100 Level
100 AL1 - GLOBAL HISTORY (Ghamari, B)
This course offers a broad introduction to global history, by discussing movements of people and ideas in addition to ecologic changes that has shaped the world from the medieval age to present times. It explores how large structural changes throughout past centuries were made and how those changes shaped and conditioned peoples' lives around the world. This course can be used to fulfill either Western or Nonwestern general education categories but not both.
102 A - REACTING TO THE PAST (Thompson, P)
Topic: Science in European Society
This course will give a broad introduction to the ways in which Europeans have understood and interacted with science from the 17th century to the present. Specifically, it will focus on the Trial of Galileo in the early 17th century, the 1860 Oxford evolution debate, and European acid rain discussions in the 1980s. A key component of the course will be Reacting to the Past games, which will allow students to immerse themselves in the historical topics discussed.
102 B - REACTING TO THE PAST (Duncan, L)
Topic: Conflict and Unity in American History
This course will explore social conflict and division in American History through the Reacting to the Past program, in which students will enact roles as historical figures in weeks-long games designed to immerse students in the concerns of historical moments. We will be focusing on two historical moments: the trial of Anne Hutchinson in Puritan New England, and the bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village in 1913. Within these periods, issues of gender, religion, and ideology created dissension about priorities and self-definition as communities struggled for unity. In this course, students will determine which interests will carry the day in each and thereby define the community.
105 A – LATIN AMERICA TO INDEPENDENCE (Brosseder, C)
This class Latin American History to Independence surveys the history of the colonial period (from 1492 to 1825) of what is now called Latin America. We will discuss pre-Columbian America, Europe in the fifteenth century, the encounter between the Old and the New Worlds, its consequences, the working of colonial institutions, the place of slavery, the role of race and ethnicity in the construction of colonial power, women in a multiethnic patriarchal colonial society, the role of the Church, and the coming of independence. Without doubt, the history of the colonial period in Latin America is one of the most interesting examples of how different cultures met in the early modern world. To understand this process this survey class focuses on three main questions: first, what constituted the pre-Columbian cultural heritage? Second, how did the encounter between European, African, and indigenous cultures evolve? Third, how did colonialism shape indigenous, Mestizo, Creole, and Afro-American identities?
120 AL1 – EAST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS (Wilson, R)
Same as EALC 120.
This course provides a survey of the past four centuries of East Asian history from the political and economic heights of the Qing empire in China, the Choson dynasty in Korea, and the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan through the turbulent decades of imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, and industrialization to the region’s resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s. To help make sense of this long and complex history, the course is subdivided into the following four chronological units: Era of Growth and Stability; the Nineteenth-Century Transformation; Alternate Modernities; and the Postwar, Cold War, and Beyond. Across these four periods, you will encounter a variety of historical sources that introduce you to all manner of people—the high, the low, women, men, outcastes, foreigners, and ethnic minorities. The sum of these voices and experiences should provide you with a broad understanding of people’s experiences in early modern and modern East Asia. This knowledge will also help you compare, contrast, and draw connections between the past and present in China, Japan, and Korea. Through section-based discussions and assignments as well as short essays and preparation for the unit exams, you will also learn and develop the skills, knowledge, and values needed to succeed as an informed and educated member of society in the twenty-first century.
130 A – HISTORY OF SOUTH ASIA (Ali, T)
Same as ANTH 130.
This course will look at the history of modern South Asia from 1700 to the present day. Students will be introduced to the histories of the varied cultural, linguistic, social, economic and political formations that constitute modern South Asia. Commencing with the Mughal Empire, the course will consider early modern state formations, the rise of British colonial power, anti-colonial nationalisms, the partition of British India, and the creation of the post-colonial nation-states of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. We will conclude by examining democracy, development, and religion-based politics in contemporary South Asia.
140 AL1 – WESTERN CIVILIZATION TO 1660–ACP (Symes, C)
Same as HIST 141, except for the additional writing component.
Please see course description for HIST 141.
141 AL1 - WESTERN CIVILIZATION TO 1660 (Symes, C)
Meets with HIST 140 AL1.
This course explores the major processes, ideas, and events that formed societies from ancient Mesopotamia to the European colonization of the Americas: over four thousand years of human endeavor. Distant though this history may seem, it shapes our everyday lives in fundamental ways; our languages, living spaces, food, clothing, gender roles, sexual mores, political institutions, values, beliefs, basic assumptions – all are products of the distant past. Students will investigate the shared and contested heritage of the West, which includes elements drawn from the diverse peoples of western Asia, North Africa, and Europe and which gave rise to the interrelated religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Major themes include the growth and transformation of empires, the changing status of women, forms of kingship and law, migration and exploration, the impact of new technologies, and the relationships among the cultures of classical Greece, the Roman Empire, Byzantium, and the Christian and Muslim kingdoms of the medieval world. This course also serves as an introduction to the craft of history, as both an intellectual discipline and a basic human need.
142 AL1 – WESTERN CIVILIZATION SINCE 1660 (Liebersohn, H)
Meets with HIST 143 AL1.
The political and economic revolutions which changed fundamentally the Western world will be the focus of this course. How do historians account for the tremendous industrial power assembled in a few short decades by European societies, or the dramatic sequence of rebellion and revolution? We will explore the impact of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution on ordinary workers, peasants, and also on the world at large. The course will examine the great burst of intellectual activity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and discuss nationalism, liberalism and socialism. The twentieth century, on the other hand, saw unprecedented destruction and horror. For this reason, we will look closely at the world wars, and at life and society in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. And Europe today? The postwar division of the continent, the "dirty wars" of decolonization, the rise of a consumer society, and the revolutions of 1968 and 1989 provide the course with its final themes. Throughout the course, we will look at the politics of war and revolution, and the accomplishments of philosophers and statesmen, but also pay attention to the lives and beliefs of ordinary people.
143 AL1 - WESTERN CIVILIZATION SINCE 1660–ACP (Liebersohn, H)
Same as HIST 142, except for the additional writing component.
Please see course description for HIST 142.
170 AL1– US HISTORY TO 1877-ACP (TBA)
Same as HIST 171, except for the additional writing component.
Please see course description for HIST 171..
171 AL1 – US HISTORY TO 1877 (TBA)
Meets with HIST 170 AL1
This course offers an introductory survey of the history of what would eventually become the United States of America, from the beginning of the seventeenth century through the end of the Civil War era (usually identified with the year 1877, when the last postwar federal occupation troops left the South). The course is designed for freshman and sophomores. Juniors and seniors -- and especially the history majors among them -- may well find it insufficiently advanced and intensive.
172 AL1 – US HISTORY SINCE 1877 (Oberdeck, K)
In this survey of U.S. history from the end of the Civil War to the present, lectures and discussions will address how the modern United States was shaped from the many, often inharmonious voices of people who its history. This disharmony is central to the main themes of the course: the multiplicity of US experience in relation to a shared public, to common rights, to social responsibilities, to state and civic institutions, and the social efforts required to maintain these “commons.” How notions of the “American public” were formed and transformed will be a central thread. Lectures will incorporate audio-visual, interpretive and case-oriented treatment of these themes to illustrate issues raised in the textbook and supplementary primary documents. Discussion sections will focus on analyzing primary source material in light of these interpretations. The course will offer some introduction to the different ways that historians listen to and interpret the diverse voices of the past. Attendance at lecture and discussion section is required, along with a midterm exam, final exam, and two short papers based on course readings.
174 AL1 - BLACK AMERICA, 1619-PRESENT (Cha-Jua, S)
Same as AFRO 101
Please see description for AFRO 101.
199 A - CAREER PLANNING FOR HISTORY MAJORS (Rabin, D)
As a History major, you bring a valued set of skills to the workplace, but we talk about our knowledge and competence differently than the workplace does. In this course you will learn to translate your academic abilities into career-specific terms. You will inventory your interests and skills, identify careers that reflect your ambitions, and practice marketing your qualifications to employers. Topics to be covered include job-hunting skills like writing resumes, crafting application letters, and interviewing; professionalization skills like researching companies networking; and self-efficacy strategies. You will emerge with a five-year plan for making the transition from college to post-graduation success.
200 A – INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION (Canales, J)
Topic: Einstein, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
This course will cover the some of the major scientific accomplishments in the 20th century by focusing on scientists, technologies, their ideas and the social and political context in which they arose. Readings will include the original research articles as well as secondary materials.
200 B – INTRO TO HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION (Asaka, I)
Topic: African American History and Culture
This course explores important themes in African American history up to the abolition of slavery as it teaches the basic skills of historical scholarship. Students will learn how to engage secondary sources, interpret primary documents, organize information, and write in clear prose. Historical topics covered in this class include the Atlantic slave trade, black abolitionism, diverse forms of resistance, gender relations and community formations among enslaved people.
200 C – INTRO TO HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION (Koslofsky, C)
The surface of the human body has a deep history. In this course we will study the transition from medieval to modern ideas about skin, especially in relation to human difference and identity. We will read and discuss recent scholarship on a wide range of topics, including the history of:
- the skin in Western anatomy and medicine
- skin and beauty, blushing, cosmetics, and tanning
- skin color and the formation of racial ideologies in early modern culture
- specific European and Mediterranean practices on the skin, including surgery, penal branding, and (among Jews and Muslims) circumcision
- scarification and "country marks" in West African cultures and in the Atlantic world
- the global circulation of tattooing.
By encompassing diverse fields such as the history of medicine, art history, cultural history, legal history, the history of race and slavery, and the history of religion, this course provides a broad introduction to historical interpretation. Assignments include short essays, a midterm exam, and a research paper.
200 D - INTRO TO HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION (Liebersohn, H)
Topic: Music in History
This course will examine the changing political uses of music in the modern era. Nationalists have mobilized music to define national communities, while globalization has furthered a counter-movement of musical cultures that overlap and borrow from each other. The phonograph, the two World Wars, the end of colonialism and the internet have also changed the role of music in public life. We will study these themes through music from many different times and places including classical, jazz, music from India and China, klezmer, and today’s world music.
205 A - LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY: PRIMARY ACCOUNTS (Jacobsen, N)
A "Great Books Course" has been a core demand of those postulating the necessity of immersing American college students in the wonderful works of the European civilization since Homer and Plato. This course applauds the idea of offering direct exposure of students to the great works produced in the course of world civilizations. But it shifts gears by focusing on works -- now arguably part of a common world heritage -- that have been written outside of Europe, in another emerging civilization: that of Latin America during the past 500 years, combining heavy doses of European influences (e.g. the language of the works) with indigenous, African and other cultural influences in the setting of colonial and post-colonial polities. The purpose of the course is to offer students direct engagement with some of the finest and most profound works written by Latin Americans, from poetry and novels to social and political treatises or essays to works of history, philosophy and theology. Since this is a history class we will be less concerned with the formal qualities of these works and more with what they reveal about fundamental issues debated and struggled over during the era when they were written. The course thus offers an introduction to Latin American civilization from the 16th to 20th centuries through fiction, history, and political essays.
220 A – TRADITIONAL CHINA (Chow, K)
Same as EALC 220.
It is common knowledge that China has a history of several thousand years. This historical longevity of China, however, is often invoked to perpetuate images of the purported stagnation of Chinese society or to present as evidence for the traditionalist attitude of the Chinese in rejecting change and contact with foreign cultures. This course challenges you to find out for yourself what historical forces have allowed, as it were, this “living dinosaur” that is China, to defy the law of survival. Or is it in fact that the image of an unchanging China itself is an imaginary dinosaur, an obsession of ours that has continued to bring us back to the land of fantasy? This is a historical survey of Chinese civilization from earliest times to the mid seventeenth century. We will focus on those aspects of history and culture that illustrate the diversity and powerful intellectual, social, and institutional forces that had shaped Chinese civilization. You will learn about Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism and other important intellectual and religious systems. While you will be introduced to major enduring institutions such as the imperial bureaucracy, the family system, and the civil service examination system, special attention will be given to recovering the disruptive forces and contesting voices that were suppressed in the memory of traditional historiography. We will also examine major change in demographic, social, economic, and political patterns leading up to the early modern period. These changes will be examined in the context of global connections, highlighting the prominence of Chinese export trade in Eurasia and China's long history of intercultural exchange with foreign peoples. We will take on stereotypes about a stagnant, traditionalist, and mono-vocal China. Finally, we will stop at the historical juncture where the Chinese had to confront the growing presence and power of European civilizations in East Asia. No prior knowledge of Chinese history is required. There will be a mid-term, a term paper and a final.
252 AL1 - THE HOLOCAUST (Fritzsche, P)
The purpose of this course is to provide students from all backgrounds with an introduction to the complex events in twentieth-century Europe now known as the Holocaust, to the various interpretations that scholars have offered to attempt to explain the Holocaust, and to the global legacy of the Holocaust. We will examine perpetrators, bystanders, and victims, the role of anti-Semitism, the interaction of war and genocide, the relationships between German and other European actors, the responses of Jewish communities, and the memory of the Holocaust. There will be a midterm and a final, but the primary focus of the course will be on student engagement with the texts in three short papers spread out across the semester.
254 - VIKINGS TO VOLVOS: SCANDINAVIA (Safstrom, M)
Same as SCAN 225. See SCAN 225.
258 A - 20TH CENTURY WORLD TO MID-CENTURY (Chaplin, T and Fritzsche, P)
Topic: World War I & the Making of the Global 20th Century
“You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.” —Kaiser Wilhelm II to German soldiers, August 1914
This year, 2016, marks the hundred-second anniversary of the onset of World War I. Lasting from 1914 to 1918 and known as “The Great War” to those unaware that more carnage would soon blight the history of the twentieth century, World War I stands as the first incarnation in human history of modern industrial warfare on a truly global scale. This bloody conflict permanently recast the ways in which nations and peoples have considered, experienced and commemorated not just military conflict, but both Western and global culture, society, industry, politics and economics writ large. Our class, which will be team-taught by Professors Tamara Chaplin and Peter Fritzsche, attempts to come to grips with World War I’s astonishing historical legacy. Our canvas is broad: we will not only learn about the chronology of the war—from its origins and military operations, to its political ramifications (including the demise of imperial empires and the rise of Soviet socialist communism), to competing experiences of battlefront and home front (with their technological and industrial innovations—including such diverse aspects as aerial and trench warfare, the use of gas and chemical weapons, food rationing, war bonds and the feminization of the workforce), but we will also study the war’s psychological and embodied effects (shell-shock, trauma, amputation, prosthetics, plastic surgery and disability) as well as the artistic and cultural attempts to acknowledge, represent and memorialize its devastation (in poetry, art, music, dance, theatre, film and literature). Our sources will be equally varied; we will read history, fiction and memoir, examine newspaper coverage, cartoons, propaganda posters, photographs and film and analyze geographic, architectural and cartographic evidence of World War I’s destruction and commemoration. We also hope to think hard together about how this history has shaped our present concerns, from our attitudes towards such issues as terrorism and human rights, to our understandings of masculinity, sexuality and gender, to our ideas about peace-making, revolution, religion and global apocalypse. To aid us in our work, our class will benefit from a series of guest lectures and presentations from specialists in other disciplinary fields. If you are interested in exploring the ways in which modern warfare continues to shape the world in which we live, this class is for you.
260 A – HISTORY OF RUSSIA (Koenker, D)
This course will examine the fundamental periods, questions, and debates in the history of Russia and its empire, 800-2000. Its big picture will be the development of the vast multi-national Russian empire and Soviet Union, exploring the changing relationship between the central state and a fractious multiethnic society spread across eleven times zones. Together we will consider interesting texts: historical epics, novels by Tolstoy and Gladkov, memoirs, art works, music, and films. Students will write a series of short essays relating some of these works to the larger themes of Russian history. There are no exams.
263 A - US HISTORY OF MEDICINE (Reagan, L)
Same as GWS 263.
This course examines the history of medicine and public health in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Topics include the history of the medical profession and midwifery; the rise of the hospital; disease definition and control; and the patient experience. Students will learn of the major causes of death, how and why mortality changed over time, and efforts to control disease. Diseases covered include tuberculosis, polio, cancer, sexually transmitted diseases, among others. We will discuss public policy issues concerning health care that have generated conflict and social movements for reform in the past (and present), such as quarantine, vaccination, maternal mortality, social vs. individual responsibility for health and disease, racial segregation in medical education and health care, birth control. Throughout the course, we will analyze the relationships among medicine, politics, and economics as well as the ways that race, sex, and class have shaped the history of medicine in America. The class will include both lectures and in-class discussion of assigned texts and original documents--such as diary excerpts, cartoons, and medical journal literature.
264 A – TECHNOLOGY IN WESTERN SOCIETY (Canales, J)
This course will examine the ways technology has developed over time, and how those changes have affected societies in different parts of the world. The primary emphasis will be places on understanding the evolving cultural contexts of technological change. Topics covered include the power, manufacturing, railroads, emergence of engineering professions, corporate R&D, household technology, technology of modern warfare, consumer electronics, and video gaming. Some of the questions examined by this course include: What is technology? How do technologies develop? To what degree are technologies a product of the culture in which they develop? How are technologies propagated? How have people thought about technology in different places and periods?
271 A - NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA (Schneider, D)
This survey of United States history from 1800-1900 will cover a period during which the nation changed from a sparsely settled agrarian republic to an industrial powerhouse with aspiration to world power. The class will emphasize a variety of topics in political and social history of the nineteenth century, including the development of the U.S. West, African American lives in slavery and freedom, the struggle for women’s rights and immigration from Europe and Asia.
282 ONA/ONB (Online) – NATURE AND AMERICAN CULTURE (McDonald, C)
Same as LA 242, NRES, and RST 242.
Please see course description for RST 242.
290 JE1 - RELIGION, VIOLENCE & AMERICA (Ebel, J)
Same as RLST 236.
Please see description for RLST 236.
292 A - LATINA/O SOCIAL MOVEMENTS (TBA)
Same as LLS 238.
Please see description for LLS 238.
295A - HONORS COLLOQUIUM (Micale, M)
Topic: Darwin and the Darvinian Revolution
It is universally acknowledged today that the ideas of Charles Darwin initiated one of the most profound and provocative transformations in all of human thought, science, and culture. This is a seminar about the intellectual origins, scientific content, and social, cultural, and religious impact of Darvinian evolutionary theory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our core subject will be Darwin's life, work, and world. The course also provides a historical case study in the development and diffusion of radical scientific ideas and explores the origins of the most successful and comprehensive theory in the contemporary life sciences. We will also explore the historical influence of Darwin's theories on diverse cultural fields, including religion, politics, philosophy, social theory, literature, gender relations, and international affairs.
300 Level
300 A - TOPICS IN FILM AND HISTORY (Fu, P)
Same as MACS 300.
Topic: Between China and the World: History & Politics of Hong Kong Cinema
This is an introduction to the major themes of Hong Kong cinema from its birth in the turn of Twentieth-century to the present. Hong Kong under British rule had been the capital of Chinese- dialect cinemas (especially Cantonese) since the 1910s and 1920s. It had taken over Shanghai after the close of the World War II, and especially after the Communist victory on the mainland in 1949, to become the “Hollywood of the East.” In spite of its small local market, and its marginality in global political economy, Hong Kong was the world’s third largest film producer, after Hollywood and Bollywood. Our course will explore the history of its development, both as an entertainment industry and as a significant part of the city’s enormous political and cultural transformations from a small British colony to a global metropolis. Our course will also explore how the cinema participated in the debate about Hong Kong’s identity, in relations to its position between China and the West..
335 A – MIDDLE EAST 1566-1914 (Cuno, K)
Did the Middle East really “decline,” and how did it become “modern”? During the four centuries before the First World War the Middle East witnessed the transformation of the classical Ottoman order, the re-ordering of government and society, and, after 1800, the steady growth of European influence in the economic, political, and cultural spheres, culminating in the establishment of colonial rule over much of the area. Toward the end of this era, a debate arose among Middle Eastern intellectuals over the causes of their “backwardness” and its possible remedies, contributing to the rise of new religious, social, and political movements which have continued to the present. We will be examining these developments in the context of ongoing social and economic changes, in the region consisting of Egypt, Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, Iran, and Turkey.
376 A - SOCIAL HISTORY IN INDUSTRIAL AMERICA FROM 1918 (Schneider, D)
American society has frequently been described as open and flexible by outside observers. On the other hand, Americans themselves have often experienced U.S. society as rigidly divided by class and race. How can the two views be reconciled? How cohesive can a society be if its people are a diverse lot, driven by high degree of individualism? This class will try to provide some historians' answers to these questions. We will examine how both social division and community cohesion shaped U.S. society during the twentieth century by studying some of the most important developments: the 1920s, the Great Depression, World War Two, the Civil Rights Movement, the 1960s and the transition to a post-industrial consumer society. The class will use extensive readings from scholarly texts in history, economics and sociology to popular non-fiction, internet resources, music and visual materials. Active participation, a mid-term and two take home essays are required. Alternatively, students can write a 15-20 page research paper (instead of essays) on a topic of their choice.
380 A - US IN AN AGE OF EMPIRE (Espiritu, A)
Topic: Cultures of US Empire, 1877-1919
This course explores in greater depth the discourses of “Anglo-Saxonism,” “manhood,” “reform,” and “Americanization” with which the United States sought to ground its imperial expansion into Asia and Latin America in the early twentieth century. It will also explore various discourses among the colonized, especially those of “Hispanism” (the re-articulation of Spain and Spanish colonialism) and “mestizaje” (the valorization of mixed race) as modes of questioning or contesting the claims of U.S. empire and constructing gendered national identities and cultures.
The class will examine the histories of John Lynch, Gail Bederman, Kristin Hoganson, Matthew Frye Jacobson, among others, as well as the original writings of Latin American and Filipino intellectuals, including Simón Bolívar, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Martí, José Enrique Rodó, Nick Joaquin, Antonio Pedreira, Margot Arce, Claro M. Recto, Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, and José Vasconcelos. Students will be introduced to historiography, work with primary sources, and have the opportunity to write original research papers.
381 - URBAN HISTORY (Harshman, D)
What, exactly, is a "city?" Who defines the city? What is its role? Why are cities so often linked to visions of modernity and mobility, or prejudice and poverty? Since the rise of the modern city, the urban landscape has been a space of contradiction: simultaneously full of hope and possibility, as well as loneliness and despair. Meanwhile, cities are constantly changing and evolving, in ways both expected and surprising. This course hopes to unpack not only the history of urban space, but also examines how urban space has been imagined and how those imaginings have translated into reality. We will examine cities and city life from the mid-1800s through the present, in sites across the globe--from Chicago to Moscow to Dar es Salaam to the fictional "Capitol" of the Hunger Games series--in an attempt to find some answers to the questions above. As a tool to examine the idea of the city and urban experience, we will look through the lens of utopia. Utopia in this case means no only dreaming or fantasizing about an alternative vision of life, but actually taking concrete steps to put that vision into practice. By looking at both utopian dreams and implementation, we will be able to study not only what the city is, but also how it has been imagined and reimagined, even up to the current day.
383 EM – HISTORY OF BLACK WOMEN'S ACTIVISM (McDuffie, E)
Same as AFRO 383 and GWS 383.
Please see description for AFRO 383.
385 A – TRANSNATIONAL SEXUALITIES (Asaka, I)
Same as GWS 385. Please see GWS 385.
This course takes transnational and comparative approaches to analyses of gender, race, and sexuality. Comparing and connecting U.S. contexts with examples from societies in the Middle East, East Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, the course looks at diverse gender and sexuality systems from the classical to modern era and examines the historical processes by which Western gender and sexual dichotomy crossed borders and generated contests and negotiations in the reconfiguration of social relations in local spaces. It will also consider how race, gender, and sexuality as modern categories have intersected with one another in their construction of differences and hierarchies. The central principle of this class is that gender and sexuality are not fixed across time and space and have operated in historically specific and culturally distinct conditions.
390 A – SPORT AND SOCIETY (Burgos, A)
Topic: Integration and American Sports
The racial integration of Major League Baseball has often been hailed by social commenters as a watershed event in the march toward Civil Rights. Scholars, however, have debated the impact that integration has had on the whole of U.S. society and, more specifically, on Black communities. Specifically, some have weighed the adverse impact integration had on the race institutions that had been formed in Black communities during the Jim Crow era of segregation. A few have considered how integration could have unfolded differently than how it was implemented in Major League Baseball, and that this should be considered in any historical evaluation of baseball’s racial integration. This course’s focus on integration and American sports will prompt us to consider integration as a process and as an idea by engaging works that examine race in major professional sports during the twentieth century. We will complicate the familiar black-white narrative and explore how other racialized minorities, specifically Latinos and American Indians, complicate or reaffirm the more popularly-known narratives race and sport. Course readings materials will engage different interpretations about the actors and their motivations in either supporting or opposing integration. In so doing, we will explore what are the possibilities and limitations of using sport as the medium to analyze questions such as integration, desegregation, and racial equality. Finally, this class will be taught in a discussion-based format, with a heavy emphasis on active participation. Assignments will include journal writing, in-class assignments, response papers, and a final paper assignment.
396 A – SPECIAL TOPICS (Hitchins, K)
Topic: Eurasia: Societies & Cultures in Southeastern Europe, Antolia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, 16th to 20th Centuries
We investigate the social, economic, and cultural development and the changing political status of the Romanians of Southeastern Europe, the Kurds of Anatolia and Iraq, the Kazakhs and Tajiks of Central Asia, and the Uighurs of Xinjiang (China). We shall be concerned with broad trends and shall search out similarities and differences of peoples of diverse ethnic origins, religious foundations, social and economic organization, and cultures (folklore, written literature, and history). We shall also measure the influence on our region of others, especially Western Europeans, Russians, Iranians, and Chinese, and we shall estimate the receptivity of our Eurasia to the modernization being promoted by the West and examine indigenous alternatives.
396 B – SPECIAL TOPICS (Ali, T)
Topic: Histories of Economic Development in South Asia: Ideas, Institutions, and Practices
This course examines economic development in colonial and post-colonial South Asia, placing equal emphases on economic theory, development institutions, and ground or field-level practices of development programs. We will examine the beginnings of development during the colonial period, investigating the British Raj’s liberal ideas of progress and its policies and programs of economic modernization. We will look at the development ideas that informed the anti-colonial nationalist movement, with a particular focus on Gandhi’s economic vision. We will investigate development policies and practices in postcolonial India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, examining Nehruvian socialism, large-scale engineering projects, Green Revolution technologies, and the contemporary practices of development NGOs. This is an interdisciplinary course weaving together economics, political science, and anthropology in understanding the histories of economic development in South Asia.
400 Level
400 - WAR, SOC, POLITICS & CULTURE (Djordjevic, S)
This course explores the relationship between warfare, culture, and society beginning in the Enlightenment and culminating with the recent Yugoslav Wars and the on-going War on Terror. During the semester, we will discuss battles seared in the popular imagination such as Antietam, Omaha beach, and Waterloo as well as lesser known, yet equally significant, killing fields including Koniggratz, Lucknow, and the Masurian Lakes. To understand war and its role in history, we will place wars and warriors witin a matrix of social, cultural, intellectual, and moral relations and assumptions. Soldiers and commanders went into battle armed not only with weapons but also with culturally and socially informed "baggage" which radically affected how they reacted to, thought about, and experienced combat. During the semester, we will come to recognize the reciprocity between war, culture, and society: While inquiring into the cultures of combat, we witness cultures and societies transformed by combat. Our discussion of war engages with critical themes and debates in modern history: Masculinity and gender, race, social conflict, civil-military relations, nationalism, modernization, and the Arts. Lecture and discussion are supplemented by readings penned by leading military and cultural historians, personal testimony by veterans, contemporary poetry and prose, visual and musical works of art, and finally films.
422 G2/G4/U3 – SOCIO-ECONOMIC HISTORY OF MODERN CHINA (Fu, P)
Same as EALC 421.
This course, China Since 1945: Society and Culture, will be taught by Poshek Fu in partnership with several visiting scholars from China. It aims to use films to explore major social, cultural, and historical issues of China from the end of World War II in 1945 through the Cold War to the Economic Reform of today. It is an interdisciplinary and lecture-and-discussion course trying to question many conventional answers to the complex questions concerning China today, focusing on the subjects of migration, education, media politics, popular culture, urban youth, and cultural identity in the rapidly changing contexts of China’s engagements with modernity and globalization. The course requires several reviews, class presentations, and a research paper.
432 A - HISTORY OF EARLY JUDAISM (Weiss, D)
Same as RLST 442
Please see description for RLST 442.
439 G2/G4/U3 – THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE (Todorova, M)
This course introduces the history of one of the great imperial formations of the early modern and modern period, which had long-standing repercussions on the development of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. It covers the whole span of Ottoman history, and will pay special attention to some of the following problems: the political rise of the Ottoman state since the thirteenth century and how it became an empire, its social and administrative structure, the classical Ottoman economic system, Ottoman impact on the societies, politics, economies and cultures of Byzantium and the medieval Balkan states, the spread of Islam in Europe, the transformations of the Ottoman polity and society and aspects of what has been conventionally named as Ottoman decline, the Eastern question in international relations, the modernizing reforms of the nineteenth century, and the spread of nationalism as a prelude to the final demise of the supranational empire in the twentieth century.
450 G2/G4/U3 – EARLY EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS HISTORY (Koenker, D)
Same as LER 450 and SOC 422.
The everyday life of workers and their families at work, home, and in public constitutes the focus of this class, which considers the experiences of workers and the working class in Europe from the Industrial Revolution to the late twentieth century. The central theme of class formation will help in studying the rise of workers as a class, the ways in which gender structured class experience and class consciousness, changes in living standards, the development of unique cultural worlds, stratification by skill, ethnicity, and religion, workplace autonomy and control, collective action and labor organization, the role played by workers in socialist movements, imperialism, and European politics, and the experience of workers under communism and fascism. Most readings, lectures, and discussion will concern Britain, France, Germany, and Russia; the readings will include memoirs and fiction as well as historical and sociological texts. Evaluation will be based on class participation and discussion, two essays based on assigned readings, and one research paper. No exams.
466G2/G4/U3 – THE BALKANS (Hitchins, K)
Topic: The Peoples of Southeastern Europe Between Empires: The Ottoman, the Russian, and the Habsburg, 1650-1918
The political, economic, social, and cultural history of the region between the second half of the 17th century and the end of the First World War as it evolved from medieval to modern institutions and mentalities and exchanged Ottoman Turkish predominance for independent states. We study how the peoples of Southeastern Europe –the Romanians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Greeks, and Albanians—interacted with neighboring empires (Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian) and were able to preserve their distinct identity in the 17th and 18th century and build ethnic nations in the 19th century. Among the subjects to be investigated are Ottoman institutions and the effects of Ottoman political and economic predominance south of the Danube (the Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Albanians) and to the south (the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia; Transylvania) in the 18th century, the rise of national consciousness and nationalism, the emergence of modern elites (the upper middle class and lay intellectuals), the struggles for independence and the processes of nation building in the 19th century, and the role of empires in all these movements. We have also to examine the ideologies of development (liberalism, conservatism, agrarianism, and socialism), especially the acceptance or rejection of Western Europe as a model. All of this raises fundamental questions: Why did Southeastern Europe follow a course of development different from that of Western Europe? Are we justified in treating the region as distinct from the rest of Europe? If it is distinct, what are the characteristics that define it?
468 SS - LOCATING QUEER CULTURE (Somerville, S)
Same as GWS 467.
Please see description for GWS 467.
472 G4/U3 – IMMIGRANT AMERICA (Schneider, D)
This advanced undergraduate seminar covers all aspects of the history of immigration to the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present. After a one week introduction on European immigration to pre-industrial America, the first half of the class will focus on immigration from Europe and Asia during the period 1840-1924. During the second half of the semester the history of immigration law and the social and cultural history of immigrants in the twentieth century United States will be the focus of lectures, readings and discussions. Contemporary topics such as undocumented migration, the second generation and transnational cultures will be discussed in the last weeks of the semester. The class format will combine lectures and discussions. Readings will include historical materials, fiction and scholarly articles from the social sciences. A research paper is required.
495 A – HONORS RESEARCH & WRITING SEMINAR (Gilbert, M)
Same as HIST 498 A.
Please see course description for HIST 498 A.
495C – HONORS RESEARCH & WRITING SEMINAR (Jacobsen, N)
Same as HIST 498 C.
Please see course description for HIST 498 C.
495D – HONORS RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Cuno, K)
Same as HIST 498 D.
Please see course description for HIST 498 D.
498 A – RESEARCH AND WRITING SEMINAR (Gilbert, M)
Meets with HIST 495 A.
Topic: American Indian Boarding School Experience
This research seminar will explore the American Indian boarding school experience during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The course will focus on a time in American history when U.S. government officials forcefully sent thousands of Native children and young adults to federal Indian schools to be assimilated into American society. Textbooks and other readings in the course will seek to understand the Indian boarding school experience from Native perspectives, and they will cover topics such as Native student athletes and sports, student labor, U.S. government education policies, and the ways Indian students resisted (or at times embraced) an educational system that was intended to weaken their tribal identities and cultures. In addition to engaging secondary sources, students will consult primary documents, documentary films, and oral histories to produce a final research paper.
498 C – RESEARCH & WRITING SEMINAR (Jacobsen, N)
Meets with HIST 495 C
Topic: The Foreign Gaze: Latin America in the Eyes of Travelers, 1750-1950
This course pursues two goals: To study how foreigners (mostly Europeans and North Americans) have portrayed Latin American societies, cultures and politics; and to systematically work on substantial research papers, from bibliography to polished final papers. Foreigners have had a love-hate relationship with Latin America, and the majority of travelers have given us a rather warped, unrealistic image of the continent. They have portrayed it is a place of perfect, exuberant nature and depraved society, of Indian victims and corrupt elites, or as the opposite: as a continent of enervating tropics, racially inferior indigenous and African descent populations and heroic European struggles of “civilizing” barbarians. In most cases Latin America has served as a seemingly empty canvass to project the desires, visions and interests of foreign writers, from the erudite Alexander von Humboldt to the caustic Aldous Huxley and moralistic Graham Greene. Along with regular work on the research projects we will read exciting travel reports and modern scholarship on travel writing.
498 D - RESEARCH & WRITING SEMINAR (Cuno, K)
Meets with HIST 495 D.
Topic: Family in History
The family is in flux. The legalization of same-sex marriage in a number of countries is the latest in a series of developments since the mid- twentieth century that have re-shaped family ideology and family life itself in much of the world. However, there never was a “traditional family” to be undone. Instead, there was an older family ideal, only occasionally realized in practice, which was invented two centuries earlier. In this course we will be surveying historic Euro-American family ideals and practices, their export to the non-Western world, and recent developments from no-fault divorce to same-sex marriage. In addition to readings and discussions, students will research and present on a topic related to the family in history – as practiced, as idealized, as legislated, and so on.
499 A - THESIS SEMINAR (TBA)
A required seminar for all seniors writing Honor Theses in history, this course will meet throughout the year and will supplement individual students' meetings with their primary advisors. Provides an intellectually supportive environment in which students work together on common methodological problems, share the results of their research, and critique developing projects. 1 to 2 undergraduate hours. 1 to 2 graduate hours. Approved for S/U grading only. May be repeated in separate terms to a maximum of 3 hours. Prerequisite: Admission to the History Honors Program; HIST 492; and HIST 495. Concurrent enrollment in HIST 493 is required.
500 Level
502 A – PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Reagan, L)
Topic: Wars and Their Legacies
In the past few years, a growing interest in the history of war has become visible among historians whose research specialties have been neither military nor foreign policy history. For instance, the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics and Gender and History have sponsored special issues on war and its multifaceted histories. This new interest, including my own interest in war’s influence on daily life and the body, has undoubtedly grown out of the last fifteen years of the “war on terror” and the wars in which the United States has engaged. It is evident that war permeates national policies, civil rights, public discourse, law, popular entertainment, and people’s general outlook on the world, to name a few things.
Wars have often been thought of (and taught) as discrete events that occurred during specific dates: the Civil War, 1860-65, the Spanish-American War in 1898, and so on, and the times in between may be treated as times of peace or normality. These seemingly obvious demarcations provide one opening point for interrogation. What marks a war’s end? There may be more than one “ending.” Historians have, of course, long considered the short-term and long-term consequences of war in terms of military knowledge, global power, foreign policy, and national economies and politics. This graduate reading course will take as its subject the history of wars and their myriad legacies. The legacies of war include the environmental and health impact of bombing and chemical warfare; the trauma of mass deaths, torture, and sexual assaults; the economic impact of waging war, destruction, and remaking societies; wounds, disabilities and social responses to veterans; new policies and agencies; war crime trials and peace and reconciliation projects, and much more. In this course we will explore how historians have analyzed wars through a wide range of questions, methods, and theories and consider what we find most useful for understanding the long history of collective violence and its consequences. We will consider too what the goals of historical research have been in this area.
Students should come away with some “traditional” knowledge of war, will choose war(s) to study in depth and will also be able to develop their knowledge in specific fields, such as disability, gender, race, or environmental history among others. For examples of some of the topics and books that the course is likely to include: The (U.S.) Civil War, Jim Downs, Sick From Freedom and Drew Faust, The Republic of Suffering; World War I, Linker, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America; Bourke, Dismembering the Male; World War II, the dropping of the atomic bomb, the holocaust; Vietnam War, Agent Orange, environmental and health effects; veterans’ movements; “The Other 9/11: Chile, 1973,”Radical History Review; military and human experimentation.
502 B - PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Todorova, M)
Topic: Comparative Nationalism
Nationalism, an issue that was considered to have passed its peak, now dominates world politics and permeates political discourse. Not only is a thorough grasp of this phenomenon crucial to the understanding of such imposing institutional constructions-in-process as the European Union, it is at the bottom of tensions and conflicts that are garbed in a religious rhetorical veil, and constitute much of the agenda of today’s “war on terror.” What explains the recurrence, persistence and ubiquity of this phenomenon? What are its peculiar manifestations in different historical periods? Which are the main forms of its articulation? How does it differ across geographical borders, class boundaries, gender and generational cleavages?
In its first part, this graduate seminar will focus on the theories of nationalism, and will deal with problems of definition, the ancient or modern origins of nationalism, its main chronological and geographical varieties and the models proposed to describe them, the typology of nationalist movements and, finally, the articulation of the nationalist discourse. The readings draw on a variety of approaches – historical, sociological, anthropological, literary, and psychological -- and aim at providing a solid introduction to the scholarly literature. They are clustered around a list of mandatory books (at Illini Bookstores), supplemented by articles, reviews and discussion that will be available during the course. The second part of the course is supposed to lead to the completion of a paper which can deal with a particular aspect of any one of the world's nationalisms, with its characteristics in a given historical period, or its evolution over time, as well as comparisons between the manifestations of different nationalisms.
507 MH – PROBLEMS IN LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY (Brosseder, C)
Topic: Religion in Latin America
This class reads classical texts that deal with the role of religion in Latin America from pre-Columbian to modern times in order to understand its crucial role in Latin American societies at different times. We will discuss religions in pre-Columbian cultures and move on to discuss the role of religion in the age of mutual adaptations. Spanish, Afro-American, indigenous religions, and the various manifestations of the Creole Baroque will all likewise be discussed to then understand the role of the Church and of religion in modern times up to the age of liberation theology.
521 A – SEMINAR IN CHINESE HISTORY (Chow, K)
Same as EALC 522
Please see course description for EALC 522.
550 A – PROBLEMS IN EARLY MODERN HISTORY (Crowston, C)
Topic: TBA
560 A – PROBLEMS IN RUSSIAN HISTORY (Steinberg, M)
Topic: Politics, Society and Culture in Modern Russia, 1801-1917
Major themes in the history and historiography of Russia from the early nineteenth century through the revolution of 1917. The course focuses on the exercise and justifications of authority, intellectual and cultural trends, and social life. Central to the course are questions of historical methodology and theory as well as of the interpretation of the Russian past. The emphasis is on examining new work and new approaches. Topics to be explored include practices and representations of power, the intelligentsia, the province, peasants, urban civil society, cultural trends, cities, sex, religion, empire, space, emotions, visualities.
591 A - HISTORY AND SOCIAL THEORY (TBA)
Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
This course surveys social theories from the mid-nineteenth century through the lat twentieth that have important bearing on the way historians conceive of society and culture in their work. Beginning with "classic" Western social theorists who addressed the characteristics of modern, capitalist societies, the course moves on to examine twentieth-century theorists who have addressed how individual and collective meanings contribute to the social distinctions and relations of power at stake in the social relations of a range of societies and, finally, to theorists who have questioned classic and Eurocentric accounts of these distinctions and relations from perspectives of new accounts of power and social difference associated with race, gender, and the postmodern.
596 - INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH PROJECT (TBA)
Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
597 D- READING COURSE (Koslofsky, C)
Dissertation Proposal Writing. Directed readings in special fields. Primarily, but not exclusively, for students with a master's degree or equivalent, who are preparing for the preliminary examination in history and who need instruction in areas not provided by current course offerings.
Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign
Topic: Dissertation Proposal Writing
Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor.
597 P - READING COURSE (Mumford, K)
Prelim Reading. Directed readings in special fields. Primarily, but not exclusively, for students with a master's degree or equivalent, who are preparing for the preliminary examination in history and who need instruction in areas not provided by current course offerings.
Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign
Topic: Prelim Reading
Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor.
598 - TEACHING OF COLLEGE HISTORY
Independent Study.
Restricted to Graduate - Urbana - Champaign
Restricted to History major(s)
Prerequisite: Candidate for Ph.D. degree in history.
599 - THESIS RESEARCH (TBA)
Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
Instructor approval required.