“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  This entry-level course aims to teach historical thinking as well as historical content, impart a basic grasp of the premodern past, and stimulate the development of large-scale frameworks for historical analysis.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%.

Introduction to Chinese Culture and Civilization

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:

• Jonathan A. C. Brown, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction
• Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (2nd edition, 2002 only)
• A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and th Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha bint Abi Bakr
• John Alden Williams, ed., The Word of Islam
• Xerox packet of documents and articles.

Grading:

4 exams @ 25% each = 100%.

This course is a survey of Jewish civilization from the origins of Ancient Israel to 1500 C.E. All materials are in English translation. The course will address both the history of Jews during this long period, and the most influential writings produced during that time. There will be some focus on the persons and writings that have been most influential for Jewish Civilization over time, including into the modern world. This course is the first half of a two-semester sequence, and another course taught regularly in Spring semester addresses Jewish Civilization from 1492 to the present.

The course will be organized according to an overarching thematic image of “Crisis and Response.” Jewish Civilization over the time period we study, from origins in the later part of the second millennium B.C.E., to the end of the 15th century C.E., encountered key crises including a memory of enslavement in its sacred sources, the need for sovereignty, the loss of sovereignty and a state of exile, and then continued existence only within larger empires for over two millennia. Responses to these crises were varied. In early legends, centuries of slavery were followed by liberation as The Exodus and the establishment of covenantal law (addressed in Unit 1). Later, the need for sovereignty brought the establishment of monarchy and centralized worship at a temple by the kings David and Solomon, and then a continuous period of sovereignty for over four centuries. This sovereignty ended in 587 B.C.E. and initiated the need for continued existence in exile as well as in Persian and Hellenistic polities (addressed in Unit 2). The first century C.E. brought a new crisis with the end of Temple worship due to Roman conquest, and then the most enduring and productive response for Jewish Civilization was the legal and other innovations of Classical Rabbinic Judaism (addressed in Unit 3). In the Middle Ages, the rise of Christian and Muslim empires brought new contexts for Jewish communities, but also new degrees of persecution, and these crises were intimately connected with responses in intellectual and religious life, including the development of philosophy and the mysticism of Kabbalah (addressed in Unit 4).

This class addresses the history of anti-colonial struggles in North Africa and the victory over European colonial powers.  These struggles gained momentum after World War II, leading to the independence of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya in the 1950s and 60s.  Coursework will seek to explain the various processes by which independence was achieved, looking at local circumstances as well as the larger regional (Africa, Middle East, and Europe) and global (Cold War, Third World, oil resources) contexts.  The course will also present the complex nature of the armed struggle: wars against the colonial powers unleashed a fury of conflicts, or wars within wars, some of which were not immediately tied to the colonial/anti-colonial struggle. Our study will conclude by highlighting the many successes of these revolutions as well as pointing to their problematic legacies, which serve as the backdrop to today’s revolutions and civil wars in the region.  Students will examine all these questions through sources that will include films, photographs, political propaganda texts, and memoires.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Students will learn the skills of critical analysis and interpretation, along with the empirical material associated with the time period itself, including primary sources. Skills will focus on the ability to grasp the complexity of historical debates and rethink received understandings and concepts in light of new evidence.  Coursework and evaluations will focus on students’ ability to marshal evidence to articulate coherent and sustained arguments in writing and verbally.  There are no pre-requisites beyond those generally associated with a course of this level.

REQUIRED TEXTS: 

Hamou Amirouche, Memoirs of a Mujahid, Algeria’s Struggle for Freedom, 1945-1962

Martin Evans, Algeria, France’s Undeclared War

Franz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism

Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized       

ASSIGNMENTS:

• Exams: There will be two exams. Both will consist of analytical ID’s and essays.  A list of potential ID’s and questions will be available beforehand to help prepare for the exams. You will be expected to respond with material from the readings and lectures.
• Writing Assignment: You will prepare a short essay based on a series of primary sources.

Grades:

Midterm                     25%               

Final Exam                25%

Essay                         25%

Participation              25%

This course provides a survey of the history of Latin America from the wars of independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century through the present. We will look at the process of nation building in the aftermath of independence, the rise of the Age of Liberalism in the late nineteenth century and the emergence of military and revolutionary movements in the twentieth century. The course will focus on such key themes as liberalism, racial and gender relations, populism, religion, communism, revolution and democracy. Alongside these key themes we will devote a significant portion of the semester examining Latin America’s relation with the world – especially with the United States – and how this relationship has shaped Latin American societies.

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%)

Course Description:

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.

AMS 310 is designed to provide an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, that is, the study of American history, culture, and politics. Though not a comprehensive U.S. history survey, this course will cover a broad time period, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and extending into the present day. Using a variety of sources and methods, this course takes as its focal point American attitudes regarding place, landscape, community, nature, and the physical environment as demonstrative of social values both historic and current, dominant and resistant. This course examines three major conceptual categories connecting the North American continent and the people who have inhabited it--landscape and the physical environment, people and place, and community and place-making--demonstrating great transformations in American society, culture, and everyday life, while also showing main currents and trajectories over time.

AMS 310 is designed to provide an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, that is, the study of American history, culture, and politics. Though not a comprehensive U.S. history survey, this course will cover a broad time period, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and extending into the present day. Using a variety of sources and methods, this course takes as its focal point American attitudes regarding place, landscape, community, nature, and the physical environment as demonstrative of social values both historic and current, dominant and resistant. This course examines three major conceptual categories connecting the North American continent and the people who have inhabited it--landscape and the physical environment, people and place, and community and place-making--demonstrating great transformations in American society, culture, and everyday life, while also showing main currents and trajectories over time.

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.

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:

1. Revel online text, with online chapter exams.

2. 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.

Survey of United States history from the colonial period through the Civil War.

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.
The two books required for the class are available for purchase at the University Co-op or online via Amazon, et. al.. One copy is also on three-hour reserve at the PCL.

Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Volume One, Fourth (Seagull) Edition, (Norton, 2013).

Robert Olwell, ed., The Presence of the Past: Documents in American History, 1492-1865, Second Edition, Kendall-Hunt, 2013).


Grading:

There will be a mid-term exam in this course and a final exam. The mid-term will address materials covered in the preceding half of the semester. The final will cover the materials from the last half of the course as well as ask students to answer a comprehensive essay drawing upon themes developed throughout. Each exam will also include a list of ten terms drawn from the lectures and readings and you will have to briefly identify and describe the significance of five of those terms. A make-up for the mid-term will be given the Friday of the week following the regularly scheduled exam. There will be no make-up for the final exam.

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 four 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), two geography quizzes; 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 and a map quiz on Canvas. Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Quiz 10%, Canvas Quiz 10%, Map Quiz 10%.

Lectures, readings, videos, maps, and photos are used to provide students with a survey of US history from Reconstruction to 2000. As such, students will study significant aspects of the nation's political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic history and will be challenged to understand the why, how, and so what of this history. Students begin with learning about what happened and then proceed to questions of causality and consequence. Moving from what happened to why or how, and then, to so what, students will sharpen their skills in critical thinking.

Texts:

• Selected articles or documents posted on Canvas.

• Eric Foner, Give Us Liberty, 2 Brief Fifth ed.
  
  • Voices of Freedom, 5th Edition, vol. 2, edited by Eric Foner
  
  • The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, by Bruce Schulman

Grading:

1st Midterm Exam, 30% course grade

2nd Midterm Exam, 30% course grade

Map quizzes10% course grad

Multiple Choice Final Exam, 30% course grade

Lectures, readings, videos, maps, and photos are used to provide students with a survey of US history from Reconstruction to 2000. As such, students will study significant aspects of the nation's political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic history and will be challenged to understand the why, how, and so what of this history. Students begin with learning about what happened and then proceed to questions of causality and consequence. Moving from what happened to why or how, and then, to so what, students will sharpen their skills in critical thinking.

Texts:

• Selected articles or documents posted on Canvas.

• Eric Foner, Give Us Liberty, 2 Brief Fifth ed.
  
  • Voices of Freedom, 5th Edition, vol. 2, edited by Eric Foner
  
  • The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, by Bruce Schulman

Grading:

1st Midterm Exam, 30% course grade

2nd Midterm Exam, 30% course grade

Map quizzes10% course grad

Multiple Choice Final Exam, 30% course grade

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 purpose of the course is to acquaint students with US history from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the 21st century, time permitting. The course follows discrete themes, breaking into five thematic sections arranged chronologically: the search for order in an age of transformation; the rise of the Regulatory State; the rise of Semi-Welfare State; the rise of the National Security State; and the triumph of conservatism. In the first third of the semester, we will focus on American society and politics and the economy at the grassroots. During the last two-thirds of the semester we will examine the most important development of the 20thand 21st centuries—the growth of federal power and authority at home and abroad.

Texts:

James W. Davidson, et. al., US: A Narrative History, Vol. II (8th edition)

William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (Bedford Books edition, edited by Terrence J. McDonald)

Richard Wright, Black Boy

Michael B. Stoff et al., eds., The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age

Grading:

1. There will be two one-hour examinations, each worth 25 percent of your semester grade, and one final examination, worth 45 percent of your semester grade. The examinations will be largely essay in format with a short objective section. The final exam may be given added weight in determining your course grade should you show steady improvement.

2. The date of the hour exams are subject to change depending on the amount of material we cover in each lecture. Any changes will be announced in advance.

3. No make-up examinations will be given. You may be excused from one of the hour examinations only if you have a certified medical excuse or an official university obligation.

4. There will be one short paper (1000 words) based on The Manhattan Project (see reading list). It is worth 30 percent of yourfinal examination grade. It will be due in class at the last class meeting.

5. No audio or video recorders are permitted in class.

6. All cell phones and Wi-Fi connections must be turned off in class.

7. You will be assigned a teaching assistant who will be responsible for grading your examinations and for helping you with any problems related to the course (see below for TA offices and office hours).

8. For those students with learning and other special needs, please contact Services For Students with Disabilities at <http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd/index.php> for assistance.

9. While the reading assignments are fixed and followed carefully, the list of lectures may change depending on the amount of material covered in each lecture.

10. This course will have a Supplemental Teaching Assistant who will run voluntary discussion sections. The room and meeting times will be announced in class.

11. Academic dishonesty is strictly prohibited and will be dealt with according to the rules of the university. For a careful explanation, see http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs/acint_student.php.

12. Attendance is mandatory and will be taken for every session beginning 10 minutes before class. Attendance will form 5 percentof the final grade. Entering class after the bell will be counted as 1?2 attendance for that session. If you are late, please sit in the back of the room and alert the Teaching Assistant to your presence after class. At random, three times during the semester attendance will also be taken at the end of class to avoid signing in and leaving.

This course partially fulfills the legislative requirement for American history.

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 on Nov. 5.  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 – Mar. 7. 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 course is largely designed to introduce students to the major themes, issues, and debates in African American history from its African origins until today. It serves as a general introduction to the historical literature by providing lower division undergraduate students with an overview of the African American experience through readings, lectures, film, and music. Some of the specific topics covered include African antecedents, colonial and antebellum slavery, the abolition movement, the free black experience, the Civil War, emancipation, Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, black culture, the modern freedom struggle, popular culture, political movements, and the contemporary experience. Ultimately, students should gain an understanding of how enslaved and free African Americans lived, worked, socialized, and defined themselves in American society. 

Course Objectives:
Students will have the opportunity to write essays and take multiple-choice and short answer exams in this course. Using this combination of testing strategies, one goal of the class is to facilitate students’ LEARNING of African American history rather than the memorization of relevant names, dates, and events. The professor recognizes the importance of knowing key figures and events; however, the primary objective is to help students develop a solid understanding of the political, social, economic, and personal lives of African Americans from their arrival through today. 

This course carries the flag for Cultural Diversity in the United States
Fikenbine, Ray ed. Sources of the African American Past: Primary Sources in American History (2nd Edition), 2003.

Texts:

Deborah Gray White, Mia Bay, and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Freedom On My Mind: A History of African Americans with Documents – Combined Volume

Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision 

All other readings available on CANVAS

Grading:

Class Participation/History “Labs” 15%

Midterm Exam 20%

Final Exam 25%

Primary Document Analyses (2)- 20%

Freedom Reflections (2) – 20%

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 Indian societies were structured, the different ways that indigenous peoples have responded to colonization and the complex history of European/Indian 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.

Possible readings to include:

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

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

3. Douglas C. Sackman, Wildmen: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2010).

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/Digital timeline assignment, 2¬4 reading quizzes, in-class participation, a book review, and a final examination.

Grading:

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.

Course Description and Objectives

The Black Power movement was a distinct period in African American life from the late 1960s and early 1970s that emphasized racial pride, the creation of black political and cultural institutions, self-reliance, and group unity. The expression of black power ideology ranged from the desire to create an all-black nation-state to the promotion of black economic power. This course will look at the major organizations, key figures, and ideologies of the black power movement. 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.

Course Content Disclaimer

In this course, students may be required to read text or view materials that they may consider offensive. Additionally, class discussions in this class can at times become intense. The ideas expressed in any given text or in class discussions do not necessarily reflect the views of the instructor, the History Department, or the University of Texas at Austin. Course materials and discussion topics are selected for their historical and/or cultural relevance, or as an example of stylistic and/or

This class will examine 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. The course aims; (1) to develop a base of African and US history and increase the level of awareness of the African Diaspora in the US; (2) to obtain a well-rounded approach to the political, economic, and cultural connections between the United States and Africa; (3) 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; (4) 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; and (5) 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.

This course focuses on the basic history of Texas from roughly 1810 to 1920.  Emphasis will be given to how and why Texas and Texans changed over time.  Among the goals and objectives are for all students to understand how and why Texas was and was not like the regions and countries on its borders, what caused change or the absence of change, and what influenced the particular path to the 20th century of all Texans.  I expect you to attend class, do the readings, and move beyond a simple mastery of factual information.  It is my hope that by the end of the semester you will think and act like an historian by engaging in the debate about the past and by using primary source material, the ideas and insights of trained professional historians, and your own critical thinking skills to place your understanding of the Texas past on a firm foundation.  The readings and assignments in this course are designed to help you achieve these objectives by building skills as well as knowledge, and you will be graded not only on your mastery of basic factual information but on your ability to effectively organize and utilize that information.

Thinking Like a Historian is a lower division seminar for History majors/potential majors/interested students of history. Students learn to read, write and think like historians, that is to understand history as an academic discipline in terms of research methods, evidence, and analysis. We use case studies about early modern Europe (France and London), Jefferson’s America and 19th-century Texas. Students read primary sources and examine how different historians have competing interpretations of particular topics.

Students will write three short papers, several very brief responses to readings, complete two group research projects and develop a research paper framework.  Students use on line 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.

Readings:

Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Harvard University Press, 1984)

Denise Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson’s Qu’ran: Islam and the Founders  (Vintage, 2013)

James E. Crisp, Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett’s Last Stand and Other Mysteries of

the Texas Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Plus articles available on line

Grading:

Three short papers 30% (10% each)

Two group projects 30% (15% each)

Research project framework 25%

Preparation and Engagement 15%

Students learn to read, write and think like historians, that is to understand different historical approaches to crucial questions about the past. Our case study will be World War I (1914-1918), a global conflict, and probably the most decisive event of the twentieth century. We will consider social, cultural, military, and geo-political history. We will study debates about the origins of the war; old and new perspectives on soldiers and the “great” battles; questions of humanitarianism, violence, and genocide; what the war meant for the “home front”; the war’s empire-shaking consequences; and the ambitions and failures of the peace. We will read secondary and primary sources including fiction and film. How (and why) do historians argue? What is in an archive, what can you do it with, and how? 

Students will write three short papers, several very brief responses to readings, complete two group research projects and develop a research paper framework.  Students use on line sources for the group projects and online or 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.

Texts:

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

Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences (2nd edition, 2009),

James Gleick, Isaac Newton,

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

plus additional readings 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).

This course explores a selection of episodes in the history of science and mathematics. It has four interlocking goals: to provide an overview of the history of science and math (for general education and to better comprehend subjects that you may eventually teach); to enable you to put these historical perspectives and context to work in pedagogy; to sharpen your independence of thought; and to improve your writing skills.

Students will design and prepare Two 5E Lesson Plans (each having a minimum length of 1200 words). Detailed instructions will be distributed separately. You will select the subject of these lesson plans from a variety of options. Once graded, you will incorporate corrections into your lesson plan, to electronically post the revised product, which will improve your grade. There will be several quizzes and writing assignments. All students will take a Midterm Exam, designed to test the extent to which you have followed, engaged, and learned from the topics discussed in class and in the readings. Furthermore, you will do a Presentation of one of your lesson plans to a group of peers. (You will also write Comments on other presentations.) Finally, all students will have to take a Final Exam.

NOTE: this course involves a weekly discussion session with the Teaching Assistant from the History Department. You are required to attend one such session per week, to carry out work for the course.

This is an upper-division history course. The assigned readings vary in length, and it's better to read thoughtfully rather than waste your time skimming and forgetting. Some of the readings will be from primary sources (such as writings by prominent scientists), other readings will be from secondary texts (such as by historians). You will also be required to do additional research and reading for the lesson plans; so keep this in mind when budgeting your time for this course. Classes will be conducted as a mixture of lecture and discussion. Accordingly, attendance and participation are important, as you can also see from the grading distributions below. Attendance will be taken daily, and will be used in evaluating your overall grade for class participation. You're welcome to speak up at any time.

Texts:

1. Martinez, Science Secrets: The Truth About Darwin's Finches, Einstein's Wife, and Other Myths (2011).
2. Martinez, The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (2012). Also, additional readings are available online, on Canvas.

Class participation 10% 

Quizzes and Assignments 16%

First Lesson Plan 16%

Midterm Exam 16% (in class)

Second Lesson Plan 16%

Presentation 10%

Final Exam 16% (in class)

This course explores a selection of episodes in the history of science and mathematics. It has four interlocking goals: to provide an overview of the history of science and math (for general education and to better comprehend subjects that you may eventually teach); to enable you to put these historical perspectives and context to work in pedagogy; to sharpen your independence of thought; and to improve your writing skills.

Students will design and prepare Two 5E Lesson Plans (each having a minimum length of 1200 words). Detailed instructions will be distributed separately. You will select the subject of these lesson plans from a variety of options. Once graded, you will incorporate corrections into your lesson plan, to electronically post the revised product, which will improve your grade. There will be several quizzes and writing assignments. All students will take a Midterm Exam, designed to test the extent to which you have followed, engaged, and learned from the topics discussed in class and in the readings. Furthermore, you will do a Presentation of one of your lesson plans to a group of peers. (You will also write Comments on other presentations.) Finally, all students will have to take a Final Exam.

NOTE: this course involves a weekly discussion session with the Teaching Assistant from the History Department. You are required to attend one such session per week, to carry out work for the course.

This is an upper-division history course. The assigned readings vary in length, and it's better to read thoughtfully rather than waste your time skimming and forgetting. Some of the readings will be from primary sources (such as writings by prominent scientists), other readings will be from secondary texts (such as by historians). You will also be required to do additional research and reading for the lesson plans; so keep this in mind when budgeting your time for this course. Classes will be conducted as a mixture of lecture and discussion. Accordingly, attendance and participation are important, as you can also see from the grading distributions below. Attendance will be taken daily, and will be used in evaluating your overall grade for class participation. You're welcome to speak up at any time.

Texts:

1. Martinez, Science Secrets: The Truth About Darwin's Finches, Einstein's Wife, and Other Myths (2011).
2. Martinez, The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (2012). Also, additional readings are available online, on Canvas.

Class participation 10% 

Quizzes and Assignments 16%

First Lesson Plan 16%

Midterm Exam 16% (in class)

Second Lesson Plan 16%

Presentation 10%

Final Exam 16% (in class)

This course explores the history of American foreign relations from the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. During this period, the United States established many of the patterns of thought and behavior that have characterized the nation in more recent times. Understanding these early years of America's relationship with the wider world can help us gain important insight into current dilemmas, debates, and controversies.

The course aims for both breadth and depth. Some lectures and readings are aimed at providing a broad view of the political and ideological currents that fed into the making of foreign policy. Other lectures and readings go into depth on particular topics - the American Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, the Texas Revolution, and especially the the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars that marked the emergence of the United States as a world power.

There are no prerequisites for the course, but students are expected to have a basic grasp of U.S. history from 1776 to 1914.

In less than a century Egypt experienced four radically different forms of political community, economic organization and public culture as it swiftly moved from Colonialism to Liberalism, Arab-Socialism and Authoritarian Capitalism. A fifth shift, Islamic Republicanism is pending. In each stage Egypt went through a complete reshuffling of the state structure and public culture. Each of these phases was experienced with great emotional intensity. The aim of this class is to critically examine the social, political and intellectual dynamics which shaped these experiences. What sort of expectations did Egyptians have in each phase, who came up with these revisionist ideas, and who put them to work and how?

Alaa Al Aswani, The Yacoubian Building (Cairo: AUC, 2004)
Latifa al-Zayyat, The Open Door (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000).
James Jankowski, Egypt: A Short History (Oxford: One World, 2000)
James Jankowski, Israel Gershoni, Egypt, Islam and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900-1930 (Oxford, 1986),
Selma Botman, “The Liberal Age, 1923-1952,” Cambridge History of Egypt, Vol. II,
Magda Baraka, The Egyptian Upper Class Between Revolutions, 1919-1952 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1998), pp. 141-209.
Michael Haag, Alexandria: City of Memory (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2004),
Hamied Ansari, Egypt: The Stalled Society (New York: SUNY, 1986  

Midterm (25%), Final (40%), two Written reports of two single spaced pages each (25%), Participation 10%  Periodical quizzes.

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.

This course examines Chinese economy, society, and politics during the reform era since the late 1970s in a historical context.  It covers the following topics: the transformation of China’s rural and urban economies and its social consequences; change and continuity in government systems, political ideologies, and popular values; and China’s integration into the global system and its impact on China’s role in world politics.  Using a comparative and historical perspective, this course aims to identify the characteristic “China model” of economic, social, and political changes and explore its implications for existing theories of development and globalization.

This class examines U.S. history from the perspective of Chinese who were the first targets of racially defined immigration restrictions. As such, Chinese have played key roles in the evolution of U.S. immigration restrictions, their enforcement, limits regarding citizenship; permanent residency, and the underlying racial ideologies and conceptions of national belonging.

This course offers an overview of the history of Chinese in America with an emphasis on Chinese American identity and community formations under the shadow of the Yellow Peril. Using primary documents and secondary literature, we will examine structures of work, family, immigration law, racism, class, and gender in order to understand the changing roles and perceptions of Chinese Americans in the United States from 1847 to the present.

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Texts:

Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (2004); Yung et al Chinese American Voices (2006); excerpts of other readings posted on Canvas.

Grading:

Midterms on lectures and assigned texts. Research paper on Chinese American history.

Contemporary Taiwan’s claims of an ethnic identity distinct from the Chinese mainland reference a history of multiple colonizations and migrations to and from the island.  This course will explore questions of ethnicity, empire, and modernization in East Asia from the sixteenth century to the present through encounters between aborigines, Han Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, the imperial Qing, Fujianese, Japanese, mainlander KMT, and the United States on Taiwan.

Shih-Shan Henry Tsai, Maritime Taiwan: Historical Encounters with the East and the West (M.E. Sharpe, 2009)

Texts:

Denny Roy, Taiwan: A Political History (2003);
Shih-shan Henry Tsai, Maritime Taiwan (2009)
Additional readings available on CANVAS

Grading:

Map quiz:  5%

Exam: 30% Short IDs and essay

Class participation and attendance: 15%

Writing assignments: 50% Three 5-6 page essays, with one rewrite required.

Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” I hope you will find the country somewhat less perplexing after studying the political, social, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military developments that shaped Russian history during the 20th century. We will devote particular attention to four milestones of Soviet history: the Russian Revolution; Stalin’s “Revolution from Above”; World War II; and the Collapse of the Soviet System. We will also focus on the Cold War, why attempts at reform failed under Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin, and the emergence of a dissident movement during the Brezhnev era. How state policies affected ordinary people will be examined throughout the course. You will gain an appreciation of the almost unimaginable suffering the Soviet people experienced. Many of the readings have been selected with an eye toward introducing you to primary documents and the major historiographic debates in Soviet history. We will also view film clips and documentary footage.

Textbooks:

John Thompson, Revolutionary Russia, 1917.

Martin Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides.

Richard Overy, Russia’s War.

Martin McCauley, The Khrushchev Era.

William Tompson, The Soviet Union under Brezhnev.

David Marples, The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991.

Course Packet: The Packet from Paradigm Books.

Grading: Three in-class examinations worth one-third each.

What were the crusades? Was a crusade an armed pilgrimage, holy war, or a war of conquest? What motivated those who fought and those supported these expeditions? What were the political, cultural, and religious developments that led to the crusades and what were their legacies both in Europe and in the eastern Mediterranean? This class explores these questions by examining both accounts of crusades written by medieval authors and modern historians' interpretations of these documents. In the process, we will investigate religious encounters between eastern and western Christians, Christian heretics, Jews, Muslims, and polytheists; political, military, and cultural changes of the high middle ages; and the ways that crusading ideas and symbols have been reused in contemporary politics and popular culture.

TEXTS:

• Susanna Throop, The Crusades, An Epitome (Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018)
• The Crusades:  A Reader  ed. S. J. Allen and Emilie Amt (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2014)
• Selected documents and articles in a reader.

GRADING:

Class attendance, preparation and reading worksheets, discussion, and in-class work: 30%

Research paper on a topic of a student's choice (15 pages): 70%

•  Library Assignment/ Annotated bibliography 5%
•  Source analysis 5%
•  Draft 20%
•  Oral presentation 10%
•  Peer Review of others 5%
•  Final draft 30%

This course investigates the political, military, constitutional, diplomatic, and social aspects of the American Civil War and Reconstruction.  The emphasis will be on the military and political facets of the war while also focusing on how the war resulted in the destruction of slavery.  The goal is to provide students with an understanding of the major events and leaders of the war and its aftermath.  The end of slavery will be examined with an eye toward the actions of the free African-Americans and slaves themselves in moving emancipation to the forefront of the debate about the war’s objectives.  The history of Reconstruction will be considered during the last several class sessions. 

The Grand Design: Strategy and the U. S. Civil War, by Donald Stoker

The Civil War, Library of America (4 vol.) (excerpts from these volumes will be assigned).

Reconstruction: A Concise History, by Allen C. Guelzo  

In addition to the final examination (which will be comprehensive), there will be two midterm exams.  Each of the midterms will count 25% of the course grade.  The final examination will count 40% of the course grade.  The exams will consist of short-answer and essay questions on the material from the classes and readings (including any handouts that may come your way from the instructor).  Quizzes and attendance will count for the final 10%.  

Description: The Indian Subcontinent can teach us a great deal about diversity in the cultures of the past. It also teaches us about the conditions under which such diversity can be lost. For these reasons, we need to understand the carving out of the Indian subcontinent into separate political units called India and Pakistan respectively (in 1947-50). The course begins with ‘caste’ and ‘religion’ in the subcontinent, moves to the gradual consolidation of British colonialism, the redrawing of social, economic, religious, political boundaries and identities and ends with the growth of modern political forms such as political parties, and end with the cataclysms of Partition in 1947.

Aims: 1) to acquaint students with basic concepts and a simplified chronology of events, people, and processes.

2) teach students the importance of ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ sources in the understanding of any past

3) encourage students to think critically by exposing them to a variety of perspectives on the past, including some key controversies around each of the themes of the course.

Requirements. On days marked ‘Read’ in the syllabus, students are required to read a compulsory number of pages in a given text in each topic before they come to class. They will be required to purchase/borrow/ rent the following

            1          Barbara and Thomas Metcalf, A Concise History of India, (3^rd edition) Cambridge University Press, (2012 paperback), ISBN-13 978-1-107-67218-5

All other readings are on Canvas OR on recommended websites for particular days.

PLEASE NOTE: NO LAPTOPS/IPADS/IPHONES WILL BE ALLOWED TO STUDENTS IN THIS CLASS.  

Grading is based on attendance and class-participation (40 points), four-page report on five American newspaper reports on an Indian event (10 points), in-class mid-terms and finals (20+30 points respectively). Letter grades of A, B, C, D and F will be assigned on the basis of the performance.

In today’s world, we live in an information age surrounded by the possibilities of seemingly unlimited storage and a ubiquitous culture of archiving that privileges the packrat and borders on the obsessive/compulsive. One does not delete an email: it is archived. We document our lives digitally under the pretense of “sharing” with friends and family, but the photos and status updates are stored permanently in the “cloud” even after one’s passing, morphing into perpetual memorials. Almost every website has an “archive,” which more often than not simply refers to anything older than the front page. How do we understand a world of archives, where data and information are the keys to twenty-first century capitalism?

We will investigate archives as a focal point around which to understand the practice of history, the relationship between archives and modern memory, and in the context of the emergence of the state, bureaucracy, the public sphere, and the beginnings of the information age: What binds the processes through which history and memory are constructed, and how do institutions that foster historical scholarship, such as archives, play an active role in the formation of historical narratives and communal memory? Archives have been alternately termed the foundation of human civilization, the historian’s laboratory, the sediment left by the stream of history, as well as a sealed room under lock and key, where archivists protect history for historians and from historians: hiding unseemly details of the past from prying eyes and shaping historical narrative through the form and shape in which historical materials are presented. And once past the Kafkaesque keeper of the keys to history, one may find him or herself, literally, buried alive in the historical evidence. We will investigate the nature of archives and their purpose in civil society, public life, and the historical discipline, and what (if any) relationship exists between the twenty-first century everyday digital archiving experience and the future of history.

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%).

    Since the late 1980s, the African film industry has undergone radical changes that reflect an increasingly globalized economy and the impact of structural adjustment policies. This revolution is characterized by the low-budget, direct to video films commonly referred to as Nollywood.  While these films have come under criticism for their low production values and popularization of negative cultural stereotypes, the Nigerian video industry has risen to colossal proportions, sweeping across the continent and throughout the global diaspora.  The purpose of this course is to examine the rise of Nollywood and the genesis of a popular African art form.  Through a combination of films and readings, students will explore how Nollywood, in comparison with the established FESPACO film industry and Hollywood, depicts the society and culture of Nigeria, and Africa as a whole.  Additionally, this course seeks to engage students in a debate about how popular films affect historical imaginations and memory.  While these images have previously been the product of Hollywood and Francophone films, this course will introduce Nollywood as an alternative to how Nigerians and Africa as a whole understand their history.  

Texts:
Haynes, Jonathan, ed. Nigerian Video Films. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000.

Rosenstone, Robert A. Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Saul, Mahir and Ralph A. Austen, eds. Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century:
Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010.

*There will also be several journal articles assigned throughout the semester.  These will be available through the university library’s online databases and posted to the course documents section of the class Blackboard page.
ASSSIGNMENTS:
Assignment                 Due                            Points
Attendance                 Every class session    50
Book/Film Review      Week 6                100
Conference Report     Week 10                50
Final Paper                 Week 15                200
Discussion Posts      See syllabus for deadlines    100

This course interrogates the historical origins of the regional category of “Latin America.” It examines the kinds of trends and forces of the 19th century that contributed to its conceptual emergence and to its political, economic, and cultural significance on the global stage. Debates among and between European, North American, Latin American, and Caribbean scholars and politicians over what countries should be included in -- and excluded from -- the Latin American region, and for what political, social, cultural, ethnic, economic, and historical reasons, have continued well into the 21stcentury. This course, therefore, takes into consideration perspectives offered by 19th-century historical actors from the region and outside it, and from contemporary scholars interested understanding region’s emergence and historical significance for the 19th century.

Keeping debates over periodization in mind, the course adopts a long nineteenth century (roughly 1780s-1930s) as its historical timeframe, and will proceed somewhat chronologically, but more importantly, thematically. Each week we will examine a particular historical theme of the 19th century that will help us better think through how to conceptualize “Latin America” geographically and temporally. Students individually and in groups will read and analyze a combination of articles, chapters from books, and primary sources to better understand the implications of major regional trends (and exceptions) including: the Bourbon Reforms; the transnational causes and local effects of Independence; the caudillo question; the US-Mexican (and Independent Indian) War; slavery, manumission, and emancipation; processes of republican territorial nation-state formation as linked to changing racial, ethnic, class, labor, and gender relations; the emergence of international trade networks; urbanization; and health and hygiene campaigns.

This class is also intended to help students understand the different audiences that historians address, from public history in the digital age to scholarly historical writing. As a group, students in the class will select from an array of available primary sources in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin America Collection at UT Austin to develop and curate an online exhibition that tells a compelling story about Latin America’s 19th century.

Note on Foreign Language Materials: This class does not require you to have any background in a language other than English. And yet, through this class, you will develop some basic language skills that will allow you to read original primary sources in foreign languages and translate them into English.

Required Texts:
Please note: there is no required textbook for this class. ALL readings listed in the syllabus, however, are required readings. There will be an optional course reader available for readings that are not easily accessible online.

Assessment:


Engagement and Participation (including daily in-class workshops and quizzes): 25%

Critical Reviews of Primary and Secondary Sources (3 over the course of the semester, each 20%): 60%

Class Project: Tasks associated with Student Curated Online Exhibit of primary sources: 15%

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 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.

This course enables the history major to engage in original research in international relations during the turbulent era of the Cold War.  Each student will choose one country in Latin America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, or Asia in order to study the relationship between it and the United States during the administration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.  The primary documentation that each student will use for this research project will come from the National Security Files of the Johnson White House.  They are collected at the LBJ Presidential Library, located at the edge of the campus of the University of Texas.  Students will access these documents in the archive reading room on the eighth floor.

There are no assigned readings for this course, but students will first read a book on the subject country’s history during the Cold War era between 1945 to 1990.  Student and professor will determine together a suitable reading available in the PCL or other UT library.

Book analysis essay = 100 points

Classroom presentations =  100 points

Outline of research paper =  50 points

Class attendance =  50 points

Final research paper =  700 points

                             Total possible points 1000

In this course we will explore twentieth-century Russian history through its representation in film. Russian movies during this period -- popular entertainment features, avant-garde experiments, radical revolutionary agitation, and animation -- include some of the greatest films ever made. Emphasis in discussions and writing assignments will be on the ways that films "write" history, and the cultural and political pressures that shaped the depictions of historical issues in particular periods.
Goals of the course include
•    Learning to “read” films critically and creatively
•    Learning to read films as primary sources
•    Gaining appreciation for Russian avant-garde and entertainment films
•    Learning about Russian revolutionary and Soviet culture through films
•    Learning to write very brief, concise, articulate essays
•    Enjoying the research and writing of an extended research project on some aspect of Russian film history

Readings:
Books to Purchase:
Tim Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film
Birgit Beumers, A History of Russian Cinema
Rimgaila Salys, The Russian Cinema Reader
John Thompson, Russia and the Soviet Union
Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses
Emma Widdis, Socialist Senses
Lilya Kaganovsky, The Voice of Technology: Soviet Cinema’s Transition to Sound
Joan Neuberger, This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia
Rima Salys, The Musical Comedy Films of Grigorii Aleksandrov

Additional required reading will be posted on Canvas

Films:
Child of the Big City (Bauer, 1914)
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
Aelita (Protozanov, 1924)
Bed and Sofa (Room, 1927)
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)
Chapaev (Vasiliev and Vasiliev, 1934)
Circus (Aleksandrov, 1936)
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein, 1945, 1946/58)
Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1965)
Nine Days of One Year (Romm, 1962)
Man in a Frame, Film-Film-Film, (Khitruk), Tale of Tales (Norstein)
Prisoner of the Caucasus (Gaidai, 1967)
White Sun of the Desert (Motyl, 1970)
Commissar (Askoldov, 1967/88)
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (Menshov, 1979)

GRADING:
Participation in Discussion: 30%
Very Short Weekly Assignments 30%
Research Paper 40%, of which:
    Topic and bibliography 5%
    Prospectus 5%
    1000-word section 10%
    Final Paper 20%

This course examines women and gender in China from imperial times to the present.  Major themes include the changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity in Chinese cultural and religious contexts; gender roles and inequalities in the patriarchal family and society; the varying discourse on women and gender in the modern period; women’s dilemma in the Chinese Revolution; new challenges to women and new conceptions of gender and sexuality during the reform era since the 1980s.  There is no prerequisite for attending this course, but some background in Chinese history is recommended.
Robin Wang, Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture (Hackett Publishing Company, 2003)
Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period. (University of California Press, 1993)
Zheng Wang, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories (University of California Press, 1999)
Leslie Chang, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (Spiegel & Grau, 2009)
Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter. Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980's. (Stanford University Press,1988)
Xueping Zhong, Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing up in the Mao Era. (Rutgers University Press, 2001)
1) Class participation (20%)
2) Mid-term and final examination (15% each, 30% total)
3) Research paper (40%)
4) Attendance (10%)

Most scholars of alcohol and drug use have concentrated upon its physiological aspects.  It is clear that addiction and craving have a physical and, in many cases, even a genetic basis.  Yet, as many anthropologists and sociologists have pointed out, cultures directly affect the types of drugs used, how they are used, and for what purposes.  In addition, one can examine a culture's drug use and attitude toward it and often discover a great deal about its functioning and values.  Thus, drug use is not only a cultural product but also a key social and historical descriptor.  In this course, we will study both how American culture affected the use of drugs and attitudes toward them and how these serve as keys to the changing American intellectual, social, and political landscape.  We will especially concentrate on alcohol, the opiates, marijuana, metamphetamines, and crack cocaine. We will note that the War on Drugs has been taking place for many years.

Topics to be considered include proliferation of alcohol abuse in the early Republic, the fight over cigarettes, the Prohibition movement, criminalization of drugs, Alcoholics Anonymous and treatment, medical response to addiction, and the drug war and the issue of legalization.

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%

In this course, students will examine, through discussions, lectures, and an extended exercise in historical role playing, the precipitant events and ideas leading up to the American Declaration of Independence in July 1776. The first half of the semester will be comprised of lectures, readings, and discussions on the Imperial Crisis between Britain and the British American colonies. The second half of the semester will be organized around the “Reacting to the Past” game: “Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution, in New York City, 1775-1776” (created by William Offutt). At the start of the game, students will each be assigned a “character” (who might be a patriot, loyalist, or neutral, wealthy, “middling,” poor, or slave) who they will portray through the subsequent six class sessions, moving through time from the spring of 1776 until the summer of 1776. Students must individually determine, describe, and depict how they believe their character would respond to historical events, and attempt to persuade others to support their position. Collectively, the class will decide if New York City will decide to join the revolution and declare independence or support the King in his effort to suppress the rebellion. During this half of the course, besides their active participation in the “game,” students will each write several “position papers” explaining their assigned character’s perspective on changing events.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Within the construct of African American Business history, race, American capitalism, 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 and American capitalism.

Yet, during the “Golden Age” of black business in the early 20^th century, there were examples of African Americans participating in the development of enterprises that paralleled mainstream white business activity in Industrial America such as the first African American car manufacturing company, C.R. Patterson & Sons. The Ohio-based company was founded by ex-slave in 1865 and manufactured carriages. In 1916, the founder’s son Frederick Douglass Patterson, built his first car, the Patterson-Greenfield. below...

Early advertisements showed the Patterson Car company’s marketing brand announced:  “If it’s a Patterson, it’s a good one.” Also the company said their cars be more efficient than the Model T. The cars cost about $850 each while a Model T cost $620.and reached speeds up to 50 miles per hour, while a Model T cost $620 and averaged 20  miles per hour. The Patterson Company could not compete with Ford’s assembly-line production and eventually stopped production of the Patterson-Greenfield car.  In the 1920s, the Patterson Company became a subcontractor manufacturing busses for Ford. 

See Juliet E. K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship ((New York/London:  Macmillan/Prentice Hall International, 1998; 2nd Printing,  Macmillan, 1999), 203, 239. 262

By the 1930s, most black business sales were limited to black consumers.  In the Civil Rights era, black hair care manufacturers expanded into million dollar enterprises. Beginning with the post-Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the only black businesses that profited from multi-million dollars sales in American’s mainstream consumer market were  those  enterprises that commodified  (sold) black cultural expressions, primarily in music, sports and cable TV media enterprises. Ironically, with few exceptions most of the profits derived from the sale of black culture go to white corporate America. 

PURPOSE OF COURSE

Proceeding from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course considers the super-rich hip hop entrepreneurs,  superstar black athletes and the cable media billionaire moguls 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?  Indeed,  also, why and how has the criminal element in the black community used modern business methods to succeed such as exemplified by the movie “American Gangster,“ which starred Denzel Washington.

Most important, the major question is why 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

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 of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship”            

      Course Packet chapters 6-11 or The History of Black Business in America:  Capitalism, Race,

                      Entrepreneurship (New York/London:  Macmillan/Prentice Hall International, 1998)

Critical Book Review Analysis 25%

(5 reviews, 2-3 pages 5 points each)

Class Discussion/participation 25%

Oral Summary of Research Paper 5%

Seminar Research Paper (15 pages) 45%

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%

This course focuses on essential developments in Greek history (social, cultural, and political) during the Archaic and Classical Periods (ca. 750-338 BCE): from the rise of the Greek city-states in the eighth century BCE to the subordination of Greece by Philip II of Macedonia in 338 BCE. We will devote roughly equal time to covering major events and personalities, exploring key developments in culture and society, and examining the various types of evidence available for the era (both written and archeological). We will begin (Weeks 1-3) with a brief look at the geography and climate of Greece and its prehistory, including the Bronze and Early Iron Ages (ca. 1600-800 BCE). Then (Weeks 3-5) we will consider the major developments of the Early Archaic Period (ca. 800-600 BCE), including the rise of the city-state (or polis) and the first forms of (small “d”) democracy, the invention of the Greek alphabet, the introduction of massed infantry (or hoplite) warfare, and the diaspora of Greeks across the Mediterranean. Thereafter (Weeks 6-15), we will focus on the two most famous city-states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, and follow their trajectories from their foundation in the Bronze Age, through the Persian War period (490-478 BCE), the Peloponnesian War (430-404 BCE), and the complex period of unstable hegemonies in the first half of the fourth century BCE, culminating in 338 BCE when Philip II of Macedonia established his control over Greece.

This lecture-discussion course traces U.S. cultural history from the time of the Puritan migration of 1630 through the end of the Civil War in 1865. The basic premise of the course is that cultural history can best be understood by examining common themes that, at any given historical moment, cut across many fields of human activity—such as work, domestic life, politics, religion, philosophy, science, literature, art, architecture, and popular culture. The course will explore such ongoing questions as the attempt to define a “new, young America” against an “old, decaying Europe”; the struggle to define individual identities and rights against the force of a cohesive, organic community; the significance of the frontier, of slavery, and of race to the development of American society; the impact of evangelical Protestantism; the concept of an American “mission”; and the rise of regionalism and pluralism in opposition to the mainstream. The course will cultivate a sense of historical empathy as a means of understanding early Americans whose intentions and activities were utterly unlike ours, but will also suggest ways in which we have inherited aspects of their social issues and cultural concerns. The format of the course consists of lectures (with questions and discussion encouraged) and several designated discussion periods. Exams require knowledge of lectures and required readings. Not all readings will be discussed in class. Students are expected to be able to integrate material from all sources. Prior knowledge of basic U.S. history is recommended. Required written work consists of two in-class exams (the first counts 20% of the course grade, the second 35%) and a cumulative final exam (45%). Exams contain essay questions and short identifications. Final grades are reported with pluses and minuses. No make-up exams are permitted except in cases of documented personal emergency. Attendance will be taken daily through a sign-in sheet. It is your responsibility to make sure you sign in before you leave the classroom each day. A student who misses no more than two classes will have the earned final course grade increased by one degree (for example, C+ to B-). A student who misses five or more classes will have the earned final course grade decreased by one degree (for example, B- to C+). Excused absences are awarded only in the case of documented personal emergency or by prior approval for educational conferences, organized athletic competition, religious holidays, or similar reasons. Use of phones, whether for calls, texting, or Internet access, is prohibited. Use of laptops and tablets for Internet access is distracting to other students and is prohibited. Anyone violating this policy will be asked to turn off the device, and at the second offense to leave class for that day. If you intend to miss a class or exam in order to observe a religious holiday, please notify me at least a week in advance and you will be given an opportunity to complete missed work within a reasonable time after the absence. 2 The course is flagged for Cultural Diversity. You are expected to abide by the University Code of Conduct and the Student Honor Code, both stated here: “The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.” “As a student of The University of Texas at Austin, I shall abide by the core values of the University and uphold academic integrity.” If you have any uncertainty as to what constitutes cheating, please see the official eleven-point definition at http://catalog.utexas.edu/general-information/appendices/appendix-c/studentdiscipline-and-conduct/. Cheating will not be tolerated and is grounds for course failure. The University provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact the Office of the Dean of Students at 471-6259, 471-6441 TTY. If you already know you will be requesting an accommodation, please submit your letter to me during the first two weeks of the semester. Please attend to the following statement from the Office of Campus Safety and Security regarding emergencies: “Occupants of buildings on the UT campus are required to evacuate buildings when a fire alarm is activated. Alarm activation or announcement requires exiting and assembling outside. Familiarize yourself with all exit doors of each classroom and building you may occupy. Remember that the nearest exit door may not be the one you used when entering the building. Students requiring assistance in evacuation shall inform their instructor in writing during the first week of class. In the event of an evacuation, follow the instruction of faculty or class instructors.”

REQUIRED TEXTS

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale

Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias

Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

This course explores how different communities organized around identifiers such as race, ethnicity, national origin, class, gender, and ideology have negotiated with and contributed to changing conceptions of American identity. This course follows a rough chronology of the past 150 years, demonstrating changes and consistencies in social attitudes regarding individual, communal, and national identities, revealing a century and a half of political and social conflicts that complicate narratives of national consensus.

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.

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. 

EXTRA CREDIT    (Museum Visit Report)       5%  

EXAM I (take-home )                                      30%

MOVIE/BOOK CRITICAL REVIEW                     5%

RESEARCH PAPER                                            30%

EXAM 2                                                             30%

CLASS PARTICIPATION                                   5-10%

Please note: “Introduction to the Holocaust” is an upper-division history course with a substantial reading and writing component.

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2nd edition)

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Attendance and Participation: 20%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 45%

The Nazi party was the first in modern history to rely heavily on culture to establish and sustain its regimes of power and terror. During the Third Reich, the art of propaganda played a key role in mobilizing mass support for the party and its policies. But the Nazis went even further, creating an aestheticized vision of nation, folk, and community. Architects build or planned monumental roads and cities to the Führer. Artists and writers celebrated the beauty of the Aryan man and the strength of the racial community. Filmmakers created compelling mass spectacles and diversions. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we will study the relationship between culture and power during the Third Reich through its main proponents (Joseph Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl) and events (Degenerate Art Exhibit). We will discuss the new ministries of “enlightenment and propaganda” and the changed conditions of cultural life, study the systematic suppression of oppositional voices and modernist sensibilities, and analyze the characteristics of fascist aesthetics and official Nazi art. Examples will be taken from art, architecture, literature, music, and film; also considered will be the so-called inner emigration and the activities of the exiles in the United States and elsewhere.  

 By providing an overview of culture and politics in the Third Reich, the course also addresses more fundamental questions about the unique role of culture in modern democracies and dictatorships—questions about the relationship between political propaganda and modern entertainment, mass media and authoritarianism, political aesthetics and ideology, and the dynamics of oppression, resistance, and consent. The question of fascist aesthetics and its later manifestations and interpretations will be a major theme throughout the course

This course will examine the complex relationship between the Church and the Jews over two thousand years. It will analyze Christian ideas and policies regarding Jews as expressed in both elite and popular culture. We’ll examine various sources, including theological texts, canon law, church art, and popular preaching. We’ll consider how the Church’s powerful anti-Jewish teachings provided a basis for restrictive legislation and violence against Jews, even if Church authorities sometimes acted to protect Jewish communities. The course emphasize the factors that led to striking changes in attitudes and policies over time, with emphasis on how the theological legacy was adapted in the face of changing realities. It will examine the consequences of the Protestant Reformation and conclude with a look at the radical shift in the perspective of the Catholic Church in the 1960s, with the documents issued by Vatican II.

TEXTS:

• Revised Standard Version of the Bible (any edition)
• The course will make used of a website designed specifically for it by the instructor. The website includes many of the readings. Other assigned readings will be posted on Canvas.

GRADING:

• Class attendance and participation (10%)
• participation on Discussion Board (20%)
• two 1-3 pp. assignments (20%)
• mid-term exam (20%)
• final exam (30%)

This class will investigate the principal trends and issues of Argentine history, which has been marked by its share of social and political unrest. It is rich in resources but suffers sharp economic booms and busts. No doubt, students will discover that, despite sharing many trends with other Latin American nations, Argentina’s history has been unique. The principal question remains: Why has such a talented people as the Argentineans had a turbulent and violent history—including a Dirty War and the “disappearance” of up to 30,000 citizens?

Three books on Argentina of the student’s choice

Each student will complete a total of five separate assignments: a map assignment, 2 five-page book essays, a final examination, and an individual research paper. The student's final grade will be based on the following:

- map assignment worth 5%

- 2 five-page book essays for 25%

- a 15-page research paper worth 40%

- a final exam worth 20%

- Attendance, class presentations count for 10%

Description:

This course takes a broad view of the concept of nationalism and seeks to trace its manifestations throughout the circum-Caribbean during the 20th century. The term circum-Caribbean is defined broadly in order to include not only the island-nations of the region, but also their diasporic communities within the United States. Throughout the 20th century the region saw episodes of great political upheaval and violent tumult. This course will explore the various factors that led to the growth of revolutionary nationalism in the region as well as the movements that arose as a result of these tensions. We will discuss nationalism from a theoretical and global perspective as well as through case studies of specific Caribbean and diasporic communities. Particular attention will be paid to the role of US hegemony in the rise of nationalist ideology.

Readings:

• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
• Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
• Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism
• Lahouari Addi,“The Failure of Third World Nationalism”
• Lillian Guerra,“Beyond Paradox: Counterrevolution and the Origins of Political Culture in the Cuban Revolution,”
• Michael Zeuske, “The Long Cuban Revolution.”
• Tanya Harmer, “Two, Three, Many Revolutions? Cuba and the Prospects for Revolutionary Change in Latin America.”
• Shalini Puri, The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory
• Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic World View in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The death knell of insularity.”
• Michael Gonazalez-Cruz, “Puerto Rican Revolutionary Nationalism: Filiberto Ojeda Rios and the Macheteros”
• Jorge Duany, “A Postcolonial Colony?: The Rise of Cultural Nationalism in Puerto Rico during the 1950’s

Is Africa free from all forms of colonialism? This course engages this question by examining the historical moment of African independence. It focuses on a variety of texts, both primary and secondary, from across the continent and beyond that embody the romantic visions, realistic compromises, and some of the tragic aftermaths of independence on the African continent. The course will explore themes that include an examination of the anti-colonial movement, the role of Pan-Africanism within nationalistic dialogues, the strengths and weakness of African nationalism after independence, as well as the challenges of nationalism in contemporary Africa.

This course introduces literary, religious, and courtly cultures of early modern India (1500-1800). We will read scholarly writings to get a historical and theoretical background of this period. In addition to this scholarship, we will read primary sources in translation: including memoirs of emperors, Sufi romances, devotional and courtly poetry, merchants accounts, and the nationalist construction of an Indian past. The goal of this course is to engage students with a broad range of texts to inform them of the traditions on their own terms while linking the discussion to current scholarship on the subject matter.

Goals:

• To get acquainted with major literary and religious traditions as well as the history of early-modern India.
• To discuss the historical, religious, mythological, and cultural aspects of literary works.
• To improve critical thinking and academic writing skills by reading, discussing, and writing about multidisciplinary secondary sources.

Medina, and the conquest of Mecca. We will seek to understand the social and political background to the Prophet’s message and the impact of that message on his historical context. We will focus on the doctrinal, social and political positions adopted by the Prophet and their impact on later Muslim society. Furthermore, we will analyze the different approaches taken by historians in interpreting and understanding the Prophets life.

TEXT:

Watt, Muhammad, Oxford University Press Martin Lings, Muhammad. Islamic Texts Society Annemarrie Schimmel. And Muhammad is his messenger: the veneration of the Prophet in Islamic piety

Description: This is a higher-level undergraduate class which requires students to read intensively in unfamiliar cultures. It is a three-part course. The first two parts use selected case-studies to explain the ways in which 'religion' and 'caste' and 'service' were woven together to form an entire social-political structure between the third century CE and the late eighteenth century. Students will learn about the ways in which a range of destitute people, orphans, debtors and criminals were incorporated into complex and variable social and political institutions. The third part of the course studies the limits of colonial abolitionism from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century. Students will understand the ways in which legal, political and commercial processes, associated with global histories of European empires, contributed to the large-scale shift in slave-using structures, the meanings of slavery and freedom, the relationship between Abolitionism of the 19th century and that of the 20th century.   

Aims: 1) to acquaint students with basic concepts and a simplified chronology of events, people, and processes.

2) teach students the importance of ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ sources in the understanding of any past

3) encourage students to think critically by exposing them to a variety of perspectives on the past, including some key controversies around each of the themes of the course.

There is no textbook for this course. All readings will be available on Canvas. 

Grading: 1) Attendance and Class Participation (40 points)

2) Written Work:  (for a total of 60 grade points) 

LETTER GRADES OF A, B, C, D, F will be given in this course.

This course explores the history of Japan via an examination of the complex and ever changing figure of the samurai. The focus is broadly on the period from 1185 to 1867 when Japan was ruled by a succession of warrior regimes but the course will also examine the evolution of samurai images and representations. The central concern is with the changing nature of the historical samurai across this long period and with the constant tension between the ideals put forward about the way of the warrior and the actual realities of samurai life.

Required texts:

Pierre Francois Souyri. The World Turned Upside Down. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2001)

Ikegami, Eiko. The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)

Constantine Vaporis, ed. Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life During the Age of the Shoguns (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2013)

Nitobe, Inazo, Bushido, The Soul of Japan: An Exposition of Japanese Thought (Tokyo, 1899), available via archive.org

Grading:

Attendance, Preparation and Participation – 10%

Annotation of Readings – 10%

First Assignment: Research Proposal: The Pitch, 5%

Second Assignment: Research Paper – 25%

Third Assignment: Research Proposal: Final Submission 25%

Final exam – 25%

This course explores the ethics of scientific experimentation on humans in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Nuremberg code of the late 1940s will act as a pivotal historical marker in the course, and students will be encouraged to ask how far the principles of informed consent to which it gave rise changed the scientific landscape. The course will consider both medical and scientific projects and will focus largely on case studies. These may include experiments conducted on convicts, children and slaves. The course will also explore chemical warfare testing and radiation experiments; compulsory sterilization, and deception. Students will study science not only as an enterprise with a history, but a history closely tied to prevailing social values.

Texts may include:


Susan Lederer, Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).



Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott, and Lara Marks, Useful Bodies: Humans in the Service of Medical Science in the Twentieth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).



1. J. Annas and M. A., Grodin, The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation (Oxford University Press, 1992).


Grades will be based on a series of written papers

Course Description

This course examines the South Asian diaspora in the United States. We will cover migration of people from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to United States and other parts of the world. While studying the history and culture of South Asian America, we will discuss globalization, transnationalism, migration, assimilation, formation of a diaspora, discrimination, and gender and sexuality, all major themes in Asian American Studies. The course is arranged chronologically and thematically. We will start in the nineteenth century following the journey of the first South Asian migrants to the U.S. We will then move on to studying the formation of Bengali-African, Punjabi-Mexican and other multiracial communities. We will study how American immigration laws have facilitated or inhibited South Asian migration to the U.S. in the twentieth century. Topics covered include economic and social reasons for migration, adaptation to American life, cultural and religious assimilation, changing family structures, and discrimination and exclusion. We will end the semester by discussing South Asian American life in the twenty-first century.

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

This course carries the Global Cultures flag. Global Cultures courses are designed to increase your familiarity with cultural groups outside the United States. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from assignments covering the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one non-U.S. cultural group, past or present. http://www.utexas.edu/ugs/ccc/teaching-resources/syllabus

Course Objectives

Through the semester we will study more than a century of South Asian American history. A primary goal of this course is to highlight the diversity within South Asian America. We will encounter a diaspora whose members belong to different religious, linguistic, economic and social groups. Many came to the United States forcibly to seek economic opportunities lacking at 2 home. Others came enthusiastically with dreams of making it “big” in the land of abundant opportunities. We will also examine South Asian American interactions with other Americans in the fields of social activism and community development.

You are encouraged to participate in South Asian American life in Austin. I will bring to your attention relevant films, lectures, art, music, and dance performances. Our class meetings will be a blend of lectures and discussions.

This is a course about the history of the United States and its wars in Iraq over the last three decades, with a focus on the conflict that coincided with what U.S. policymakers dubbed “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (2003-2011) and its aftermath. It will provide you with an understanding of the historical political, economic, social, and cultural background of Iraq, including the formation of the country at the end of the First World War, and covering the periods from the 1920s and into the Cold War, the Gulf War (1990-1991) and the 1990s, and up to the U.S. invasion in 2003. This context is vital for understanding the U.S. relationship with Iraq and that country’s leaders over time, how the Iraqi population viewed the United States, and the historical background of key Iraqi political figures that would later feature in the extended occupation from 2003 until, effectively, 2011. It will cover in detail the political debate over invading Iraq after September 11, 2001, the planning of the war, the conflict phase, the formal occupation, and then the various periods of American military presence that followed. It will also explore how both wars affected the relationship between the U.S. military and American society, including the ways in which it reflected and refracted long-standing debates about prior wars – especially Vietnam – and the American role in the world. Through readings, lectures, guest speakers with first-hand experience, films, maps, and other materials, the course will help you to understand what happened and how it happened. You will also gain an appreciation for how historians think about causality – that is, why it happened. The legacy of these wars remains vitally important to understanding the place of the U.S. military in American life today, the role of the United States in the region and in the world, attitudes about military interventions at home and abroad, and how the nation’s experience in Iraq may affect future debates and decisions.

1.    Tripp, Charles. A History of Iraq. 3rd ed. Cambridge. UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

2.    Polk, William R. Understanding Iraq: The Whole Sweep of Iraqi History, from Genghis Khan's Mongols to the Ottoman Turks to the British Mandate to the American Occupation. 1st ed. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

3.    Iraq Study Group (U.S.), James Addison Baker, Lee Hamilton, and Lawrence S. Eagleburger. The Iraq Study Group Report. 1st authorized ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

4.    Rayburn, Joel, et al. The U.S. Army in the Iraq War. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, 2016 (Vols I & II) – available online and on Canvas

5.    Iraq Inquiry (Great Britain), and John Chilcot. Report of the Iraq Inquiry: Executive Summary. Kingston upon Thames, Surrey: Canbury Press, 2017 (additional selections from the “Chilcot Report” also available on Canvas).

6.    Readings, maps, and other materials posted to Canvas

»    In-class examinations: 20% each (for a total of 40%)
»    Final examination: 30%
»    Paper on a primary source: 20%
»    Class/section participation: 10%
»    Possible extra credit assignments: up to ten extra points added to your final grade

This course has two broad functions.  First, all semester long, we will explore and analyze the roles of war and violence in American history. We will divide our inquiries into two categories:  “authorized violence” (in other words, state-directed violence such as wars, occupations, and military campaigns) and “unauthorized violence,” such as racial violence, labor unrest, vigilantism, and terrorism. Over the course of American history, the U.S. military has been involved in both types, and our goal for the semester is to understand how both types of violence have changed American history since initial colonization.

We will strive to achieve four major course objectives, 3 relating to content and 2 relating to skills. 

Specific Content Objectives

1. To understand the causes, conduct and consequences of some of the most important military events in American history since initial colonization.

2. To grasp the basic institutional history of the U.S. Armed Forces since the creation of the United States of America.

3. To develop historically-informed opinions of the utility of violence in American history.

Specific Skill Set Objectives

1. To improve your oral and written communication skills and to build your confidence in

questioning both your own ideas and assumptions and those of others.

2. To improve your ability to think critically, recognize patterns, determine causes, find and analyze evidence for historical arguments, listen to others, and debate important ideas effectively.

1. Course Themes:

1. “The Three C’s: Causes, Conduct and Consequences.”  During the semester, we will cover almost every major war in U.S. history, as well as a few you probably don’t even know about. With each war, we will ask the same three questions: Why did the war or violent event happen (causes)?  What were the significant events in it that determined the outcome (conduct)?  What were the effects of the war (consequences)?

2. War: What is it Good for? And for Whom? We will also explore the efficacy (aka: effectiveness) of violence as a political instrument. When has it worked? When hasn’t it? What groups have used violence to get what they want in American history?  Who have been the victors? Who have been the victims? Whose stories are the loudest in your understanding of American History? Why is that?

3. Facts, Opinions, Assumptions, & the Art of a Good Conversation: This class may touch close to home for some of you.  In studying violence, we will be discussing things that may be closely tied to your narratives about yourselves, your families, your country, and perhaps even the world. It can get contentious! To make it productive (even enjoyable), we will all need to be respectful of each others’ opinions while still being vigilant in pursuing the truth about the U.S.’s history of violence. Opinions count. Facts matter. Assumptions are sneaky. Separating them out and conveying your thoughts clearly in verbally and in writing will be a theme of the course all semester long.

1. Course Materials

1. Millett & Masklowski, For The Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, 2^nd Ed. (New York: Free Press 1994)

2. Assorted Readings posted on the course website (marked with ** in the list of assignments).

Grade Distribution

First Paper                                        15%                Class Participation:              15%   

Second Paper                                              20%                Final Exam:                           15%

Third Paper                                       20%                Quizzes:                                15%

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 (from a prepared larger 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 on a voluntary basis with the British Studies faculty seminar 3:00-

4:30 pm. on Fridays HRC 3.204-6.

The seminar upholds the principles of the Modern History Faculty at Oxford—to

enhance (1) intellectual curiosity; (2) conceptual clarity; (3) accuracy and attention to detail; (4)

lucid and succinct style; (5) capacity for hard work.

Grades are determined by attendance and participation in discussion (25%) and the

quality of the weekly critiques (75%). The course carries Writing and Global Cultures flags.

Reading List—The following books are required – (plus other books to be decided upon

in consultation with the instructor):

Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians 

Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Men Who Lost America 

Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf 

This research seminar will discuss the causes of British expansion in the nineteenth century and the reactions to British conquest and rule. How did the British manage to establish colonial sway over a quarter of the globe? What were the aims of British colonial administration? How did the Empire affect the lives of Asians, Africans and others throughout the world as well as the lives of those within the British Isles? In the first half of the seminar, students read books that will stimulate curiosity about those questions. During the opening weeks, the focus is on Latin America, the Middle East and Africa as well as India. Latin America provides the background for discussion on ‘informal empire’.

One of the main requirements is met by students submitting a weekly critique of the reading assignments. Each of the weekly essays is circulated to all other members of the class who make annotations on style as well as substance. The seminar thus becomes as much a course in professional writing as one in which individual academic interests are pursued.

This is a research seminar. In the latter part of the seminar, the focus will shift to India as an example of British rule and the problem of Indian independence in 1947. Two documentary series will be studied as a primary sources, the British Transfer of Power series and the Indian Towards Freedom series. The requirement is a research paper of about 20 double-spaced pages.

Again, drafts of the research papers are circulated to all members of the seminar for annotation, comment and discussion.

The seminar upholds the principles of the Modern History Faculty at Oxford—to enhance (1) intellectual curiosity; (2) conceptual clarity; (3) accuracy and attention to detail; (4) lucid and succinct style; (5) capacity for hard work.

This course is an introduction to the history and historiography of empires: what they were, what they are, how they work, and how researchers have explored these questions. We will examine a range of explanations for empire: institutional, geopolitical, economic, and cultural. Readings will include explorations of ancient Roman, Ottoman, Ming, Qing, modern British, French, Japanese, and American empires. Our major questions will include

·      Can a single definition of empire account for polities as diverse as ancient Rome and Qing China? What are the advantages of such general definitions over regional and chronological specificity?

·      What drove empire formation? How should we weigh economic demands, geopolitical rivalries, and domestic pressures?

·      At the beginning of the last century, much of the world lived within a European empire, either in a colony or in the metropole. Was nineteenth-century European colonialism unique, or simply an intense instance of a broader historical process?

·      How does imperialism relate to nationalism and local political identities? Does imperialism efface or create national identities?

·      How do empires shape quotidian lived experience? How do empires transform gender identities and family practices?

Requirements:

Weekly assignments: During the semester, write six short responses (800-1000 words) to the week’s readings. Try not to summarize, or focus on a single work, but to explore a central issue that connects the readings. Think about how and why questions have been framed, and the questions that remain unanswered or not even imagined.
Mock ACLS grant proposal: Begin formulating your research question with mock grant proposal. The proposal should include a title, an 800-character abstract, a 2000-character proposal, and a bibliography.
Research paper (5000 words): Explore a question in your specialty and relate it to the course readings. Should your research topic be considered an instance of imperialism? Use both secondary and primary sources and include a bibliography.

This course is a hands-on introduction to Digital Humanities. This course directs students to better understand the digital in terms of the humanities and vice versa, including questions concerning Why digital: What knowledge systems are prioritized? What digital: What has been captured and what is not included? How digital: How have artifacts of study been produced, how structured, how made accessible? Who digital: Who is represented, by whose authority and for what audience? Where digital: Where does it come from? Where does it reside? Where does it go? When digital:  When is the digital at play? When is it in circulation?

This course will include learning to evaluate the nature of Digital Humanities artifacts, projects, scholarship, and teaching through a close (and critical) look at the infrastructural, institutional, and political issues involved in creating, analyzing, disseminating, and preserving digital resources in the humanities. As we look at the concepts, methods, and theories of digital humanities 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 the digital. No experience is required, but an openness to learning basic programming is a must.

Modern thinkers have approached the Mediterranean Sea and its people with a wide variety of expectations and understandings.  The Italian writer and anti-fascist Carlo Levi argued that outsiders define the Mediterranean, powerful people who impose their will and prejudices. "No one has come to this land except as an enemy, a conqueror, or a visitor devoid of understanding," he wrote in 1935.  Certainly, various black legends have proliferated over the last two centuries that figure the Mediterranean as a place of reaction, ignorance, suffering, disease and (most of all) violence and war.  At the same time, others invest this place with positive attributes, seeing in it a “sea of brotherhood,” nurturing pluralistic and democratic values within a vibrant place of convergence and exchange. Moreover, utopian thinkers have invested the Mediterranean with their hopes, seeing it a trans-temporal space of free-spirited entanglements in which people, ideas, technologies and goods came together to create an ideal human reality. In this seminar we examine shifting investments in the Mediterranean through the contemporary historiography of the Mediterranean. By critically reviewing the best of recent scholarship in the fields of intellectual, cultural, social, gender and legal history, this course introduces students to a broad array of methodological, theoretical and historiographical concerns. With the Mediterranean serving as a canvas, we seek to teach students how to read and write about books that cross, transcend and unite scholarly fields.

Using Public Scholarship to Generate Research Questions
                                                                                

Professors Art Markman and Jeremi Suri

Academics are increasingly being asked to disseminate their knowledge to the public. This course--intended for PhD students in the middle of their program of study--focuses on how to engage the public, but also how to formulate new research questions based on this engagement. Students will be required to attend at least 1 full-day seminar offered by the HDO Professional Institute during the semester. They will develop brief lectures based on their area of study. The course will culminate in a proposal for scholarly research inspired by public engagement

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.

How have medical ideas moved across time and space? In this course, we consider the making of medical knowledge since the 1500s. Readings and course materials consider different ways to conceptualize empires and diasporas to show overlapping arenas for medical authority.  Case studies include the circulation of materia medica within the British, Spanish, and Dutch empires, the contest between Ayurveda and biomedicine in South Asian diasporas, the movement of African medical knowledge during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the globalization of Chinese traditional medicine, and research on genetic diseases within populations. Additional topics include bioprospecting for new drugs, birthing practices, globalization of clinical studies, and the spread of injections and vaccines. Course participants will gain a deep historical background in world history of medicine and global health. A primary goal of the course is to show points of connection between biomedicine and other healing traditions.

Politics, Ecology and History: Asia in the Anthropocene

This is a reading course for students who want to engage diverse readings in political ecology. While Asia-focused the course is premised on Asia’s historical engagement with other parts of the world and the global environment. Students will engage with ‘clusters’ of reading around a particular topic and write three review essays responding to each set of readings within a 15 days of the last reading.

Assessment will be based on

(a) preparation and participation in class 34%

(b) Three review essays (out of the four clusters) 66%

The purpose of this graduate reading course is to introduce students to the literature and historiographic debates in Russian history from the end of the imperial regime to the beginning of the Stalinist era. The readings, a mix of older and newer works, will focus on both the “high” politics of the period and the social and political pressure from “below.”

Texts:

Figes, Orlando. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924.

Pipes, Richard. The Russian Revolution.

Read, Christopher. From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and Their Revolution, 1917-21.

Gatrell, Peter. A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. The Bolsheviks Come to Power.

  Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, Vol. 1.

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929.

Cohen, Stephen. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938.

Stites, Richard. Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution.

Goldman, Wendy. Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936.

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 seminar considers the histories of different kinds of intimacy, from sex, love, friendship, family, and marriage to neighborliness. We’ll be interested in the character of those relationships, how they are shaped by gender, racial, national, or ethnic inequality and difference. We will look at their political consequences: the emotions, bonds, conflicts, and violence they generate. We will look at state interest in regulating these relationships and ordinary people’s strategies for guarding secrets and privacy.  We will devote several sessions to considering the sources for such research and the use of “intimate” documents, such as letters, diaries, and autobiography.

Most of the readings will be drawn from European and American history. Students from all fields and disciplines are welcome, and students choose their own topic for their final essays.

Readings will include selections from Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint; Deborah Cohen, Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain; Annette Gordon Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family; Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation; George Chauncey, Gay New York; Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do; Sarah Igo, The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America; and Gail Hershatter, Dangerous pleasures: prostitution and modernity in twentieth-century Shanghai.

 Requirements:

1) 25% Preparation and informed, cooperative participation in discussion. 2) 25% 5 short précis (2 pp., double-spaced) of the weekly readings. 3) 50% Final review essay on the subject of your choice.

This course will offer a broad exploration of the main literature and theories that pertain to religion in Latin America. The course will take a historical, chronological approach, examining topics such as indigenous religions before Contact, the “Spiritual conquest” of the Americas, the hybridization of religious experience in the Americas, and the religious dimensions of the African diaspora. It will also explore and theorize the historical and modern religious transnationalism, from pilgrimage to shrines to missionaries and international televangelism.  Finally, it will interrogate the interaction between religion and (post) modernity in Latin America and the Caribbean.

(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 provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the historical development of the Shi‘i branch of Islam. The course will explore historiographical debates surrounding the emergence and early development of Shi‘ism, as well as Sunni-Shi‘i polemics. This will be followed by an analysis of the historical evolution of popular Shi‘i beliefs and ritual practices. Students will learn about the different Shi‘i sectarian divisions, along with schools of law and theology. Finally, students will learn about the important changes Shi‘ism has undergone during the modern period. The course will be organized partly in accordance with historical chronology and partly along thematic lines. In addition to being exposed to the secondary literature, students will be required to read original texts or primary documents, either in the original language or in translation (depending on the student’s language skills).

This is a graduate research course for doctoral students interested in learning how to conduct archival research. Employing a thematic approach to historical studies, students will examine sources related to African American History, Slavery, and the Domestic Slave Trade housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. The Natchez Trace Collection serves as the core collection researched in this course. With more than 450 linear feet of primary resources, this collection contains slaveholding records, personal papers, photographs, maps, newspapers, broadsides, diaries and other political, business and legal records related to slavery in the Gulf South states of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Students will learn how to locate, transcribe, analyze, and interpret a variety of records culminating with a research paper based on primary documents at the end of the semester.

Students should familiarize themselves with the Briscoe website:

http://www.cah.utexas.edu/

In addition to drawing upon the resources in this large collection, members of the library staff will make guest presentations on topics related to the research process, archival preservation, and how to navigate various complementary collections on campus and at other institutions. Students are expected to produce a research paper primarily based on the holdings in the Briscoe Center, in particular the Natchez Trace Collection, yet some may wish to consult other repositories on campus including the archival material from the Benson Center and Harry Ransom Center if their approved paper topics fall beyond the Gulf South. The professor expects this course to draw upon students interested in US slavery as well as comparative slavery in the Americas -broadly definedand welcomes scholars in a variety of fields including but not limited to History, African and African Diaspora Studies, Anthropology, American Studies, and Art History.

Required Readings:

Martha Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America

Stephanie Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slavery Owners in the American South

Barbara Krauthamer, Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South

Maurie McInnis, Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade

Damian Pargas, Slavery and Forced Migration in the Antebellum South

Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management

Calvin Schermerhorn, Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery

The Black Power Movement represents one of the most important and controversial social and political movements in postwar American history. This graduate redings course examines how the movement for black political self-determination during the 1960s and 1970s transformed American race relations, accelerated the pace of black elected officials nationally, erected new educational, social, political, and cultural institutions nationwide and redefined black politics, identity, and culture. We will also explore the movement’s critique of, and participation in, civil rights struggles; its reimagining of American Democracy; efforts to gain political and economic power within America society while redrawing the landscape of race relations.

Students interested in black politics, civil rights, social policy and the deep connections between the historical development of racial justice struggles and contemporary policy debates and challenges would find this course of interest.
A weekly three-paragraph response on the assigned reading is due by 5 PM the day before our seminar. Each student should read everyone’s essay before the start of class and provide comments, both positive and critical, that will be used for class discussion. Your responses should be submitted in the “Discussion” section of Canvas which will allow you to post your response as well as comment on the responses of others.

Each paragraph should be five sentences and consider the following:
1.    How does the author approach Black Power? How does the history being explored connect to our contemporary understanding of black and Africana identity and what are the theoretic and political implications of the work, both historically and contemporaneously?
2.    What’s the argument being laid out and how persuasive do you find it to be? Examine the sources in the bibliography and endnotes to consider the way in which the author has marshaled their evidence.
3.    How does the work merit analytically and stylistically? Does the author’s analysis seem persuasive and insightful, even when you disagree?
4.    Think about the readings in tandem, both thematically, chronologically, and theoretically. How does Black Power’s critique of American democracy play out in the work? What are some of the movement positive, negative, and unexpected or unanticipated outcomes, legacies?

Meetings with Professor Joseph: All students are required to meet with Professor Joseph one-on-one once during the semester.   

Midterm Assignment: Rough Draft of Final Historiographical Paper.

Final Assignment: Students are required to write a critical twenty-five-page historiographical essay examining the development, evolution, and impact of the Black Power Movement

This historiographical essay will chart the the historiographical contours of the burgeoning scholarship on the Black Power era; its relationship with the history of the Civil Rights Movement; its local, national, and global contours; the movement’s impact on policy, politics, culture, and society; its critique of American democracy and how its remembered in American history and popular culture; its impact on radical, liberal, feminist, conservative and other intellectual and political perspectives during the Black Power era and now; its resonance with contemporary social movements in the Age of Black Live Matter, Occupy, March For Our Lives, #MeToo, and LGBQT movements.

Students will be evaluated based on five criteria:
1)    Weekly three-paragraph critical analysis of the readings.
2)    Class participation and presentation
3)    Research Progress Reports
4)    Draft of Historiographical Paper
5)    Final Historiography Paper

This goal of this course is to explore the historiography of black women’s thought from Early America to the present day. Throughout the course, we will trace the ideological continuities and disjunctures in the texts black women across the African Diaspora have produced. We will also engage with a range of scholars in order to address how historians have approached the intersections of women, gender, sexuality and black thought.

Sample Texts:
Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha Jones, Barbara Savage, Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women
Ashley Farmer, Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era
Brittney Coper, Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women
Beverly Guy-Sheftall ed. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought
C. Riley Norton, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity
Marisa Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive
Stephanie Y. Evans, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History
Vincent Carrretta, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage 

Grading:
Discussion Leadership: 15%

Reading Notes: 12 %

Class Participation: 13%

4 Reading Skills Essays: 60 %

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.

This course will use a variety of exercises to help graduate students learn how do three things: to teach well; to apply their skills to the pursuit of a wide range of careers; and to navigate the process of searching for an academic job.