords an opportunity to think more broadly about how people have dealt with natural disasters in the past and to explore the roles that science, technology, and social policy play in defining and addressing natural hazards in contemporary societies and in the future. Class meetings include lectures, discussions, and in-class activities. We analyze scientific observations that have led to increased understanding of earthquakes, earthquake hazards and risk. We also make extensive use of case studies as concrete examples of different types of earthquakes, the historical evolution of ideas about earthquakes, and the range of social impacts of earthquakes. Reading assignments provide essential background for class sessions.
This course examines the social, political, and economic history of African American women in the United States from slavery to the present. Using secondary and primary sources along with film and discussion, we will explore the varied lived experiences of African American women paying special attention to the themes of family, sexuality, labor, politics, and religion. We will examine how the simultaneity of racial and sexual oppression influence African American women¿s actions. Additionally, we will consider dominant images of African American women in a historical context. While the course is primarily discussion in format, the professor will lecture when necessary. As the course is writing-intensive, papers of various lengths constitute the bulk of student assessment.
The course provides students with basic knowledge on major topics in Palestinian and Israeli societies and cultures with a thematic analysis of these topics. It examines the encounter between Palestinians and Israelis from a perspective that questions our ability to understand them separately and it emphasizes interdependency between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and internal tension within Palestinian and Israeli societies. Some of the major themes under discussion are: the place of religion in defining national identities and boundaries, intra-ethnic divides, competing discourses of citizenship, the fragile status of Palestinian citizens and non-citizens under the Israeli control system, struggles over collective memory, and the place of gender and sexuality in the conflict. The course emphasizes the intersection of politics and culture, demonstrating the political relevance of cultural fields such as music, cinema, and sports.
This course surveys the institutions and social networks in which European fine arts were created, consumed and critiqued. Beginning with the medieval period and ranging to the early 20th century, the course will examine the variety of communities where public and private often intersected and which sponsored innovations in the arts. Often indexing social movements and political change, such communities include convents and cathedrals, royal academies and courts, coffee houses, salons, and theaters. Artists, performers, patrons, politicians, journalists, and others collaborated and competed in these spaces. Such communities could embody political and economic power, or foster resistance to it. This approach to the history of the arts in western culture puts the focus less on the individual creative genius of great composers, writers, painters, and sculptors, and more on the social exchanges and institutions that sponsored and received their work. Such an approach brings to light particularly the ways in which women played significant roles in the production and reception of culture: as salon hostesses, patronesses, and divas, women often enabled and enacted cultural production. Some examples of particular units of study might include: the German convent of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), where monophonic chant and allegorical morality plays developed; the Mantuan (Italy) court of Isabella d'Este ,the first lady of the world, (1474-1539) where the roots of the madrigal began and where notable painters found support and sponsorship; the French salons of Mme. Geoffrin (1699-1777) and Mme. de Staël (1766-1817); and the student residences in Madrid where avant-garde writers and artists interacted. Each unit will also consider the relationships between the aesthetic norms and values of a period and the economic and political realities of sponsorship. The course will require that students attend at least one musical performance or concert held on campus during the semester and complete a brief writing project based on that experience. This requirement will encourage students to think about their own university as a contemporary space of cultural sponsorship.
This class explores the history of Middle Eastern and North African cities in the 19th-21st centuries. Cities are more than an agglomeration of buildings and bodies; they are also sites of tremendous political, economic, social, and cultural meaning, contestation, and change. The class focuses on the intersection of various urban settings (house, market, street, neighborhood), themes (sacred spaces, gender in the public sphere, sectarianism), and historical forces (nationalism, colonialism, war, revolution). The class draws on a wide range of primary sources such as memoirs, music, poetry, literature, and film, as well as multidisciplinary scholarship in history, anthropology, sociology, and architecture.
A survey course exploring the emergence and historical evolution of the modern Caribbean. This course will explore the evolution of the Caribbean region from the eve of the arrival of Columbus to the 21st century. It will explore Indigenous societies prior to the arrival of Columbus and the interactions that lead to their destruction and the consolidation of European colonial empires. We will explore the coercive labor systems that emerged in the region including indentureship, Indigenous enslavement, transportation of Europeans, the establishment of African slavery, and the establishment of the plantation system that defined the region until the 20th century using both free and unfree labor to maintain its dominance in these island societies. Themes examined will include revolutions in Haiti and Cuba, the struggle for independence, slavery and racial hierarchy, the rise of U.S. neo-colonialism and hegemonic control in the region, nationalism, tourism, and the economic underdevelopment that defines the Caribbean until today.
The "Arab Spring" of 2011 that spread rapidly across the region and featured movements for democratization, social justice, and minority rights collapsed into authoritarian military rule, struggles over the role of political Islam, sectarian and civil violence, massive refugee flight and urban destruction, and outside intervention. This course places the 21st century Middle Eastern revolutions and their aftermath in a broader historical perspective. What were the political, economic, religious, social, and geopolitical factors that contributed to the outbreak of revolution throughout the region? In which ways were these revolutions new, and in which ways were they extensions of earlier, unresolved struggles? How can we understand the distinct trajectories of revolution and counter-revolution across the region? We will focus on several country case studies framed against their late 19th and 20th century histories. The class integrates extensive interdisciplinary and multi-media sources, including novels and memoirs, movies and songs, websites and twitter feeds.
HIST 255N studies the global history of the book broadly conceived, from oracle bones to "born digital" materials. The course will examine major developments including the invention of parchment and paper, the prevalence of woodblock printing in East Asia, the influence of printing in early modern Europe, Latin American writing systems, and the rise of the world wide web. Major themes include book-making technologies, the interplay of form and decoration, the social impact of printing, and the social context of reading practices. Students will combine course readings with hands-on experience examining materials in the Penn State Library's Special Collections and the Palmer Museum.
Through the medium of film, HIST/JST 260 examines the contemporary and historical transformation of the Middle East from the Ottoman period, through the British and French mandates, and the eventual establishment of the modern nation-states. This course analyzes the political-religious-social tensions of this region, and through film illuminates many of the conflicts in a different light. This course engages in specific film define certain moments in the contemporary history of the Middle East. The films reveal the culture perception of politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, views on and of religious and ethic minorities, women and gender issues, carious elements of political Islam, and the generational shift in politics and culture. The course will watch, analyze and engage in films (with subtitles) from - among other states - Iran before and after the revolution, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and Tunisia.
HIST 266YSexuality and Violence in Nineteenth-Century America3
HIST/WMNST 266Y explores the social and cultural history of sexuality and violence in the United States during the nineteenth century. Both sexuality and violence are extremely broad topics, and the course will focus on a few intriguing elements of sexuality and violence, including courtship, prostitution, the early popular culture of sports, slavery, military violence, exploitative journalism, and sexuality and violence as metaphor. The course also examines the "creation" of homosexuality in the nineteenth century, and manner in which masculinity has been historically constructed.
HIST 292NWitches and Witchcraft from the Middle Ages to the Present3
This course will explore the social and cultural history of witches and witchcraft from the late Middle ages in Europe and the U.S. to the present. The very nature and broad scope of the topic lends itself to an interdisciplinary approach that combines history, folklore, religious studies, criminology, women's studies, art history, English literature and popular culture. Historically, real individuals were accused of witchcraft and suffered persecution and punishment accordingly. Others proclaimed themselves to be witches and the practice continues to attract adherents today such as in the modern Wiccan movement. However, modern consensus views witches as fictions: figures of magical power in folklore, literature, visual art and popular culture. From Shakespeare's Macbeth to the characters in the popular Harry Potter books and films, fictional witches have haunted European and American culture for centuries. This course will explore the complex interplay of fact and fiction in the history of witches and witchcraft. In other words, how do fictions become powerful enough to inform history? The course will also focus on the historical status of witches as a source of power outside of, and in opposition to, established political, religious and social structures. Since those accused of witchcraft were predominately women, how has witchcraft functioned as a means of empowerment for women as well as a tool for their persecution? And how has the representation of witches influenced attitudes towards women both historically and today? The course will begin with an historical inquiry into the belief in witchcraft during the late Middle Ages in Europe and the social and cultural role witches played in society. We will look at texts such as the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) published in 1486 as a guide for hunting and destroying witches, as well as studies on the more constructive role witchcraft may have offered women and communities. The course will be organized chronologically and move back and forth between history, such as the Salem witch trials, and the representations of that history in art, literature and film. Particular emphasis will be placed on the visual arts, from the engravings of German Renaissance artists such as Albrecht Durer and Hans Baldung Grien, the gothic paintings of Francisco Goya during the Romantic period, to contemporary artist Louise Bourgeois' monument to those executed as witches in Norway. The course will end with analysis of images of witches in popular culture, movies and television, and with a discussion of the modern representations of the domesticated witch and the femme fatale.
Thematic or topical investigation; emphasis on historical criticism and analysis. HIST 302W Undergraduate Seminar (3)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. The principal aim of the course is to assist in training History Majors in writing, analysis, and criticism by pursuing the study of one historical topic in detail. The precise contents of the course may vary in accordance with the teaching and research interests of the instructors. The course is not a conventional lecture course. It is, instead, designed in the seminar format with emphasis on discussion, sequential writing assignments, and further developing the core skills of the historian. Several features reflect its writing intensive designation. The course requires a series of writing exercises (with on-going instructor feedback), attention to relevant methods of research, all leading to the production of a final seminar paper. The final paper should effectively advance a reasoned argument derived from multiple sources (a portion of which must be primary sources when the historical topic permits).
The course is a research seminar for undergraduates majoring in Middle East Studies and for students interested in pursuing a sustained research project on a topic related to the Middle East. Course topics on the Middle East will vary according to the interests of the instructor. This course is writing-intensive with attention to developing, drafting, and producing a quality research paper over the course of the semester.
This course examines different case studies of agriculture, food production, and food availability in diverse settings to show how access to food and its denial intersects with ethnic and nationalist politics, imperial and colonial encounters, and global asymmetries. The course reveals the close association of food to social and cultural identities and to conflicts in a global history framework. Spanning case studies from the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-nineteenth century to the Russian Famine of early twentieth century to the Bengal Famine of mid-twentieth century, the course focuses on disparity in access to food for social classes. It focuses on discrete social classes (landlords, farmers, labor, women), but also on modernizers, agronomists and scientists, on state, and on global diplomacy and developmentalist perspectives in the post-World War II era to show the embeddedness of food production and consumption in social relations and in emergent political economy contexts.
Russia is the largest country on earth. It has had a major influence on world events, especially during the Soviet period. The Soviet period represents the greatest economic experiment ever undertaken. Russia has had a vast imperial experience, and its economy has proven capable of producing nuclear weapons and space exploration. Yet, its economy remains dependent on natural resources. Russia is a literary, nuclear and geopolitical superpower but not an economic superpower. This juxtaposition is unique. The aim of the course is to provide a review of Russian economic history together with main concepts explaining the peculiarities of economic and institutional development of the country. The course combines historical narrative with formal economic analyses. We will utilize both an economics and a history perspective. We will explore the development of the Russian economy in the Tsarist period, the abolition of serfdom and Russian industrialization before the Russian Revolution, and we will explore the economic history of the Soviet period. We will also explore the interaction of economic history with social history. The course will conclude by examining the myriad economic and social difficulties encountered in transitioning from a socialist to capitalist economy.
Public historians build essential bridges between ordinary citizens and the knowledge and understanding of the past required by any self-governing society. Knowing how time has acted upon a society, how things came to be the way they are, helps individuals and groups move toward where they want that society to go, what they want it to become. This class will lay the groundwork for what is expected of public historians in the many professional settings available to them, which include museums, art galleries, national parks, historical societies, non-profit organizations, park and recreation commissions, historic homes, battlefields, foundations, corporations, government departments, preservation organizations, archives, libraries, living history organizations, tourism councils, convention and visitors' bureaus, and universities. This course allows students to experience of some of these roles and places, and more importantly, to develop a lived sense of how they all can fit together in an individual career. The course does this partly in the classroom and partly through direct engagement with doing public history, well-supported by faculty and classmates. The course invites students to meet public historians and to participate in the public history process - mobilizing accurate history to stimulate emotions that then produce citizen engagement. The heart of public history practice involves sharing authority with audiences and confronting the line between entertainment and education. The first several weeks of the course introduce students to specific elements of practice and examples of public history, followed by an extended public history work project that can be actual and/or virtual. After the completion of the project, students gather to reflect on their practice and develop a deeper theoretical understanding of what they have come to know. Together, the three sections of the course create the capacity, and the motivation, to become active public historians either as professionals or as participants in the communities students will encounter in their own lives.
Surveys the history of anti-Semitism from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the present. HIST (J ST) 409Y (RL ST 407Y) European Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Present (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course analyzes major episodes in the history of anti-Semitism and tries to clarify the motives and dynamics involved. It seeks to understand what these episodes have in common and what is unique in each case--is there a single universal, eternal antisemitism? Or are there rather 'anti-Semitisms' each belonging to a unique historical context? Is there a single continuous line of development in anti-Semitism? What is the relationship of a particular anti-Semitism to the national culture in which it originates?We will be reading the major original texts of anti-Semitism from Roman and ancient writers, through early Christian texts and medieval Christian Blood Libels against the Jews, documents of the Spanish expulsion, Lutheran tracts, Voltaire's essays, German philosophical texts from Kant to Marx, Wagner's racial essays, the Protocols of Zion, and documents of Nazi anti-Semitism by Hitler and Streicher. The major part of the grade will depend on a short research paper which will be presented in various drafts, so that the final version represents the culmination of discussion and constructive criticism and advice. This course is a parallel course to J ST/HIST 416 (Zionist History) and J ST/HIST 118 (Modern Jewish History). This course will count toward the Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, and History majors and minors in the 400-level category.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century royal absolutism in France, Prussia, and Austria; concurrent economic, social, and scientific developments; the Enlightenment.
This writing intensive course follows a standard political chronology, starting with the unification of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in 1469, followed by the ascension of the Habsburg kings, and ending with the death of Philip IV in 1665. The course will then examine the Spanish Empire both in Europe and abroad, paying close attention to the ways in which Spaniards, Africans, and Indigenous communities experienced and participated in the imperial project. Students will evaluate the successes and failures of the period through close studies of several major spiritual, artistic, and literary productions, and through an exploration of the connections between political, domestic, and religious policy in Iberia and in the colonies, with special attention to the use and function of the Spanish Inquisition.
HIST 424Comparative History of Sports and Politics3
Although sport is popularly considered as a sphere separate from other aspects of social and political dynamics, this course illustrates the contrary reality that both active and passive involvements in competitive sports have taken part in shaping and undermining social structures, political mobilizations, collective identities, patterns of domination, and more. This course takes a global and comparative perspective to follow the processes through which national, racial, ethnic, civic, religious, local, and gender identities have been constructed by sport. Special emphasis is given to: the relation between sports, colonialism, and anti-colonialism; sports as a political battleground for the production of meanings in ethno-national conflicts and colonial contexts; the importance of sport in deeply divided societies; and the implications of sport globalization on various collective identities. Theoretical themes are illustrated through various particular case studies from around the globe, including North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, India, the Middle East, and Papua-New Guinea.
This course examines the political, social, cultural, environmental and religious history of the Incas and their Andean subjects from the 15th century to the present. Via written and visual primary and secondary sources, the course explores how the Incas built the largest Indigenous empire of the Americas, and how their descendants and subjects experienced that empire¿s 16th century invasion and takeover by Spain's conquistadors, surviving to shape the world¿s adoption of their environmental innovations. The course will then survey how Incas and Andeans rose up against Spain in the 18th century, and in the 19th through 21st century fought against their economic marginalization by collaborating in the resurrection of the Incas as national, archaeological, and touristic ancestors in republican Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, with varying success.
This course is an in-depth study of the history of the Holocaust in Europe that puts special emphasis on primary sources. HIST 426 / JST 426 Holocaust (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. The Holocaust stands out as the most terrible and challenging phenomenon of the 20th Century. Societies and the scholarship struggled for decades to fully grasp how much the Holocaust has questioned widely shared assumptions about modernity and progress. This course pursues the overarching question how the Holocaust could have taken place. Who were the perpetrators, victims and bystanders? How much agency did they have? How was the Holocaust organized? The course will encourage students to critically engage with the Holocaust, and will consider a variety of different kinds of sources and means of representation, including oral testimony, film and fiction, as well as more conventional documentation. After discussing some of the most important studies about the Holocaust and identifying the main historiographical debates, students will look at the origins and the evolution of the "Final Solution." The class will touch on the function of the "Ghettos," the role of the mobile killing units, the extermination camps, and Jewish resistance. The course will also deal with Jewish responses to the Holocaust, notably with attempts to enable Jews to emigrate to safe countries; with efforts to alert the public to the systematic killing after 1940; and the support especially of American Jews for Jewish survivors and DPs. Apart from discussing the historiography, students will work mostly with primary sources. Students are expected to do extensive reading for this class and prepare oral presentations on their respective paper topic. The research paper for this course will be based largely on primary sources. Apart from discussing the historiography, the sessions will concentrate on the interpretation of primary sources: - documents created by the perpetrators, bystanders, and victims; - files relating to postwar trials of perpetrators; - photographs; - representations of objects relating to the Holocaust; - memoirs by survivors; - interviews with survivors and bystanders.
Influence of geography, economic conditions, and nationalism upon the Eastern European and Balkan peoples; Pan-Slavism, conflicting interests of the great powers.
HIST 431Black Liberation and American Foreign Policy3
This course deals with American foreign policy and Black liberation in Africa since 1945. AFAM 431 / HIST 431 Black Liberation and American Foreign Policy (3) (US;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. Black Liberation and American Foreign Policy in Africa since 1945 presents an interdisciplinary approach to the study of American foreign policy in Africa. Course readings will consist of both secondary and primary sources to explore the evolution of American policy toward the continent over the last half-century, and the meaning of the American engagement with Africa for American politics and society. The course will also examine the reasons that Africa has served as a focus of concern among African Americans both prior to, and, over the period 1945 to the present. Of particular concern will be the ways in which American policy has reflected pressures from African Americans as a constituency in foreign policy. The focus of the course will be student-centered written research and discussion. Students will be required to select topics from the course outline for presentation in class with the instructor serving as the moderator of discussion and guide to relevant research materials. Students will be encouraged to use both primary and secondary sources for their research. Students will be expected to prepare two individual written presentations which will serve as the basis for class discussion (30% of the grade), a book review (10% of the grade), and a research paper of 15 pages (40% of the grade) on a topic drawn from the areas identified in the course outline. The final 20% of the grade will be awarded for participation in class discussion.
HIST 432Between Nation and Empire: The Caribbean in the 20th Century3
An exploration of the political evolution of the Caribbean Region over the course of the 20th Century. HIST 432 / AFAM 432 Between Nation and Empire: The Caribbean in the 20th Century (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course will explore the political evolution of the Caribbean Region over the course of the 20th century. Its focus will be the ways in which imperial rule and the search for national identity have been the parameters that have shaped Caribbean political history over that period. Students will explore, in written assignments and class presentations, the ways in which the region which has historically been a theatre of confrontation among the major powers in the international system continued to serve that role over the course of the 20th century. The costs that have been borne by the people of the region from these conflicts have been enormous and crippling for several societies, especially Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. Among those costs have also been the continued dependence of these societies upon human migration, limited economic strategies of transformation, increasing levels of poverty, and the emergence of a wide variety of political systems that reflect different historical experiences, demographic diversity, varying levels of political autonomy, and a remarkable level of cultural similarities. Evaluation will be based upon two class presentations; one research paper and class participation. The course will be required for students pursuing the African Diaspora minor and for those seeking to broaden their diversity requirements. It can be used to meet non-Western history requirements in the History major.
Enlightened absolutism, mercantilism, westernization; economic progress, liberal reforms, and revolutionary movement; major intellectual and cultural trends; Russia as great power.
Study of a particular period or country in European history, its significance and relation to other areas and the present. (May be repeated for credit.)
Analysis of women's experience in the Holocaust and exploration of the role of gender in Holocaust Studies. J ST (HIST/WMNST) 439 Women and the Holocaust (3) Most of the early study of the Holocaust focused almost exclusively on the experiences of Jewish men. It was men who wrote the first and most widely read Holocaust memoirs and men who produced the first studies of the Holocaust. The first question motivating this class is thus what we can learn from examining women's experiences. Is it possible that the ghetto, the camp, and the forest look different from women's perspectives? Are there factors we miss when we read primary documents written by only half of the participants in these historical events? Beyond this, however, our exploration will also lead us to look more broadly at gender as a category of analysis. What do we gain by bringing questions of gender to bear on our study of the Holocaust? Are there any ethical concerns that should inform our approach?
Jews have been part of Middle Eastern societies for thousands of years. They flourished at times and endured hardships at others, but they have been part of every significant social and cultural transformation of the Middle East. In this class, students will discuss the significant contribution of the Jewish community to the development of various Middle Eastern societies throughout the centuries. Students will critically read and analyze primary sources and secondary literature. We will delve into national historiographies of places such as Morocco, Egypt, and Iran-to name a few-and seek to discover a nuanced narrative of Jewish histories of the region. We will also analyze popular culture products, such as documentaries, television, and literature. The course will follow a chronological and thematic order, and will examine Jewish history in conjunction with global and interregional processes in the Middle East and beyond, such as colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, relations with the West, the formation of the modern nation states of the Middle East, and the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Contemporary economic, social, and political aspects of the United States and its role as a world power since 1945. AMST 447 / HIST 447 Recent American History (3)This course covers the history of the United States from the end of World War II to the present. Topics include but are not limited to the Marshall Plan, the Cold War, the Korean War, the rise of television, atomic power, the Eisenhower presidency, the Civil Rights and Women's Movements, the Vietnam War and protests, the space race, Watergate, the Reagan presidency, the two Iraq Wars, the Dot-com revolution, 9-11 and the War on Terror, and the Obama presidency. While addressing major historical movements, the course will also explore the culture of the period - art, literature, music, sports, television, religion, and film. Even though the course covers a relatively short span of years, students will see that American society has undergone dramatic changes in this period as the result of social movements, immigration, wars, political scandal, and technological innovation. The course will close by speculating on the current direction of the United States in light of the serious challenges the nation faces.
HIST 449Constitutional History of the United States to 18773
Colonial background; framing and adoption of the constitution; development of the court under Marshall and Taney; sectionalism, Civil War, Reconstruction.
HIST 450Constitutional History of the United States Since 18773
Constitutional developments from laissez-faire to the welfare state; imperialism, war, internationalism; the contemporary court, civil liberties, and civil rights.
The origins and impact of American consumer society since 1870. HIST 451HIST 451 The Consumer Revolution (3) (US)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This lecture course shows how the United States became a nation of consumers from 1870 to the present. It is designed both for the business and communications student as well as the liberal arts major. The origins of department stores, name-brand goods, fast-food chains, modern advertising, and mass entertainment show us how American business and culture was transformed by the consumer revolution. We will explore how the automobile became the leading consumer good of the 20th century and analyze its impact on how Americans shopped. The rise of advertising and its linkage to home-based mass entertainment through the radio and TV will interest us. We will also consider how events like the Great Depression, World War II, the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s, the energy crisis of the 1970s, and the economic deregulation of the 1980s and 90s shaped consumer attitudes and advertising. " The Consumer Revolution" also briefly explains how American consumer culture has been globalized (with companies like Coca Cola, Disney, and Ford).The course also explores how new consumer goods shaped the experience of childhood, youth, family and home life, and retirement. In particular, we will consider how youth-oriented goods in fashion, foods, and entertainment created a unique youth consumer culture. Also important are the intellectual debates about the meaning and value of consumer society: Is mass consumption the real meaning of American democracy or is it a perversion of it? Are consumer needs unlimited and where does the desire for goods come from? Because consumer society seemed to threaten so many traditional values, we will also analyze movements for restricting consumption. We will consider the origins and impact of Prohibition, dieting and health food crazes, and movements to restrict advertising and sale of goods like cigarettes.In addition to lectures and visual presentations in class, students will read chapters from major studies of the above topics, some of which will be discussed in class. Grades will be based on performance in discussion and essay exams.
This course introduces the history of epidemics from the 1300s to the present day through historical case studies from across the globe, including examples such as the Black eath; Smallpox; Cholera; Influenza; HIV/AIDS; Zika; and most recently, COVID-19. A central focus of the course examines how epidemic and infectious diseases, and human responses to them, have shaped the world history socially, politically, environmentally, medically, and economically to the present day. The analysis of written and visual primary sources, as well as secondary sources, allows this course to ask and answer questions about the experiences of women, men, and children who witnessed epidemics, treated the sick, lived and died during various epidemic outbreaks, and attempted to understand death and disease from a range of perspectives.
HIST 457Hiroshima & the Holocaust in History and Memory3
The history and memory of the Holocaust and Hiroshima and Nagasaki are often taught separately in different disciplines. This course will examine them together through the various ways different societies remembered, understood and commemorated these. Using the extensive literature on the history of memory, this course further suggests ways in which these memories and histories affected and were entangled by each other. Specific content will vary according to individual instructor, but topics may include victim cultures, cold war nuclear history, trauma, human rights, dark tourism, memorials, architecture as well as the general impact of these tragedies on the fraught politics of memory in East Asia and the Middle East, or the way the memories of the tragedies were entangled with the civil rights and other struggles in American and global history.
LHR 458Y, "History of Work in America," a writing-intensive course, studies selected problems in the history of work in the United States. This course addresses economic, technological, social, cultural, and political aspects of employment and self-employment. Major topics of concern include methods of producing goods and services, work time, working conditions, the composition of the workforce, the changing functions of managers, the role of the state in shaping labor markets and regulating employment, the formation and actions of unions and other pro-labor organizations, and the relation of work to the family and other social institutions. In addition, students will undertake original research in primary sources and secondary literature, thereby learning something of historical research methods. The essay project is treated as a process, besides regular encouragement of students to submit a paper proposal, rough drafts, and a final draft. Students are advised that the instructor will read and comment on additional drafts as they care to submit. This section of LHR 458Y is a blended course. Some activities take place in the classroom, and other activities are conducted on Canvas.
HIST 460YResearch Seminar in History of Asian Religion & Medicine3
This seminar focuses on the intersection of history, religion, and medicine in Asia. It is an upper-level, writing-intensive course that gives students the opportunity to learn research skills that are central to humanities research. The course will have different focuses in different semesters, depending on the research expertise of the instructing professor. Potential topics might include, for instance, history of yoga, history of Chinese healing practices, history of Buddhist approaches to medicine, etc. Regardless of the topic, the course will involve a series of exercises that teach research skills, building toward a final paper based on independent research.
HIST 465The Post-World War II Civil Rights Movement3
The civil rights struggle and its impact upon American politics. AFAM 465 / HIST 465 The Post-World War II Civil Rights Movement (3) (US) This course focuses on the post-World War II Civil Rights Movement. It begins with a discussion of the "Long Civil Rights Movement," briefly looking at the roots of the movement in the labor movement and social struggles of the Great Depression and World War II. We then turn to the impact of World War II on African Americans, the growing militancy during the war, the struggles over segregation in the military, the growing role of blacks in the labor movement, and the growing link between African Americans and the rising anti-imperial movements that accelerated after the war. We discuss the role of African Americans in the Cold War and the struggles over the role of Communism and Socialism in the emerging Civil Rights Movement. The course is broken down into key topics of the movement years: the rise of localized grassroots movements all over the United States that were led by local people who sought to challenge school segregation, political disfranchisement, poor housing conditions, police brutality, and job discrimination. While legal disfranchisement and segregation existed solely in the southern states, the entire country practiced both and black people suffered the consequences universally. Much time is spent on the more famous southern civil rights movement, with discussions of the Emmett Till Murder of 1955; the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and the Little Rock Crisis of 1957. The beginning of the 1960s saw the creation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the emergence of key women leaders in the struggle such as Mrs. Ella Baker, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Mrs. Rosa Parks, and Mrs. Septima Clark, to name only a few. We discuss key moments in the 1960s, beginning with SNCC and CORE and the Freedom Rides, the SCLC in Birmingham and Albany; the March on Washington, the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer and the murders of Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner, and Medgar Evers; the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, and the final passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The emphasis on the southern struggle is on the local, ordinary people who achieved extraordinary things.
Critical exploration of the history of sexuality, focusing especially on the emergence of modern lesbian and gay identities. WMNST (HIST) 466 Lesbian and Gay History (3) (US;IL) This course will explore the relationships in different cultures and historical periods between the dominant culture and homosexuals, whom the culture deemed, at different times, sinful, deviant, criminal or, more recently, a minority community. Students will confront the very nature of difference, and how it has been played out in European and American history. The course will challenge students to deal with how societies define difference itself; how they isolate or punish deviants; and how the creation of the 'homosexual' helped establish not simply difference but 'normalcy' in a highly sexualized modern culture. Finally, the course will explore notions of identity itself, focusing on the creation of a modern gay and lesbian identity and its impact on broader questions of gender, community, civil rights, and political discourse in the United States.An example of evaluation methods would be: course presented in a seminar format with grades based on class participation, brief analytical papers, and a longer research or historiographic paper.
HIST 469Drugs and Drug Policy in the United States3
Examines the history and dimensions of drug use and analyzes the impact of drug policy. CRIMJ 469 / HIST 469 Drugs and Drug Policy in the United States (3) For nearly a century, the United States has been waging its version of a hundred years' war on drugs, spending billions of dollars and incarcerating thousands of offenders while failing to significantly reduce the use of illicit drugs. This course examines drug use in a historical context while addressing the changing nature and dimension of drug use, including the pharmacology of drugs, patterns of drug use, and sentencing policies. Because drug control is inextricably linked to social, political, and public policy, the course will provide the student with a foundation for critical thinking and rational decision making relative to the efficacy of the various drug control initiatives. Since drugs seemingly permeate every level of American society and directly or tangentially touch most Americans' lives, issues such as drug testing in the workplace, the use of drug courier profiles, legalized medical marijuana, and needle exchange programs are evaluated. Students will be expected to learn the pharmacology of various drugs, the history of drug use in the United States since the colonial era, the evolution of federal drug agencies, and acquire knowledge about contemporary drug issues. They also will be expected to develop and strengthen their critical thinking skills as they assess the consequences of implementing particular anti-drug policies and their impact on reducing the use of illicit drug use. An example of the evaluation methods would be: students will be evaluated on the basis of three exams and four "think pieces" (requiring students' critical responses to an assigned topic) scheduled throughout the semester. Class attendance also will influence the grade. Faculty Member Proposing Course : John C. McWilliams
Pre-Islamic Arabia; Muhammad; Arab conquests; Islamic beliefs and institutions; literary, artistic, and scientific achievements; relations with Europe; breakdown of unity.
This course examines the history of the Ottoman Empire from its origins to the rise of the Turkish Republic, an historical time period covering approximately 1300 to 1923. Each week, the class will focus on a major turning point or theme using a combination of regional case studies and primary sources. In the process, students will be exposed to ongoing historiographical debates about a variety of events and trends in Ottoman history. Topics covered include war, diplomacy, gender, architecture, science, religion, technology, and slavery. This course focuses on and examines how the Ottoman state evolved in a changing global context.
Japanese history from 1580-1880. ASIA 474 (HIST 474, JAPNS 426) Early Modern Japan (3) Japan's Tokugawa period can be difficult to grasp. It resembles a modern society in many respects but operated according to a logic of social organization different from that of most modern states. There was a collective sense of national identity, but its characteristics differed significantly from modern forms of Japanese identity. Moreover, modern ideologies have contributed to the characterization of early modern Japan as a rigid society and of the country as a whole having been isolated from the rest of the world. The main purpose of this course is to afford students the opportunity to study early modern Japan in detail and, insofar as possible, on its own terms. Through readings in primary and secondary sources, and through the evaluation of visual images, this seminar-style course will deepen students' knowledge of Japan and serve as basis for comparative study of other early modern societies. Although the course investigates classic areas of historical study such as institutional development and foreign relations, the emphasis is on social and environmental history. The course encourages students to think about a range of approaches to the past and to think about the ways our contemporary biases influence the ways we understand the past.
HIST 475YThe Making and Emergence of Modern India3
India's transition to social, economic, and political modernity through the experience of British colonial rule and the nationalist struggle. ASIA (HIST) 475Y The Making and Emergence of Modern India (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course covers India's transition to social, economic, and political modernity through the experience of British colonial rule and the nationalist struggle. It begins during the early modern period, when European travelers encountered the flourishing Mughal Empire, and moves into the dynamic moment following, when the East India Company was one of various competing forces, both locally and globally. It then examines the rise of British power, and the various responses to it from collaboration to mutiny; the multiple development of nationalisms and anticolonialisms, including secular, socialist, Hindu and Muslim variations; the accompanying social reform visions, including caste abolition and feminism; the turbulent paths toward partition and independence, resulting in the postcolonial states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan. It then follows the continuing trajectories of these countries after independence, from the Nehruvian years to the neoliberal shift, with attention to emerging social movements and issues including caste and gender relations; religious and separatist politics; struggles around land and development; urbanization, and labor migration. This course raises important questions about the nature of modernity and its relationship to global interconnectedness, the rise of capitalism and colonialism, industry and technology; while emphasizing South Asian social and cultural contributions and responses to these global shifts. By filling in the context of this part of the world to that global story, the course enables students to grapple with some of the major economic and geopolitical trends of the early 21st century.
Development of United States military policy in the 20th and 21st centuries, emphasizing conduct of wars, interrelationship of civil and military authority.
HIST 479History of Imperialism and Nationalism in Africa3
A selective overview of the history of iumperialism and nationalism in Africa. HIST/AFR 479 History of Imperialism and Nationalism in Africa. This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. History/African Studies 479 will provide a selective introduction to major developments and issues concerning Africa's colonial and postcolonial history. The beginning of this course will concentrate on the meanings of imperialism and nationalism and the fact that there is no "single" African experience with either of them. This will be followed by a discussion of 19th and 20th century political history in specific contexts in North, East, West, and Southern Afria. The course concludes with a review of African decolonization and the most notable manifestations of recent nationalism on the continent. Special attention will be given to the methods of colonial takeover, methods of African resistance, the West's role in Africa, and Africa's formative role nstruon the West. Religion, the military, and racial/ethnic identity politics will be recurring themes in the course. The actual time devoted to each topic and the sequence of topics will vary from instructor to instructor. The objective of the course is to intrroduce to the causes, nature, and consequences of modern imperialism in Africa. In doing so, students will receive a comprehensive history about a region of the world that is often misunderstood and misrepresented. Also, the course emphasizes critical thinking and analytical writing. The course will consist of polls, pratice discussions, quizzes, response papers, and a final project. As a general education course, this class will provide an introduction to African political history for students of anyn major. Students majoring or minoring in History, African Studies, International Relations, or Political Science will learn vocabulary and information that is basic to the field and broaden their knowledge of History.
An overview of Japan from the 10th to 17th century, a period of political decentralization, cultural efflorescence, and social change. ASIA (HIST) 480 Japan in the Age of Warriors (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. By the eighth century, Japan had become a centralized state centered on the reign of a sovereign, commonly known in English as an emperor. At the end of the ninth century, the emperor’s court relocated to the city of Heian (Kyoto), and soon thereafter, an elegant court culture developed in the capital. The courtly culture was based on civilian values and civilian rule. In the countryside, however, Japan was gradually becoming militarized. Local warlords began rising to prominence and vying with each other for power. One of them, Taira-no-Masakado, rebelled against the central government during the years 939-940, declaring himself “emperor” of several provinces in eastern Japan centered on Hitachi. Although the central government in Kyoto enlisted other warrior groups to put down Taira-no-Masakado’s rebellion, the process of militarization was underway. Buddhist temples also participated in this process, using their wealth and influence to assemble monastic armies on occasion. This course examines Japanese history beginning approximately in the 10th century, at time when civilian high culture in the capital was approaching the height of its development. At the same time, the process of militarization of the countryside was beginning to undermine that civilian court culture. The course ends in approximately the seventeenth century with the establishment of a military government under the Tokugawa shoguns. This development was ostensibly the peak of warrior influence, with the samurai (=warrior) class entrenched by law as the elite group within society. However, just as the warriors began their rise to power in the tenth century, by the end of the seventeenth century they were rapidly losing influence and prestige to wealthy merchants as the forces of the market economy spread throughout Japanese society. HIST 480 is a course in medieval Japanese history, broadly defined. Different instructors will emphasize different aspects of Japanese history and culture during this era. Approaches to teaching will also vary depending on the instructor. Class sessions can take the form of lectures or discussions. Assessment methods and learning activities may include debates, discussions, exams, research papers, book review papers, and other similar academic activities.
The transformation of Japan from a relatively isolated, agricultural nation into a highly industrialized world power. ASIA (HIST) 481 Modern Japan Since 1800 (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. In the late 19th century, Japan emerged from relative seclusion and grew, within the period of a few decades, into one of the world's major powers. Japan's remarkable transformation into an imperialist power ended suddenly with defeat by the Allied powers in August 1945. But the history of prewar and wartime Japanese nation-building and economic growth set the stage for postwar rebuilding. This course examines Japan's development as a powerful modern state, imperialist aggressor, defeated nation, economic power-house, and pop culture super-power. Specific content will vary according to individual instructor, but may include the structures of state and society in the early 19th century, the creation of the Meiji state (1868-1912), the successes and costs of the Meiji government's program of rapid modernization and Westernization, imperialist expansion, the road to war and defeat in World War II, the postwar U.S. occupation of Japan (1945-1952), Japan's resurgence as a global power, and some of the major challenges facing the Japanese state and society today. The goals of the class are not only to gain an understanding of the history of another country, but also to develop the skill of building such an understanding through primary and secondary sources, both written and visual. Students in this class will take on the role of historian themselves, thinking critically about assigned texts and making their own interpretations of their meanings. Through readings, discussions, and written work, students will enhance their ability to think critically and to express their ideas clearly in both speech and writing.
This course familiarizes students with the critical texts and intellectual cultures of Warring States and early imperial China. CHNS 418 / ASIA 418 / HIST 482 Confucius and the Great Books of China (3) This course exposes students to the key texts, thinkers, and ideas that form the foundation of the Chinese classics and classical period, providing an integral foundation for the study of Chinese history, culture, or literature. While the emphasis is on the texts and their main themes, the course will encourage historical engagement with the texts by placing them into a context of competing cultural, social, political trends. Readings may be grouped around categories of teachings such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, or around thinkers such as "(Confucian) ritualists," "statesmen," "military strategists," "rebels," "recluses," and "spiritual leaders." Students will learn how each of these types of teachings and thinkers related to each other, as well as how they responded to the emergent, centralized political order of the day. This will help students better understand many of the recurrent intellectual, political, and religious themes that arise in later Chinese history as well.
The social, political, and cultural issues and developments from the 8th to 16th century. ASIA (HIST) 483 Middle China (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This advanced discussion-based course covers the social, political, and cultural issues and developments in Chinese history from roughly the eighth century through the sixteenth century. Specific content will vary according to instructor. Students will gain a strong foundation in Chinese history and culture and experience analyzing historical texts.
A study of the dynamic historical development of Chinese thought with its diverse expressions from antiquity to the present. ASIA (HIST) 484Y History of Chinese Thought (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course examines the historical developments of Chinese thought and its multifarious expressions from ancient times to the eighteenth century. It explores the unique Chinese ways and means of making sense of the world and the human condition by probing China’s philosophical and religious traditions. It reveals the conscious life of the Chinese in matters moral, ethical, aesthetic and metaphysical. Moreover, by showing the unity, diversity, continuity and discontinuity in Chinese thought throughout the ages, this course debunks the popular “Orientalist” myth that Chinese culture had been a hermetically sealed and stagnant monolith until the modern era when Western influences became dominant.
HIST 485YChina's Last Empire: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-19113
China from 1644 founding of Qing dynasty to 1911 fall; Chinese society and institutions, imperialism and China's internal diversity. ASIA (HIST) 485Y China's Last Empire: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911 (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course will examine the Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty to rule China, from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. More than doubling the size of the previous Ming dynasty, the empire also included people such as Tibetans, Muslims and Mongols who had never before considered themselves as “Chinese” but were now Qing subjects. The course will examine how Manchu ruling family, a non-Chinese people, outnumbered by the Chinese by about three hundred and fifty to one managed to conquer and rule China for nearly three hundred years. Tracing the political, social and cultural development of china starting with the foundation and consolidation of the Qing in 1644 and concluding with the collapse of the dynastic system in 1911, this course examines the role of the imperial system, internal rebellions, and the impact of Western colonialism on China. Considerable time will also be focused on China’s ethnic, religious and cultural differences in order to allow a deeper understanding of major issues and themes in late imperial Chinese history. Finally, the theme of China’s international relations in Asia and the world and China's shifting place in the world will be a prominent thread of the course. Through a blend of primary and secondary sources, students in this class will need to think critically, read broadly and express their ideas clearly regarding the evolving challenges facing China’s last empire.
China from 1900 to the present; nationalism, cultural change; development of communism. ASIA (HIST) 486 China in Revolution (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course examines the social and cultural history of modern China from 1900 to the present. Major topics may include the formation of a modern national state, relationships between society and government, economic development and environmental crises, changes in kinship and family life, and changing relationships between elite and popular culture. The course uses excerpts from primary documents, fiction, and film to help students understand the modern Chinese historical experience.
Survey of the social, economic, political, and religious conditions of accusations and prosecutions of witchcraft in western Europe and north America, from 1500 to 1700.
This seminar will examine the social, cultural, religious, and philosophical attitudes regarding the treatment of death and dying, the care and disposal of the dead, and the processes associated with mourning and commemoration from antiquity to the present. The course will examine the transformations that have taken place in western society's attitudes toward death, modes of dying, relationship with the dead, and ways to remember the dead. While the major emphasis of the course will be on the history of these themes in western cultures, the course also includes comparative analysis of non-western societies and religions so that students will be able to understand death practices within a global context. Various readings and discussion will examine the idea of death, on both macrocosmic (societal) and microcosmic (personal) levels.
The purpose of this course is to explore the place of the natural environment in the late medieval and early modern world. It does so by revisiting classic episodes in world history, from the Mongol conquests in the thirteenth century until the volcanic eruptions of Laki (1783) and Tambora (1815), and reinterpreting them through the lens of environmental history. Topics considered include climate change, plague epidemics, wetland drainage, urbanization, malaria, forestry, colonization, and the commodification of nature. Horses, mosquitoes, and rats will come under the spotlight as active participants in the great transformations of world history. Central to our inquiry throughout the semester is the perennial problem of historical agency; how humanity's freedom to think and act interacts with the limits that nature imposes. Along the way, students will be given an overview of the concepts, methods, and sources of environmental history.
This graduate seminar explores the major scholarly developments in the study of women's history, masculinity, and gendered representations in early modern Europe (1400-1800) and several colonial areas. Topics covered include the family, women's health, work, sodomy, witchcraft and the reformation, honor, slavery, missions, monasticism, and the Inquisition. Through weekly discussions, students will become familiarized with the various methodological and archival trends in recent and more classic scholarship.
HIST 514Global History 1300-1800: Empires, Economy, and Civilizations3
This course covers the basic historical information, historiographical orientation, and theoretical discussions of the major problems of global history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern world. It covers the history of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, as well as Oceania in a thematic and chronological manner.
The course examines the possible use of social theory by historians and explores how theory could inform historical writing. It provides an outline of canonical theoretical perspectives on modernity, class, race, gender, nationalism, totalitarianism, and the public sphere. Students will learn to navigate between theoretical perspectives that differ in the answers they give to fundamental questions, along several continuums: from emphasizing material processes as shaping human history to prioritizing the power of ideas; from accrediting the autonomous free will of humans to ascribing more influence to constraints set by social structures; from considering human history a sphere of endless conflicts to seeing it as a site where consensus and harmony are gradually built; from recognition of the existence of objective social reality to the acceptance of merely various subjective points of view; from the explicit ambition to make theory a tool for advancing certain political goals to an ambition to be politically neutral. Various scholars provide different answers to these questions. While analyzing them the course addresses, in particular, the following questions: What are some of the strengths and weaknesses in each of these positions? How are particular ways of theoretical thinking related to the specific social positions and biographies of the theorists? How have the foundations of each of these views changed over time?
HIST 523The History of Colonialism and Mass Death3
Over 100 million people were victims of mass killings, including genocide, in the 20th century. And yet, episodes like the Holocaust were not the first instances of state-sponsored mass death; on the contrary, mass killings and mass death have been a distinguishing feature of colonialism and its aftermaths for at least the last five centuries. How and why did these acts and processes occur? What forces caused humans to kill others on a massive scale? How have slower or less sudden processes-like death via slavery or disease-been reinterpreted and debated as foundational to genocide? What do these episodes reveal about the nature of race, religion, colonialism, technology, and modernity? HIST 523 is a graduate seminar that gives students an overview of the key literatures, methodologies, and debates in the historical literature on colonialism and mass killings, from genocide to epidemiological collapse, from the fifteenth century to the present. Its broad temporal framing and comparative framework reflects debates over the place of violence in European expansion in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, while also allowing for more subsequent, more local mass killings in places where colonization retreated. Before delving into specific historical examples, we will explore definitions of colonialism, mass death, and genocide. The course is then organized chronologically and examines episodes across a broad geographical spectrum, including early modern France, the early Columbian New World, the 19th century American West, 19th century Australia, Congo and Namibia during the "Scramble for Africa," East Asia in the early-mid 20th century, 1980s Guatemala, and the Darfur Genocide of the early 2000s. It familiarizes students with the re-reading of colonial and post-colonial histories since the coining of the term 'genocide' in 1944, by Raphael Lemkin, and the debates that the application of the term outside of Europe, outside of the Holocaust, have engendered. Students will be prepared to: teach on the history of mass death, mass killings, and genocide outside of Europe; more efficiently read and review academic texts; and find and interpret primary sources. This course is open to students across departments, and highly recommended for students minoring in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
HIST 524Deviance, Crime and Madness in Modern Europe3
Historiography of deviance, crime, and madness in Europe from the late-18th century to the present. HIST 524 Deviance, Crime and Madness in Modern Europe (3) Historians and social scientists have shown that societies have persistently established certain standards and ideals for human conduct and being. At the same time, the natural variation in human phenotypes has meant that individual, groups, and institutions within these societies have been faced with those deviating from these norms. The deviations may sometimes present themselves physically (e.g., in the form of a somatic lesion or disability), intrapersonally (e.g., in eccentric thinking or affect), or interpersonally (e.g., in criminal or anti-social conduct). As historians, anthropologists, and other have demonstrated, while there are noteworthy continuities in how these deviations have often been manifested (e.g., seizures accompanying epilepsy), there have been considerable differences across time and place in how deviance has been expressed, perceived, understood, and handled. This seminar examines this constellation of problems as they have emerged in Europe since the 18th century. Posing, as they do, complex human problems, the historical study of deviance, crime, and madness requires paying attention to the scholarly contributions of multiple disciplines beyond the field of history. Thus, the course will attend to both social theory and historiography. Each week, readings from social theory will be paired with a historical work, in order to bring broad theoretical analysis and empirical disciplinary research more deliberately into conversation with one another. Some examples of the course readings include Emile Durkheim's On Suicide, Erving Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity, Janet Oppenheim's "Shattered Nerves: Doctors, Patients, and Depression in Victorian England," Norbert Elias' The Civilizing Process, Reviel Netz's Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity, and Jan Gross' Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Weekly topics will center on key social processes and prominent conceptual frameworks: social control, self-control, marginalization, pathologization, criminalization and de-criminalization, representation, punishment, extermination, and enhancement. Students will be required to write an interdisciplinary research paper (i.e., a paper accessible to multiple scholarly audiences), calling on both theoretical and empirical scholarship from various disciplines. The course will culminate in a seminar conference in which students will present their research and field questions and comments.
This course provides students with an overview of the processes of constructing borders in a variety of forms, ethnic, religious, trade, and linguistic, in a European imperial context. HIST 525 Imperial Borderlands in Modern Europe (3) This course exposes students to the latest developments in colonial studies and new paradigms for considering European imperial history in terms of its borderlands. Using the methodological tools applied in recent years to the history of Western colonial empires, this course expands the scope of European history to encompass the complex interaction between the conquered peoples and their rulers by broadening imperial history to include the study of ethnic and religious differences that emerged from the European encounter with peoples whose cultures differed profoundly from their own. In particular, the material covered in this course will build an awareness among students of the role of states, and especially imperial states, in confronting the polyethnic/multinational character of populations they sought to rule. The theoretical and historiographical works assigned will focus on how imperial European states crafted or erased cultural differences and how borderlands posed particular challenges in these endeavors. Building on these insights, students will gain an awareness of imperial policies and conceptions of colonial rule and of the impact of imperial domination on colonial peoples. Students will learn to recognize and identify the means by which Imperial rule brought irreversible changes to the way of life of the borderlands peoples, who adapted to and resisted imperial rule by a variety of means that they had at hand. Such an approach will yield an awareness of the methods by which historians formulate questions, choose sources, use theory to interpret the material they collect, and the variety of rhetorical and other means available to historians to present findings. Students will conduct their own analyses of scholarship by reflecting on the assigned readings and presenting their thoughts and evaluations in the form of weekly critiques and a final paper. This will be invaluable in helping students to acquire the necessary methodological and theoretical tools to formulate questions for their own research projects. This course fulfills the requirement of a topical graduate course in History. It is open to students within and outside of the History Department.
HIST 530History of Science in the Early Modern World3
This course exposes students to the current state of scholarship from the standpoint of historical, legal, sociological, and literary analyses of science in the early modern period. The inadequacy of long-accepted notions of "science" and "modernization" to describe the rapid changes of scientific thought in the early modern era require students to assess the specific value given to such notions by the state, religion, and society in specific cultural and historical contexts. The seminar will also explore the reconceptualization of society and nature in the early modern period and the way in which discoveries in natural philosophy inspired those changes. The exchanges between European and non-European centers of authority during the early modern period helped to shape many of these disputes and scholars' current interpretive frameworks. In particular, we will challenge triumphal narratives of the Scientific Revolution by examining the ways in which geography and local context affected ideas about the natural world, the role of gender in knowledge-making, and how non-elite and artisanal practices also contributed to the creation of early science. A focus throughout the course will be on how the exchanges between European and non-European intellectual communities shaped contemporary understanding of the natural world. The seminar is intended for graduate students in history and related fields who are preparing for the field in Early Modern studies. The seminar is intended for graduate students in history and related fields who are preparing a field in early modern studies.
HIST 531Religion and State-making in the Early Modern World3
This course is a research seminar covering the historiography of early modern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India, Warring-State and early Tokugawa Japan, Choson Korea, and the history of Ming and Qing China with a focus on the interaction between religious and political history.
This course provides students with an overview of the contribution of intelectual and cultural historians to the field of "body history." HIST 535 History of the Body (3) This course exposes students to the contribution of intellectual and cultural historians to the field of "body history." Ranging from the late medieval to early twentieth century, the course will focus attention on the early modern period. Inspired by the writings of Ernst Kantorowicz, Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Judith Butler, among others, historians have demonstrated that bodies are not exempt from social, cultural, or ideological regimes of power. As a metaphor for the body politic or an instrument of power, the corporeal order is shown to have physical, social, symbolic, and political effects. As historians continue to demonstrate, the body has a history: which involves health, sickness and food, gestures and movement, sartorial codes and sumptuary regulations, gender taboos and sexual prohibitions. Studies of the body demand a multidisciplinary perspective. Thus, this course explores how historians have drawn upon visual as well as textual sources, and crossed disciplinary boundaries in order to better appreciate the entire range of bodily representations in the past.
This seminar provides an overview of early modern Atlantic history from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Like other seminars in the Early Modern Global curriculum, it builds on the knowledge and skills acquired in the core seminars. HIST 537 offers an overview of Atlantic history, an orientation to important research questions and problems in the field, and methodological training in the critical use of primary sources and its relationship to the important multidisciplinary concepts underlying historical research in the Atlantic field.
Surveying Native American history from the pre-colonial era to the present, this course examines key historical events, including: Indigenous civilizations before colonialism; the invasion of North America by Europeans; colonial epidemics; the Indian slave trade; the Pueblo Revolt; the Seven Years' War; the development and impacts of U.S. Indian policy; Indigenous sovereignty. Methodologically, this course exposes students to a range of historical subfields, such as social history, cultural history, political history, military history, and gender history. Additionally, History 539 gives students an overview of ethnohistory, an interdisciplinary field that draws on techniques and sources from History and Anthropology. By studying ethnohistory, historians will become better acquainted with cultural anthropology and archaeology. This seminar introduces students to major questions, themes, and problems in Native American history. These include: How can we study pre-colonial Indigenous history? What impact did colonization have on the Americas? How did Indians, Europeans, and Africans attempt to navigate cultural differences? How did the enslavement of Indigenous peoples and Africans impact race in North America? How do Native-centered histories transform our understanding of the American past?
The study of the causes, conduct, and political, social, diplomatic, cultural, and economic consequences of war from 1500 to the present. HIST 541 War in the Early Modern and Modern World (3) This course offers an introduction to the complexity of war in the early modern (1400-1850) and modern world (1850 to the present). Since war has been experienced across the entire world, the course will draw readings and examples from North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. It brings together the two major approaches to the study of war, both the traditional emphasis on the battlefield and the more recent consideration of both the battlefront and the political, social, economic, and cultural homefronts. Specifically, this course considers the various methodologies that have shaped the ways in which historians have asked and answered such fundamental questions as how and why wars start, have been averted, and ended. The study of military theory provides the intellectual framework that shaped the study and conduct of war at specific periods of history and in specific cultural context. The evolution of a nation's military theory over time reflects the impact of changes in technology, the changing social composition of its armed forces, the strength of the economic support the national government will supply, and much more. Thus, this course considers issues relevant to armies (technology, soldier experience in battle), to the government (laws of war, revolutions in military affairs, military doctrine, war and national identity), and to the people (issues relating to race, class, and gender; antiwar activism, popular literature) for a fuller understanding of the overarching impact of war in the modern and early modern world.
This course provides graduate students with an introduction to the field of American borderlands studies. It devotes a great deal of coverage to the most important of the nation's international frontiers, the U.S.-Mexico border, by detailing the various positions of Native Americans, Anglos, Asians, and Mexicans as they struggled over competing visions of an American future. But the course also attends to other major American frontiers, including the Atlantic littoral, the Canadian border, and the Pacific rim; it also examines all these in international context. In order to get a broad survey of the state of the field, we will examine how cross-cultural encounters shaped policy, changed the landscape, and heightened racial tensions. Using a variety of texts-documentary and feature films, magazine and newspaper articles, travelers' accounts, academic monographs and articles, and popular literature-we will explore a range of topics: territorial expansion, Native dispossession, racial formation and anxiety, Mexican, Asian, and Canadian migration and labor, and cultural change and negotiation. The course will begin with a close examination of the political, economic, and military conflicts that defined America's eastern, southern, northern, and western boundaries and then follow a series of selected historical events that led up to the current political and cultural debates that continue in the borderlands today. Drawing on these items, we will ultimately reflect on how past and present collide in all the nation's borderlands, shaping the United States in countless ways.
Primarily a reading seminar, this course focuses on United States history from the 17th century to 1877, emphasizing the profound ways that the British American colonies and then the United States changed through numerous social, cultural, economic, and political revolutions. In particular, the course investigates transitions from the colonial period through the road to the Revolution, the Early National period, the Jacksonian Era, the sectional conflict, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. Students will examine the growth and impact of the institution of slavery; territorial expansion; cross-cultural encounters; social, cultural, economic, and political revolutions; the consolidation of capitalism; and the impact of reform movements on the colonies and nation.
Primarily a reading seminar, this course focuses on United States history from 1877 to the present, emphasizing the profound ways the nation changed socially, culturally, economically, and politically since the late nineteenth century. In particular, the course investigates and builds an awareness of the transition from the Gilded Age through the two world wars, and onward through the social protest and civil rights movements of the 1960s. This seminar will address a variety of topics: industrialization; evolving ideas about individual rights; the role of government in social and economic affairs; the emergence of the nation as an economic and military power; as well as social and labor movements. On a methodological level, the seminar will expose graduate students to a variety of interdisciplinary approaches and subfields of history, ranging from political, economic, social, ethnic, religious, cultural, and environmental history.
Slavery in South America, the Caribbean, and North America from 16th century European colonization through the 19th century abolition movement. HIST 547 Slavery in the Americas (3) This course provides a broad exploration of slavery in the Americas from the beginning of European colonization to abolition. From the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, Spanish, Portuguese, British, and French colonists in the Americas created the largest slave societies the world has ever known. Slaves in the New World produced tropical commodities such as sugar, tobacco, cotton, and coffee that, in turn, contributed to the foundation of capitalist and consumer societies in the Atlantic world. The staple crops produced by slaves were among the first goods to transform elite luxuries into common necessities. The Age of Revolution was a watershed in the history of slavery in the Americas, transforming the terms of struggle between slaves and slaveholders, of debate about slavery, of the ideology of slavery. While the Age of Revolution catalyzed a century-long process of abolition, it also began a new period in the expansion of slavery. Slaveholders developed new policies, practices, and doctrines to reconcile slavery and liberalism. The adoption of modern technology and industrial techniques of production resulted in dramatic increases in the productivity and exploitation of slaves, as well as the wealth and power of slaveholders. The simultaneous growth of slavery and antislavery heightened political divisions over slavery and made its destruction a protracted struggle marked by slave rebellion and civil war as well as landmark acts of state. This course investigates the origins of slavery, race, and abolitionism; transformations in plantation production, the culture of Africans in the Americas, and the ideologies of slavery; and the relationships among slavery, liberalism, capitalism, and modernity. Students will apply a range of concepts from the human sciences, such as creolization, ideology, and human geography, to major problems in the history of slavery.
This course offers a survey of American history from roughly the fifteenth to twentieth centuries. Students will read and discuss studies employing the lenses of physical space and place to examine the changes in the American landscape over time. They will learn to read the built environment as an historical text, assess how changes in landscape and spatial practice reveal larger shifts in social and economic structures, and identify the multiple practices of spatial arrangement that existed among diverse groups who came to make up the United States. They will be encouraged to recognize, identify, and apply the social scientific theories of "the spatial turn" and the tools of spatial analysis to place. At the conclusion of the course, students will come to recognize the way analysis of place can reveal the values and power relations in society. They will articulate the importance of physical space in shaping social interactions and how that has changed over time, while also achieving a better understanding of the diverse characteristics of peoples, societies, and institutions in U.S. history.
This seminar provides students with an overview of important topics and debates related to the African American Freedom Struggle from Reconstruction to the present. The course is organized chronologically and thematically to highlight the changing and distinctive concerns related to African Americans' efforts to secure the rights and benefits of American citizenship. Special attention is given to the ways in which high politics intersect with grassroots actions. The course considers African American mobilization throughout the entire country and does not simply address the more familiar southern post-WWII struggle. Not only will students gain a critical understanding of some central debates in this field, but also, they will begin to think about how they might teach this material to undergraduates.
This course offers a survey of the history of the place that became the United States through the lens of the environment. Through attention to changing ecologies, conflicting resource-use regimes, differing ideas about what nature is and should be for, students will come to understand the many ways in which natural systems have shaped and been shaped by people in North America over the past five centuries.
Surveying Social and Cultural History in the 19th and 20th centuries in the United States, this course examines key themes and topics in the history of the field, including: race, class, gender, sexuality, labor, migration, citizenship, incarceration, and environment. This seminar gives students an overview of major questions and problems in American Social and Cultural History such as What is culture? How does society produce culture? What is the relationship between culture and politics? How do we write history from the bottom up? How do our methods constrain what histories we can tell? Methodologically, this course exposes students to a range of theories and subfields including political history, gender history, history of capitalism, labor history, urban history, and legal history. Additionally this seminar examines journalistic historical writing, biographies, and opinion editorials in order to examine the multiple forms history writing can take.
This course introduces graduate students to key historiographical and methodological literatures and debates in the field of modern Middle Eastern history. Drawing on a variety of historical approaches and methods from related disciplines, we analyze the transformation of the Middle East in the modern era as part of broader global processes. The rise of capitalism and the incorporation of the Middle East into the world economy led to wide-ranging transformations in agriculture, urbanization, the creation of new social classes, and migration within and to the region. The expansion of imperial, colonial, and national states occurred congruent with the emergence of mass politics, new technologies, and new public spaces. All of the above developments contributed to changing intercommunal relations, new gender roles, and a reassessment of the role of religion in political and social life. Graduate students will thus acquire deep knowledge about the history of the region while at the same time developing comparative skills and a broader understanding of the Middle East within world history.
HIST 558Colonialism and Nationalism in the Middle East3
This course provides a thorough grounding in the relationship between colonialism and nationalism in the Middle East, as well as in the emergence of modern nation-states and national identities. Topics will include but are not limited to: Visions of Middle Eastern modernities and the role of colonialism in shaping them; the place of religion and secularization as sites of colonial hegemony or national resistance; popular culture as contested terrain in the colonial era; the various ways the colonial encounter shaped social norms and patterns related to gender and sexuality; and the nature and effects of colonial violence.
HIST 559Migrants and Refugees in the Middle East and North Africa3
This course investigates the history of mass movement within and out of the Middle East, the Balkans, and North Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present day. We will examine multiple manifestations of such movement: emigration and reverse emigration, forced population transfers and exchanges, the making of refugee communities and their movements around the region, and the influence of diaspora communities on political, social, and economic movements in the homeland. As well as investigating the role migrants and refugees have had in the making of the modern Middle East, this course will give students the opportunity to engage with major issues surrounding diaspora, transnationalism, and citizenship, as well as broad historical questions of identity and belonging.
This course offers an overview of the historiography of the Ottoman Empire. The weekly readings will include a combination of classic and recent scholarship and will acquaint students with some of the historiographical questions, research methods, and theoretical framings that have shaped the field since the early twentieth century. Students will acquire the foundational knowledge to teach courses on the Ottoman Empire or conduct original research. The course will appeal to students of early modern history, Middle East history, and world history. Knowledge of a Middle Eastern language is not required.
HIST 562Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Middle East3
The course provides an in-depth examination of key topics in recent research on the study of women, gender, and sexuality in the Middle East and an investigation of changes in the field. The course promotes theoretical, analytical, and methodological approaches that redirect understanding and research away from a legacy of essentializing norms identified with orientalism and colonialism. The course begins with a discussion of how and why women, gender, and sexuality of the Middle East became a distinct field and the challenges imposed by its origins in an era of colonial empires and missionary activism. The course examines pioneering studies in women's history and gender and sexuality and investigates some of the most recent scholarship thematically. Readings include monographs and articles from an array of locations and perspectives to provide a view of the complexity of topics and of regional, social, economic, racial/ethnic diversity, and to develop a foundation for comparative analysis. Topics include but are not limited to women, gender, orientalism, and Islam; women, gender, sexuality, and social disruption; women, gender, and sexuality in literature, art, and popular culture, contemporary feminisms and queer studies.
This course provides an analysis of the modern Middle East in a global context. The students will learn to read the history of the region in international and transnational frameworks. This course will position the Middle East in relation to Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas; and in the context of imperialism, decolonization, World Wars, the Cold War, and other global phenomena, such as emigration, economy, and global networks. It will be of interest to students of Middle East history, Global History studies, and Asian Studies.
HIST 564Islamic Law and Society in Historical Perspective3
The course provides an in-depth examination of key topics in recent research on the study of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and theory (usul) and an investigation of changes in the field. This class also offers a thorough examination of two or three topics within Islamic law with an emphasis on their development in recent history. Topics will be selected in consultation with students, and they will be approached from various disciplinary perspectives, including literary, documentary, and anthropological approaches. They should be of broad interest and could include subjects within family law, international relations, ritual, colonialism, democratization, and so forth. Readings include monographs and articles from an array of locations and perspectives to provide a view of the complexity of topics and of regional, social, economic, racial/ethnic diversity, and to develop a foundation for comparative analysis. Reading knowledge of Arabic is helpful but not required.
This course provides a thorough grounding in the state of the field of the history of Palestine/Israel. It examines the encounter between Palestinians and Israelis from a perspective that questions our ability to understand them separately and it emphasizes interdependency between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and internal tension within Palestinian and Israeli societies. Topics will include but are not limited to: Palestine/Israel as case of settler-colonialism, the place of religion in defining national identities and boundaries, intra-ethnic divides, competing discourses of citizenship, the fragile status of Palestinian citizens and non-citizens under the Israeli control system, struggles over collective memory, and the place of gender and sexuality in the conflict. The course emphasizes the intersection of politics and culture, demonstrating the political relevance of cultural fields such as music, cinema, and sports.
HIST 567Revolution and Counter-revolution in Modern Latin America3
Latin American colonial history was defined by exploitation for profit; the efficiency of state control over Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations established economic profit or loss. In the face of independence, abolition, and widespread immigration, racial hierarchy and exploitation continued to shape modern Latin America, but often under a fictive constitutional promise of equality, citizenship, and democracy. In the nineteenth century much of Latin America experienced the rise of caudillos, military strong men, and dictators who often rule through a limited or truncated form of democracy but come to represent the interests of the political, industrial, and landed elite who consolidate their control over much of Latin America in the early twentieth century. In response to this control, we see a rise of popular revolution throughout twentieth century Latin America. Some succeed while others fail; they include national and regional movements, they are shaped by labor, agriculture, populism, democracy, nationalism, socialism, communism, and military uprising. We later see-often but not always in direct response-a conservative backlash in the form of military dictatorships, neo-colonial and neo-liberal economies, torture, disappearance, murder, and anti-communist fervor driven by Cold-War ideology. We will examine these events through various lenses: that of participants, through analysis of regional and national outcomes, and through the intervention of global powers. We will ask what social, political, and/or racial conditions led to revolutionary situations? How successful were revolutionary leaders at shaping policies, administrations, and nations? What did revolutionaries seek to accomplish and what were the outcomes of their reforms? Conversely, what did counterrevolutionaries seek to accomplish and what were the outcomes of their reforms? We cannot address every "revolution" or every conservative backlash that occurred in modern Latin America. By addressing these themes in Cuba, Mexico, Central America, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, we will emphasize forms of revolution, nationalism, "bureaucratic-authoritarian." state formation, imperialism, agrarian reform, immigration, industrialization, labor movements, and citizenship.
HIST 568Medicine, Science, and Technology in Latin American History3
This graduate course explores the history of medicine, science, and technology in early modern Latin America and Iberia, integrating interdisciplinary approaches and local/global contexts. It is designed to give students an overview of some of the key historiographical debates and research in these fields for Latin America and Iberia, and to provide a basic familiarity with the forms that this field of historical/interdisciplinary inquiry has taken in recent years. Some of the themes that we will explore are the role of empire building in shaping medical, scientific, and technological knowledge; how "non-Western" (indigenous, African, Asian, and mixed race) healers, artisans, and scientists innovated, developed, and recreated their practices and societal roles under colonial rule; the historical development of public health in Latin America; and the interactions between global processes of Western knowledge production and local-level multi-ethnic Latin American knowledge production. This course will be of interest to those studying colonial Latin America, those who wish to understand the colonial legacies of issues important to modern Latin America research topics, those interested in the early modern era in a comparative and/or global perspective, and those who wish to prepare for the Latin America or Early Modern World fields of their comprehensive exams.
HIST 569 gives students an overview of key literatures, methodologies, and debates in the historiography of Latin America (the writing of Latin American history), from the 1490s to the Independence period (mostly, but by no means solely, the 1820s). Its primary focus is Spanish America and Portuguese Brazil, especially Iberian interactions with indigenous American and Africans/African-descended people. But some attention is given to all regions of the Americas and to roles played by British, French, and other colonizers. Chronologically, it is a prequel to HIST 570 (but not an official prerequisite). The course comprises five sections, each based on an historical sub-field and its historiography within the larger field: (1) the indigenous civilizations of the Americas and their responses to European invasion, including the shift from traditional Eurocentric Conquest narratives to the New Conquest History; (2) the political and economic institutions, as well as the culture, of Spanish and Portuguese colonization; (3) the changes and continuities in indigenous civilizations during the colonial centuries (usually termed "Ethnohistory," and explored more fully in HIST 571); (4) the history of trans-Atlantic slavery and the experience of African-descended peoples in Colonial Latin America; and (5) a sub-field that will vary according to instructor, examples being the history of science and medicine in the region, the history of gender and sexuality, and the history of religious change (or "the Spiritual Conquest").
This seminar gives students an overview of central literatures and debates in the historiography of Latin America (the writing of Latin American history) and the Americas more broadly, from approximately to 1800 to the present. Its framing reflects the chronology of mainland Spanish American Independence, but it reaches backwards and outwards as needed. It looks to prior Andean and Haitian bids for self-determination and subsequent exports and imports - of empire, capital, people commodities, science, and instruments of terror - to and from the United States and Africa. It connects those nodes by tracing continuities in political, social, and environmental relationships, and by identifying the ways that peoples in the region (in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, Colombia and the Andes, Brazil and the Southern Cone) have thought and acted their way out of colonialisms. Chief among the seminar's goals is the preparation of graduate students to teach post-1800 Latin American History to undergraduates. Students will develop a grasp of the field's key historiographical developments, and think about new ways to teach a subject that many - but not all - North American undergraduates meet with stereotypes. Graduate students of other historical geographies and from other disciplines are welcome too, given that it is also designed to survey approaches to thinking historically after 1800, to question assumptions that those methodologies make, and to address the politics of researching and writing a post-colonial history of a place that has always been "modern," where "Latin America" came into being as a means of anticipating questions crucial to past and present imperialisms, global histories, and politics
HIST 571 gives students an overview of key literatures, methodologies, and debates in the historiography of Latin American ethnohistory, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. "Ethnohistory" is defined here as the historical study of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The course comprises four sections, each based on an historical sub-field and its historiography: (1) the indigenous civilizations of the Americas in the pre-Contact and Contact periods, primarily fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including but not necessarily limited to the civilizations of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas; (2) indigenous responses to European invasion, with particular attention to regions of Spanish and Portuguese activity - and including the historiographical development of the New Conquest History, with attention also given to regions where colonies were not established; (3) the indigenous experience of Spanish and Portuguese colonization, and indigenous contributions to new colonial-era societies, including changes and continuities in indigenous civilizations during the colonial centuries - and including the historiographical development of the New Philology); and (4) the indigenous experience of the long Independence period, taking the seminar to a point in the nineteenth century, as determined by the instructor.
From initial colonial contact, Latin America represents a site of violent conquest by European colonizers over indigenous populations and exploitation of both African and indigenous labor; white control over black and brown bodies was at the very core of colonial economic success or failure. In turn, racial hierarchy and exploitation define both colonial and modern Latin American history. Our focus is not the overall study of race and slavery throughout Latin American history. Instead we will examine the role of race in Latin American nation-building following independence through the age of twentieth century nationalism. As the ideas of scientific racism swept Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century, the United States established economic, and at times military, dominance over much of Latin America from the neo-colonial period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Increasingly, as cultural and economic ties were broken with the Iberian empires-even in the case of Spain's last American colonies, Cuba and Puerto Rico-Latin American elite sought modernity through trade with and cultural borrowing from the United States and Europe. In response to the scientific racist ideology that in the US led to segregation, Jim Crow, convict lease systems, lynching, and widespread disenfranchisement, Latin American elite consciously engaged these racist ideas as they granted or restricted non-white populations access to their rights as citizens. Nineteenth century luminaries such as Cuban revolutionary José Marti, Argentine journalist and politician Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and even Venezuelan military and political leader Simón Bolívar had introduced radical ideas on race and citizenship. In the first half of the twentieth century Latin American intellectuals famously built on those ideas by embracing, renegotiating, and/or rejecting North American racist ideologies-often all within the same work-as they optimistically and proudly recognized and rehabilitated the place of the nonwhite, indigenous, mestizo, and mulatto populations into their national narratives. We will focus on three of the best known of these authors (Mexican Jose Vasconcelos, Cuban Fernando Ortiz, and Brazilian Gilberto Freyre) as well as scholarship that will help us contextualize their works, and allow us to better understand the broader theme of race in modern Latin America. The object here is to consider how the subject of race-in large part defined by the role of Afro-Latin Americans, the indigenous, mestizo, and mulattos-is situated in relation to broader considerations of nation, power, violence, and identity. The goal of the course is to lay the groundwork for an interdisciplinary understanding of modern Latin America and the modern black Atlantic: To consider the consequences of colonization, slavery, and the slave trade, both historically and contemporarily, on modern intellectual formations and institutions.
HIST 573 gives students an overview of key literatures, methodologies, and debates in the historiography of empire and society in Latin American history, fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. The course comprises five sections, each based on an historical sub-field and its historiography: (1) the empires and societies of the Americas in the pre-Contact and Contact periods, primarily that of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas; (2) the culture and society of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism in Iberia and the Americas (3) the culture and society of the Spanish conquistadors, including roles played by indigenous and black conquistadors; (4) the impact on the Americas of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism in East Asia, and the cultural and social ramifications of trans-Pacific exchanges during the colonial centuries; and (5) the comparative history of imperialism in the Americas by other European powers, most notably the British, Dutch, and French, including the differing experiences of indigenous and African-descended peoples. The seminar will end at a nineteenth-century point determined by the instructor.
This course focuses on East Asian religious history, starting with the formation of several major traditions in ancient China and ending with major religious trends in the modern era. The course examines major religious developments and traditions in China, Japan, and Korea and ways that these religious traditions influenced each other. The course examines connections between religion, intellectual currents, political transformations, gender roles and social customs, the natural environment, and, in the modern era, national identity formations. Students will explore the multiple approaches that historians have taken in interpreting East Asian religions and will consider how such approaches shape the production and reception of historical scholarship.
This course offers a foundation in early modern Asia from roughly the fifteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. Students will examine the constitution of centralized and bureaucratic empires, ideological movements, and practices associated with Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hindu thought, and the formation of syncretic socio-cultural spheres in different parts of Asia. Through an exploration of key political, cultural, and intellectual developments in Asia, students will assess Asia's place in the global network of thought, commerce, and exchange. Central to this analysis is how such contact with overland and maritime cultures deeply affected mainstream Asian societies. By tracing such interactions, students will be encouraged to recognize, identify, and apply the roles of frontier and borderlands in the creation and reification of identity and culture in different parts of Asia. Through this multifaceted approach to Asian history, students will come to recognize the strategic role of Asia within the pan-Eurasian sphere of interactions while also achieve a better understanding of the diverse characteristics of Asian peoples, societies, and institutions in history.
Primarily a reading seminar, this course focuses on Chinese history from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to the present, emphasizing the profound ways that the Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty, Republican China, and then the People's Republic of China changed through social, cultural, economic, and political transformations and revolutions. The course investigates topics such as the rise of commercial culture, urbanization, imperialism and empire-making, conflicts with the West, nationalist revolutions, and communism and the establishment of socialist China. Students will examine the role of gender in Chinese society, the relationship of humans to the environment, the shifting notions of ethnic and religious difference, and the effect of successive political movements on China and the Chinese peoples. Students will explore the multiple approaches Chinese historians have taken to reading and presenting historical work, including economic, political, social, and cultural history, and will consider how such approaches shape the production and reception of historical scholarship.
HIST 582Women and Gender in Modern Chinese History3
Examines the historical literature on women and gender in late imperial and twentieth century China. HIST 582 Women and Gender in Modern Chinese History (3) The roles of women and men have undergone major shifts in late imperial and modern China, affecting all aspects of daily life. Just the titles used to describe feminine ideals give an indication of these shifts - from the "talented women" of the late imperial period to the "new women" and "modern girls" of the early twentieth century to the "iron ladies" of the Communist period to the "factory girls" of the new millennia. Masculine ideals, too, have shifted, from the literary scholar-official of late imperial China to the patriotic worker of the Mao years to the entrepreneurial party member of the late twentieth century. But beyond the ideals, the day-to-day lives of Chinese people have been fundamentally altered as well, changing the way people relate to family and to society. This course examines the historical literature on these shifts from the late imperial period to the present. Misperceptions and stereotypes about Chinese gender roles and, in particular, the status of women are widespread. In the past several decades, historians of China have sought to place our understanding of these topics on firmer historical ground by exploring topics from homosexuality and law in imperial China to widowhood and the imperial cult of female chastity to new marriage practices in post-economic reform village China and, in doing so, to undermine the "orientalism" that informed, for instance, investigations of footbinding and the "women's quarters." Through a wide range of readings, this course will introduce students to the major works and topics in the field of Chinese women's and gender history, including: women and family, women's legal history, gender and nationalism, "new women" (xin funü), gender and revolution, gender and demographics, gender and labor, women's liberation, and love and sexuality. Students will be expected to demonstrate their familiarity with the major themes and topics for Chinese women's and gender history through discussion and written work.
HIST 583Rebellion, Revolution and Nation in China3
A research seminar, this course focuses on rebellion and revolution in Chinese history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In particular, the course investigates not only the myriad forms of revolution experienced in China including the 1911 Revolution, the Warlord period, the Nanjing Decade, Second World War, the Civil War, and the Cultural Revolution, it seeks to see these through the lens of the political ideologies such as nationalism, anarchism, communism, and feminism. Students will examine the manner in which the tide of rising expectations predicated the social and economic motivations lingering in the more overt political demands. Understanding the dramatic shifts in Chinese culture as well as its relationship to global politics will shape much of the seminar's focus.
HIST 584Medicine, Disease, and the Body in East Asia3
This course focuses on theoretical and applied medical knowledge as it developed in ancient China, spread to Japan and Korea, and developed over time to the modern era. The course also examines the closely related topics of evolving concepts of the human body and responses to outbreaks of epidemic disease. Course participants will examine the social and scientific contexts of East Asian medicine, and relationships between medical theory and practice and the natural environment and major religious traditions. Students will explore the multiple approaches that historians have taken in interpreting East Asian medical history and will consider how such approaches shape the production and reception of historical scholarship.
This course provides a thorough grounding in the state of the field of environmental history in Asia, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. It will begin with an introduction to methods and trends in environmental history in general and Asian environmental history's place within the larger field, followed by an overview of foundational works in the field. Students will come away with sufficient knowledge to teach courses in Asian environmental history or conduct original research. It will be of interest to students of Asian history, environmental studies, and the history of science. Knowledge of an Asian language is not required.
This course focuses on Japanese history from the early development of a state in the seventh century to the present. The course emphasizes major changes and turning points such as the rise of warriors and the establishment of military governments, the early-modern bakuhan state, the modern Meiji state, the wartime state, and the postwar state and society. The course also examines exchanges and relations between Japan and other states and regions of East Asia over time. The course may also investigate topics such as the rise of premodern warrior culture, cultural interactions with China and Korea, the rise of commercial culture, urbanization, imperialism and empire-making, conflicts with the West, and its role in the modern world. Students will examine the role of gender in Japanese society, the relationship of humans to the environment, and the construction of modern national identities. Students will explore the multiple approaches historians of Japan have taken to reading and presenting historical work, including economic, political, social, and cultural history, and will consider how such approaches shape the production and reception of historical scholarship.
A research seminar, this course examines Chinese history from a multi-ethnic perspective. Major topics to be covered include the theoretical development (and evolution) of the terms frontier and borderlands; ethnicity in the imperial period; the centrality of ethnicity in China's conceptualizations of itself; and ethnicity in the People's Republic of China. After successfully completing this course, students will be able to: to demonstrate their familiarity with the major themes and topics for Chinese imperial history and how it relates to the intertwined conceptualizations of ethnicity through discussion and written work. Students will have the option to use this course as a research seminar, conducting primary document research alongside their historiographic readings.
This course provides students with the thematic and theoretical foundation for the study and teaching of world history. HIST 589 World History: Themes and Approaches (3) This course will provide students with the thematic and theoretical foundation for the study and teaching of world history. Because world history is a crucial secondary field for historians, with increasing emphasis on it as a necessary "teaching field," this course seeks to equip students to teach world history at the undergraduate level. The course will be divided into five primary units, each of which will address a major theme in world history, such as the rise of civilizations, great land empires (particularly the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire), the Silk Road, the spread of world religions, the Mongol invasions, European exploration, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the nation-state, and globalization (specific units will be determined by the instructor). Within each of these units, students will be exposed to both substantive historical literature on the topic as well as major theoretical works that have influenced historical scholarship. In this way, students will be encouraged to think about the ways historians use theory to frame and inform their scholarship and teaching. By the conclusion of the course, students will be expected to demonstrate the integration of content, theory, and pedagogy.
Formal courses given on a topical or special interest subject which may be offered infrequently; several different topics may be taught in one year or term.
HIST 602Supervised Experience in College Teaching1-3
Students enrolled will lead discussion sections, grade papers and examinations, given an occasional lecture, and assist instructors in planning survey level courses.
