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History Courses for Spring 2008
100 Level Courses
History 101A & 101B. Western Civilization to 1700 (3h). TR 8-9:15 & 9:30-10:45. B117. Williams. At light speed (in one class period) we will traverse the prehistory of our species and then set about a more intensive review of the next 5200 years (3500 B.C.E to 1700 C.E). Our journey will carry us from Sumeria and the appearance of that form of culture historians call civilization to the eve of industrialization and political revolution in Western Europe. While examining the the communal structures, achievements, tribulations, and transformations of peoples who, for the most part, spoke Indo-European languages and who, from their origins somewhere north of the Caucasus, came to control not only Europe, but the Americas and the whole of northern Asia, we will try to determine what sense it makes to speak of the tangible and intangible worlds they made as a single civilization and on what bases we might distinguish this civilization from others that appeared elsewhere. |
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History 102A & 102B. Europe and the World in the Modern Era (3h). MWF 10-10:50 & 11-11:50. A208. Fitzgibbon. In this course, we will focus on the intersection of personal and public life, on the ways in which individuals' desires and perceptions have shaped politics, religion, knowledge, the economy, public discourse, urban life, and international relationships during past 400 years, and vice versa. In addition to the textbook, you will read four book-length documents that illuminate changes in moral values and social relationships during the past 250 years. Written assignments will include 2 midterms, a paper on a classic European film, 2 papers on the supplementary reading, and a final exam. |
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History 102C & 102D. Europe and the World in the Modern Era (3h). MWF 10-10:50 & 11-11:50. A103. Bobroff. This course introduces students to the modern history of Europe and its interactions with the world around it. Major developments in society, economy, technology, politics, war, and diplomacy will be analyzed. A central theme of this exploration will be the relationship of state and society through these centuries. Students will also be introduced to history as a subject of study. Aside from textbooks, we will engage with novels and memoirs of the times, this semester highlighting those written by women such as Graffigny, Austen, Colmore, and Carles. |
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History 102E & 102F. Europe and the World in the Modern Era (3h) MWF 12-12:50 & 1-1:50. A102. Bennett. A survey of modern Europe from 1700 to the present. Focus varies with instructor. |
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History 104A. World Civilizations since 1500 (3h). MWF 9-9:50. A305. McConnell. This course develops a thematic approach to global history by examining the relationship between religion, violence, and warfare; phenomenon shared by all cultures throughout time. In developing these subjects, our study will take two approaches. One, we will be concerned with chronological development and periodization. That is to say, when did events occur, what was their historical context, and how did they shape a particular era or people. The second approach is concerned with broader topics or “big ideas,” what some scholars call superstructural ideologies. This category relates to the formation of “worldviews” and begs questions about how cultures relate violence to religion and how these subjects inform the everyday lives of people within various epochs.
Each of the major religious Abrahamic traditions we be studied. In addition we will cover aspects of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Sikhism, dependent upon time constraints. Throughout the semester we will discuss questions including: How do these traditions understand the work of violence in society? When, if ever, is violence or warfare is appropriate? After examining theoretical arguments and religious ideas that relate to violence, class participants will explore the use of warfare within particular cultural and historical contexts seeing the relationship between warfare and integral developments which shape the modern period. In this study students will consider topics such as technological developments, chattel slavery, mercantilism and the development of modern economies, colonialism, the emergence of nation states, genocide, and imperialism. While no single theory or perspective will guide our course of study, the aim is to help students develop a more sophisticated appreciation of religious phenomenon and their interaction with developing worldviews of the modern life. |
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History 104B & 104C. World Civilizations since 1500 (3h) MWF 10-10:50 & 11-11:50. A102 & A305. Greenspan. This class will examine the last five hundred years of world history with particular attention to how ordinary people are affected by the events going on around them. To this end, in addition to a main textbook, we will read five primary sources that address the issues confronted by average people around the world. We will read works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Frederick Douglass, Karl Marx, Chinua Achebe and Mohandas Gandhi. Students will be asked to discuss these works in class, as well as answering a required question on them for both the midterm and final exams. In addition to lectures, discussions and exams, students will be asked to write an 8-10 page research paper on a topic which is agreed to by both the student and the instructor. |
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History 104D. World Civilizations since 1500 (3h) MWF 11-11:50. B117. Wakild.This course surveys the history of contact between the Americas and the wider world through the eyes of foreign travelers, from European contact in the fifteenth century to the twentieth century. Using the insights of chroniclers, scientists, revolutionaries, and economists we will examine the role of New World peoples, products, and philosophies within the broader context of world history. The aim of the course is to elicit how global trends of cultural exchange, economic expansion, societal development, environmental change, and political consolidation influenced people's daily lives and shaped the current world situation. |
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History 104E & 104H. World Civilizations since 1500 (3h). TR 8-9:15 & 12-1:15. A102 & B117. Whittaker. A survey ofthe major civilizations of the world in the modern and contemporary periods. . |
History 104F & 104G. World Civilizations since 1500 (3h). TR 12-1:15 & 1:30-2:45. A103. Vella. This course will introduce students to major episodes and trends in world history since 1500. Readings, lectures and class discussions will cover the political, social, economic, cultural and intellectual spheres as well as exploration, warfare, commerce, religion, science, race, gender and the arts. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the enormous role global empires played in this period and how they served both to join diverse peoples together and to drive them into conflict, creating cosmopolitan worlds that often fractured into one of "us" and "others".
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History 104I & 104J. World Civilizations since 1500 (3h). TR 1:30-2:15 & 3-4:15. A102. McGraw. This course offers an introduction to major trends and conflicts in world history since 1500. In particular, it explores the meeting and movement of diverse peoples at specific moments in the past in response to economic, political, cultural, and intellectual change. In order to examine the interrelationship between these broad changes and the experience of everyday life, the course frequently employs a case study approach. For example, it considers “contact zones,” such as the European, American, and African coastal regions that formed the Atlantic World, and it focuses on specific territories like Bosnia and China, where self-governance was challenged by imperial ambitions and international conflict. |
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History 107A & 107B. The Middle East and the World (3h). MWF 10-10:50 & 1-1:50. A103. Wilkins. This course examines the Middle East region in its global context from the inception of Islam in the seventh century to the twentieth century. Combines an introduction to Islamic civilization in its central lands with a close study of its interaction with other societies and cultures.
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Credit cannot be received for both 101 and 103 or 102 and 104.
All classes held in Tribble Hall unless otherwise noted.
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200 Level Courses
History 206. The Early Middle Ages (3h). TR 12-1:15. A102. O'Connell. The central question of this course is one of identity: at what point can we speak of a distinctively “European” identity? In order to answer this question, we will investigate the political, cultural, religious, and material history of Europe from the later Roman Empire to the end of the Viking invasions around the turn of the millennium. Once dismissed as the “Dark Ages,” scholars now point to this as an era when some of the key cultural, political, and artistic foundations of later European history were forged. Indeed, these centuries saw the “birth” of a distinctive Western European civilization that arose from the ashes of ancient Greece and Rome. Major themes will include the rise of Christianity and contests over its institutions, the division of the old Roman Empire into Western Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic world, the emergence of the Carolingian Empire and the tenth century fragmentation, intellectual themes and developments, and changes in gender roles across the period. |
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History 240. African-American History(3h). TR 3-4:15. B117. Parent. The role of African Americans in the development of the US, with attention to African heritage, forced migration, Americanization and influence. |
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History 245. Modern China (3h). TR 1:30-2:45. B117. Whittaker. Study of China from 1644 to the present. |
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History 251. The United States Before 1865 (3h). MWF 10-10:50. Carswell 101. McConnell. Political, social, economic, and intellectual aspects. |
History 275A & 275B. Modern Latin America (3h). MWF 1-1:50 & 2-2:50. B117 & A102. Wakild. This class explores the transition of Spanish and Portuguese colonies into free and independent nations. It traces the development of countries in Latin America through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and explores political, social, economic, and cultural changes as they occurred throughout the region. We will question how and why this region changed over the modern period and how Latin America affected, and was affected by, global historical trends.
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300 Level Courses
History 311A & 611A. Special Topics: Perceptions of the American Past (3h). MW 3-4:15. A208. Greenspan. This class will examine the ways in which Americans have portrayed and presented their past. We will examine the celebration of national holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Independence Day, historic pageants and reenactments, and the use and interpretation of major historic sites and museums, such as Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg. We will also examine a local public history site, Old Salem, as a practical exercise. Ultimately, we will seek to understand the changing ways that Americans have viewed their past and the reasons why they did so. In addition to class readings and discussions, we will have a midterm and a final exam, a 10-15 page paper using primary sources, and a practical exercise, which will include visiting and writing a short paper about Old Salem. |
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History 311B & 611B. Special Topics: Race and the Courts(3h). TR 12-1:15. A208. Hopkins. This course will use the historical method to examine the impact of state and federal court cases upon the evolution of race relations in this country. Beginning with Dred Scott, the historical context of each case will be placed in juxtaposition to the social and political realities for the given time periods. Case law, scholarly articles, as well the Supreme Court Digest will provide a foundation for analyzing government intervention, inaction, and creative interpretation.
Topics for consideration will include the impact of Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson upon social relations in the United States; the Civil War Amendments and the Slaughter House cases and their consequences; Reconstruction, lynchings, and the emergence of the KKK; the analysis of civil rights during the Great Depression and the New Deal; separate but equal applications in American life; voting rights issues; school desegregation before and after Brown with a particular emphasis on the Michigan college desegregation case and ending with the landmark case regarding racial balance in the public school system, Parents v. Seattle. Further, other subject areas will be devoted to race and the military, race and sports, and the rights of immigrants. The goal of the course is to demonstrate the historical evolution of race relations in the United States which are predicated upon the judicial interpretation of the rights of its citizens. |
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History 311C & 611C. Special Topics: Listen to the Past: The Craft of Oral History (3h). TR 1:30-2:45. A208. Phillips. This course covers the methodology and practice of oral history. In addition, the course provides hands-on experience to tape the life history of a person or members of a family, community, corporation, other organization. The course is an excellent way to understand and document more fully the concepts of race, gender, class, and culture. On a scale of Novice to Ken Burns, we want to be nearer Burns. |
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History 311D & 611D. Special Topics: History of Mestizo America: Sexuality, Borders and the Color Line (3h). TR 9:30-10:45. A102. Mcgraw. This course draws inspiration from the astute observation of historian Gary B. Nash that the history of the republic contained the possibility of a mestizo United States, meaning a nation that embraced racial intermixtures of all kinds. It asks students to reconcile the ubiquity of interracial unions in U.S. history with the emergence of an ideology of rigid racial separation. We shall be concerned with the role of sexuality in constructing the Jim Crow “Color Line.” We shall also explore the significance of sexuality in shaping U.S. border controls. Concomitantly, the course shall take as a central theme the transgression of such boundaries; the circumstances under which such transgressions were welcomed, tolerated, or resisted; and the complicated dynamics of power that structured heterosexual and homosexual intimacy in ethnic neighborhoods, red light districts, and other mixed-race spaces. Topics include the history of prostitution, the politics of passing, and the popular construction of “mulattos” and “Orientals” as objects of desire. Course readings include Joshua Rothman’s Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861, and Eithne Luibhéid’s Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border. |
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History 311E & 611E. Special Topics:Persecuting Deviance: A History of Demons, Divination, and Witchcraft in the Atlantic World, 1100-1700 (3h). T 6-8:30. B117. McConnell. Nearly all religions, to some degree, offer their adherents a medium for encountering supernatural power. The pre-modern history of the Atlantic World was profoundly shaped by this understanding. Because it was believed the supernatural world had such a dramatic impact on the earthly sphere, a protracted struggle ensued for control of its mystical powers. Perhaps nowhere was this struggle more acute than in Europe where magicians, sorcerers, and witches, those in dominion with the Devil, were pitched in a deadly battle with Catholic and eventually Protestant forces.
Exploring thematic topics such as divination, miracles, deviance, and purity, the class will provide students an interpretative framework to understand the pre-modern world and its concern for controlling the supernatural. Considering the works of Christian apologists from Thomas Aquinas and to Martin Luther, this class examines the prosecution of witchcraft and other deviant behaviors throughout Europe from the Middle Ages through the European Reformations and early Modern Period. It takes seriously the intersection of religious thinking with institutional power and how all too often the charges of sorcery or witch craft were, at their heart, institutional justification for punishing behaviors and peoples labeled as deviant. As Europeans spread across the globe, the prosecution of this worldview had profound consequences for indigenous peoples. During the second half of the course, student will explore regions in Africa, the Americas, and North America where the said forces between good and evil collided. |
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History 311WA & 611WA. Global Cities in Historical Perspective (3h). MWF 2-2:50. A208. Fitzgibbon. This course will focus on the ways in which colonialism, consumerism, and the cold war shaped the social geography of contemporary cities and helped determine their position and function within the contemporary global economy. We will pay special attention to the relationship between land use and international trade and finance throughout the course. Special topics will include fashion and theater, gambling and theme parks, sex tourism, ethnic conflict and organized crime, Bollywood, and apartheid. The geographic focus will be on Asia, Africa, and Western Europe. The course may be used to satisfy the distribution requirement for Latin American, Asian, or African history. |
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| History 311WB & 611WB. Special Topics: The Second War in Indochina, 1954-1975(3h). MW 3-4:15. A102. Bennett. |
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History 315 & 615. Greek History (3h). TR 9:30-10:45. A208. Lerner. The course surveys the social and intellectual history of the Ancient Greek World from the eighth to fifth centuries B.C.E. Throughout this period the Greeks developed many ideas and institutions that were new to antiquity. These achievements will be seen as the result of the varied and rich response of a gifted people to a more complex and changing historical landscape than had existed in the ancient Near East. Though largely new, the Greek experience was not entirely unique. Some of it can be found in the thought and experience of our own civilization: democracy and philosophy, individual character and the freedom of social choice.
We shall attempt to appreciate the significance of these achievements through the historians and philosophers who actually witnessed these events, from numerous Greek plays (comedy and tragedy), as well as from art and architecture. The main themes of the course will be: (i) the development of city life and colonization, and the revolutionary changes in society, culture, and religion that it brought; (ii) the ‘Classical Moment’; and (iii) the struggle between Athens and Sparta for control of the Greek world. No background in Greek History is necessary. |
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History 328 & 628. History of the English Common Law (3h). TR 3-4:15. A103. Zick. Study of the origins and development of the English common law and its legacy to modern legal processes and principles. |
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History 333 & 633. European Diplomacy 1848-1914 (3h). MW 2-3:15. A103. Bobroff. This course examines the history of European international relations from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the start of the First World War. We study in part the Great Powers and the men and women leading them as well as the broader social, cultural, ideological, religious and economic contexts that inform and limit the choices left to the direct players. We also interrogate the roles nationalism and imperialism played in the development of this history. |
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History 354 & 654. Revolutionary and Early National America, 1763-1815 (3h). MW 2-3:15. B117. Hendricks. The American Revolution, its causes and effects, the Confederation, the Constitution, and the new nation. |
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History 357 & 657. The Civil War and Reconstruction (3h). MWF 10-10:50. B117. Escott. This course focuses on America’s most destructive war, the changes it produced, and their meaning for national values and freedom. The scope of the course is broad, embracing political, social, economic and military history. The questions with which it deals have been and remain central to American values and government. |
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History 363 & 663. The American South to Reconstruction (3h). MWF 9-9:50. B117. Escott. Examination of the origins of southern distinctiveness, from the first integrations of Europeans, Native Americans and Africans to the Civil War and Emancipation. |
History 366 & 666. Studies in Historic Preservation (3h). T 3-5:30. A208. Hendricks.
Analysis of history museums and agencies and of the techniques of preserving and interpreting history through artifacts, restorations, and reconstructions. |
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History 387. Islamic Empires Compared: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (3h). TR 9:30-10:45. A103. Wilkins. This course examines in comparative fashion central themes in the history of the three great Islamic empires of the early modern period (1400-1800). It considers the problem of political legitimacy faced by Muslim rulers, transformations in Islamic religious practices, and the relationship between war and other aspects of Islamic society and culture. |
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History 390A & 690A. Research Seminar(3h). T 2-4:30. A104. O'Connell. Does the Mediterranean showcase a clash of civilizations or provide an enduring model for co-existence? In the late medieval and early modern period, the Mediterranean presents the historian with colorful tableaux of competing, yet intimately connected Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations. The persistent understanding of Christianity and Islam as two cultures in conflict and of the region that contains them as permanently divided contrasts with the intrinsic cross-cultural nature of the Mediterranean world during the Renaissance/early modern period. This course approaches the question of conquest or co-existence by looking at those who crossed boundaries and created frontiers for religious, military, or economic purposes. |
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History 390B & 690B. Research Seminar: Rethinking British Cultural History (1707-2007) (3h). W 2-4:30. A305. Vella. This course takes as its premise the intertwined nature of British domestic and imperial history. Course readings, seminar discussions and written assignments will have as their leitmotif the question: how did the experience of Empire, in particular times and places, affect Britons’ sense of themselves? The varying uses of “identity” as a theoretical framework will be scrutinized as we apply them to British case studies. In examining these cultural points of intersection in the self, students will work through such thematic problems as class, race, gender, nation, alterity, hybridity, ideology, violence, metropole, periphery and borderlands. Studies of the methodological potential of textuality, the visual and material culture as well as engagement with the genres of historical narrative, biography, autobiography, memoir, letters, journalism and literary fiction will aid students in the drafting of their research papers. |
History 390C & 690C. Theodore Roosevelt's Era (3h). W 3-5:30. B116. Watts. In this seminar, we will begin by establishing the historical milieu of Theodore Roosevelt, one of the most influential and exemplary men of his time, and one who reflected many if not most of its social and cultural preoccupations. In seeking to understand those preoccupations and their treatment by subsequent historians, we will examine various theoretical approaches, analytical categories, and methods of researching and writing history. |
History 390D & 690D. Research Seminar (3h). W 3-5:30. A207. Parent. Offered by members of the faculty on topics of their choice. A paper is required. |
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History 390E & 690E. Research Seminar: Race, Class and Gender in American History (3h). R 2-4:30. A104. Caron. This seminar will examine race, class and gender in American history since the Colonial era, with special emphasis on the early national period to the present. As a research seminar, all students will be required to complete a twenty-five to thirty page research paper based on primary and relevant secondary sources. We will seek to answer how economic and political changes impacted race, class and gender relations in American history. The first seven weeks of the class will entail intensive reading and discussion of secondary materials to familiarize students with the background necessary to write the research paper. |
History 391 & 691. Honors Seminar (3h). W 3-5:30. A104. Williams. Seminar on problems of historical synthesis and interpretation. Honors students must take History 391. |
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First Year Seminars
FYS 100. Global Wealth and Poverty (3h). T 3-5:30. Collins 007. Watts. Global Wealth and Poverty provides a brief history of globalization, one which addresses the disparities of wealth and poverty within and between nations and which analyzes the processes and events leading to the current modern world system. We seek to understand why, with so much global productivity and wealth-creation, do the gaps between rich and poor states widen at an ever increasing rate? We will learn the conceptual categories of meaning through which one “thinks” the world using methods of analysis from economic geography, urban sociology, international political economy, development economics, and postcolonial anthropology.
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