"The Great War" - This will be a two-part course:
Part 1: Postmodernism and the Question of Truth in History
Part 2: World War I - Political, Cultural, Social, and Military aspects of the Great War.
"The Great War" - This will be a two-part course:
Part 1: Postmodernism and the Question of Truth in History
Part 2: World War I - Political, Cultural, Social, and Military aspects of the Great War.
"Russia and the West"
The relationship between Russia and the West has been the concern of historians and contemporary commentators for hundreds of years, and especially since the fall of the Soviet Union there has been a heightened effort to understand the parameters of that relationship. Westerners have typically sought either to exclude or to enlist Russia into the European community, using every tool from conversion to Christianity to capitalism and democratization. The Russians themselves have historically found in this debate reflections of their own national, political, and ethnic character; especially in the 19th century the struggles to determine whether and to what extent their culture existed of itself or was, on the contrary, a product or abortive variation of Western models deemed superior. This section of History 200 will discuss the history of this historical relationship in its major manifestations and ask students to consider one aspect of it in a major research project.
"The Antislavery Movement"
This is a reading intensive course. In addition to covering the Philosophy of History and modern historiographic trends, students will craft a 12 page research paper focusing on the 19th century Antislavery Movement. We will discuss the complexity of America's first civil rights movement, the myths and realities of the underground railroad, the trans-Atlantic nature of the movement, the ideological attacks on the institution of slavery and internal divisions concerning means and ends.
"Schooling in American History - Myth Verses Reality"
We will focus on the history of American education from multiple sources and perspectives. We will study and challenge our understandings of what "actually happened" and what we are "teaching happened." The concept of reality and perceived reality will be discussed as it relates to historical memory regarding education, schooling and American society. Students will be asked to challenge the myth and realities surrounding topics. What "stories" do we tell about the past and why? How do these "stories" shape our historical mindedness? We will survey the field post holing with key points, eras and narratives. Students will examine particular time periods in greater detail from both a fiction and nonfiction approach. Sources will include traditional historical monographs, survey texts, biography, children's literature, images, artifacts, film, etc.
"The History of Conservatism in the Twentieth-Century United States"
Curious about the Tea Party? About why so many people seem to support the likes of Sarah Palin? About why so many American distrust America? This course will offer you a deep historical knowledge of such contemporary phenomena. The United States is a deeply conservative country, perhaps the most conservative in the developed world. This is hardly surprising considering it is at once both more religious and more capitalistic than most nations. But conservatism as a coherent movement is is new to the postwar era, the "New Right" being the first such movement in U.S. history. This course will explore how this movement came into being, and how it has deeply affected the U.S. political order. Students will write capstone research papers. Possible topics include aspects of the Christian Right such as Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, the neocons and their influence in foreign policy, culture war battles such as over the National History Standards, conservative political leaders such as Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan, conservative intellectuals such as National Review founder William Buckley, conservative activists such as Phyllis Schlafly, and conservative media voices such as Rush Limabugh or Fox News.
"Mass Violence/Genocide in the 19th and 20th Century"
The class focuses on mass violence/genocide in the 19th and 20th Century, engaging various historical case studies as well as works that attempt to define genocide and its relationship to "ordinary" mass violence. Research opportunities are - unfortunately - global and could consider any aspect of an event or any groups (victims, perpetrators, bystanders/spectators) involved in mass violence/genocide.
"Film History"
This course will focus on the history of cinema and movie-going in the United States, although students are welcome and encouraged to write research papers on any form or aspect of film history. The assumption is that cinema, as the most popular and significant form of mass media in the first half of the 20th century, can provide a valuable lens into shifting cultural mores and values, as well as into larger political and social change. This course will study the history of film from a variety of angles: the nature of the emergence of mass culture at the turn of the 20th century; the development of the film industry and the rise of Hollywood; issues of censorship and moral reform in cinema, particularly during the Progressive era; the ideological impact of movies and their ability to both represent and shape popular consciousness on a range of issues, including race, sexuality, patriotism, and war.
"Ancient Greek and Roman Women"
The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the sources, methodologies, and the current debates focusing on women and gender in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. We will explore the representations of women in classical literature and art as well as the place of women in ancient Greek and Roman culture. By analyzing textual, visual and archaeological evidence, we will also investigate the legal and social status of women with particular attention to issues of "class" and ethnicity. Throughout, we will focus on several basic questions: what were the roles of women and how did they fit into the goals of the city-state, of the republic, and of the empire? How much of the reality of women's lives can we actually recover given that our surviving sources were almost entirely produced by men? What were the customary attitudes toward sex and marriage, and how did they vary in different places and times in ancient Greece and Rome? How did prevailing ideologies of gender in those times affect men's attempts to be "scientific" and "philosophical" about women's bodies and women's natures? How are famous (and infamous) Greek and Roman women represented by ancient and modern society, and why?
"From Radicalism to Class Struggle: Black Politics in the New Deal and World War II."
This course offers an examination of black politics that places African Americans' quest for material betterment at the center of civil rights activism.
"Society and Culture in the U.S. South, 1877-Present"
The U.S. South is arguably the most distinctive, controversial, and parodied section of the country. It is often considered the most "American" section, and most "Un-American." It is the most religious section of the country, and the most violent. It is the most poverty-stricken with high illiteracy rates; yet Southerners have produced some of our nation's greatest music and literature. This course will explore the strange and troubled history of the South from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Issues we will examine include: the origins and development of legalized racial segregation, white supremacy, and racist violence; the rise of industrialization and urbanization, and their impact on traditional ways of life; the hold of the Democratic party in the Sough and the subsequent rise of the Republican party in the 1960s; the impact of religious evangelicalism on the South; and black resistance and activism against racial oppression, culminating the black freedom struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. We will also study Southern contributions to American popular and intellectual culture, particularly in literature, religion, and music, and pay attention to the complex and often contradictory ways in which the South and Southerners have been represented and understood within the American popular imagination.
"Subordinate Classes: Peasants, Slaves and Workers in the Modern Era"
Casting our net widely, and including subjects in Europe and across the globe, we will read older and classic literature as well as more recent scholarship of note. Seminar members will meet on a weekly basis for intensive discussion of common reading. Each student will prepare a four to five page critical review of the week's reading prior to the seminar meeting. Students will also have the opportunity to lead the weekly discussion on a book of their choice.
"Research using Lincoln's Legal Practice"
This is a "research" as opposed to a "reading" seminar for graduate students. In the first part of the class we will speed quickly through the general historiographical issues in 19th Century U.S. legal history and the historiography of Lincoln's legal practice more specifically. Students will then engage and challenge that historiography by exploring the wealth of material in the Lincoln Legal papers made available online. Published on DVD in 2000 and recently made available online, The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition presented over 96000 documents belonging to over 5100 cases and 500 other legal matters. These documents and cases were made keyword searchable in a number of ways, greatly facilitating research. And in 2008, the project published in hard copy The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases in four volumes, presenting documents from 64 selected cases interspersed with scholarly commentary and three topical chapters to help the reader find her bearings in the formerly lost and otherwise rather arcane world of antebellum law.
One of the highlights of the class will be a visit to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, where, in the style of the seminar, students will shop their final paper proposals to the authors of the books In Tender Consdieration and editors of the Lincoln papers. Students will receive expert advice and then spend the afternoon in the archives supervised by the professor and the Lincoln legal scholars.
"Readings in US History - Deviants or Dynamos? Understanding Women's Activism in the United States"
This course will examine women who challenged the systems they found themselves subjected to and the ways in which communities dealt with their actions. We will also explore the associations and organizations to which activist women belonged, and the avenues they used to maneuver through patriarchal systems. our focus will be on issues that raised eyebrows among "respectable" folk, including mixed race relationships, single pregnancy, lesbian love, union organizing, and peaceful protest to end armed conflict. We will also interrogate how American society has tainted certain professions, crafts, and talents as deviant precisely because women have engaged in them. Along the way we will meet some liberated daughters, protesting moms, frustrated aunts, and assertive grandmas.
This course explores the evolution of Afro-American struggle for political, social, and economic equality between 1900 and 1954 in order to deepen students understanding of civil rights politics. Though historians have generally identified Brown v. Board of Education (1954) as the catalyst of the modern civil rights movement, recent scholarship has demonstrated that many of the tactics and goals associated with the black liberation movement of the 1950s and 1960s had been pioneered decades earlier. Drawing upon readings by authors such as Beth Bates and Louis Harlan, the course ultimately attempts to make sense of the modern civil rights movement through examination of preceding generations of black political actors.
The course focuses primarily on the recent political history of the Arab eastern Mediterranean region, with particular emphasis on countries in a state of conflict: Palestine/Israel, Lebanon and Iraq. It will address some important similarities they share - i.e., the fact that they were centers of political activism and nationalist movements in their recent histories; the fact that all three of them deal or have dealt with, military occupation; and the fact that they have diverse populations divided into ethnic, religious or national groups. However, since these regions are interconnected, with each other and with other places around, the course will also take countries like Syria, Jordan and Egypt into consideration at various points.
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