“Premodern World” is a lower-division, lecture course that provides an overview of global development from roughly 30,000 BCE to 1500 CE. It introduces students to the main political, social, and cultural trends in a variety of societies while at the same time stressing the global perspective. Considerable emphasis is thus paid to comparative history and the study of cross-cultural encounters. While covering the content of the human past, we will also investigate methods of historical study to discover how history is constructed from both material remains and written sources.  This entry-level course aims to teach historical thinking as well as historical content, impart a basic grasp of the premodern past, and stimulate the development of large-scale frameworks for historical analysis.

Texts:
-- textbook, to be determined
-- numerous essays and book chapters provided on course website



Grading:
Exams (3 x 25% each) = 75%; digital history project (3 x 5% each) = 15%; map quizzes = 5%; attendance & participation = 5%.

Description:

Introduction to Chinese Civilization and Culture

Course Description:

This course will provide an introduction to major concepts and ideas from Chinese cultural traditions to construct a course inquiry into understanding Chinese culture and society. A guiding principle in this course inquiry will be to investigate the past to help inform the present.   Lectures and discussion will examine key concepts from art, history, language, literature, and thought that greatly shaped, and continue to influence, “Chinese” cultural and geopolitical entities.  

This course surveys the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam to the end of the fifteenth century. Students will be introduced to basic aspects of the political, social, and cultural dimensions of Islamic civilization from Spain to Iran as they changed over time. In the midst of mapping this broad view, we will focus our attention on how specific historical figures and events contributed to definitions of Islamic identity, community, and authority. Central themes include the emergence of Sunni and Shi`i identities, the relationship of Muslims and non-Muslims, and the unique material and intellectual contributions of Islamic civilization to world history and other societies.

Texts include:
Amira Bennison, The Great Caliphs.
Jonathan A. C. Brown, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction
Vernon O. Egger, A History of the Muslim World to 1750, 2nd edition
John Alden Williams, ed., The Word of Islam
Selections of primary documents in translation online on CANVAS
Selections from additional books online on CANVAS


Grading:
4 essay exams, quizzes, and take-home exercises/questions

Our images of medieval Europe are often shaped more by contemporary popular culture and modern politics than by the historical record.  Scholars, however, have broadened their understanding of the period to incorporate material culture, as well as data from climate science, genetics, and archeology, into their traditional analysis of written documents. This class draws on recent studies of European history between 500 and 1500 to explore how the social practices, ideas, and institutions of the European middle ages developed through interactions with Europe’s neighbors. Themes include: climate change and disease; archeological evidence for everyday life; the relationship between trade and political power; the articulation of religious, ethnic, and gendered differences; intellectual interactions between Christians, Jews, and Muslims; and the formation of empires.

Here’s what we will investigate together:
• important events, people, and places within the medieval millennium (500-1500)
• how interactions with peoples, ideas, and material objects from the Middle East, Asia and Africa shaped medieval European culture
• the documents and material objects that scholars use to study medieval Europe, and how to understand the perspectives of their authors and their audiences
• how historians formulate arguments and conversations
• an understanding of how societies change
 the modern fascination with the medieval past, and ways of understandingcultures different from our own
• how to write and speak more clearly, to articulate your position or argument, and to support it effectively and respectfully.

Readings:

Barbara Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (5^th edition). University of Toronto Press, 2018

Articles, translated documents and images will be available on Canvas

Grading:
Midterm  20%

Final Exam 30%

Reading response handouts and class participation 20%

Group research project and oral presentation   30%. 

This course introduces students to selected topics in Latin American history and culture through film, readings,class discussion and lectures. One goal is to explore significant influences that have molded Latin American history from the conquest through the early twentieth century. Another is for students to develop their analytical capabilities to utilize both visual and written materials as they engage in discussion and  write analytical essays. Topics include but are not limited to: The Conquest, The Colony, Church and Native Peoples, Women, Religious and the Church, Caudillos, Gender and Aristocracy, Nineteenth Century Mexico, The Golden Age of Cinema, The Infamous Decade in Argentina.

All readings are posted on Canvas.

Grading:

Essays     6/10  (60%)

Outlines 2/10  (20 %)

Discussion 2/10  (20%)

Utilizing a combination of secondary literature (scholarly books, journal articles, etc.) and a close reading of primary sources, this course will explore the different social, economic, political, and cultural encounters that have both divided and united the western hemisphere (North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean) over the last two centuries. The focus of the course will include discussions of particularly significant events in the history of U.S-Latin American foreign relations—everything from U.S. military interventions, diplomatic encounters, social revolutions, and political counterrevolutions to important examples of economic and cultural exchange and the hemispheric movement of peoples and ideas. Throughout the course, we will consider the ways in which varying internal conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean have allowed the region to resist U.S. influence—in some cases, even providing Latin American and Caribbean nations the ability to exert considerable power over U.S. politics and culture. Finally, students will be expected to analyze the different ways that Latin America, as a region, has been viewed or represented through North American eyes (and vice versa), and the many political consequences those representations have had over the last two centuries.


Selected Texts:

*Robert Holden and Eric Zolov, The United States and Latin America: A Documentary History (Oxford, 2010)
*Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, 2nd ed. (Harvard University Press, 2005). [Note: There are older editions of this book but please make sure you purchase the second edition].
*Stephen G. Rabe, The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2016)
*Additional journal articles and book excerpts will be scanned and uploaded to the course website, via Canvas. Students will be expected to download, print, read and take notes on these readings on their own. Each week’s readings must be brought to class.


Grading:
Paper #1: 10% (2 pages)
Exam #1: 30%
Paper #2: 20% (3-4 pages)
Exam #2: 30%
Map Quizzes (4 Total) 5%
Reading Quizzes/Course Participation: 5%

This is an introductory, inter-disciplinary course on the peoples and cultures of Africa, designed for students with a limited background in African studies as well as those who want to improve their understanding of this huge continent. The course is divided into two parts, one on a survey history and the other on aspects of culture. The subjects cover the long historical era known as the precolonial, which terminated at the turn of the twentieth century when Africa came under European rule. Among the main themes are: early history, kingdoms, interactions with external agencies, and various institutions and customs of society. Readings are drawn from two textbooks, two monographs. The books deal with essential outline histories and dense interpretive literature on a few issues. Films provide visual illustrations and additional perspectives.
 
Goals:

1)    To use a combination of films, lectures and reading materials to introduce students to a number of themes in African history and cultures.

2)    To enable students to reflect on a number of issues in order to reach independent conclusions.

3)    To provide an adequate background that will prepare students for other courses on Africa.

4)    To improve the writing and analytical skills of students, by introducing them to the craft of history writing.



Required Materials

Toyin Falola, ed., Africa, Vol. 1, African History Before 1885, Durham: Carolina
Academic Press, 2000.

Toyin Falola, ed., Africa, Vol. 2, African Cultures, and Societies Before 1885, Durham:
Carolina Academic Press, 2000.

*** Books are available at Co-op. Students can also use the Internet to order direct from the publishers or through Amazon.com

Evaluation and points--100%


1)    Community Project      25%           September 18

2)    Mid-Term Examination—Take Home          25%            October 18  
     (Two essay questions, at least three pages on each)

3)     Class attendance and participation                  20%          
                       
4)     Final examination—Take Home                   30%    December 10
        (Two essay questions, at least three pages on each)

The course will cover all aspects of American history to the end of the Civil War. The basic themes of the course will be the emergence of an American identity, the evolution of American self-government, and the expansion of American territory.

Required texts:

    Revel online text, with online chapter exams.

    The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr (paperback)


Grading:

There will be fifteen chapter exams, taken online, worth a total of 40 percent of the semester grade. There will be two in-class essay tests, worth 15 percent together. There will be two take-home essays, worth 15  percent. There will be one book review, worth 10 percent. Class participation will be worth 20 percent.

A = 90 to 100. B = 80 to 89. C = 70 to 79. D = 60 to 69. F = 0 to 59.

Too many students spell history b-o-r-i-n-g. They regard history as a jumble of disconnected facts. The word they use to describe history is "irrelevant."

High school history too often consists of little more than lectures, textbooks, worksheets, and memorization of names and dates. In fact, history need not be dull.

In this class, you will be a detective, a myth buster, a problem solver, and a forensic scientist. You will debunk or confirm legends and folklore. You will investigate some of history’s most gripping mysteries and take part in some of history’s biggest debates.

You will uncover the hidden history behind front-page headlines as well as the roots of a host of everyday rituals and customs.

You will examine Hollywood’s version of the past and separate fact from fiction. You will re-fight past battles, re-live key episodes in the past, and ask what-might-have-been.

You will also explore the uneasy relationship between academic history and popular memory—those legends and traditions that exert a much more powerful grip on our imagination.

This class offers an innovative approach to U.S. history from global and multicultural perspectives, ties past events to contemporary issues, and allows you to investigate U.S. history's most gripping mysteries.
Divided into 15 modules that must be completed weekly, the course includes a wealth of sources including gravestones, maps, film clips, and music—that bring the past to life and allow you to understand the key issues and controversies of U.S. history from a fresh perspective.

Grading is based on multiple-choice questions, essay questions, and interactive activities.

This course is a survey of 400 years of American history, from the Age of Exploration to the Civil War. It meets two times weekly for lectures. Your TAs will lead weekly discussions of required readings at the beginning of class on Thursdays.


Two of the three required readings are available for free as e-books on UTCAT. Print copies of the readings are available at the UT Coop, via online sources, and (most) on PCL Reserve.

Grading:

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), brief, multiple choice Canvas quizzes (see below), and a 20-minute written quiz on one of the books. Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams only.

Exams will test specific knowledge of both lectures and readings. There will also be a series of 10 short quiz questions on Canvas. Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Quiz 10%, Canvas Quiz 20%.

Too many students spell history b-o-r-i-n-g. They regard history as a jumble of disconnected facts. The word they use to describe history is "irrelevant."

High school history too often consists of little more than lectures, textbooks, worksheets, and memorization of names and dates. In fact, history need not be dull.

In this class, you will be a detective, a myth buster, a problem solver, and a forensic scientist. You will debunk or confirm legends and folklore. You will investigate some of history’s most gripping mysteries and take part in some of history’s biggest debates.

You will uncover the hidden history behind front-page headlines as well as the roots of a host of everyday rituals and customs.

You will examine Hollywood’s version of the past and separate fact from fiction. You will re-fight past battles, re-live key episodes in the past, and ask what-might-have-been.

You will also explore the uneasy relationship between academic history and popular memory—those legends and traditions that exert a much more powerful grip on our imagination.

This class offers an innovative approach to U.S. history from global and multicultural perspectives, ties past events to contemporary issues, and allows you to investigate U.S. history's most gripping mysteries.

Divided into 15 modules that must be completed weekly, the course includes a wealth of sources including maps, film clips, and music—that bring the past to life and allow you to understand the key issues and controversies of U.S. history from a fresh perspective.

Grading is based on multiple-choice questions, essay questions, and interactive activities.

The goal of this class is to introduce students to the complexities of understanding the past and to the many ethnic groups and political and religious ideals that shaped the United States from 1865-2000. We’ll assess how the U.S. put itself back together after the Civil War; its economic development into a major industrial nation; its rise to prominence on the world stage; and its role in three major world wars of the 20th century. We’ll also examine important issues such as the rise and fall of the progressive impulse in American government; the rise of the religious and political rights; and the struggle of many people to gain civil rights and political participation.
 
The chronology of the course is divided into three major eras: the Gilded Age (1865-1900); The Progressive Era through World War II (1900-1945); and the Cold War to the Present (1945-2000). It is organized around 5 central themes: the economic growth of the US; the struggle for civil rights of African Americans, Latinx Americans, women, and others; the emergence of Protestant fundamentalism; the shift from liberalism to far right conservatism in mainstream American politics; and the emergence of U.S. as a superpower. Students can expect to see essay questions related to these themes in all three units of the course.

Students will be evaluated primarily based on online quizzes, take-home papers, and in-class essay exams.

The goal of this class is to introduce students to the complexities of understanding the past and to the many ethnic groups and political and religious ideals that shaped the United States from 1865-2000. We’ll assess how the U.S. put itself back together after the Civil War; its economic development into a major industrial nation; its rise to prominence on the world stage; and its role in three major world wars of the 20th century. We’ll also examine important issues such as the rise and fall of the progressive impulse in American government; the rise of the religious and political rights; and the struggle of many people to gain civil rights and political participation.
 
The chronology of the course is divided into three major eras: the Gilded Age (1865-1900); The Progressive Era through World War II (1900-1945); and the Cold War to the Present (1945-2000). It is organized around 5 central themes: the economic growth of the US; the struggle for civil rights of African Americans, Latinx Americans, women, and others; the emergence of Protestant fundamentalism; the shift from liberalism to far right conservatism in mainstream American politics; and the emergence of U.S. as a superpower. Students can expect to see essay questions related to these themes in all three units of the course.

Students will be evaluated primarily based on online quizzes, take-home papers, and in-class essay exams.

This course examines the chief characteristics of Anglo-American culture from the initial permanent English settlement of British North America in the early seventeenth century to the emergence of provincial societies in the mid-eighteenth century.  Its theme is the settlement and unsettlement of North America as migrants from Europe and Africa mingled with aboriginals already in the New World.  We will look comparatively at different colonizing experiments in North America and the Caribbean, in order to comprehend the varied and often international context within which colonial history took place. At he same time, we will look for the values that shaped early American institutions and social norms and examine them against alternatives both that other contemporary societies offered and that the circumstances of colonial life suggested.  In doing so we will attempt to understand how environment and experience shaped distinctive new world cultures.

This course may be used to fulfill three hours of the U.S. History component of the university core curriculum and addresses the following four core objectives established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board: communication skills, critical thinking skills, personal responsibility, and social responsibility. It also carries two distribution flags: Cultural Diversity and Writing.

This course carries the flag for Cultural Diversity in the United States. Cultural Diversity courses are designed to increase your familiarity with the variety and richness of the American cultural experience. A substantial portion of your grade will come from assignments covering the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one U.S. cultural group that has experienced persistent marginalization.

This course also carries the Writing Flag. Writing Flag courses are designed to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline. In this class, you can expect to write regularly during the semester, complete substantial writing projects, and receive feedback from your instructor to help you improve your writing. You will also have the opportunity to revise one or more assignments, and you may be asked to read and discuss your peers’ work. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from your written work.

Readings:

The following books are available at the Bookstore.

Richard Middleton and Anne Lombard, Colonial America. A History, 1565-1776,
4th edition (Oxford, 2011).
Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, 1972; 2000).
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography. Various editions. [Louis P. Masur ed., (Boston, 2016)].
Anthony S. Parent Jr., Foul Means:  The Formation of Slave Society in Virginia, 1660 -1740 (Chapel Hill, 2003).
John Woolman,  Journal.  Various editions. [Phillips P. Moulton, The Journal and Major Essays (Richmond, IN 1971, 2007]

Alternative books for essay #3
Ian Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America  (New York, 1994).
Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeny, Captors and Captives: the 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield (Boston, 2003)

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale:  the Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York, 1990).
Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: A Life (New York, 2009).

Course Requirements

All students will attend weekly lectures and discussions that take place in the third class hour.  Discussions will focus on the assigned readings and students will be expected to participate actively. Participation marks will be based on attendance and the instructor’s evaluation of student contributions to discussion. Students are responsible for lecture material along with that contained in the required readings and for any changes to the syllabus that are announced in class.  Although there is some overlap between texts and lectures, lectures do not simply repeat material in the readings. I do not provide copies of lectures and attendees are prohibited from recording lectures and discussions.  A schedule of the required readings is attached.

Written Work:  Students will hand in three short essays.  The first will be a 5-page paper comparing the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and John Woolman. This essay is due on Sept. 18 for peer review, final version due Sept. 25.  The second is a comparison of Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves and Anthony Parent, Foul Means, due on Oct.16 for peer review, final version due Oct. 23. The third is a comparison of EITHER Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale and Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: A Life (New York, 2009), OR Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeny, Captors and Captives and Ian Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America, due on Nov. 13 for peer review, final version due Nov. 27. The second and third papers will be a maximum of 6 pages.
You may choose to hand in ONE of these papers up to a week late. Essays later than one week will be credited as work completed but will receive a mark of zero.
You also may choose to submit a re-written version of paper one.
Examination:  The final examination will cover all material addressed in class and all readings assigned for essays or for consideration in the classroom.  We will discuss the nature of the examinations and essays in class.  

Marking Scheme:

Essay on assigned primary sources (5 pages) – 15%
Comparative essay on Dunn and Parent (7 pages) – 25%
Comparative essay on either Ulrich and Holton or Anderson and Haefeli & Sweeney
(7 pages) – 25%
Class discussion participation - 10%
End-of-Term Examination – 25%
Final marks will include a plus and minus range.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a thorough introduction to what is best described as the foundations of American History.  “Establishing America” covers the two centuries of English/British colonization ventures in North America and the ensuing, crucial four decades from the Declaration of Independence in 1775 through the aftermath of the War of 1812.  No later period of United States History compares with these two and a half centuries in contributions to the fundamental shape and character of American society.
    Too often American History courses merely gesture toward a slender list of perspectives on the extremely varied, North American colonial experiences before focusing heavily on the “origins” of the American nation in the Revolution and through the adoption and early implementation of the U. S. Constitution.  What this approach fails to acknowledge properly is that most members of the founding generation grew up in, and were deeply influenced by the colonial/provincial societies their parents and grandparents consciously constructed and adapted to, and that the Revolutionaries inherited. Pre-Revolution experiences and the structures of the various provincial British-American societies mattered in all that ensued. Building on these experiences late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Americans undertook a variety of experiments in politics, economics, social relations and international affairs that – just as the colonial past had done – posed profound questions about ethics and leadership in the nascent American society.
    The establishment of America over the first two decades of Euro-American habitation of North America constitutes a continuum of ethical considerations and choices, which spring from a variety of themes: immigration, both voluntary and forced; the commerce of the Atlantic, both in goods and people; traditional English rights and their metamorphosis in American hands; British and American constitutionalism; experiments with sovereignty, federalism, and the language of rights; the meanings and institutionalization of religious liberty and freedom of speech; claiming, expropriating, and establishing title to land; slavery and various other forms of unfree labor; the role of the slave trade and slavery in the Atlantic economies; native American/Euro-American contact, trade, conflict and demographics; various theatres and experiences of violence and warfare; ethnic and racial distinctions; institutional, cultural, and economic Anglicization and Americanization; patriarchy and equality; family structures and gender roles; imperialism, provincialism, nationalism and exceptionalism; monarchy and subjecthood; republicanism and citizenship.  While these topics will inform weekly lectures, readings and discussion, they will be structured around four basic themes; occupation of the land; slavery; loyalty in the Revolutionary struggle; and the meanings of rights and equality in the new republic. These will require students to reflect on and appreciate perspectives that will enrich their capacity for present-day civic mindedness and engagement.

Geographical literacy. This class will participate in a new History Department initiative to improve student geographical literacy using a digital history tool called Cerego. Along with other conceptual dimensions, geographical literacy helps us deepen our understanding of the complex processes of human interaction. You will be required to complete a series of map exercises this semester that are intended to reinforce your grasp of geographical knowledge. These exercises are accessible through Canvas.

This course may be used to fulfill three hours of the U.S. history component of the university core curriculum and addresses the following four core objectives established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board: communication skills, critical thinking skills, personal responsibility, and social responsibility.

This course also carries the flag for Ethics and Leadership. Courses carrying the Ethics and Leadership Flag equip you with the tools necessary for making ethical decisions in your adult and professional life. Courses carrying this flag expose you to ethical issues and to the process of applying ethical reasoning in real-life situations.


For background and some perspectives on American History students might refer to the UT History Department’s website NOT EVEN PAST  (https://notevenpast.org/teaching-us-history-with-not-even-past/).


Readings:

The following books are available at the Co-op Bookstore:

Eric G. Nellis, An Empire of Regions: A Brief History of Colonial British America, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
Eric G, Nellis, The Long Road to Change: America’s Revolution, 1750-1820, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.
Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World, revised edition, New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.  
David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution:  From Revolution to Ratification, New York: Hill and Wang, 2009.
Book of Primary Sources.

Course Requirements

All students are expected to attend Monday and Wednesday lectures and to have read the assignments listed for that date in advance of each class. Students are responsible for lecture material along with that contained in the assigned readings and for any changes to the syllabus announced in class.  Although there is some overlap between texts and lectures, lectures do not simply repeat material in the readings. A schedule of the required readings is attached.

I do not provide copies of lectures and attendees are prohibited from recording lectures. No cell phones, tablets, e-readers, iPods, iPads, laptop computers, etc. This is an electronics free classroom.  All laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices must be turned off at the beginning of class.

Written Work:  Students will hand in one short essay.  This will be a 5-page paper comparing the analyses in Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World, revised edition, New York: Hill and Wang, 2001, and Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.  Student’s should read the following article as they think about how to compare these two monographs. John Keown, “ America’s War for Independence: Just or Unjust”, Journal of Catholic Social Thought 6(2009), 277-304.
We will discuss how to structure such written comparisons in class. Late papers will be penalized by one full grade per day.

Attendance: Students are expected to attend all classes. After two absences students will be penalized one half mark for each missed class from the assigned total of 5 marks for full attendance.
Test and Examination:  There will be a test made up of multiple choice questions, short answer questions and one longer essay question in the second class period of Week 8. There will be a final examination in this course during the end of term examination period.

Marking Scheme:

Map Quiz 5%
Attendance 5%
Test 20%
Comparative essay on Gross and Jasanoff – 30%
End-of-Term Examination – 40%
Final marks will include a plus and minus range.

This survey course will examine the history of Native American societies in North America from the earliest records to the present. We will explore the diverse ways in which Native American societies were structured, the different ways that indigenous peoples have responded to colonization and the complex history of European/Indigenous relations. Attention will be paid to political, social, economic and cultural transformation of Native American societies over time. We will cover, among other things, the following topics: disease, religion, trade, captivity narratives, warfare, diplomacy, removal, assimilation, education, self-determination, and gaming.

1. Colin G. Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of the American Indian History (Boston: Bedford St. Martins) – latest edition. 

2. Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman (New York: Harper Collins, 1990) 

3. David Gran, Killers of the Flower Moon.
 
4. David Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (New York: Longman, 2006).

Assessment for this class will be based on class participation, a mid-term examination, one short paper, 2¬4 reading quizzes, in-class participation, a book review, and a final examination.
The final grade breakdown is as follows:
Midterm: 100 points
Paper: 50 points
Final exam: 100 points
Book Review: 25 points
Reading quizzes: 10 points each
In class participation: 25 points. 

Assessment for this class will be based on class participation, a mid-term examination, one short paper, 2¬4 reading quizzes, in-class participation, a book review, and a final examination.
The final grade breakdown is as follows:
Midterm: 100 points
Paper: 50 points
Final exam: 100 points
Book Review: 25 points
Reading quizzes: 10 points each
In class participation: 25 points. 

This class will look at the history of the political, economic and cultural relations between the United States and Africa from the early origins of the slave trade to the present. It explores the role of the US in historical global contexts. The class is intended to elucidate historical developments both in the US and on the African continent, and should satisfy students with a strong interest in US history as well as those interested in the place of the US in the African Diaspora.  The semester is divided into four parts, each covering a major theme.
Course Objectives
To develop a base of African and US history and increase the level of awareness of the African Diaspora in the US.  
To obtain a well-rounded approach to the political, economic, and cultural connections between the United States and Africa.
To reevaluate perceptions of Africa, to recognize the vibrant nature of African culture, and to apply new knowledge to the different cultural agents active in US popular culture, such as music, dance, literature, business and science.
To help students understand present-day politics in Africa at a deeper level and to obtain a better understanding of racial conditions in the US.
To learn how to assess historical materials -- their relevance to a given interpretative problem, their reliability and their importance -- and to determine the biases present within particular scholarship. These include historical documents, literature and films.
 

1. Joseph E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture  (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005 second edition).
2. Curtis A. Keim, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind (Westview Press, 1999).
3. Alusine Jalloh, ed., The United States and West Africa (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008).
4. Kevin Roberts, ed., The Atlantic World 1450-2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).
5. Karen Bouwer, Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: the Legacy of Patrice Lumumba (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
6. Gendering the African diaspora : women, culture, and historical change in the Caribbean and Nigerian hinterland / edited by Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.    


i. Public Lecture Review 10%     
ii. First  Examination 25%
iii. Book Review 20%
iv.   Book Review 20%
v. Second Examination 25%

In this class, students will practice the reading, writing, research, and thinking skills of historians, developing skills useful to the academic discipline of history and beyond. This course will emphasize this history the University of Texas at Austin, examining three specific incidents of controversy in its history: the conflict between the faculty and regents of the university with Texas Governor Jim Ferguson, which ultimately led to Ferguson’s impeachment; the conflict over racial integration in the 1950s; and finally the recent debate about the presence of monuments honoring Confederate war heroes that led to their removal from campus grounds in the 2010s. Students will ready both primary and secondary sources related to these events and examine competing interpretations of these events. They will write three short papers, four very brief responses to readings, complete two group research projects, and develop a research paper framework. They will use online sources for the group projects and campus archives of their choice (The Briscoe Center for American History, The LBJ Presidential Library, the Harry Ransom Center etc) for research frameworks.

The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century produced several fundamental shifts in the way people have viewed the natural world and their own place in it. In this course we will examine the roots and course of this revolution and trace the main outlines of the new world it helped to create. This course carries a Global Cultures flag and we will strive to show how science has become a global pursuit.


Texts:
Galileo Galilei, The Essential Galileo (ed. Maurice Finocchiaro),

Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences (3rd edition, 2019),

James Gleick, Isaac Newton,

Michael R. Matthews (ed.), The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy

plus additional readings to be posted on Canvas.


Grading:
Course grades will be +/- and will be based on three one-hour essay exams and a short paper on a topic to be assigned (25% each).

In this course, we will examine the history of nuclear weapons from the discovery of fission in Dec. 1938 to the Oppenheimer security hearings of 1954, with a brief look at later events.

This course carries a Writing Flag, and we will emphasize the form as well as the content of your written work. It also carries an Ethics and Leadership Flag, and we will focus closely ethical issues.

Texts:
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb,
John Hersey, Hiroshima,
Michael J. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory,
Herbert York, The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb,
Richard Polenberg (ed.), In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer,
plus additional readings to be posted on Canvas.

Grading:
Course grades will be +/– and will be based on a quiz (10%); a 2–3 page draft (5%) and a 10–12 page final paper (45%) on the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities; a 3–4 page paper on the Oppenheimer security case (15%); an essay exam (15%); and class participation (10%). All students will be expected to attend all class meetings and take an active part in class discussions.

Description: Hitler and the Nazis have given twentieth-century Germany a world-historical significance it would otherwise have lacked. Even from our vantage point, the Nazi regime is still one of the most dramatic and destructive episodes in western European, indeed, in world history. Nazism is synonymous with terror, concentration camps and mass murder. Hitler's war claimed the lives of tens of millions and left Europe in complete ruins. The danger resides in the temptation to view all of German history from the end of the nineteenth-century onwards as merely the pre-history of Nazism, thereby failing to deal with each period on its own terms. And what do we do with the more than half a century of German history since 1945? With the defeat of  Nazi Germany in 1945, the course of German history appears to have experienced a radical break. New political and social systems were imposed upon the two sides of the divided Germany by the victors. The hostilities of the Cold War appeared to ensure a permanent division of Germany, which in 1961 assumed a compelling symbolic form, the Berlin Wall. But in 1989, the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe revolutionized East Germany as well. The Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany were once again joined together in one nation. What exactly this newest version of the German nation will look like in ten or twenty years is still unclear. 
In the first half of the course, we will begin by discussing the origins and effects of  World War One(1914-1918), then move on to the German Revolution(1918-1919) and the Weimar Republic(l9l8-l933), the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and the Holocaust. The questions we will focus on here are: Was Germany’s first experiment with democracy between 1918 and 1933 doomed to failure? What factors contributed to the rise of Nazism and how did the Nazi regime affect Germany and Europe? Were all vestiges of Nazism destroyed in 1945? In the second half of the semester we will discuss the history of  Germany in the Cold War(1945-1989). We will end by talking about the consequences of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989 to the present). Here, the main questions will be: Did, West and East Germany follow fundamentally new paths? What clues can be found in the histories of the Federal Republic in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic in East Germany since 1949 that may indicate the possibilities for change in the future? How has the unification of East and West Germany affected Germany's role in Europe and the world?
 
 
Required Reading:
Mary Fulbrook,The Divided Nation
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Richard Bessel(ed.) Life in the Third Reich
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper
We will be working extensively with materials on this site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/
 
Assignments/Grading:
(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history.
(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.


Required Reading:
Mary Fulbrook,The Divided Nation
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Richard Bessel(ed.) Life in the Third Reich
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper
We will be working extensively with materials on this site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/


Assignments/Grading:
(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history.
(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.

Objects, “things” – whether mundane, everyday household items or great works of art and architecture patronized by merchants, religious leaders, or rulers – have had a profound impact on the course of history. Indeed, recently historians have begun to speak of a “material turn” within the field – a movement away from a purely text-based model of understanding the past. This model acknowledges that things can often reveal a more nuanced and rich picture of past lives, in particular, allowing us to understand how ordinary people lived. And yet, history is often still taught as though our only source of knowledge about the past comes through texts. This course will be a survey of the history of the medieval Middle East, from the period of Late Antiquity (in the seventh century) to the rise of early modern empires of the Safavids, Ottomans, and Mughals (in the seventeenth century), taught by a close examination of the meaning and significance of 100 objects. The objects will come from sources as diverse as archaeological investigations, museum collections, and European Church treasuries, but all of them will tell a vivid story about their time.

Students will learn basic skills of visual analysis and object analysis, and will gain an introduction to theories of seeing and interpreting works of art and architecture – essential skills in today’s increasingly visually-based information economy. At the end of the course, students will not only have a clear sense of the histories of the great medieval and early modern Islamic dynasties, but will also be able to use works of art and architecture, as well as everyday objects, as an effective tool of analysis.

Course description. This upper-division course mixes lecture, reading, writing, and discussion to explore the cultural movement known as the Italian Renaissance. Each semester the course has a different emphasis. This semester we focus on the Renaissance reception of classical moral philosophy.

Learning outcomes. This course aims to help you become more thoughtful analyst of continuity and change in such contentious fields as politics, gender, religion, and cultural values. By semester’s end, you will have read some of the most influential and controversial works from this period. You will be able to put them in historical context, to analyze them, and to explain why they remain compelling today.

Prerequisites.This course has no prerequisites and assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, but students are presumed to be capable of critical reflection upon both lectures and readings.

This course carries flags in both GLOBAL CULTURES and ETHICS.

Among our readings:

Boccaccio, Decameron (Norton), tr. Rebhorn

Machiavelli, Mandragola (Waveland), tr. Flumenhauft       

Castiglione, Book of the Courtier (Norton), tr. Rebhorn

Vasari, Lives of the Artists (Oxford), tr.  Bull

This course introduces students to the history of Latin America from the eve of the wars of independence to the present.  Major issues to be covered include the breakdown of Spanish and Portuguese Empires, the struggle to form independent nation-states, the re-integration of the region into the world economy, the emergence of national politics and mass culture, Cold War cycles of revolution and counter-revolution, the promise of democracy in the region, and implications of immigration from the region to the United States. In addition to highlighting the political history of the past two centuries, the course readings and lectures will examine the importance of ethnicity, race, class, nationality, and gender in understanding the changing characteristics of Latin American societies. A combination of primary sources and scholarly works will shed light on the historical development of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, and Argentina, among other countries.

Over the course of the semester, students will consider the following broad questions: how has Latin America come to be imagined as a particular kind of place? What elements went into forging the imagined national communities of the region? How have different ideas of “progress” and “modernization” been applied over time in Latin America and what impacts have they had in practice? Why have hierarchical social orders proved so durable in Latin America? What have been the motors of reform, revolution, and counter-revolution in the region? And finally, what how has the relationship between the United States and Latin America changed over time?

Through weekly discussions, essays, group work, and examinations, students will hone their talents for historical interpretation, including their critical thinking and writing skills. In addition, the course provides tools for understanding present-day problems in the Americas from a broader historical perspective.


The following texts are available from the UT Co-op.  They may also be consulted on reserve in Perry Castañeda library.

John Charles Chasteen & James Wood, Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations. Fourth edition. ISBN: 978-1-4422-1859-8

Hector Tobar, Deep Down Dark: The untold story of 33 Men buried in a Chilean Mine, and the miracle that set them free (Picador 2014)

i>clicker remote for in class discussions

Course Packet (TBD)

Grading:
Map quiz                                           5%
Overall Attendance and Participation in Friday Discussions 15%
Mid-Term                                           25%
Paper             30%  (25% paper; 5% prep for paper)
Final Exam    (During Exam Week)                                              25%

Perhaps no part of the world is more often associated with the term “revolution” than Latin America. From Haiti’s Toussaint L’ouverture and Cuba’s José Martí in the 18th and 19th centuries to Che Guevara and Hugo Chávez in the 20th and 21st centuries, Latin America’s modern history has long revolved around leaders and political movements promising transformational change. As a result, Latin America is often been depicted as a place of constant unrest and rebellion. But if we look deeper, we find histories that are filled with questions and complexity: people pursuing radical rupture but also gradual reform; movements demanding change on the streets but through the ballot box as well; political groups at times acting peacefully and in other moments with arms; mobilization for social and economic emancipation on the factory floor as well as in schools, churches, and the most intimate spaces of everyday domestic life. Should we classify all these events, people, and movements as “revolutionary”? If so, revolutions of what kind, through what means, toward what ends, and at what cost? Both historians and revolutionary have discussed and debated these questions, and they are the sorts of queries that we will take up together in this class.
 

Over the course of this semester, we will explore the topic of revolution in modern Latin America by tracing (and contextualizing) the many origins, consequences, and meanings of the term. Our primary attention will be on those conceptions of revolution that emerged in the 20th century, after the last colonial outposts of imperial Spain won formal independence. The course will conclude with an examination of Latin America’s “pink tide” governments at the end of the turn of the 21st century, many of which drew upon—and sought to learn from—earlier revolutionary experiments.

Selected Texts:
*Marc Becker. Twentieth-Century Latin American Revolutions. Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.
*Marian Schlotterbeck. Beyond the Vanguard: Everyday Revolutionaries in Allende’s Chile. University of California Press, 2018.
*Additional journal articles and book excerpts will be scanned and uploaded to Canvas. Students will be expected to download, print, read and take notes on these readings on their own. Each week’s readings must be brought to class.


Grading:
*Participation and Attendance: 10%
*Weekly Reading Responses: 10%
*Book Review Essay: 20%
*Final Paper Description and Annotated Bibliography: 10%
*First Draft of Final Paper: 10%
*In-Class Presentation: 10%

*Revised Final Draft of Final Paper (+1 page revisions memo): 30%

Students in this course will investigate why the Cuban Revolution of 1959 had an impact beyond its shores, essentially transforming both Inter-American and East-West relations. At the outset, students then will survey the history of Cuban-U.S. relations from the so-called Spanish American War to the Great Depression. We will next analyze the populist period in Cuba that ended up in the dictatorship of General Fulgencio Batista and how a middle-class rebellion forced him from power on January 1, 1959. Then we will take a long look at the process by which Fidel Castro consolidated political power, mobilized the popular classes for revolutionary reforms, and turned to an alliance with the Soviet Union. We pay special attention to the revolution's influence on social organization, gender relations, and education. The students must also understand the relationship between popular demands, political consolidation, and Cuba's external relations. Finally, the class will assess how the Cuban Revolution affected U.S.-Latin American relations and why Castro choose to support other revolutions in Latin America and Africa.

Texts:
Sebastian Balfour, Castro
Lois M. Smith, Sex and Revolution
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War



Student requirements and preparations for the course include reading four paperback books and two articles in a reading packet, viewing video documentaries, participating in class discussions, and attending lectures. In addition, each student will turn in a map assignment and a 5-page essay based on a book selected from the bibliography of our readings. 

One's final grade will consist of the following graded exercises:
-A map assignment worth 5 % of the final grade or 50 points.
-A mid-term exam worth 20 % of the final grade or 200 points.
-A written book essay worth 35 % of the final grade or 350 points.
-A final exam worth 40 % of the final grade or 400 points.

The accumulation of points at the end of the semester will determine the student's final grade: i.e., 900 points or more for an A, 800 or more for a B, and so forth.

This seminar focuses on the history of Catholicism in twentieth-century Mexico, often seen as Latin America’s most “Catholic” nation. Chronologically, the course runs approximately from the Revolution of 1910 to the constitutional reforms of the 1990s that restored the Church’s legal standing in Mexico. Conceptually, the seminar will explore both the political and institutional aspects of Catholicism; at the same time, however, we will stress that the Church is a diverse community of believers that is actively engaged in interpreting and transforming the social world on religious lines. Individual seminar topics will include Catholic responses to economic modernisation and the postrevolutionary persecutions of the 1920s and 1930s; the Church’s role both in underpinning and undermining the one-party (PRI) state of the post-1940 period; Catholicism’s contribution (via guadalupanismo) to the creation of a Mexican national identity; the role played by Liberation Theology in driving the neo-Zapatista revolt in the southern state of Chiapas; and Church responses to democratic reform and the onset of religious pluralism. As well as discussing secondary readings, students will analyse a number of significant primary documents in class and also complete a final project using primary documents.

Texts:
Class reader
Matthew Butler, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1927-1929 (2004)
Jason Dormady, Primitive Revolution: Restorationist Religion and the Idea of the Mexican Revolution, 1940-1968 (2011)

Grading:
In-class participation (20%)
Reading reviews (x4 @ 10%) = 40%
Research for final paper (10%)
Final paper (30%)

Global Environmental History explores how human societies and natural environments have shaped each other in world history. This semester, we will focus on the theme of climate change. The planet is currently warming at a rate unprecedented in human history, yet historial perspectives can help us face this present-day problem. This course will examine how a variety of human cultures have understood and responded to changing climates in the recent and deep past. By exploring topics from the “Little Ice Age” to melting Andean glaciers, we will consider how both natural and anthropogenic climate variability has historically shaped migration, colonialism, war, technology, perceptions of nature, and cultural values. We will also analyze how historical shifts in practices of land use, industrialization, and capitalism have led to global warming. Finally, we will trace how researchers have pieced together our contemporary understanding of climate science and how politics and culture have shaped societies’ responses.

This course is an upper-division, reading- and writing-intensive seminar. It acts as an introduction to the growing field of environmental history, as well as to a variety of approaches to understanding history at a scale beyond the nation-state. It carries Independent Inquiry, Global Cultures, and Writing Flag designations.

Readings may include books, or selections, such as the following:
Carey, Mark. In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Degroot, Dagomar. The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Fagan, Brian. The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. Basic Books, 2005.
Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. Verso Books, 2016.
Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury press, 2011.
Robin, Libby, Sverker Sörlin, and Paul Warde. The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change. Yale University Press, 2013.
White, Sam. The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Weart, Spencer R. The Discovery of Global Warming. Harvard University Press, 2008.
Zilberstein, Anya. A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Grades will be based on a research project (60% total), several short reflection essays (20%), and participation, which includes signing up and leading class discussion at least once in the semester (20%).

How do societies understand illness, and how do they restore good health? In this course, we explore how communities have confronted disease throughout Africa’s history. During the first six weeks, we read about the changing role of specialist healers since the 1700s, including shamans, malams, nurses, and drug peddlers. The second half of the course turns to the history of specific health concerns and diseases including coronavirus, ebola, malaria, reproductive health, and AIDS through regional case studies. Particular emphasis is placed on pre-colonial healing, medical education, colonial therapeutics, and the impact of environmental change.

This course offers participants a nuanced, historical perspective on the current health crisis in Africa. Staggering figures place the burden of global disease in Africa; not only AIDS and malaria, but also pneumonia, diarrhea and mental illness significantly affect the lives of everyday people. Studying the history of illness and healing in African societies provides a framework with which to interpret the social, political, and environmental factors shaping international health today.

Material culture is a term borrowed by a number of disciplines from archaeology that refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool; from architectural monuments to hedge rows—that are studied by historians in the hope of revealing their use as overlooked evidence of past lives that reach beyond the written text.

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution. We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas. We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of both the artisans (makers) and their societies (consumers).


Text:
Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.


Grading:
2 page book review due weekly; 50%
Final 5 page project; 20%
Class Participation; 30%

Within the construct of African American Business history, race, contemporary American popular culture and global capitalism, this course will focus on an important aspect in the contemporary political economy of black Americans. Specifically, the commodification (sale) of black culture provides the conceptual frame for an examination of the phenomenon of both the superstar black athlete as an entrepreneur and the Hip Hop Superstar as an entrepreneur in post-Civil Rights America. The emphasis in this course, then, is to critically examine and analyze the impact of a multiplicity of societal, cultural and economic factors in the post-modern information age, propelled by new technologies in the New Economy of Global Capitalism. Also, consideration will be given to the new diversity as it impacts on the political economy of African Americans..  In addition, given the recent (Spring 2020) highly negative impact of the virulent Corona Virus, COVID-19 pandemic on the African American community, are there similarities/parallels between the factors contributing to the resulting socio-economic impact and conditions of free blacks, both as workers and entrepreneurs since 1865, with those of 21st century African Americans, also as workers and entrepreneurs, with both historical generations  contending with the persistent racial iniquities of capitalism?                                                                                                                                         

Proceeding from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course considers both the financial successes of superstar black athletes and hip hop entrepreneurs as well as their emergence as cultural icons, contrasted with the comparatively overall poor performance of Black Business not only within the intersection of race, gender, class, but also within the context of transnationalism in the globalization sale of African American Culture in post-Civil Rights America. But who profits? Most important, why is it that business receipts for African Americans, who comprise almost thirteen percent of this nation's population, amounted in 2007 to only .5%, that is, less than one (1) percent of the nation's total business receipts? In addition, why is it that among the various occupational categories in which blacks participate in the nation's economy, especially as businesspeople, that black entertainers and sports figures are the highest paid? What does this say about race, class, gender and hegemonic masculinities in America at the turn of the new century?

REQUIRED BOOKS
Eldridge, Lewis, Capitalism:  The New Segregation
Lewis, Reginald, Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun:  How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire
Marable, Manning, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems Race, Political Economy, and  Society  
O’Malley, Zach,  Empire State of Mind: How Jay Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office,
Peebles, R. Donahue, The Peebles Principles: Tales and Tactics from an Entrepreneur's Life Winning Deals Succeeding in Business, and Creating a Fortune from Scratch
Smith-Shomade, Beretta,   Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black Entertainment Television
Stoute, Steve, Tanning of America:  How Hip Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote Rules of a New Economy
Walker, Juliet E. K. History Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship [1998 edition] 


Critical Book Review Analysis       10% 
Oral Summary of Research Paper  5%
Class Discussion/Participation      20% 
Take-home Mid-Term Exam          25% 
 Seminar Research Paper (15 pp)  40%

This course is intended to do three things: provide a brief introduction to Islam for those unfamiliar with the religion and its early history; define the role of Islam and early American views of Muslims in the founding history of this country; and introduce students to major issues concerning contemporary American Muslims. The course surveys the presence of Islam in the United States from the colonial era to the twenty-first century through the use of historical documents and contemporary media, with a special focus on the politics of religion and race.  
The course is divided into three sections. The first explores the origins of Islam through primary textual examples. The second section focuses on early American views of Islam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with an emphasis on the earliest Muslims in the United States. The final section of the course analyzes the diversity of the contemporary American Muslim population, together with the politics surrounding notions of race, gender, immigration, and citizenship. Special emphasis placed on the challenges faced by young American Muslims in the twenty-first century. The course interrogates the question of whether one can be both American and Muslim in the 21st-century U.S
Objectives and Academic Flags
This course may be used to fulfill three hours of the U.S. history component of the university core curriculum. The course carries 3 University-approved “Flags”: Cultural Diversity (CD), Independent Inquiry (II), and Writing (WR). The aim of courses with a CD flag is to “increase your familiarity with the variety and richness of American cultural experience as it applies to marginalized communities, their history, beliefs, and practices.” The course is designated also as a Writing Flag, which features assignments designed to improve written communication. The Independent Inquiry Flag focuses on communication skills, critical thinking skills, personal responsibility, and social responsibility.   

Required Readings include:
Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel To Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America (2008). Jonathan Brown, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction (2011)
Edward E. Curtis, IV, Muslims in America: A Short History (2009)
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America (2010)
Shabana Mir, Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity (2014).
 Other reading selections posted on Canvas.


Attendance Required: Class participation -unexcused absences result in deduction of points from the final grade.
Quiz 10%
First Essay 20%
Second Essay 20%
Biography final version 20%
Oral presentation 10%
Final Essay 20%

This course examines Mexico’s Revolution through both its armed and post-revolutionary phases, from 1910-1940. During the semester we will focus on several key questions. What kind of revolution was the Mexican Revolution: an agrarian, political, social, cultural, or even mythical process? What caused and drove it? What did ordinary people think about the revolution and how far did they shape its course or simply suffer its consequences? Did “many Mexicos” just produce many revolutions, or can a broad narrative be discerned? What were the main contours of the post-revolutionary regime, and how different were they to those of the old regime? The course will consist of lectures, group discussions of set readings, primary documents, and folk songs (corridos), and occasional viewings of theater films made during (or about) the revolution. By the end of the course you will have a broad theoretical sense of what constitutes a social revolution and a detailed knowledge of Mexico’s revolutionary history that will help you to make up your own mind about the $64K questions: did twentieth-century Mexico truly experience a revolution? If so, how “revolutionary” was it?

Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution 
 
Gilbert Joseph and Jurgen Buchenau, Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution
Martín Luis Guzmán, In the Shadow of the Strongman
Luis González y González, San José de Gracia: Mexican Village in Transition 
Stephen E. Lewis and Mary Kay Vaughan, The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940 
John Womack Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution

Map quiz, 5%
Reading papers, 60%
Final paper, 35%

A lecture and discussion course dealing with the history of the development of the American constitutional tradition from colonial times to the present.  Particular attention will be paid to the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, the rise of the Supreme Court and the doctrines of judicial review and judicial supremacy, and the expansion of the meaning of liberty in twentieth century applications of the Fourteenth Amendment to civil rights, civil liberties and other modern constitutional issues.  The course will always keep a sharp focus on the historical context in which these questions arose.

Texts/Readings

Most readings will be in primary materials, especially opinions of the U. S. Supreme Court from Marbury v. Madison to recent decisions.

Examinations and Grading

Two midterm examinations, each worth 25% of the course grade, and a final examination worth 50% of the course grade.  Exams will be essay format.

Prerequisites

Upper-division standing required.

Partially fulfills the legislative requirement for American history.

PURPOSE OF COURSE
This upper division course examines the history of African Americans in the United States from the West African Heritage to the Civil War and provides a critical examination on central issues under scholarly debate in the reconstruction of the Black experience in America. The course thus engages the debate on the evolution of African-American slavery as a social, economic and political institution, with special focus on antebellum slavery, including plantation slavery, industrial slavery, and urban slavery in addition to slave culture.
Also, the course assesses the institutional development of the free black community, during the age of slavery, with emphasis on free black protest activities, organizations, and leaders. Equally important, information is provided on the business and entrepreneurial activities of both slave and free blacks before the Civil War to underscore the long historic tradition of black economic self-help. Invariably, those slaves who purchased their freedom were slaves involved in various business enterprises. Also emphasized in the course are the various ways in which slave and free black women responded to slavery and racism before the Civil War, giving consideration to gender issues within the intersection of the dynamics of race, class, and sex.
The course format is primarily lecture, with informal class discussion, utilizing in part the Socratic method of teaching/pedagogy (especially useful for students who are pre-law), as we examine topics that broaden historical consciousness and critical thinking skills, such as: the role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade; the historical forces that contributed to the origin of racism in Colonial America; the anomaly of black plantation slave owners in a race-based slave society; how white economic disparities and hegemonic masculinities were played out in class subordination and racial oppression; why race takes precedence over class in assessing the black historical experience; the extent to which judicial cases provide a pragmatic assessment of the realities of slave life; the extent to which American law supported the racial subordination of slave and free blacks; whether or not the economic and political imperatives that prompted antebellum African American settlement in West Africa can be considered colonialist in design and intent.
These and other questions will bring to the forefront the central issue of the agency of African Americans in their attempts to survive racism and slavery in attempts forge their own political and economic liberation. This course, consequently, emphasizes both the deconstruction of prevailing assessments and interpretations of the African American experience as well as provides information for a new reconstruction of the Black Experience from slavery to freedom. In each instance, emphasis will be on exploring different historical interpretations of the Black Experience.
African American slaves did not lead a monolithic slave experience. They shared life-time, hereditary, involuntary servitude, racial oppression and subordination. But many manipulated the institution and slave codes in attempts to mitigate that oppression. Others, such as Nat Turner and Dred Scott used other means to bring about an end to their servitude, while free blacks also fought to end slavery as well as improve their economic, societal and legal status.   Yet, given the recent (Spring 2020) highly negative economic impact of the virulent Corona Virus on the African American community, are there similarities/parallels between the resulting socio-economic impact and conditions of slaves and free blacks, both workers and entrepreneurs (1619-1865), with those of 21st century African Americans, also both the workers and entrepreneurs, in contending with the racial iniquities of capitalism?
The primary purposes of this course, then, are 1) to develop an understanding of the nature of historical inquiry; 2). to heighten historical consciousness 3), encourage critical thinking and analysis of historical material; and. 4) to recognizing the difference between what might have happened and what actually happened to blacks, both slave and free blacks during the age of slavery to the Civil War.

REQUIRED BOOKS
Franklin, John Hope and Higginbotham, E. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans
Holt, Thomas, Barkely-Brown, E. and Patterson, T.   Major Problems in African American History, Vol 1
Horton, James, Horton, L., In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, Protest among Northern Free Blacks,
                         1700-1860 
Owens, Leslie, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South
Walker, Juliet E. K., The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship, Vol 1,  
Washington, Harriet A., Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black
             Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.

EXAM I (take-home )                                      30%
RESEARCH PAPER                                            30%
EXAM 2                                                             30%
CLASS PARTICIPATION                                       5-10%
EXTRA CREDIT Museum Visit Report          5%
Extra Credit Movie/Book Report                  5%

This course will introduce students to the historical development over the past five centuries of one of the most important and enigmatic countries of Latin America.  In the 1920s, Argentina boasted of having the fifth largest economy in the world, on a par with that of France.  Yet, in 2001, the economy plunged into the worst depression of its entire history, impoverishing half of all Argentineans and tumbling many into malnutrition.  
    Why has Argentina gone from rags to riches and back to rags again?  This question will guide our readings, discussions, and papers throughout the semester.  Professor and students will search for explanations in this country’s legacy of social discrimination, inequitable distribution of income, snobbishness, political instability, and impunity.  
This course will especially explore the national crisis that Argentineans endured beginning with the 1955 coup d’état that sent Juan Domingo Perón into exile through to the last military government. Forty-four years ago, the generals began a campaign of state terror that took the lives of up to 30,000 citizens.
The capstone of this course consists of an individual research project each student undertakes in recent Argentinean history.



Jonathan C. Brown, A Brief History of Argentina, 2nd ed

Description: This seminar is designed as a reading course in history, literature, and politics, and as a class in professional writing. In addition to the required reading listed below, each student draws up an individual reading list in consultation with the professor. The scope of the seminar includes not only the literature, history, and politics of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland but also the interaction of British and other societies throughout the world. One point of emphasis will be the history of the British Empire and Commonwealth in its Asian and African as well as early American dimensions. Another point will be a focus on historical and literary biography—and autobiography—for example, not only Disraeli, Virginia Woolf, T. E. Lawrence, and George Orwell but also Gandhi. The main requirements of the course are met by students reading a book or its equivalent each week and by submitting a weekly critique of the reading. Each of the weekly essays is circulated to all other members of the class who make annotations on style as well as substance. The class thus becomes as much a course in professional writing as one in which individual academic interests are pursued. The class also meets together with the British Studies faculty seminar at three o’clock Friday afternoons. This is a requirement of the course. The seminar upholds the principles of the Modern History Faculty at Oxford—to enhance (1) intellectual curiosity; (2) conceptual clarity; (3) flexibility, that is, the capacity to engage with alternative perspectives and new information; (4) accuracy and attention to detail; (5) critical engagement; (6) capacity for hard work; (7) enthusiasm for history, literature, and politics; and (8) historical imagination and understanding, that is the ability to speculate and compare, alongside the possession of appropriate historical knowledge and the capacity to deploy it.

Texts: The following books are required -- plus other books (one a week) to be decided upon in consultation with the instructor: Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians; Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf; Norman Davies, The Isles Course

Requirements: Grades are determined by attendance and participation in discussion (25%) and the quality of the weekly critiques (75%). The class also meets together with the British Studies faculty seminar at three o’clock Friday afternoons. This is a requirement of the course.

This course introduces major themes in the history of medicine through the lens of disease. It focuses on two questions: How have people defined well-being? How have they responded to illness? The course considers major diseases to understand their multiple meanings across time and space including: AIDS, Chagas Disease, Cholera, Coronavirus, Ebola, Influenza, Malaria, Plague, PTSD and Sleeping Sickness. Themes to be considered include changing theories of disease causality, the development of international public health policy, social understandings of the body, and the growth of the pharmaceutical industry. The course emphasizes the roles governments, medical practitioners, and patients play in the social construction of disease and health. Case studies from India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States will be analyzed through readings, lectures and films.

In a self-proclaimed “nation of immigrants” such as the United States, our narratives of migration, race, and ethnicity emphasize themes of acculturation and assimilation symbolized by the metaphor of the “melting pot.”  In this class, we will explore experiences of migration, adaptation, and settlement from the perspective of an emigrant society--China--which has one of the longest and most diverse histories of sending merchants, workers, artisans, diplomats, missionaries, students, sailors, and scientists, overseas to work, manage trade, and foster a multitude of other kinds of connections.  Over the last millennia, Chinese have migrated around the world and made homes under a great range of adversity and opportunity, producing diverse experiences with racial and ethnic differences, adaptations, and the forging of hybrid identities.  For their independent research projects, students will select a Chinese overseas community to investigate for primary sources to explore some of the following topics:  As ethnic Chinese have moved and settled in so many places among such diverse societies, what is Chinese about the Chinese diaspora? What kinds of skills and attributes have helped Chinese to become arguably one of the most successful migrant groups? What do Chinese share in common with other migrant groups? What are varieties of national policies toward multiculturalism, immigration, and citizenship?  How do Chinese adapt their identities and cultures under different circumstances?  What can Chinese experiences of migration contribute to contemporary debates and perceptions of migrants and different kinds of migration?

Required Texts
The Essential Guide to Writing History Essays, Katherine Pickering Antonova (OUP 2020)
Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and Southern China, 1882-1943 (Stanford 2000)
Vivian Louie, Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity among Chinese Americans (Stanford 2004)
Stephen Miles, Chinese Diasporas:  A Social History of Global Migration (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Wang Gungwu, The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (Harvard 2000)

Assignments and Grade Distribution:
20% Class participation and attendance
5% Research proposal
15% Annotated bibliography of secondary literature
10% Discussion of primary sources available through UT libraries
10% 15-minute presentation of research
40% 15-page page research report, draft presented in final week of classes
 

“Terrorism & Military Occupation in American History” is the capstone course for history majors. As with other HIS 378W seminars, the primary course goal is to demonstrate mastery of the essential skills of the discipline of History: a critical evaluation of primary sources, active engagement with secondary sources, and the articulation of a cogent argument that is situated within the existing scholarship. In addition to small class discussions, research journal entries, and other assignments, students will engage in a substantial independent research project, conducted in stages,  that culminates in the production of a 15-20 page paper.

The broad subject matter of this capstone course will be to understand how the United States has thought about terrorism (or related terms) throughout its history, and to explore how the US government has responded to terrorism with both non-violent and violent tools (with a focus on military occupations). Potential research topics might explore a specific U.S. effort in the Global War on Terror, or earlier military occupations that resulted in a violent backlash, such as Reconstruction in the American South, or the 20^th Century occupations of the Philippines, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, among others. Students will also have opportunity to explore related issues, such as the ways terrorism and occupation have been framed in popular culture or affected specific American communities.

This course carries the Independent Inquiry flag. Independent Inquiry courses are designed to engage you in the process of inquiry over the course of a semester, providing you with the opportunity for independent investigation of a question, problem, or project related to your major. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from the independent investigation and presentation of your own work.

This course also carries the Writing Flag. Writing Flag courses are designed to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline. In this class, you can expect to write regularly during the semester, complete substantial writing projects, and receive feedback from your instructor to help you improve your writing. You will also have the opportunity to revise one or more assignments, and you may be asked to read and discuss your peers’ work. A substantial portion of your grade will therefore come from your written work.

This seminar will introduce students to the historiography and methods of two fields: the history of science and environmental history. Both historical subfields center on nature, yet the core questions of each field are distinct. Environmental historians seek to understand the dynamic relationship between humans and nature over time. Historians of science are concerned with the production of knowledge about the natural world. This seemingly subtle difference in orientation creates profound theoretical and methodological tensions. Environmental historians draw on science in order to reconstruct environmental change and nature’s active role in human history. In contrast, historians of science take a more critical stance toward science––for them, science is the object of explanation rather than a methodological tool. By interrogating the tensions and intersections of these two fields, we can hone our historical thinking. How should scholars understand non-humans as actors or agents in human history? What position should the natural sciences hold in historical argumentation and narrative? Why does a historian’s stance toward matter matter?

This course will be an exploration of interdisciplinary historical approaches to materialism and the construction of knowledge. It will not focus narrowly on the history of the environmental sciences, although this topic will be addressed in multiple ways. Throughout the course, we will ground ourselves in a selection of foundational texts from each field, while also exploring a wide range of new scholarship that inhabits the growing borderlands between them.

Grading:
Class presentations (10%), book review essays (20%), participation (30%), historiographic essays (40%)

This course will include learning to evaluate the nature of DH artifacts, projects, and scholarship through project-based exercises in creating and interpreting DH resources, and a close (and critical) look at the infrastructural, institutional, and political issues involved in creating, analyzing, disseminating, and preserving digital resources. As we look at the concepts, methods, and theories of DH through the perspective of practice, we will not only consider how computational methods are being used to further humanities research and teaching but how the humanities can deepen our understanding of computational methods and infrastructures.

Yoav Di-Capua and Benjamin Brower

Graduate Seminar in History

This seminar will examine the problem of political violence across the Mediterranean world in the last 150 years.  The violence of political upheavals transformed states and societies around the Mediterranean in the modern era.  Colonization and decolonization both were typified by extreme violence, including assassinations, mass killings, torture, and the “uncivil wars” that claimed an untold number of non-combatant lives. The post-colonial period also witnessed costly wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions, leading to tropes that figure the Mediterranean as a theater of “fire and blood.” We will critically interrogate this history of violence from 19th century colonialism to political Islam of the last 50 years.  Readings come from both at the accounts of historians and other scholars as well as the political theories and original documents that influenced how actors at the time understood the relationship between violence and political power.

Primary Source Readings

• Emir Abd al-Qadir, “On the Minor and Major Combat,” Mawqif 73 (ca. 1870)
• Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (1908)
• Lenin’s Notes on Clausewitz (1915)
• Walter Benjamin “Critique of Violence” (1921)
• Antonio Gramsci, “Political Struggle and Military War,” from Prison Notebooks (ca. 1930s)
• Benito Mussolini, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions (1935)
• Franz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• Qutb, Signposts (1964)
• Hannah Arendt, On Violence (1970)
• Shock and Awe doctrine

Secondary Source Readings

• Alessandro Orsini, Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-Set of Modern Terrorists
• Achille Mbembe On the Postcolony
• Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam
• Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing
• Faisal Devji, Terrorist in Search of Humanity

Assignments:

• Lead seminar discussion: working with a partner, you will lead two discussions sessions. You should be prepared to field questions concerning the author’s biography and reception of the book, as well as the book’s sources, method, principle argument, as well as its contribution to the field and significance to the seminar’s work. 
• Book review: This review should be around 1,000 words long and should provide both an accurate summary of the book’s argument and sources and critically evaluate its achievements.  (See full description of assignment on Canvas).
• Final paper: in this paper, you will be provided the opportunity to pursue a topic of your own choice (such as a possible dissertation project) which you will read and develop through the perspectives offered by the seminar readings. We will take time during the semester to workshop possible topics and critically evaluate your proposals.
• Presentation: in our final meeting, you will informally present your final paper to the seminar in a short (15 mins) communication.

This course will examine how leaders formulate a coherent and effective strategy for policy-making in a complex and unpredictable global environment. Readings and discussions will focus on planning, organization, persuasion, and adaptation to changing international pressures. The course will focus on case-studies in leadership, as well as broader studies of global change in the modern world. Students should gain a greater appreciation for what it means to be an effective strategist, policy-maker, and agenda-setter. They should also acquire a certain humility about the difficulties involved with fulfilling these often inhuman tasks.

Description: This graduate seminar will examine the history and historiography of the Stalinist period. Much of the course will focus on the interaction between the party-state and society: both how government policies affected people's daily lives and how social and economic realities, as well as popular resistance, shaped and constrained state policy. We will also focus on the brutal war on the Eastern Front, including its origins and legacy.

Books:
Khlevniuk, Oleg. Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics.

Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant

Resistance.

Cameron, Sarah. The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence and the Making of Modern Kazakhstan.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village 

after Collectivization.
Viola, Lynne. The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Special Settlements.
Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. 

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. 

Hellbeck, Jochen. Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin.
Getty, J. Arch. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the 

Bolsheviks, 1932-1939.

Khlevniuk, Oleg. The History of the Gulag from Collectivization to the Great Terror.

Viola, Lynne. Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine.

Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 

1923-1939.

Written Work/Grading: On alternate weeks you will be required to write book reviews of the readings, two pages in length each, or four questions and a peer review.  The final grade will be based on class participation (50%) as well as on the written work (50%).

This class will cover five different aspects of what is commonly called "digital humanities": data visualization (dataviz), descriptive statistics, text mining, web scraping, and mapping (GIS). Dataviz is the craft of depicting quantitative and qualitative data on the page or screen. In descriptive statistics, we will survey the basics of correlation and regression (or OLS). Text mining is the practice of finding and describing patterns and trends in corpora, collections of texts. Web scraping is a technique use to extract large amounts of data from websites. Finally, we will survey the creation of digital maps and basic spatial statistics.

We will examine both theoretical questions, such as how digital methods can change humanistic inquiry, and technical questions of data management processing. The course will focus on the computer language R and the RStudio interface.

You do not need any special background in mathematics or computer science, just curiosity and a lack of “math anxiety.” If you have a strong math, stats, or coding background, you will learn to apply those skills to real world data. If not, this is a great introduction to data science.

This course examines the history of Latin America's largest and most populous nation, shedding light on Brazil's political history, economic development, and cultural formation. The course looks at principal topics in postcolonial Brazilian history: Independence and Empire, slavery and post-emancipation society; formation of racial, class, and gender identities;  urbanization and industrialization; foreign relations; frontier expansion; and bureaucratic-authoritarianism.  We begin with the fundamental premise that nation-states are sociocultural constructions whose inclusiveness, legitimacy, and viability vary from one historical moment to another.  The challenges to nation-building that confronted Brazil--with its oligarchic, patriarchal, and slavocratic heritage, economic "underdevelopment," multiethnic population, and pronounced regionalism--are the matters to be interrogated through the readings.
In this readings course we will focus closely on questions of argumentation, evidence, and historiography.

Over the course of the semester, students will write eleven book reviews (2-3 pp. each). The essay should highlight the factual, methodological, and historiographical contributions of the text.    The final paper  (8 pp.) will consist of a comparative/historiographical essay that examines at least four texts to analyze divergences or overlaps in the treatment of a given historical theme..

(Reading/Research)
The goal of this course is for students to write either a major historiographical essay or a publishable research paper. While the seminar will focus on the colonial era, students may write essays on any period. During the first weeks, the seminar will discuss strategies to analyze archival indices, the organization of research materials and analysis of colonial documents. The class will read the article index of the Hispanic American Historical Review from 1918 to the present and discuss historiographical changes in methodologies, research sources and topics.  Each student will write a competitive research proposal on his or her chosen paper topic, which the seminar will evaluate. During the middle weeks of the seminar students will meet one-on-one with the professor to discuss progress in research and writing. In the final week each student will report on the status of his or her paper.


Students should attend every class, participate in assignments and discussion, and keep assigned meetings with the professor. The professor may lessen the final course grade if such requirements are not met. Normally, the grade assigned the research paper will be the final grade. Reading knowledge of Spanish is required

This course will consist of two equal components, a research/writing workshop, and a reading seminar. Throughout the semester, approximately half of each course session will be spent on each of these two aspects of the course. By “workshopping” their research projects, students will learn how to carry out the different stages of a research project. 1) the evidentiary stage-collecting, processing and analyzing primary evidence, 2) conceptually formulating the project-culminating in a detailed prospectus, 3) presenting their research in a conference-style presentation, 4) writing the actual research paper, and 5) discussing, commenting on, and editing each other’s work in the stages listed above. The second component of the course will consist of reading and discussing scholarship on crime and criminals, as well as police and law enforcement across the Middle East. Students will learn how crime and law enforcement have evolved over the past few centuries in the Modern Middle East.

Requirements: Weekly reading assignments, substantial classroom discussions and presentations, a short analytical paper on the readings, a graduate level research paper, a prospectus for this research paper, and comments on each other’s work.

Migration is one of the most widespread of human experiences yet generates tremendous conflicts and contradictions in constructions of identities, communities, and inequalities of power.  Perhaps the chief systems of differentiation troubled by migration are those of racial categorizations and nation-state formations. This reading seminar guides graduate students to develop a vocabulary and conceptual understanding for migration studies and its interventions into nation-based conceptual frameworks through transnational, diasporic, critical race, and ethnic studies projects.
 
This course fulfills the core course requirement for the portfolio in Asian American Studies with completion of the syllabus assignment.


Texts:
Excerpts from Aihwa Ong, Melissa Brown, Mae Ngai, Adam McKeown, Philip Kuhn, Wang Gungwu, Renato Rosaldo, Glick-Schiller et al, Arjun Appadurai, Roger Rouse,
Natalia Molina, How Race is Made in America (UC 2014)
Madeline Hsu, The Good Immigrants (Princeton 2015)
Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires (Oxford 2001)
Vivek Bald, Bengali Harlem (Harvard 2013)
Lisa Lowe, Intimacies of Four Continents (Duke 2015)
Elaine Lynn-ee Ho, Citizens in Motion: Emigration, Immigration, and Re-migration Across China's Borders (Stanford 2018)


25 % Class participation and attendance


10 % Conducting class discussion


30 % Two 750-word book reviews


35 % Annotated bibliography or syllabus for “Introduction to Asian American History” course

Course Description:

Think of a borders approach to the past as a tool that can open up new ways of understanding the past.  This tool helps you see connections between people and places, and it helps you envision the networks that both bind together and separate groups.  It is simply a beginning point in understanding and a way to ask new questions and evaluate evidence.

One example of this approach is to examine how linguistic and cultural traits persist over time and how they change to fit new circumstances.  You might ask, for example, why the Comanche changed and did not change as they marketed more buffalo hides to European descent people.  The answer might lead you to examining changes in how they treated captives or the evolving role of women.  A borders approach is a window to the past that leads in many exciting directions.

This course focuses on two types of borders–borders between places and borders between groups.  Another way to phrase this is to say physical borders such as lines on the map and cultural borders such as religious differences or differences in myths and memories. It assumes that borders divided, united, and helped define both places and groups. It also assumes that borders were fluid, constructed, and reconstructed. 

The core area of the course includes places today called Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Northern Mexico, but the flow of goods, peoples, habits, cultures, and ideas to and from this core region includes movement north and south between the Southwest and Mexico, back and forth on the Atlantic, from and to the South, the Mid-continent, and the West of North America.

Thus the key groups included Indian peoples, Mexicans and Tejanos, Anglos, African Americans, and European ethnic groups such as German Texans or French Louisianans.  Groups and the borders between them also included such things as gender and class.  We will explore how each group helped define another, how, for example, white became not black.

This is a course then about borders between and within a region from roughly 1700 forward, and how those borders shaped and defined a region’s culture, economy, politics, and identity.  The goal is for all in the class to come to a working definition of this broader meaning and the impact of borders. It is a course meant to open up the historical imagination and equip you with a tool for research, writing, and thinking. Along the way it offers much about the history of the Southwest and its peoples.

HIS 394H - Introduction to Historical Inquiry
Fall 2020                               Yoav Di-Capua, Professor and Lina Del Castillo, Associate Professor

This course is designed to introduce all incoming history graduate students to a variety of theoretical, methodological, or historiographical approaches to the past.

Readings will represent a range of approaches: micro- and macro-, local and transnational, cultural, political, intellectual, and economic.

Grading:
Grades will be based on class participation and several short to medium writing assignments.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of the graduate adviser.

May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.