Course Offerings Fall 2012

Visit the Registrar’s webpage or Webadvisor for additional information

PLEASE NOTE THAT COURSE AVAILABILITY AND TIMES CHANGE FREQUENTLY. CHECK BACK OFTEN FOR UPDATES.

HIST 450: Seminar
Reiko Hillyer
TTH 9:40-11:10

Work with primary documents to research and write a major paper that interprets history. Topical content varies depending on instructor’s teaching field. Recent topics: the Americas; the United States and Asia; European intellectual history since 1945; women in American history; Indian policy on the Pacific Slope; World War II, the participants’ perspectives; the British Raj; cultural nationalism in East Asia.

 

HIST 400: Colloquium: Empire and Independence in the Modern World
David Campion
TTH 9:40-11:10
This reading-intensive course focuses on the steady dismantling of Europe’s overseas empires during the latter half of the twentieth century, primarily in Asia and Africa. It offers a critical and comparative analysis of such examples as India/Pakistan, Kenya, Congo, Algeria, Vietnam, and Jordan as well as a focus on postcolonial literature and theory. Course readings are drawn from a wide range of historical scholarship that addresses the political, cultural, social, and economic dimensions of decolonization and its legacies in our own time.

HIST 400: Colloquium
Andrew Bernstein
TTH 1:50-3:20

Reading and critical analysis of major interpretive works. Organized around themes or problems; comparative study of historical works exemplifying different points of view, methodologies, subject matter. Focus varies depending on instructor’s teaching and research area.

HIST 398: Special Topics
Staff
MWF 11:30-12:30
Course description forthcoming.

HIST 328: The British Empire
David Campion
MWF 9:10-10:10
The history of British overseas expansion from the early seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth century. Theories of imperialism; Britain’s Atlantic trade network; the Victorian empire in war and peace; collaboration and resistance among colonized people; India under the British Raj; Africa and economic imperialism; the effects of empire on British society; the creation of the British Commonwealth; the rise of nationalism in India, Africa, and the Middle East; decolonization and postcolonial perspectives. This course counts toward the International Affairs major.

HIST 316: Popular Culture and Everyday Life in Japanese History
Andrew Bernstein
TTH 9:40-11:10
Popular culture as the site of social change and social control in Japan from the 18th to the 20th century. Religion and folk beliefs, work and gender roles, theatre and music, tourism, consumerism, citizens’ movements, fashion, food, sports, sex, drugs, hygiene, and forms of mass media ranging from woodblock prints to modern comic books, film, television. Concepts as well as content of popular and mass culture.

HIST 311: History of Family and Gender in China
Susan Glosser
TTH 11:30-1:00
Development of family structure, gender roles, and sexuality in Chinese history, explored through oracle bones, family instructions, tales of exemplary women, poetry, painting, drama, fiction, and calendar posters. Key movements in the transformation of family and gender from 1600 B.C.E. to the 20th century. Close readings of texts to explore how social, economic, religious, and political forces shaped family and gender roles.

HIST 300: Historical Materials
Ben Westervelt
TTH 1:50-3:20
Materials and craft of historical research. Bibliographic method; documentary editing; use of specialized libraries, manuscripts, maps, government documents, photographs, objects of material culture. Career options in history. Students work with primary sources to develop a major editing project. Topical content varies depending on instructor’s teaching field.

HIST 242: Borderlands
Elliott Young
TTH 1:50-3:20
The concept and region known as the Borderlands from when it was part of northern New Spain to its present incarnation as the U.S.-Mexico border. Thematic focus on the roles of imperialism and capitalism in the formation of borderlands race, class, gender, and national identities. The transformation of this region from a frontier between European empires to a borderline between nations.

HIST 234B: US History: Empire to Superpower
Reiko Hillyer
MWF 9:10-10:10
The power of the United States in the world, from the Spanish-American War to Iraq. American economic growth and its consequences. The federal government and the people. Mass society and mass marketing. Changing political alignments, the policy elite, and “political will.” The welfare state, women’s and minority rights.

HIST 229: Holocaust in Comparative Perspectives
Maureen Healy
In this course, we will study the Nazi genocide of the Jews of Europe during World War II in order to gain insight into the many episodes of mass ethnic violence that have afflicted the world during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will examine similarities and differences between the Holocaust and other cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” including the Armenian genocide, Stalin’s resettlement of ethnic groups in the Soviet Union, the expulsion of ethnic Germans from postwar Poland and Czechoslovakia, the warfare in Bosnia-Herzogovina during the 1990’s, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and the current ethnic violence in Sudan. The course will explore the causes of the Holocaust and other genocides, as well as the ways in which memories of these events shape contemporary political debates. We will also reflect on strategies for preventing genocide and atrocities in the new millennium.

HIST 226: Twentieth-Century Germany
Maureen Healy
TTH 9:40-11:10
Origins and consequences of World War I; attempts to develop a republican government; Nazism; evolution of the two Germanies after 1945 and their reunification. Readings on relationship between individual and state, pressures for conformity, possibility of dissent.

HIST 224: The Making of Modern Britain, 1815-present
David Campion
MWF 12:40-1:40
The history of Britain from the Industrial Revolution to the present. Industrialization and its social consequences; the shaping of Victorian society; the rise and fall of the British Empire; the Irish question and the emancipation of women; political reform and the rise of mass politics; the age of total war; popular culture, immigration, and multi-cultural society. Themes include the growth of the social and economic class structure, the shaping of national and regional identities, and the consequences of imperialism. Extensive use of primary sources, literature, and music.

HIST 213: Chinese History Through Biography
Susan Glosser
TTH 1:50-3:20
Political, economic, and cultural history of China, traced through the lives of individual Chinese, including the mighty and the low: venerable philosophers and historians, powerful women, mighty emperors, conscientious officials, laboring women and men, evangelizing missionaries, zealots of all political persuasions. Sixth century B.C.E. to late 20th century, with emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. Lectures cover the historical milieu in which the various subjects lived. Through class discussion and essay assignments, students unite their knowledge of particular individuals and the broad sweep of events to form a rich and lively familiarity with Chinese history.

HIST 141: Colonial Latin America
Elliott Young
TTH 9:40-11:10
History of Latin America from Native American contact cultures through the onset of independence movements in the early 19th century. Cultural confrontations, change, and Native American accommodation and strategies of evasion in dealing with the Hispanic colonial empire.

HIST 120: Early European History
Ben Westervelt
MWF 10:20-11:20
Social, intellectual, political, and economic elements of European history, 800 to 1648. Role of Christianity in the formation of a dominant culture; feudalism and the development of conflicts between secular and religious life. Contacts with the non-European world, the Crusades, minority groups, popular and elite cultural expressions. Intellectual and cultural life of the High Middle Ages, secular challenges of the Renaissance, divisions of European culture owing to the rise of national monarchies and religious reformations.

HIST 110: Early East Asian History
Andrew Bernstein 
MWF 10:20-11:20
Early histories of China and Japan from earliest origins to the 13th century. Prehistory; early cultural foundations; development of social, political, and economic institutions; art and literature. Readings from Asian texts in translation. The two cultures, covered as independent entities, compared to each other and to European patterns of development.