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. The overall course inquiry: How is the present informed by an understanding of the past? How has the past shaped the present geopolitics?

Grading:

• 10% Class and online discussion, participation and “preparedness” (unannounced reading quizzes, discussion/participation exercises)
• 60% THREE Section Quizzes (Take-home Essay and Video Comment Responses to Discussion and Reading Questions, based on Lectures, Readings, Class/Online Discussion)
• 15% ONE Written Response (2 pages) on Ten Lessons in Modern Chinese History [+5% for attendance/participation in discussion of selected chapters for Focused Discussion sessions in Weeks 11 and 13]
• 10% Contemporary Geo-politics Responses (Video Comments, Final Written Commentary)

This course contains a Global Cultures Flag and surveys the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam through 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 mapping this broad view, we will focus 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, the contributions of Muslim women, and the unique material and intellectual contributions of Islamic civilization to world history and other societies, including the nascent United States.

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Selections of primary historical documents in translation online on CANVAS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


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

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 influence in 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 15^th 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 this change initiated the need for continued existence in exile 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).  

Grading:

1. Three short papers, 2 pages each; each 15% of the course grade (45% total)
2. Midterm exam, closed-book, in-class (20%)
3. Final Exam, closed book, in-class; location, time, and date are set by the Registrar (20%)
4. Class Participation (15%)

Required Books (available at the University Co-Op Bookstore):

Alexander, ed., Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism

Jewish Publication Society (JTS), TaNaKh: The Holy Scriptures

Robert Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought

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%

Hybrid instruction:  Students will meet in person on Mondays at 11am – 12 noon in UTC 3.112.
Other instruction is asynchronous.

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

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


Readings:
Barbara Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (5th edition). University of Toronto Press, 2018
Articles, translated documents and images will be available on Canvas

Grading:
2 Midterms  25% each
Final Project 30%
Reading response handouts and class participation using Perusall 10%
Group reading response projects using ClioVis  10%. 

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

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


Readings:
Barbara Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (5th edition). University of Toronto Press, 2018
Articles, translated documents and images will be available on Canvas

Grading:
2 Midterms  25% each
Final Project 30%
Reading response handouts and class participation using Perusall 10%
Group reading response projects using ClioVis  10%. 

HIS 310M - Film History in Latin America: Colonial

Fall 2021                                                                                                        Ann Twinam, Professor

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 3/10  (30 %)

Discussion 1/10  (10%)

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


Selected Texts:

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


*Weekly Reading/Lecture Quizzes: 20%
*Paper #1: 10% (2 pages)
*Exam #1: 25%
*Paper #2: 15% (3-4 pages)
*Exam #2: 25%
*Class Participation/Engagement: 5%

The modern state of Israel was founded in a land known in modern times as Palestine, and this course examines the origins and history of modern Israel and the Zionist project to create a state for the Jews within the context of the land and the people who have lived there, of diverse faiths and ethnic backgrounds. The class brings together the history of Palestine and the land of Israel, the Zionist movement, Palestinian and Arab nationalism, modern Jewish history, and the history of Israel’s state and cultures. Students will gain a historical context to understand the complex movement of ideas, peoples, and polities across a small stretch of land which since ancient times has been a site of political and religious conflict. The course proceeds chronologically from the nineteenth century to the present, focusing on political, intellectual, and cultural history so that we can consider how one land has had so many histories but all those who live there have an intertwined destiny.

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

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

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

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

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

Required Materials

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

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

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

Evaluation and points--100%


1)    Community Project      25%

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

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

The reading and lecture course examines the historical development of the Mexican community in the United States since 1848, with an emphasis on the period between 1900 and the present.  The primary purpose of the course is to address time and place specific variations in the incorporation of the Mexican community as a national minority and bottom segment of the U.S. working class.  One of my central concerns is to explain two inter-related historical trends in this incorporation, steady upward mobility and unrelenting social marginalization.  I emphasize work experiences, race thinking, social relations, trans-border relations, social causes and larger themes in U.S. history such as wars, sectional differences, industrialization, reform, labor and civil rights struggles, and the development of a modern urbanized society. Also, I incorporate relevant aspects of the history of Latinos, African Americans, and Mexico.

Same as History 315G. An interdisciplinary introduction to the historical exploration of American culture. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. American Studies 310 and History 315G may not both be counted.

Same as History 315G. An interdisciplinary introduction to the historical exploration of American culture. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. American Studies 310 and History 315G may not both be counted.

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

Required texts:
    Revel online text, with online chapter exams.
    The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr (paperback)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Two of the 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%.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The goal of this class is to introduce students to the complexities of understanding the past and to historical thinking and writing, by studying the people, events, and ideas that shaped the United States from 1865-2004. The chronology of the course is divided into three major eras: Reconstruction through World War I (1865-1920); The Roaring Twenties to the Outbreak of the Cold War (1920-1953); and the Civil Rights Movements to the Conservative Resurgence (1940-2004). [There will be some chronological overlap from units 2 to 3.] It is organized around 5 central themes: the economic growth of the US; the struggle for civil rights of African Americans, Latinx Americans, Native Americans, women, and others; the emergence of Protestant fundamentalism; the shift from liberalism to far right conservatism in mainstream American politics; and the emergence of U.S. as a superpower.

Course Learning Objectives: By the end of this course, students should be able to:

Demonstrate knowledge of the major events, ideas, and people in US history between 1865-2004
Demonstrate knowledge of the history of diverse and persistently marginalized cultural groups in US history
Identify and analyze primary source documents
Craft clear historical thesis statements and write historical arguments

Students will be graded primarily on three take-home unit essays, two group timeline projects, and weekly quizzes over the textbook and lecture material.

The goal of this class is to introduce students to the complexities of understanding the past and to historical thinking and writing, by studying the people, events, and ideas that shaped the United States from 1865-2004. The chronology of the course is divided into three major eras: Reconstruction through World War I (1865-1920); The Roaring Twenties to the Outbreak of the Cold War (1920-1953); and the Civil Rights Movements to the Conservative Resurgence (1940-2004). [There will be some chronological overlap from units 2 to 3.] It is organized around 5 central themes: the economic growth of the US; the struggle for civil rights of African Americans, Latinx Americans, Native Americans, women, and others; the emergence of Protestant fundamentalism; the shift from liberalism to far right conservatism in mainstream American politics; and the emergence of U.S. as a superpower.

Course Learning Objectives: By the end of this course, students should be able to:

Demonstrate knowledge of the major events, ideas, and people in US history between 1865-2004
Demonstrate knowledge of the history of diverse and persistently marginalized cultural groups in US history
Identify and analyze primary source documents
Craft clear historical thesis statements and write historical arguments

Students will be graded primarily on three take-home unit essays, two group timeline projects, and weekly quizzes over the textbook and lecture material.

Surveys the development of American Jewish life from 1492 to the present. Students will examine cultural, religious, and migratory trends that have shaped Jews in the western hemisphere and in the United States in particular. Focus will be on the emergence of Jewish life in America, its growth into the world’s leading Jewish community in the twentieth century, and its continual transformation both in the past as well as the present.

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.

Through a mixture of lectures and discussion (and a few film clips), this course will examine the causes, course, and consequences of the American Revolution from 1763 to 1793. Assignments will consist of three on-line take home exams, plus a brief research paper based on reading primary sources, and a short analysis of a scholarly book.
 

Assigned Books:
Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, (2016).
Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Small Pox Epidemic of 1775-1782, (2001).
(Other readings will be accessed online.)
 

Assignments:
Three, on-line take home, Exams  = 60% (20% each)
Research paper  = 20%
Book Analysis  = 20%

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

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

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

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


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


Readings:

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

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

Course Requirements

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

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

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

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

Marking Scheme:

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

Description:  Widely considered a wellspring for U.S. greatness, immigration has also been an abiding site of our deepest conflicts.  The republican foundations of the United States with its promises of democracy and equality for all seem to strain against ever increasing numbers of immigrants from parts of the world barely conceived of by the Founding Fathers, much less as sources of new citizens.  What is the breaking point for the assimilating powers of U.S. democracy and how much does national vitality rely upon continued influxes of a diversity of immigrants with their strenuous ambitions and resourcefulness?  Today we remain embattled by such competing beliefs about how immigration shapes our nation’s well-being and to what ends we should constrain whom we admit and in what numbers.  

This survey emphasizes the following themes:  the changing population of the United States from colonial times; ethnic cultures, communities, and cuisines; ideologies concerning eligibility for citizenship and for restricting immigration; the development of immigration law as an aspect of sovereign authority; the entwining of immigration policy with international relations; and the evolution of institutions for immigration enforcement.   

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 Cultural Diversity in the United States. Cultural Diversity courses are designed to increase your familiarity with the variety and richness of American cultural experiences. A substantial portion of your grade stems from assignments concerning the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one U.S. cultural group that has experienced persistent marginalization.  


Texts/Readings: *main texts are on 2-hour reserve at PCL
*Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (Harper Perennial, 2002 edition)
Supplemental readings are available on Canvas


Grade Distribution: Final grades will be allocated as follows: A 93-100; A- 90-92; B+ 88-89; B 83-87; B- 80-82; C+ 78-79; C 73-77; C- 70-72 and so forth  
    Family Immigration Narrative:  10%; 2-page essay
    Midterm: 20% bluebook exam; short essay IDs
Final: 30% bluebook exam; short essay IDs and long essay
    Attendance and class participation: 15%
    Primary document analysis: 25% research and 4-5 page essay

This course is a survey of African-American history from the colonial era to the present focusing on the social, economic, political, and cultural history of Black people in the United States. Throughout the semester we will examine major topics and themes in African-American history that include: its beginnings in Africa; the Middle Passage and trans-Atlantic slave trade; colonial and antebellum slavery; the abolition movement; the free black experience; emancipation; “Jim Crow” segregation; racial violence; mass incarceration; mass migrations and the “New Negro”; Black participation in international wars; Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Feminist Movement(s); popular culture; and ongoing struggles against social, political, and economic inequality. We will pay special attention to the meanings of citizenship, social movements, sexuality, class, and gender.

Course materials will include primary and secondary sources. Students will be required to complete four short (500-words) written assignments and then will have the opportunity to determine how to demonstrate their learning by selecting the other assignments that contribute to their final grade from a pre-determined “menu” of options. At the end of the course, students will have developed an understanding of African American history and met specific learning objectives that require students to: 1) Critically examine historical documents (primary sources) and scholarly interpretations (secondary sources) concerning key elements of African-American history; 2) Analyze the impact of enslavement and discrimination, as well as ideologies of race, gender, sexuality, status, and white supremacy, on the experiences of African-Americans; 3) Explain the causes and ramifications of mass migrations of African-Americans from rural to urban areas, as well as from southern to northern and western sites; 4) Analyze the effects of significant events on African-Americans (e.g., the Great Depression and world wars); 5) Identify and compare strategies of organizations and social movements focused on civil rights; and 6) Demonstrate the ability to think and communicate critically and analytically in written work.

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

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

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

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

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

This course examines Mexican American history from the point of view of three distinct places: Los Angeles, the mountains of northern New Mexico, and the far southern tip of Texas. These locales, one urban, another remote and isolated, and another rural but connected to larger networks of trade, are not representative of Mexican American history as a whole. That is a story too vast and complicated to cover in a single semester except as an introductory survey. This course is not a survey. Instead, it is meant to introduce students to the geographic and cultural diversity of Mexican America by doing a deep dive into three separate histories. 

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

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

Course Description, Expectations, and Objectives: This course focuses on the basic history of Texas after 1900.  While major events such as the Great Depression, World War II, and the oil price bust of the 1980s will be covered, emphasis will be given on how and why Texas, its culture, and its groups of people changed and did not change 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 21st century of all Texans.    
   I expect you to attend and participate in 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.   

Main skills and attitudes to be developed:
    1.  Critical Thinking (to include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information).
    2.  Communication (to include effective development, interpretation and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication).
    3.  Social Responsibility (to include intercultural competence, knowledge of civic responsibility, and the ability to engage effectively in regional, national, and global communities).
    4.  Personal Responsibility (to include the ability to connect choices, actions, and consequences to ethical decision-making).

Student Learning Outcomes:   During the semester, students will:
    1.  enhance their ability to ask questions of, accurately evaluate, and effectively synthesize primary and secondary historical writings.
    2.  develop the ability to effectively express their own ideas in written and oral form.
    3.  expand their knowledge of the historical and social contexts that created diversity in past and present human cultures.
    4.  apply knowledge about the human condition—in the past and present—to their personal lives and studies.

Prerequisites:   None


How to be successful in this course:
      READINGS:  Complete each assignment before the next one begins and do not get behind.
     WRITTEN WORK: Good writing requires rewriting.  Complete the first draft of your written assignment well before the due date and then let it sit for 24 hours.  After that go back and edit it for clarity, style, and meaning.  Ask yourself if it is well written and understandable.
     DISCUSSION POSTS: Be thoughtful and base what you post on evidence and information from your readings, research, and lectures.  Quality is more important than quantity.
     FINAL EXAM: Make sure that you have completed all the readings and edited and gone over your notes before the last class day.  Think of the final exam as a combination and culmination of all we have done in the course.  Take the lessons you have learned about critical thinking, analyzing evidence, and making decisions about the past and use them to prepare for the final.  Remember that I expect you to think, communicate, and act like an historian by May 14.


Required Readings:
Rebecca Sharpless, Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940
Monica Muñoz Martinez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas
Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show
Brian D. Behnken, Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas



Grading Assessment:
Discussion/Posts and Questions    18%
Reflection Papers             36%Research Note            24%            
Final Exam                22%    
        
Grading Scale:
A    93-100    A-     90-92
B+    87-89        B    83-86        B-    80-82
C+    77-79        C    73-76        C-    70-72
D+    67-69        D    63-66        D    60-62
F    59 and below

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.

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 a discipline in terms of research methods, evidence, and analysis. We use case studies about the global early modern world (France, London, and South Asia), Jefferson’s America and 19th-century Texas. Students read primary sources and examine how different historians have competing interpretations of particular topics. Students learn important transferable skills that are valuable for a wide range of careers.

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.

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

Historians use a range of analytical skills and our discipline, like the rest of the world, is entering the age of big data. In this class we will explore changes in American society using a massive data source, the hundreds of millions of names in the Social Security database. We will treat changes in baby names as evidence of broader political, social, and cultural change. When and why did the name Adolph drop in popularity? That should be obvious, but which name dropped in popularity the fastest: Adolph, Benito, or Hillary? Which name switched genders the fastest: Ashleigh, Kerry, or Jackie? Have personal names in the US become more or less diverse? Do the answers to these questions vary by state or region? Is Texas more “name diverse” than Wisconsin? Through these questions, we will explore the intersection of history with the interdisciplinary field of data science.

So that we can analyze name trends, this course will introduce the computer language R and review some basic algebra. Math and coding-related questions will include how to measure name diversity and how to calculate it by state and year. We will also explore more conventional historical sources and methods: newspapers, magazines, fiction and non-fiction books, and archival materials. Which politicians, celebrities, or fictional characters might have changed the popularity of a name? Was the name Marion, for example, already trending female when Marion Robert Morrison chose the screen name John Wayne? Did Cassius Clay spark a trend toward Islamic and Afro-centric names when he became Muhammed Ali? How do biographies, autobiographies, and other sources explain trends in names? How do those explanation match our quantitative evidence?

You do not need any special background in mathematics or computer science, just curiosity and a lack of “math anxiety.” If you have a strong math, stats, or coding background, you will learn to apply those skills to real world data. If not, this is a great introduction to data science. For all students, by combining humanistic critical thinking with computational analysis, this course will give you skills applicable to a range of careers.

Covers the period from Rome's foundation through Caesar's murder in 44 B.C.  The emphasis placed on the last two centuries of the Republic when problems accumulated and solutions did not.  All the factors contributing to the Republic's fall will discussed:  political, military, social, economic, religious, etc.

Carries the Global Cultures flag and fulfills the Cultural Expression, Human Experience, & Thought course area requirement.

The History of the Modern Life Sciences traces the study of living things from the seventeenth century to the present. We will examine how naturalists and biologists have searched for order in nature––from cabinets of curiosity to maps of biodiversity, and from the theory of cells to the structure of DNA. In this course, students will examine the development of changing practices and approaches to investigating life in the field, the museum, and the laboratory. Students will confront critical problems in the history of biology and society, including those related to exploration and empire; race, gender, and classification; theories of evolution; genetics and eugenics; ecology and conservation; molecular biology; and biotechnology. How has the meaning of “life” changed through history? How have ideas about social order and natural order mirrored or shaped each other? To explore these questions, we will analyze historians’ interpretations, historical actors’ own accounts of their work and ideas, as well as historical images and objects of scientific practice.

Texts may include:

Farber, Paul Lawrence. Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition From Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.


Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2011.

Additional primary and secondary sources will be posted on our course’s Canvas site

Grading:

Midterm Essay Exam (30%)

Final Essay Exam (35%)

Reflections (homework and in-class writing) (20%)

Participation (15%)

“Perspectives on Science and Mathematics” is intended primarily for students in the UTeach-Natural Sciences program for prospective secondary school science and mathematics teachers. It is designed to give students a grasp of science and mathematics as both the products of historical processes and as factors in further change, and to equip them to use this understanding to inform and enrich their own future classroom teaching. The course is built around a mix of lectures, readings, and class discussions, as well as the preparation and presentation of model lesson plans drawing on historical themes and materials. The course carries a writing flag, and we will emphasize clear and effective writing on all assignments. Note that the course includes a weekly discussion section led by a teaching assistant.



Texts: Galileo Galilei, The Essential Galileo (ed. and trans. Maurice Finocchiaro), plus additional readings to be posted on Canvas.

Grades will be based on a variety of short response essays (30%), a longer paper (20%), the lesson plan project (25%), several quizzes (10%), and participation, including attendance (15%).

“Perspectives on Science and Mathematics” is intended primarily for students in the UTeach-Natural Sciences program for prospective secondary school science and mathematics teachers. It is designed to give students a grasp of science and mathematics as both the products of historical processes and as factors in further change, and to equip them to use this understanding to inform and enrich their own future classroom teaching. The course is built around a mix of lectures, readings, and class discussions, as well as the preparation and presentation of model lesson plans drawing on historical themes and materials. The course carries a writing flag, and we will emphasize clear and effective writing on all assignments. Note that the course includes a weekly discussion section led by a teaching assistant.



Texts: Galileo Galilei, The Essential Galileo (ed. and trans. Maurice Finocchiaro), plus additional readings to be posted on Canvas.

Grades will be based on a variety of short response essays (30%), a longer paper (20%), the lesson plan project (25%), several quizzes (10%), and participation, including attendance (15%).

This course will provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the historical developments in Modern Iran. Students will learn how Iranian society, culture, and politics have evolved from the beginning of the Qajar period, until the present day. Themes that will be explored include religion and society, especially in relation to Shi’ism, and including religious minorities, the complex process of modernization, issues of identity and modern nationalism, oil and economic development, international politics, gender issues, the Islamic Revolution and theIslamic Republic.

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.

Overview: This is an introductory survey of modern Japanese history, covering 1850 to 1950. There are no prerequisites. Topics include a brief survey of traditional Japanese society and politics; the fall of the shogunate and the Meiji Restoration; industrialization and economic development; the rise of political parties; militarism and World War II; the American occupation and postwar recovery. Although the emphasis will be on major political events and institutional developments, we will trace social and cultural currents through literature, including dramas and novels.


Readings: The following books are available at the bookstore.

Gordon, Origins of Modern Japan, ISBN 9780190920555. Earlier editions are similar.
Tanizaki Junichirō, Naomi, ISBN: 9780375724749. Other editions are fine.
Cook, Japan at War, ISBN 9781565840393


Grading:
Quizzes (5): 5% each for 25%. These will be short, point-of-fact exams at the beginning of class.

Our stereotypical image of an early modern woman is a witch - for some good reasons because thousands of witch trials took place.  In this course, we will look beyond that perspective to explore the complex of material, political, and cultural factors that shaped experiences of gender, family and power in early modern Europe.  The early modern centuries between about 1500 and 1800 were years of tremendous change in many ways – including religious reformations, more powerful governments, the domestic impacts of colonialism that included the forced migration of people of African descent to Europe and involvement with slavery in many indirect forms, and the economic transformation we call the transition to capitalism.  Some features were slower to change, however, especially with regard to family life. We will focus on lived experience to explore how women's experiences compared to men's - whether as workers, consumers, criminals, political subjects and political actors, peasants or nobles, members of racial and religious minorities, spouses or parents.  Along the way, we will explore why some of these dynamics fed into a proliferation of "witches."

Discussion of the assigned readings (see below) will be an important element of this class: you will learn more effectively when you take an active part in the analysis of the material to be covered. Consequently you must expect to read every reading assignment very carefully and thoughtfully. You should come to each class ready to ask questions and contribute observations. You will need to demonstrate mastery of the readings to do well on the exams.

Daily class readings are available on Canvas or online through the Library Catalogue. 

Grading:
Midterm 20%
Final 30%
Reading grids 20%
Witchcraft group projects 20%
Preparation and engagement 10%

What caused the Civil War? Was the Civil War inevitable? Was it necessary? How does a divided nation reunite? Was Reconstruction a success or a failure? This course will examine historians’ changing interpretations and approaches to answering these questions as we consider the causes, course, character, and consequences of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Starting in 1850 and continuing through the end of Reconstruction in 1877, we will examine the period and its people from multiple perspectives and consider the war’s effect on different groups including those who experienced it firsthand on the battlefronts, the enslaved and formerly enslaved, indigenous Americans, and women of all social orders.

The primary goal of the course is for students to understand the multiple meanings of, arguably, the most transformative event in American history. Those meanings may be defined in many ways: national, sectional, racial, constitutional, individual, social, intellectual, or moral. Four broad themes will be closely examined: the crisis of union and disunion; slavery, race, and emancipation as national problem, personal experience, and social process; the experience of modern, total war for individuals and society; and the political and social challenges of Reconstruction.

At the end of the course, students will have developed an understanding of the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that led to the Civil War as well as the consequences of that war. Students will: 1) Analyze and evaluate primary and secondary sources; 2) Critically assess the social, economic, and political factors that contributed to and resulted from the Civil War; 3) Evaluate the success/failure of Reconstruction; and 4) Develop, articulate, and defend educated arguments and conclusions using fact-based evidence, both orally and in writing.
Course materials will include primary and secondary sources.

Required readings:
Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South (New York: Random House Books, 2013).

Thavolia Glymph, The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2020).

Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War

All other readings and primary sources will be available on Canvas.

Assignments/Grades:
Attendance (5%)
Primary Source Analysis Responses (20%)
Confederate Monuments Assignment (15%)
The Civil War in Popular Culture Assignment (15%)
Historical Newspaper Assignment (15%)
Final Assessment (30%)

This course surveys the history of South Asia during the era prior to British colonial rule.  It begins ca. 1200 with the establishment of Muslim political power in North India and ends ca. 1750 with the emergence of British dominance in East India.  The large states which emerged in this period – the Delhi Sultanate, the Vijayanagara kingdom of South India, and the Mughal empire – incorporated  regions of South Asia that had previously been politically divided and stimulated the circulation of ideas, peoples, and goods throughout the subcontinent and beyond.  The increased scale of these political networks led to greater uniformity and communication in the society and economy of South Asia, as well as the growth of a pan-Indian elite culture.  At the same time, the diversity of South Asian culture and society increased during the timespan from 1200 to 1750, due to the influx of peoples and religions of foreign origin coming overland from Afghanistan and Persia and also overseas from Europe and elsewhere.   The roots of contemporary South Asia -– an area that is distinctly different from other parts of the world yet is also very diverse internally – thus lie in the precolonial era.

1) C. Asher & C. Talbot, India before Europe
2) Banarsidas, Ardhakathanak: A Half Story, trans. Rohini Chowdhury
3) excerpts from The Rehla of Ibn Battuta, Hasan Sizji's Morals of the Heart, 
    Baburnama, Humayunnama, Michael Fisher's Visions of Mughal India etc.

2 papers (4-6 pps each)= 40%
2 exams (ID & essay))= 50%
1 set of discussion questions=   5%
attendance & participation=   5%

This course is focused on one big question:  What is “Modern” about Modern Latin America? Implicit in this question is another set of interrelated questions we will explore throughout the semester: Who gets to define modernity? Where did the regional category “Latin America” come from? Might there be other, more meaningful ways of carving up the Western Hemisphere? What historical processes and trends contribute to “Latin America” as a meaningful regional category? Implicit in this framing are the ways the region has interacted with other regions and global actors, including the United States, but also Europe, Africa, and Asia.   

Seeking answers to these questions will help students get an introductory sense for the history of Latin America. The course begins by addressing the most significant aspects of contact and colonization that led to the deep Iberianization of the region. The bulk of the course, however, will deal with the 19th- early 21st centuries. Major issues to be covered include: the breakdown of Spanish and Portuguese Empires; the struggle to form independent nation-states; innovative democratic experiments Spanish American republics such as Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama; the role “second slavery” played in developing and sustaining modern economies in Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico (and also the United States); the re-integration of the region into the world economy by the late 19th century; the emergence of national politics and mass culture; Cold War cycles of revolution and counter-revolution; the promise of democracy in the region for the world; and the implications of migration from and to the region.

In addition to highlighting the modern, global interconnections that best help us understand Latin America as a region, the course readings and lectures will examine the intersections between ethnicity, race, class, nationality, and gender in understanding significant changes in political, social, and economic trends. A combination of primary sources and scholarly works will highlight broader themes – and exceptions. Lectures and readings will cover most of the region, but some countries will garner more attention than others, most notably Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Guatemala, Argentina, and Cuba.

Through weekly (7-10 minute) video-recorded lectures, readings, synchronous zoom discussions, group work, essays, presentations and examinations, students will hone their talents for historical interpretation, including their critical thinking and writing skills. In addition, the course provides tools for understanding present-day problems in the Americas from a broader historical perspective.



Required Materials
Steven Dudley, MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang (HarperCollins, 2020)
The rest of class reading materials will be posted to the Canvas Website

Grading Policy
A=       92.5-100%
A-=      89.5-92.4%
B+ =    86.5-89.4%
B =       83.5-86.4%
B- =      79.5-83.4%
C+ =    76.5-79.4%
C =       73.5-76.4%
C- =     69.5-73.4%
D+ =    66.5-69.4%
D =      63.5-66.4%
D- =     59.5-63.4%
F=        59.4% or less.

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, (3rd 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.
 
Grading is based on posting daily comments on Discussion Board in Canvas (40 points), In-class mid-terms (20), In-Class Finals (20 points), One Self-Assessment/ Reflection Essay (10). Letter grades of A, B, C, D and F will be assigned on the basis of the performance.

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

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

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


*Weekly Reading Responses: 18%
*Book Review Paper (3-4 pages): 15%
*Final Group Project Description and Annotated Bibliography: 5%
*Group Project + In-Class Presentation: 25%
*Individual Final Paper (8-10 pages): 25%

*Class Participation/Engagement: 12%

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

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

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

The Cold War involved the whole world.  It began in 1945 when the victorious Allies of World War II broke up into ideological enemy camps that divided the East (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Eastern Europe, and China) and the West (Western Europe, and the United States).  Whether a country should follow the capitalist West or the socialist East also split many developing nations of Asia, Latin America, and Africa.  Moreover, the proliferation of nuclear weapons complicated the tensions between and within these ideological struggles.  
    While the grim prospects for mutual nuclear annihilation forced the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to maintain an uneasy peace between them, many armed conflicts did arise at the margins of the great powers.  The Chinese Revolution of 1949 eventually led to serious but limited wars on the Korean Peninsula as well as in Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos).  Africa also became involved, as fighters in the “wars of national liberation” engaged with ideological struggle between West and East.  Latin America joined the Cold War struggle when the Cuban Revolution of 1959 sought to eliminate traditional U.S. domination with a military and commercial alliance to the Soviet Union.  In fact, the emergence of socialism in the Western Hemisphere led the East and West to the brink of nuclear warfare.  
    Needless to say, the Cold War did not treat democracy kindly.  In Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, the emergence of new nations from colonial rule usually resulted in dictatorships rather than electoral governments.  In Latin America, the threat of the spread of Cuban Communism doomed most democracies to long-term military rule.  In the Eastern Bloc countries, communist totalitarianism predominated—not socialist democracy.  Only the United States and the countries of Western Europe preserved democracy throughout the Cold War period.  Nevertheless, the Cold War did come to a definitive end.  China and the United States came to an agreement, and Soviet Union collapsed.  The world today may be no safer than it was during the Cold War, because the legacy of the “New World Order” resulted neither in order nor in a new world liberated from the burdens of the past.

Texts:
Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006, 10th ed
Chen Jian, Mao’s China & the Cold War


-Three essays based on the above texts, 600 points or 60 percent
Essay 1 (4-5 pages) 100 points (may be revised for extra points)
Essay 2 (5-6 pages) 200 points
Essay 3 (6-7 pages) 300 points
-Three multiple-choice, true-false exams, 400 points or 40 percent.

minus absences     – 0.5 course points per unexcused absence.

This undergraduate seminar focuses on India's classical epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.  Although they originated in ancient times, these two captivating narratives have been retold in different languages and formats over the centuries, including most recently in the form of TV serials and graphic novels.  Among the topics to be explored are the martial ethos of ancient India, the complexities of dharma, the ideology of kingship, traditional gender norms, the recent politicization of the Ramayana, and the use of the epics to counter social and gender hierarchy.  Students will read abbreviated versions of the epics along with excerpts from various translations of the complete narratives; they will also be exposed to other primary sources including paintings, traditional theatrical performances, and modern films and TV shows.

Texts:
1) Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan, The Mahabharata
2) Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good
3) R. K. Narayan, The Ramayana
4) Numerous articles and essays provided on Canvas.

Grading:
reading responses (6 x 5% each) = 30%; analytical essays (2 x 25% each) = 50 %; film review = 5%; attendance & participation = 15%

Although piracy was a global phenomenon, most people associate pirates with a brief moment in which predominantly European pirates were active in locations like the Caribbean. In fact, piracy was central to East Asian history. In the sixteenth century, Japan-based pirates launched massive raids of China and Korea while in the nineteenth century Chinese pirates mustered tens of thousands of fighters and hundreds of vessels.  While the immense scale of East Asian piracy is important, pirates had a reach that extended far beyond violent attacks on the coast or seizures of vessels.  Pirates operated on the maritime fringes of powerful territorial states.  In large part because of this position on the margins, their activities helped bind East Asia together into an integrated zone of economic and cultural exchange. In this way, they formed the leading edge of early modern globalization, linking diverse economies and societies together.  

Because they were so important, states often tried to co-opt pirates, using former maritime predators to form navies or to hunt down other pirates.  Confronted by state power, some pirate leaders attempted to forge independent kingdoms of their own while others, including remarkable women like Cheng I Sao, created powerful maritime confederations. By looking at the lives, communities, careers and wider impact of pirates, both male and female, we’re able to uncover new ways to understand the history of this key area.  Our focus throughout the class is on maritime East Asia, a region which stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk down through the East China Sea to the South China Sea.  Our discussion will thus encompass Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan but we will also look further to Southeast Asia.  The label of pirate was never a precise or uncontroversial designation and we will explore maritime violence across a broad spectrum from supposedly legal privateering to illicit attacks on vessels and coasts and everything in between. As such we will consider European chartered companies like the Dutch East India Company, maritime and military entrepreneurs like Zheng Chenggong or Cheng I Sao, and a range of state-sponsored pirates who blurred the lines between legal and illegal violence.


Weekly Readings

C. R. Pennell (ed.), Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader (New York: NYU Press, 2001), excerpts
Anne Peìrotin-Dumon, “The pirate and the emperor: power and the law on the seas, 1450-1850”, in Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader (New York: NYU Press, 2001), Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader (New York: NYU Press, 2001).

Bruce L. Batten, Gateway to Japan: Hakata in War and Peace, 500-1300 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), 11-49, 81-140.

Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994), 75-122, 167-181.

Benjamin Hazard, “The Formative Years of the Wako, 1223-63,” Monumenta Nipponica22.3/4 (1967), 260-77.

Cesar V. Callanta, The Limahong Invasion (Manila: New Day Publishers, 1989), 1-70.

Robert Antony (ed.), Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 27-71.

Masashi Haneda and Mihoko Oka, A Maritime History of East Asia (Kyoto University Press/Trans Pacific Press, 2019).

Adam Clulow, The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 135-170, 205-231.

PETER BORSCHBERG. Hugo Grotius, the Portuguese and Free Trade in the East
Indies. Singapore: NUS Press, 2011

Peter D. Shapinsky. Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies Publications, University of Michigan, 2014

Peter D. Shapinsky, Predators, Protectors, and Purveyors: Pirates and Commerce
in Late Medieval Japan,Monumenta Nipponica, Volume 64, Number 2, Autumn 2009, pp. 273-313

Emily Sohmer Tai, Marking Water: Piracy and Property in the Pre-Modern West

Adam Clulow, “The Pirate and the Warlord,” Journal of Early Modern History 16.2 (2012): 523-542.
Tonio Andrade, Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory Over the West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 20-59.

Dahpon David Ho, “The Burning Shore: Fujian and the Coastal Depopulation, 1661-1683,” in Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang (eds.), Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History: 1550-1700 (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2016), pp. 60-89.

Xing Hang, Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c. 1620-1720 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 146-240

Tonio Andrade, “The Company’s Chinese Pirates: How the Dutch East India Company
Tried to Lead a Coalition of Pirates to War against China, 1621-1662,” Journal of
World History 15, no. 4 (2004): 415-444.

Jurgis Elisonas, “The Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s Relations with China and Korea,” in
John Whitney Hall, ed. The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 4, Early Modern Japan
(Cambridge, 1991),

Kwan-wai So, Japanese Piracy in Ming China during the 16th Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,1975).

Robert Hellyer, “Poor but not Pirates: The Tsushima Domain and Foreign Relations in Early Modern Japan,” in R. Antony, ed., Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas (Hong Kong, 2010), 115-126.

Robert Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates (Cambridge, 1986)

Robert Antony, “ ‘Righteous Yang’: Pirate, Rebel, and Hero on the Sino-Vietnamese Water Frontier, 1644-1684,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 11 (2014): 4-30. https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-11/antony

John L. Anderson. “Piracy and World History: An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation.” In Bandits at Sea, ed. C. R. Pennell, pp. 82–106. New York University Press, 2001.

Dian H. Murray, Pirates of the South China Coast (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987),


Attendance, Preparation and Participation - 10%
Reading Grids – 10%
Midterm – 15%
Assignment 1: Piracy Imagery Exercise 10%
Assignment 2: Maritime Asia Classroom Exercise and Paper – 15%
Assignment 3: Piracy Portfolio (bibliography, outline and poster presentation) – 25%
Final Exam – 15%

Course Description: 

This course explores the “conquest” of Mexico and the social, cultural, political, and economic processes which were set in motion by the Spanish invasion of Mexico. We will examine recent scholarship and primary accounts of conquest that seeks to understand the complexities of conquest and conquest society. How do we account for the Spanish military victory and for the consolidation of Spanish power in Mexico? What roles do the Catholic Church, Spanish settlers, and indigenous communities play in the consolidation of conquest society? In what ways is indigenous society (political structures and power relationships, gender relations, economic organization, religious practices and beliefs, etc.) affected by conquest? Conversely, how does indigenous society affect Spanish colonial policies and practices? The conquest of Mexico had global repercussions, not only in economic terms but also in cultural and intellectual terms. How did Spanish discovery of unknown peoples and places affect thinking about humanity and the world? We will examine these questions through selected readings and interpretations of primary sources, visual sources, film, and assigned texts. This is a particularly apt moment to be studying this important topic given that 2021 is the 500^th commemorative year of the Spanish invasion of what we now know as Mexico in 1521. 

Required Texts: 

• Matthew Restall and Kris Lane, Latin America in Colonial Times (2^nd ed.) 

• Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests (2^nd ed., available via electronic resource) 
• Miguel León Portilla  Bernardino de Sahagún. First Anthropologist (available via electronic resource) 
• Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices (available via electronic resource) 
• Diana Magaloni Kerpel, Colors of the New World 
• Alex Hidalgo, Trail of Footprints: A History of Indigenous Maps from Viceregal Mexico (available as an Ebook) 
• Additional readings are available on CANVAS. 

Grading:
• 4 Informal response papers 20%
• 3 short analytical essays 30%
• peer review 10%

• final analytical essay 35% (15% draft; 20% final Essay
  • engagement and participation 5%

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%

This seminar offers students with some knowledge of the history of civil rights movements in the U.S. the opportunity to more deeply explore African American and Mexican American struggles for justice and liberation from the 1950s to 1970s. Its comparative approach encourages insights into movements that had distinct historical roots and yet, in many places, did not occur in isolation from each other. In Austin, for example, African American and Mexican American civil rights organizations filed suit against school segregation on the same day. From this vantage point, we consider the relationship between racial justice and such themes as gender and sexuality, education and media, antiwar and antipoverty movements, power and liberation. Students have opportunities to explore such issues in the context of Austin and/or Texas.

Writing Component and Projects
This writing component for this course will be fulfilled through reading responses, short essays, and the final project, a public digital presentation on some component of civil rights movements on the UT campus and/or in the Austin community. A central goal is to help students learn how to articulate their own historical arguments based on their research, and to present them to others. Presentations will bring written historical analysis together with selected historical documents, photos, oral histories, radio clips, and/or film segments. We will have the opportunity to collaborate with another civil rights class.

Activities
Class sessions include discussion seminars; workshops on research, writing, and digital presentation; and guest presentations by activists from the Austin community and individuals who will present information for the projects. Course materials combine scholarly texts (book chapters and articles by historians) with historical documents, oral histories, and films. Near the end of the semester, there will be a final public event at which students will present their projects.


Possible Books (in addition to other readings):
Goldstone, Dwonna. Integrating the 40 Acres
Oropeza, Lorena. ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era
Montejano, David. Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981  
Orleck, Annelise and Lisa Hazirjian, eds. The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964-1980
Theoharis, Jeanne. A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History


Evaluation
Reading responses (8 total, submission grade)    15%
Review                        10%
Oral History Essay                15%
Final Project    – Short submissions and drafts    10%
– Writing components        20%
        – Digital Project as a whole    20%
        – Presentation              5%
Reflections                     5%
Attendance (points subtracted if over 3 unexcused absences)

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

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

Attendance Required: Unexcused absences result in deduction of points from the final grade. Requirements will likely include:
Quiz/Weekly discussion leadership 20%
First Essay 20%
Second Essay, with group work component, 20%
Biography final version 20%
Oral presentation of final research, 20%

Mapping Violence: Racial Terror in Texas, 1900 - 1930 is a research project that aims to expose interconnected histories of violence, the legacies of colonization, slavery, and genocide that intersect in Texas. Although often segregated in academic studies, these histories coalesced geographically and temporally. Students in this course will learn interdisciplinary methods combining historical research methods, theories in public history and ethnic studies, and digital humanities methods to rethink the limits of archival research, historical narrative, and methods for presenting findings to public audiences. This research intensive seminar will allow students to develop historical research skills and to contribute original research to the Mapping Violence project.

Overall Objectives:
The overall goals for this course are for students to:

Develop an analytical understanding of the history of racial violence in Texas in the early twentieth century

Develop critical reading skills for evaluating different kinds of historical and cultural sources, their arguments, and their use of evidence

Develop archival research methods and skills for critically analyzing historical documents including newspapers, census records, court documents, diplomatic records.

Learn to write analytic essays drawing on archival documents and develop skills for presenting their findings to public audiences.

Learn methods public humanities and digital humanities methods for presenting academic findings to the public


COURSE READINGS:
To develop the historical and methodological training for the course students will be working through a hefty reading load. Some readings are more challenging than others, but seminar discussions will provide opportunity for more detailed analyses and individual questions.
Kidada Williams, “Regarding the Aftermath of Lynching.” Journal of American History , Dec 2014. doi: 10.1093/jahist/jau683
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History Beacon Press 1995.
Ida B. Wells, The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes on Lynching in the United States. 1895.
William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb. Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence Against Mexicans in The United States, 1848-1928. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Ken Gonzales-Day, Lynching in the West, 1850-1935. Duke University Press, 2006.
Sadiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe, June 2008.
Richard White, “What Is Spatial History?” Working paper, Spatial History Lab, February 2010.
Vincent Brown, “Mapping a Slave Revolt: Visualizing Spatial History through the Archives of  Slavery.” Social Text, no. 125 (2015): 134–41.
Andrea Roberts and Mohammad Javad Biazar. “Black Placemaking in Texas: Sonic and Social Histories of Newton and Jasper County Freedom Colonies.” Current Research in Digital History . Vol. 2 (2019)
Angel David Nieves, Kim Gallon, David Kim, Scott Nesbit, Bryan Carter, and Jessica Marie Johnson. “Black Spatial Humanities: Theories, Methods, and Praxis in Digital Humanities.” Digital Humanities Conference 2017.
Equal Justice Initiative. Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror . 2017 ed.
Rebecca Carter, “Valued Lives in Violent Places: Black Urban Place making at a Civil Rights Memorial in New Orleans.” City and Society (2014) 26: 239–261.
Jessica Marie Johnson, “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” Social Text (2018)
Lauren Klein. “The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings.” American Literature (2013)


Grading:
Short Response Assignments (10%) : Students are required to write short weekly responses to the readings. These short writing assignments will vary throughout the semester are designed to help facilitate informed discussions and reading comprehension. These short assignments will also provide a space for students to discuss research challenges and strategies in the second half of the semester. Further instructions for short-responses will be given in class.
Case Study Reports (40%) : Students will select three cases of racial violence included in the Mapping Violence database and search archival records to compile a research report on what is known about the case. Students will compile an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources, create a chronology of events (timeline) related to the selected case, write short biographies of the person targeted with violence, any known aggressors, and any known witnesses or surviving family members, and compile a research statement on what information is outstanding and what if any competing interpretations of the event exist. Students will complete these projects by drafting an approximately 350 word narrative of the event
Digital Prototype (20%): Students will develop a proof of concept or prototype for a proposed digital narrative related to the case study that they have researched and analyzed. Building on the research and storytelling work completed for the essay, the digital narrative should consider uses of archival media, demonstrate forms or interaction possible in digital contexts, and acknowledge where and how digital media is viewed and disseminated in twenty-first-century contexts
Reflections (10%) : Students will write one short essay reflecting on the methodological challenges of recovering histories of racial violence and the narrative challenges of writing these histories. Students will draw on themes from course readings and conversations to evaluate their own contributions and to consider histories that continue to be obscured or erased.
Student Presentations (20%) : Students will present on their research, essays, and digital narratives.

The French revolution is one of the most famous events in global history. We have still not resolved the fundamental questions it raises. Why does a regime collapse? How is a new state built? Why are some revolutions peaceful while others become protracted and violent? The human drama of this tumultuous decade and a half is irresistible. How were extraordinary careers made and then lost? How did people take sides? How did ordinary people survive?We will use the French revolution to think about all these questions concretely.

We have three aims. The first is to master the major developments of the revolution itself. The second is to understand how those events have produced classic political arguments about the conditions for democracy, the sources of rights, and the process of historical change.  Third, we consider how the revolution has shaped the world, and how it compares with other revolutions, including ones going on right now.


Texts:
Rousseau, The Social Contract
William Doyle, The French Revolution: A Very Short History
Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight
Timothy Tackett, The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution or R.R. Palmer, 12 Who Ruled.
David Bell, Napoleon, A Biography


Requirements:
• 2 4-5 page take home papers (25% each)  (total 50% of grade**)
• 1 comprehensive test (25%)
• group political club assignments (25%).

This course covers Greek history during the Archaic and Classical Periods, from the rise of Greek city-states and the first examples of Greek writing and literature (ca. 800 BCE) to the subordination of Greece under Philip II of Macedonia in 338 BCE. The course 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 (literary, epigraphic, and archeological sources). After looking at the geography and ‘prehistory’ of Greece (including the Bronze Age and Dark Age), we will cover major developments such as the rise of the polis and the first forms of democracy, the invention of the Greek alphabet, the introduction of hoplite warfare, and the diaspora of Greeks in the Mediterranean. Then we will focus on the two most famous city-states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, and follow their trajectories through the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, and the complex period of unstable hegemonies in the first half of the 4th century until Philip II of Macedonia was able established his control over Greece.
The course will consist of two hours of lecture per week plus a required one-hour discussion section. The two lectures will combine historical outline with the exploration of specific themes and problems, such as systems of government, social structures, economy, culture, religion, and war, while the discussion sections will be focused on how to analyze and interpret ancient sources.

This course carries the Global Cultures flag.

Same as History 355N. Traces the development of American culture and society from the colonial era until the end of the Civil War. Major themes include racial conflict, religion, slavery, the development of democracy, and cultural reform. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

This course has three major aims:(1)to trace and explain the development and transformation of espionage, intelligence and surveillance in Europe from the first World War to the end of the Cold War.At the beginning of the twentieth century, intelligence operations were not a major priority of European governments. They involved only a small number of agents and tiny budgets. By the end of the last century, states around the world were funding huge intelligence operations involving more than a million human actors and costing over a billion dollars per year. While human actors continue to play important roles, these are no longer only agents in the field but analysts with advanced degrees in mathematics, physics, foreign languages, economics, engineering, and political science. Moreover, modern intelligence operations employ highly sophisticated and costly technology, from satellites to huge listening stations and complicated software programs. The first priority of this course is to explore the reasons for this quantitative and qualitative transformation of European intelligence agencies.Why have modern states seen the need to expand their intelligence apparatuses in such a dramatic fashion? (2) Secondly, this course asks:What difference have espionage,intelligence and surveillance operations made to military and political decision making and more, generally, to the nature and functioning of modern states?(2)Finally, this course will explore the relationship between the actual history of spying and its fictional representations. Most ordinary citizens know about espionage, intelligence and surveillance from spy novels, spy films and television series which have constructed powerful but often quite misleading images of spies and spying. This course will explore the ways in which these fictional depictions of spying have influenced the way European and American readers and audiences think about (and very often misunderstand) intelligence operations.
The course covers the entire twentieth century, but it will focus upon a series of particularly important and revealing case studies which it will embed in this longer historical narrative(for example: the code breaking operations during World War Two at Bletchley Park in the UK which successfully utilized a stolen Enigma Machine to tap into secret Nazi military and naval communications.) The course will also examine certain sites and spaces which have been particularly important to the development of modern spying—for example, Berlin as the “Spy Capital of Cold War Europe.” Finally, the course will also explore domestic surveillance operations using two main examples- the infamous Nazi Gestapo and the East German Stasi(from 1950-1989).

READINGS

[*=available as an electronic resource on-line at the PCL=you do not have to buy these books]

Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies:Intelligence in the Twentieth Century

Ben MacIntyre, Double-Cross:The true story of the D-Day Spies

*Christopher Andrews, The Sword and the Shield:The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Len Deighton, Berlin Game

*George Orwell,1984

Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

+selected readings to be made available as pdf.files,listed as **

We will also be watching and discussing this classic spy film:

“The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (1965)

as well as the film “The Lives of Others”(2006)

Requirements:

The requirements are:

(1)One in class-report on an image, person or document to be assigned by the instructor in the form of a Power Point presentation 15 minutes in length(on the first day of class, I will distribute a sign-up sheet for for these in-class reports).For this assignment, you will also be asked to submit a short(2-3 pages) essay which summarizes the findings of your oral report, due no later than 2 weeks after the report is presented in class (this assignment is worth 20% of the final grade)

(2)One shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten —worth 20 % of the final grade) on selected historical monographs, spy novels, films or television series that have not been assigned for the course and that students choose themselves in consultation with the instructor.(Due date=TBA) 

(3)The final assignment for this class is a small group project the results of which are to be presented in class(worth 40% of the final grade). The assignment for each small group is to design an exhibit in a Spy Museum which can be located anywhere in the world. Each group will need to pay close attention to the individual artifacts it wishes to place on display, to the use of photographs, films and interactive media and to the overall trajectory of the narrative it wants to construct in their museum.

Class participation counts for 20% of the final grade

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


Texts:
Jonathan C. Brown, A Brief History of Argentina, 2nd ed
Valeria Manzano, The Age of Youth in Argentina

Grading:
A map assignment worth 50 points
1st essay of 3 pages worth 75 points
2nd essay of 5 pages worth 175 points
3rd essay (research) of 10 pages worth 350 points
A final exam worth 250 points
Attendance 90 points – minus 10 points per absence

Modern French imperialism advanced its claims to power through a division of the world into two parts. In the Mediterranean world this thinking erected a frontier running across the middle of the sea. In the north there was Europe or the “West,” and in the south there was “Islam” or the “East.” The former was home to civilization and progress and the later was a backward place in need of regeneration. For their part, Muslims who fell under French domination or influence deployed their own divisions.  They reproduced parts of French concepts in a complex dialogue with their own history. The goals was to set Muslims towards a future that was modern, but authentic. Therefore throughout the Mediterranean, French imperialism triggered a “civilizing mission” to renew or revitalize society, by force if necessary. Many parts of this thinking have survived the colonial era and mark attitudes in contemporary France and the Middle East. Religion is generally offered as the decisive category determining these divisions, a so-called “clash of civilizations,” with Muslim societies set off as somehow incompatible with secular Europe.  Our task in this course will be to critically consider how these cultural and political frontiers developed, and their use in contests for power. The focus will be on modern France and the Middle Eastern countries that fell under French rule, particularly Algeria, but the course will examine these questions within a broader trans-national context across several historical periods into the present.

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.


Readings will be provided online and grading will be based principally on a series of short take-home debate papers.

This upper-division history course examines women’s participation in both well-known and lesser-known social movements during the twentieth century, more deeply than is possible in a U.S. history survey course. Throughout, we explore women’s activism in movements that specifically targeted women’s rights, such as the woman suffrage movement. However, we also consider women’s participation in movements that do not outwardly appear to be movements about women’s rights, such as the Civil Rights Movement.

In addition to exploring the scope and contours of women’s activism, the course will place particular emphasis on four themes:
1) impacts of contemporary cultural understandings of gender on social movements, and the reverse
2) tensions between ideas of women’s rights that emphasized equality of the sexes and those that emphasized difference
3) perspectives on whether you can write a universal history of women or need to write separate histories along lines such as race, class, region and/or sexual preference
4) power relations not only between men and women but among women

Possible Required Readings
SHORT READINGS will be available on Canvas.
BOOKS:
Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman.  Reprint edition, Grove Press, 2011.
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. 1968; reprint edition, Delta, 2004.
Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Course Evaluation
Short written assignments: Submission grades                 20%
Film reviews: Total of 2                            15%
Historical evidence forms: Total of 3                    15%
Collaborative Projects: Total of 3 (excluding final project)        10%    
Historical Essay                                20%
Final Project: (17% Individual portion; 3% Group project)        20%
Attendance:  Loss of points over 3 unexcused absences

This lecture course offer students an introduction to the history of modern Mexico from the close of the Mexican Revolution (1940) to the present. Our overarching theme will be the tense interplay between authority and freedom––the deconstructing and rebuilding, as it were, of a Mexican pyramid. In political terms, the course will cover the rise and fall of the authoritarian system dominated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)––the “perfect dictatorship” in Mario Vargas Llosa’s celebrated phrase––and Mexico’s transition to imperfect democracy since 2000. The course will first explore the development of the PRI regime in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, a period marked by one-party rule, cultural nationalism, industrialization, tourism, rapid urbanization, and a Mexican economic “miracle” that also generated huge inequality. We will look critically at the conventional view that Mexico’s pax priista (“peace of the PRI”) was a period of bland authoritarianism and peaceful prosperity in which nothing basically happened. Looking behind this telenovela history, we will explore the efforts made by campesinos, railway workers, schoolteachers, progressive Catholics, students, and others to change the regime. The second part of the course will explore the decline of the PRI state: topics will include the student democracy movement and 1968 Tlatelolco massacre; the 1970s oil crisis; the papal visit of 1979 that sapped the restrictions on public religious worship; the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and the revitalization of civil society; neoliberal eonomic reform and the 1994 indigenous uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). The course will close by looking at the double tragedy that Mexico has experienced since 2000: ferocious competition in some areas (politics, religion, narcotics, human rights) coupled with searches for a new authoritarian principle that will somehow resurrect the certainties of the pyramid.


Set Texts
Benjamin Smith and Paul Gillingham, Dictablanda: Politics, Work, and Culture in Mexico,  
                1938–1968 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014)
Anabel Hernández, Narcoland (New York: Verso, 2014)
Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sánchez: Autobiography of a Mexican Family (New York:
                Vintage, 2011)
Elena Poniatowksa, Massacre in Mexico (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1991)
Subcomandante Marcos, Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings (New York: Seven Stories
                Press, 2002)


Grading Policy:
 
Quiz (Mexican presidentes, 10%)
Reading responses (4 x 15% = 60%)
Final paper (30%)

What does socialism’s Soviet, Cold War past have to do with socialism’s possible futures, if anything? This course will focus on understanding ordinary people’s experience of the Soviet project—the world’s largest experiment in building state socialism—and on the plural interpretations of this experience after the Soviet Union’s collapse. We will study socialist and post-socialist Eurasia to understand what socialism might mean today as a resource for resisting state-sponsored corruption and rampant social inequality, in the region—and beyond. In the first few weeks of class, we will discuss the origins of socialism in the Russian empire in the nineteenth century, popular experiences of the Russian Revolutionary period from 1905-1930s. We will then look at some case studies of the organization of Soviet society, from collectivization to the informal economy, to consider the ways in which the official goal of constructing socialism shaped the everyday lives of Soviet citizens. Finally, we will use these historical accounts to inform our exploration of socialism as a set of material, affective and ideological infrastructures that became newly visible, sensible, and comprehensible only after socialism lost its status as an official state doctrine, and the end of the Cold War. The last few weeks of the course will consider activist movements in post-socialist Eurasia and the United States that explicitly or implicitly take up the ideas and practices of collective life that oriented Soviet social modernity.


Selected Readings:
Aronoff, Kate and Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos (2019) A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal
Burawoy, Michael, Krotov, P (1992) “The Soviet transition from socialism to capitalism: worker control and economic bargaining in the wood industry.”
Cherkaev, Xenia (2018) “Self-Made Boats and Social Self-Management: The Late-Soviet Ethics of Mutual Aid” Cahiers du monde russe
Collier, Stephen J (2011) Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics
Dace Dzenovska (2014) “Bordering encounters, sociality and distribution of the ability to live a ‘normal life’”
Engels, Barbara and Cliff Rosenthal, Five Sisters: Woman against the Tsar
Grant, Bruce (1995) In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas
Humphrey, Caroline (1983) Marx Went Away but Karl Stayed Behind
Kharkhordin, Oleg (1999) The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices
Kotkin, Stephen (1995) Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization
Kruglova, Anna (2017) “Social Theory and Everyday Marxists: Russian Perspectives on Epistemology and Ethics” Comparative Studies in Society and History
Lemon, Alaina (1998) “Your Eyes Are Green like Dollars”: Counterfeit Cash, National Substance, and Currency Apartheid in 1990s Russia
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1848) The Communist Manifesto
Rivkin‐Fish, Michele (2009) “Tracing landscapes of the past in class subjectivity: Practices of memory and distinction in marketizing Russia” American Ethnologist
Roudakova, Natalia (2017) Losing Pravda: Ethics and The Press in Post-Truth Russia
Shevchenko, Olga (2008) Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow
Steinberg, Mark (2017) The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921
Verdery, Katherine (1996) What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next?
Volkov, Vadim (2006) Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism
Wood, Tony (2018) Russia without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War
Yurchak, Alexei (2006) Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation

Selected Films:
Sergei Eisenstein: Strike (1924), Old and New (1929)
Mikhail Romm, Nine Days of One Year (1962)
Aleksei Fedorchenko, Angels of Revolution (2014)


Requirements:
The bulk of the work over the course of the semester will include reading, writing, and revising drafts as you progress towards a final paper. Further specifications for each assignment and the due dates will be posted to the course website. Students are required to:

1.    Prepare the readings, attend class, and fully participate in class discussion. (10%)
2.    Submit weekly annotations to the assigned readings using Perusall, a social reading application integrated into our Canvas course site (10%)
3.    Submit four 500 word papers in response to the readings (25%)
4.    Midterm essay (25%). Careful summary, synthesis, extension, or critique of 2-3 readings in first half of class, 8-10 pages long.
5.    Provide oral and written feedback to 3-5 students on their papers (10%).
6.    Submit a final essay of 10-12 pages (30%). This paper is a culmination of your written work throughout the semester, and as such should draw on your prior drafts to develop an argument about an issue that you’ve found compelling. One week before the due date, please provide an abstract, and note how you will incorporate the feedback you have received, or your planned revisions, into the final draft.

This course is organized in three parts: the first two span the period between the third century BCE and the late eighteenth century, the third covers indenture and abolition during the nineteenth-twentieth centuries. Students will learn about a range of practices that bonded destitute people, orphans, debtors and criminals to lay and sacred complexes in the subcontinent. These institutions lost their eminence with the growth of European colonial economics in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

1) Arthashastra Book III, Chapter XIII, Rules Regarding Slaves and Laborers, on www.mssu.edu/projectsouthasia/history/primarydocs/
2) Amitava Ghosh, ‘The Slave of Ms. H6’, from Subaltern Studies, Vol. 5.
3) Sunil Kumar, ‘When Slaves Were Nobles’, Indian Economic and Social History Review , 1998.
4) Pushpa Prasad, ‘Female Slavery in Thirteenth Century Documents’, Indian Historical Quarterly, 1985.
5) Excerpts from Ex-Slave’s Memoir, Tahmasnama: The Autobiography of a Slave (Bombay 1967).
6) Legal Documents : Lariviere ed. Contested Ownership of a Slave; Mr. Hunter Stands Trial for Injuring his Slave Documents, Criminal Judicial Consultations of 1799 from the British Library and the U.N. Report 7) Marina Carter, ‘Slavery and Unfree labor in the Indian Ocean’ and ‘Indian Slaves in Mauritius’

Course Work: 1) Posing Daily Question/Comment on Discussion Board (Canvas): (60%)
2) Home-Written 5-page essay comparing historical readings with interpretation made in film (20%)
3) Home-Written 10-15 page discussion on a single theme (20%).

Letter grades of A, B, C, D and F will be assigned accordingly.

This course examines the religious and cultural developments across the Islamic world between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries, stemming from the rise of the Mongols and the end of the caliphate. After the Mongols destroyed the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in 1258 and established their rule in large swathes of Asia, the Islamic world entered an era of momentous change. In Iran, Central Asia, and parts of the Middle East, Muslim religious identities experienced a phase of “confessional ambiguity,” marked by the widespread veneration of saints and shrines. To explore the significance of these shifts, we will focus on three themes: the spread of a new type of devotional, shrine-centered, Sufi Islam across Muslim Asia and the Indian Ocean world; the development of a new style of Islamic sovereignty that replaced the caliphate; and the rise of new forms of knowledge, both scientific and artistic, sponsored by the early modern Muslim empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and the Mughals.

Inquisition and witch-hunt: the modern use of these terms evokes conceptions of authoritarian and irrational officials, acts of intimidation and torture, and mass hysteria about hidden dangers and conspiracies. This course explores the development of inquisitorial practices in the European middle ages and their expansion in early modern Europe as officials searched for heretics, witches, Jews, Muslims, and other dissenters. We will consider the problems of interpreting the documents that inquisitors and witch hunters produced.  We will also explore how these documents illuminate everyday practices and behaviors, imagined and wonderous phenomena (including a werewolf and a canine saint), and the exercise and abuse of legal procedures.  In addition, we will examine inquisitorial documents at the HRC and the Benson. Students will learn to analyze medieval and early modern documents (in translation) but can develop their own research projects using inquisitorial documents from more modern periods if they wish.


Readings will include selections from:
RI Moore, The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe
Edward Peters, Inquisition
Le Roy Ladurie,  Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error
Carlos Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms
Brian Levack, The Witchcraft Source Book
and selected articles and documents in translation


Grading:
    Class preparation and reading response exercises  30%
    Research project prospectus:  10%
    Draft research paper and peer review:  20%
    Oral Presentation 10%
    Final Research paper (15-20 pages) 30%

9/11: A History

Twenty years ago, on 9/11 2001, an obscure but resolute group of terrorists stunned the world with a series of coordinated attacks on American soil. The American empire that won the Cold War and presided over a decade of intense economic globalization that was supposed to end all wars was caught off guard. Following the attacks, the public wanted to know who attacked America and why. Seeking to answer these and other questions, this research seminar offers a comprehensive historical analysis of the 9/11 attacks. Most of the class will be devoted to the examining the historical realities of the Middle East in the second half of the 20th century. In addition to taking a close look at general political, economic and cultural history of the Middle East, we will also examine the slow but steady rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its Jihadi worldview. What was Islamic fundamentalism and how come it became the generational choice of so many young people in the region? We will then juxtapose this inquiry with the history of the American neoconservative movement and its decisive response the attacks. Student do not need prior knowledge of US or Middle East histories. The final product of this seminar is a 5000-600 words research paper on of a relevant topic of the students’ choice.


Readings:

9/11 Commission Report
UN Arab Human Development Reports
Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam
Ussama Bin Laden, Messages to the World
Sayyid Qutb, The Sayyid Qutb Reader
Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower
Andy Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East
Robert Draper, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq
Elizabeth Kassab, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective


Grading:

Final Research paper 50%
Participation: 20%
Midterm 30%

Secularization was once thought to be a one-way process whereby religion and superstitions are subtracted from the world. More recently, however, specialists have come to think of secularism in more complex terms. They describe it as “full,” i.e., as taking diverse formations in different times and places, proffering distinctive values, practices, rituals, and norms. This course, which is primarily intellectual-historical in nature, will unfold in two parts. In the first half of the course, we will read a variety of diverse literatures on secularism, ranging from recent critical-theoretical, anthropological, and post-colonial investigations to classic historical articulations (primarily European) of the secular. In the second half of the semester, students will investigate their own chosen “secular formation.” For those research projects, students may craft their own topic within the range of global secular developments.

Sample readings may include:

Michael Rechtenwald, Rochelle Almeida, and George Levine, eds., Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic
Emile Durkheim, Fundamental Concepts of Religion
Baruch Spinoza, Theological Political Treatise
Joan Scott, Sex and Secularism
Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire
Rajeev Bhargava, ed., Secularism and its Discontents
Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular
Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter


Grading:
Small paper = 20%
Final research paper and presentation = 60% (this will be broken down into some steps along the way)
Attendance and participation = 20% (this will include weekly small writing assignments, discussion boards, etc.)

“Henry David Thoreau and His World, 1837-1862

Henry David Thoreau is best known today for his 1854 book: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods, which describes the two years he spent living in a one room cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, near the village of Concord, Massachusetts. But Thoreau was a prolific writer, who wrote three other books, numerous articles and essays (the most famous of which, “Civil Disobedience,” inspired both Ghandi and Martin Luther King), thousands of letters, and perhaps most impressive of all,  a daily journal that he kept from age twenty to almost the end of his life in the pages of which his mind (and pencil) ranges freely from detailing mundane everyday activities to nature observations and philosophical musings. Thoreau’s corpus, all of which is now accessible online, will be the basic foundation of this course. The primary objective is to enable students to design, research, and write a c. 4000 word original analytical essay based on some aspect of Thoreau’s life and or interests, and in which Thoreau’s own words are used as a major source. Narrowing our collective research focus to one man and “his world,” allows us to broaden the possible research topics that students can choose to write upon while still all having something (Thoreau) in common to talk about. Thoreau’s interests and writings encompass a wide variety of subjects including (but by no means limited to): nature and ecology, Native Americans, religion and spirituality, economics and ideas of the self, politics and non-violent resistance, and the women’s rights and anti-slavery movements of the age. Moreover, the time period of the course, spanning the twenty-five years from Thoreau’s graduation from Harvard (and the start of his journal) to his death at the start of the American Civil War, was a very turbulent one in American history during which these topics were hotly debated and contested. For the first half of the semester, the class will collectively read and discuss Thoreau’s writings and writings about Thoreau to examine different aspects of his life and the era in which he lived. (As part of this effort, students will virtually become Thoreau and live for a few weeks in his cabin at Walden pond - keeping their own journals - via an online, first person, roleplaying game that has been developed by the University of Southern California.)  In the second half of the course, students will undertake their individual research projects, conducted in several stages and culminating in a significant and original work of historical writing that will be submitted to me and shared with the rest of the class.  As in all HIS 378W seminars, the objective of this course is mastery of the essential skills of the discipline of History: a critical evaluation of primary sources, active engagement with secondary sources, and the articulation of a cogent argument situated within the existing scholarship.


Collective reading: Approximately one thousand pages drawn from four or five short monographs, ten or twelve articles about Thoreau (to be purchased or accessed via J-Stor and/or Canvas)  and selected extracts from Thoreau’s writings (accessible online).

Grading: Attendance and participation (20%); short papers/presentations made in the first half of the course (30%); research project including initial research proposal, first and final drafts of research paper, and class presentation (50%).

This seminar examines the sources, implementation, and consequences of American foreign policy strategy.  Drawing on the work of historians and political scientists, we will explore how geopolitics, domestic politics, and strategic ideas have shaped America’s international priorities and policy practice.  To this end, the seminar will focus on several critical junctures in the American experience to consider how new understandings of the nation’s international purposes arise, and the contours of debates over how best to pursue them.  A portion of the course will be set aside to examine contemporary visions of the evolving geopolitical landscape and what these visions mean for U.S. statecraft in the present and near future.


Texts:
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment

Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Charles Kupchan, No One’s World

James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans

John Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Christopher McKight Nichols, Promise and Peril

Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century

Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History

Peter Trubowitz, Politics and Strategy

Course requirements

Weekly seminar participation, weekly Canvas postings, 20 page research paper or policy brief.

This course intended for students who want to engage with diverse approaches to environmental politics and justice. While Asia-focused, the course is premised on Asia’s historical engagement with other parts of the world and with the global environment. The course will have both research and reading tracks. Students taking the research track will select their area in the third week of the semester and write a source-based 18-20 page essay. Students opting for the writing track will write a historiographic essay of the same length. 

Assessment will be based on

 (a) Final paper (including drafts and presentations toward it), 50% 

(b) Weekly response papers 30% 

(c) preparation for and participation in class 20% 

This course will use +/- grades. 

Women and the right to vote in the Americas

Teresa Cristina de Novaes Marques   

History Departent/Universidade de Brasilia  

Course description: This course examines in comparison the long historical path for the achievement of women´s right to vote in the Americas. It focuses on the case of 10 countries in the Americas.

In the year of 2020, the United States celebrates the centennial of the passage of the 19^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed women in this country the right to vote. The strategies adopted by North American suffragists inspired many movements in Latin American, including in Brazil.

In fact, suffragist groups in the Americas shared many commonalities, such the belief in the justice of the full citizenship for educated women, and the recourse to similar tactics to persuade movers and shakers, like lobbying candidates for public offices, developing their own press, making public demonstrations, gathering signatures, and broadcasting radio transmissions. Despite all these features, the suffragist groups in the Americas faced their own set of obstacles presented in their individual political system. For instance, in the 1920s, both Brazil and the United States were federal regimes. In the U.S., states had autonomy to define the requisites for being a voting citizen. In Brazil, on the contrary, the federal format refrained the Union from intervening in the economics of the states, but the setting of citizenship requirements was a prerogative of the Union.

In Mexico, as in Brazil, the 1917 Constitution used male words to refer to citizen (ciudadano). This apparent technical choice proved to represent an obstacle to extend the vote to women. The writing of the Constitution consumed much political energy from the suffragist groups to promote the revision of the Charter and obtain the vote.

In Argentina in 1932, an important attempt to extend the right to women was associated with the right to divorce, a political maneuver that killed the possibilities of the bill. In Peru, the right to vote to national elections was extended to educated women in 1955, but the universal vote was adopted in 1979 only. In Brazil, the universal vote was adopted in 1988.  

Frustrated in the Parliamentary front, suffragists negotiated the vote with centralist leaders. The vote came as a concession in several Latin American nations, such as Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina. Consequently, the electoral participation of most ordinary women – black or indigenous, was limited. The social valor of voting was treasured by white middle-class only.

At first, the course explores the intellectual obstacles which prevented women from voting, the format of the political campaigns for the vote, and their political agenda. Then, it examines historiographical contributions to several aspects of the struggle for political rights in the Continent. Because the experience of citizenship is still biased by gender and racial relations in Latin America, the course brings into attention historiographical contributions to discuss aspects of the separation of male and female social roles in the political systems under these lenses too.   

The selected authors approach suffragism under the following problems: how nations conducted elections, which were the requisites to the voter, how movements were organized, arguments in favor of suffrage, arguments against it, the real integration of women in the political systems, the influence of ethnical and racial relations in the integration of women in the system, the influence of international politics.

Objectives: As a result of this course, the student will be able to:

• Identify the key political actors to the women´s suffrage in each country examined.
• Access historiographical interpretations of class and racial bias which limited the full participation of women in political life.
• Identify common arguments in favor of suffrage and against it.
• Identify the political strategies used by political groups who worked for the suffrage.
• Identify the importance of the writing of constitutions for the setting of citizenship requirements in Latin America.
• Identify the specificity of the historical process which led women in Latin America to fully participate in public sphere.
• Identify the importance of the Inter-American diplomacy for the extension of the women´s rights in the Americas in the after the World War II.

Requirements for the course:

This course will be reading intensive. A basic knowledge of Spanish is recommended to keep up with the activities. Texts presented in Portuguese will be worked in the form of lectures. In case the students do not feel comfortable in reading extensive texts in Spanish, alternative bibliography in English is listed in this syllabus.

Students are expected to fully participate in the debates, sharing the task of summarizing the main arguments of the readings assigned for each week. Up to two students should initiate the discussion in each session. 

The final examination will take the form of an essay examining historical sources under the lens of the theoretical and the methodological approaches examined during the course. Students are expected to share the development of their research project with the class along the week sessions, and share the outcome of their exercise at the last session. 

Distribution of the grade:

Final essay plus presentation (60 % of the grade)

Class participation (40% of the grade)

Office hours: to be determined. Contact: tcnovaes610@gmail.com

In this dual-track graduate seminar, students can write a historiographical essay or a research paper for their final project. Throughout the semester, we will examine modern Iranian history from the nineteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on a body of scholarship that critiques methodological nationalism. Students will read and discuss monographs and selected articles from emerging scholarship in Iranian Studies and beyond. Classic works will also be discussed to ensure a better understanding of evolving historiographical trends. This course is organized both chronologically and thematically (e.g. transnationalism, borderlands). The goals of this course are twofold: 1) prepare students to have a comprehensive understanding of modern Iranian history; 2) advance students' research and writing skills as historians. Assigned books include the following:

Current Course Schedule Information (registrar.utexas.edu)

Black Politics: From Reconstruction to Black Lives Matter

Black Politics examines the political thought and practice of African Americans from the end of slavery to the era of Black Lives Matter. From the anti-lynching crusade of Ida B. Wells through to the presidency of Barack Obama this course defines “politics” broadly, ranging from movements to elect officials at the local, state, and national level to civic groups, fraternal association, religious, and cultural and educational movements that organized for political self-determination during the Age of Jim Crow segregation that gripped the nation for a century after salvery’s legal demise. A wide range of African Americans have organized themselves in public and private spheres in pursuit of political power; through women’s clubs; civil rights organizations; self-help group; labor union; institutes of higher and vocational education; the creation of the public school system; and churches, Black politics has consistently sought to reimagine American democracy as a vehicle for intersectional justice, political liberation, freedom, power, love, and compassion. 

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.

Current Course Schedule Information (registrar.utexas.edu)

Current Course Schedule Information (registrar.utexas.edu)

Current Course Schedule Information (registrar.utexas.edu)

Current Course Schedule Information (registrar.utexas.edu)

Current Course Schedule Information (registrar.utexas.edu)

Current Course Schedule Information (registrar.utexas.edu)

Current Course Schedule Information (registrar.utexas.edu)