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 This entry-level course aims to teach historical thinking as well as historical content, impart a basic grasp of the premodern past, and  stimulate the development of large-scale frameworks for historical analysis.

-- Robert W. Strayer, Ways of the World, A Brief Global History with Sources

                                                                        Vol.1: To 1500, Bedford/ St. Martins.

-- Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, Viking Press.

-- numerous essays and book chapters provided on course website

Exams (2x25%, 1x33%) =80%; In-class assignments =10%; on-line assignment =10%.  

Introduction to Chinese Culture and Civilization

Course Description:

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

Required Text:  (Available at University Co-op Bookstore)

Charles A. Desnoyers, Patterns of Modern Chinese History (Oxford, 2017)

[Additional readings on Canvas Course Site]

Recommended:

Rana Mitter, Modern China: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2016)

Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition – Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014)

Statement on Global Cultures Flag:  This course carries the Global Cultures flag. Global Cultures courses are designed to increase your familiarity with cultural groups outside the United States. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from assignments covering the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one non-U.S. cultural group, past or present.

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

Texts:

Jonathan A. C. Brown, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction

Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (2nd edition, 2002 only)

D. A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and th Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha bint Abi Bakr

John Alden Williams, ed., The Word of Islam

Xerox packet of documents and articles.

Grading:

4 exams @ 25% each = 100%.

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

The course will be organized according to an overarching thematic image of “Crisis and Response.”  Jewish Civilization over the time period we study, from origins in the later part of the second millennium B.C.E., to the end of the 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 initiated the need for continued existence in exile as well as in Persian and Hellenistic polities (addressed in Unit 2). 

The first century C.E. brought a new crisis with the end of Temple worship due to Roman conquest, and then the most enduring and productive response for Jewish Civilization was the legal and other innovations of Classical Rabbinic Judaism (addressed in Unit 3).  

In the Middle Ages, the rise of Christian and Muslim empires brought new contexts for Jewish communities, but also new degrees of persecution, and these crises were intimately connected with responses in intellectual and religious life, including the development of philosophy and the mysticism of Kabbalah (addressed in Unit 4).  

Grading:

• Three short papers, 2 pages each; each 15% of the course grade (45% total)
• Midterm exam, closed-book, in-class (20%)
• Final Exam, closed book, in-class (20%)
• 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

Broad introductory course to acquaint students with the main areas of interest in Latin American studies

Utilizing a combination of secondary literature (books, journal articles, etc.) and a close reading of primary sources, this course will explore the different social, economic, political, and cultural structures and concerns that came to both divide and unite the western hemisphere (North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean) following independence from Europe. The focus of the course will include discussions of particularly significant “macro-historical” events and processes 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 will also consider the way in which varying internal conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean have allowed the region to resist U.S. influence—in some cases, even allowing Latin American nations and their citizens to exert considerable power in shaping U.S. policy 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) over nearly two centuries.

Texts:

Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America (Harvard Press, 1998)

Robert Holden and Eric Zolov, The United States and Latin America: A Documentary History (Oxford, 2010)

Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of the New Left (Verso, 1993)

*Additional journal articles and book excerpts will be scanned and uploaded to the course website. 

Grading:

Paper #1: 10% (2-3 pages)

Midterm Exam: 30%

Paper #2: 20% (5 pages)

Final Exam: 30%

Course Participation/Engagement: 10%

Description:

In Fall 2017 we will observe the quincentennial of the beginning of the Protestant Reform initiated by Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) 95 theses. Luther was one of the seminal figures of the second millennium whose impact is felt today. We will examine his writings and his activities, the conditions that lead to his rise, and the impact he had on the world after him. Just as importantly, we will study the historical, cultural, and social context in which he lived and whose product he was.

In a broader sense, this course focuses on the transformation of European culture (with special emphasis on Germany) from the late Middle Ages to the early modern age (1450-1600), roughly during Luther’s life time. Humanism and the Protestant Reformation will be the main focus of this course, but we will also discuss political, social, economic, scientific, and philosophical developments as well as architecture, art, music, and literature of the time period. At the end, students will have a good understanding of German and European culture at this particular crossroads.

We will break down the course into the following themes:

*          What is Humanism? Renaissance?

*          The printing press and the first information revolution

*          A new urban culture (literature, architecture, music)

*          Political power and social order

*          Heliocentrism and discoveries: America, Cape of Good Hope

*          Trade networks: the first age of Globalization

*          The Catholic church and monastic life before Luther

*          Luther’s life

*          Luther’s theology: his writings

*          The Protestant Reform: Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and others

*          Catholic responses

*          Social and political impact of the Reformation

*          How Luther changed the world

Readings:

*          Scott H. Hendrix. Martin Luther: A Very Short Introduction.

*          John Dillenberger (ed.). Martin Luther: Selections From His Writing.

*          R.C. Sproul and Stephen J. Nichols (eds.). The Legacy of Luther.

*          Jerry Brotton. The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction.

*          Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History

*          other materials on Canvas

Grading:

Attendance, Participation                             10%

Quizzes                                                           10%

Oral presentation                                          10%

Two short writing assignments                   20%

Two examinations                                         50%

In this lower division, undergraduate course we examine authentic historical texts from four different “magical” traditions (witchcraft, alchemy, Kabbalah, nigromancy) to find the truth behind the fiction and the historical events that sometimes permitted and sometimes persecuted the religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas we have come to refer to collectively as “magic.” The site of our study is post-Reformation Bohemia during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II where we concern ourselves with how the practice of magic affected politics and religion as well as with how politics and religion affected the practice of magic. In the process of disambiguating four very different mystical and religious traditions, which are too often misleadingly grouped together under the undifferentiated term “magic,” students will also expand their knowledge of the history of Bohemia and the city of Prague. For more, see: https://www.facebook.com/MAGICandPOWERinPRAGUE

Required texts

(1)             Title: The Magic Circle of Rudolph II: Alchemy and Astrology in Renaisance Prague

                  Author: Peter Marshall

                  ISBN: 978-0802715517 

(2)             Title: Malleus Maleficarum: The Original Guide to the Catching and Burning of Witches

                  Author: Mike Rosen

                  ISBN: 978-1593622138

(3)             Title: The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague

                  Author: Yudl Rosenberg     

                  ISBN: 0300143206

Grading

A.               5 take-home essay tests = 75% 

B.               Homework and class assignments = 25%  

This course focuses on the history of medieval Europe primarily through the lens of material culture.  In addition to manuscripts, we will explore the significance of several categories of historical artifacts including: art, textiles, relics and reliquaries, architecture, pottery, crowns, jewelry and seals.  We will discuss what we can discover about the production, circulation, reception, historic and geographic context, and the meaning attributed to the materials from which these objects were created. How would these objects be experienced in a pre-modern world? This class explores what these objects reveal about the religious, political, economic, cultural, and intellectual history of medieval Europe, beyond what we can learn from medieval texts.

Primary Sources:

Isidore of Seville, “Etymologies”

Hugh of St. Victor, “Noah’s Ark”

Abbot Suger, “On the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures”

Honorius of Autun, “Gemma Animae”

Augustine, selections on the sense of sight

Secondary Sources:

Bak, Janos M. Coronations:  Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual. Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1990.

Bynum, Caroline. Christian Materiality. New York: Zone Books, 2011.

Janes, Dominic. God and Gold in Late Antiquity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Kessler, Herbert L. Seeing Medieval Art. Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004.

Miller, C. Maureen. Clothing the Clergy:  Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800-1200. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.

Tilley, Christopher, et al. Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Proposed Grading Policy:

10% attendance

10% class preparation and participation

20% Exams

20% Quizzes

20% Presentation

20% Final

This course surveys ‘Western’ culture, society, and politics from 1492 to the present. We will study political, religious, and cultural revolutions, Europe’s changing place in the world, the rise of the modern state, and legacies of war. We study the history of now-familiar concepts (nature, science, the self), institutions (the state, or religion), and debates (What does “the West” stand for? What is legitimate authority?). Along the way, the course aims to teach historical analysis. How do historians (as opposed to philosophers, for instance) explain events like the Holocaust? How do historians think about causation and context?

READINGS The following books are REQUIRED reading and available at the Coop.   

•           Coffin, Stacey, Cole and Symes, Western Civilizations, vol. II 17^th edition

•           Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 1492: The Year the World Began (2009)

•           Honoré de Balzac, Old Goriot (any edition)

•           Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Edition, 4^th edition)

•           Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon

Additional required reading (Martin Luther, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, et. al) is available on the web. I have either provided the URL or posted the excerpt on Canvas.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1)        Preparation for and participation in regular class discussions; informal writing assignments, short papers, and quizzes. 20%

4 short (3-4) page papers 20% each.

This course introduces students to selected topics in Latin American history and culture through film, readings, documentaries, 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, write analytical essays, and prepare individual projects. Topics include but are not limited to: The Mexican Revolution; Borders between Central America, Mexico, The US; The Argentine Dirty War, The Cuban Revolution.

Readings:

Donald Stevens, Based on a True Story: Latin American History at the Movies, Scholarly Resources, 1998.

Other readings will be posted on Blackboard.

Grading:

Essays            6/9  (67%)

Outlines          1/9  (11%)

Discussion      2/9  (22%)

This is an introductory, inter-disciplinary course on the peoples and cultures of Africa, designed for students with a limited background in African long precolonial history, as well as those who want to improve their understanding of this huge continent  before 1885. It is an excellent background to the class on Modern Africa.

The course is divided into two parts, one on an outline history over a long period.Among the main historical themes are: early history, kingdoms, interactions with external agencies, and various institutions and customs. The other is on resilient aspects of culture such as the family, religion, sexuality, gender, women, economy, and politics . 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.  

Goals

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

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

 iii.) To provide an adequate background that will prepare students for other courses on Africa, especially those on the modern and contemporary.

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

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.

Manuel G. Gonzales, Mexicanos, A History of Mexicans in the US (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

Angela Valenzuela, “The Drought of Understanding and the Hummingbird Spirit,” Unpublished essay in my possession.

Emilio Zamora, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas, Mexican Workers and Job Politics during WWII (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009).

Emilio Zamora, “Guide for Writing Family History Research Paper.

Mid-term examination (25%),

Final examination (25%),

Research paper (30%),

Two chapter reports (10%)

Film report (10%).

AMS 310 is designed to provide an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, that is, the study of American history, culture, and politics. Though not a comprehensive U.S. history survey, this course will cover a broad time period, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and extending into the present day. “Home” will serve as our central trope and organizing framework, allowing us to track changes and themes in the American past in three major ways. First, we will examine “home” in a literal sense, as a dwelling place or lack thereof, to help us uncover persistent forms of racial and economic inequality. Second, we will consider “home” in a metaphorical sense, as a powerful and enduring symbol of the nation as a whole, drawing our attention to issues of immigration and citizenship. Finally, we will consider “the home” in an ideological sense, as a site at which ideas about family, gender roles, and sexuality cohere. Throughout, this course will examine shifts in what it means to be American, the ways in which that identity has worked to bring people together and push them apart, to bestow power and privilege on some while taking them away from others. Hopefully, students will come away from this course with a firm grounding in the diverse methods of American Studies research, a richer understanding of the American past, and a deeper sense of the multiple meanings of home in the present.

Description

This class introduces students to the field of American Studies. The guiding objective of the class is to use interdisciplinary lenses – such as music, dance, material culture, and urban studies – to develop a more complex understanding of American culture. In this class, we will investigate select aspects of American culture using various methodological approaches. The course outline follows a semi-linear pattern in history, but is hardly comprehensive. We will look broadly at the tensions between individual identity formation and the many social constructions that operate in American culture. The class is loosely tied around the connection, or disconnection, of individuals with mass culture (music, in particular, but also cars, corporations, television, and even fashion).

This class is organized into three sections, starting with swing culture in the 1930s and 40s, shifting to the dynamics of popular music and culture from the 1950s to the 1980s (think girl groups, salsa, disco, and rap), and finally, looking at the politics of consumerism and globalization in our everyday lives. We will use these three modules to think critically about the relationship between the past and present, to examine the relationship between individual identity formation and the larger cultural zeitgeist, and to develop an understanding of how social inequalities, particularly guised through race, class, gender, and sexuality, infiltrate all areas of American life.

While mass culture often provides a context for making sense of the world, it also simplifies and negates a variety of more complex issues. Thus, if there is an overriding theme to the class, it is the concept of visibility versus invisibility. Who becomes the representative American? What is un-American? Who feels displaced, or invisible? How do ideologies of race, class, gender, and sexuality penetrate popular culture? And how have individuals responded? The goals of the course are to develop a more nuanced understanding of American culture and American Studies, to build critical thinking skills, and to generate new paradigms for looking at the world.   

This course introduces students to the field of American Studies, as well as to interdisciplinary approaches to analyzing and exploring a variety of elements of American culture and history. Students will gain expertise in basic theories and methods in American Studies, and will employ a variety of analytical tools, from close readings of television episodes to investigations into digital archives, to examine the transformation of identity and culture in America from WWI to the present. As such, questions of inclusion, exclusion, visibility, and invisibility will be central to our examination, and the ways that different identities - race, gender, class, sexual identity, religious belief, and other markers - have historically engaged with media and culture in America.

This course centers thematically on how media and performance have reflected, shaped, or challenged notions of what it means to be an American. We will proceed linearly from the early 20th century into the present, and the course will be divided into three units. First, we will examine the role of photography, exhibition, and performance in constructing an early vision of modern America before WWII, emphasizing in particular the development of early mass culture. Next, we will examine the developing role of television and film in crafting a culture of consensus and conformity during WWI and in the Cold War era, and the various sites of resistance to that conformity that developed into the 1980s. The course will conclude with a unit on the anxieties of political life and identity from the Watergate era into the present, from post-Vietnam War malaise to contemporary fears of terrorism.

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

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Texts:

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

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

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

Grading:

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

The mid-term exam is worth a potential of one hundred points. The final exam will count for two hundred points. No other "extra-credit" assignments of any kind will either be assigned or accepted. Final grades will be awarded according to the following curve: A = 270 points or more; A- = 264-269 points; B+ = 255-263 points; B = 240-254 points, B- = 234-239 points; C+ = 225-233; C = 210-224 points; C- = 204-209 points; D = 180-203 points; Any student who does not at least earn at least 180 points (60% of the total) will fail the class.

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

Required texts:

1. Revel online text, with online chapter exams.

2. The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr (paperback)

Grading:

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

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

This course explores the most vital—and occasionally controversial—aspects of the social, cultural and political developments in the European colonization of North America and the emergence of the United States.  Surveying nearly 400 years, it ranges from the early period of European exploration to the American Civil War.  Lectures will provide a detailed examination of such topics as race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration, religion, regional tension, dominance and resistance.  We will explore the emergence of an American identity, the evolution of American self-government and the expansion of American territory. Major themes will include the cultural collision of the contact period, the development of slavery, religious and intellectual trends, the American Revolution, the divergence of the northern and southern United States, the dominance of market capitalism and the rise of the American working class, continuous immigration, geographic and economic expansion and the sectional divisions preceding the Civil War.

Throughout the course, we will read cutting-edge scholarship and analyze compelling primary sources.  Students will become adept at interpreting images, deconstructing texts and evaluating historical evidence.
Of the People: A History of the United States, Volume 1: To 1877, Second Edition, by James Oakes, et al.

Reading the American Past: Selected Historical Documents, vol. 1, To 1877, ed. by Michael P. Johnson

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, by Frederick Douglass
Attendance and class participation                            20%
Midterm                                        20%
Essay    (2000 words)                                    30%
Final examination                                    30%

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

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

This class will survey over 150 years of modern American history, keeping a collective mind open about which and why certain facts, stories, events, and people are key to understanding our past. It draws on two popular American history books that offer complementary, sometimes conflicting, interpretations of the American story to illuminate the rich textures of the nation?s history as well as the particular challenges faced in its writing. Using these authorities (as well as a basic Outline of U.S. History) as a starting point, participants will work collaboratively to expand their understanding of American history and to engage in the type of thinking required to “do” history.

Texts:

 U.S. Government, Outline of U.S. History, chapters 8-15.

Johnson, History of the American People,

Zinn, A People?s History of the United States (available online, but without page numbers)

Additional readings,  posted on Canvas or course website

Grading:

Grades will be determined on the basis of individual quiz grades (15%), four in-class essays (35%), team work and individual participation (20%)  and a final exam (30%).

Lectures, readings, videos, maps, and photos are used to provide students with asurvey of US history from Reconstruction to 2000. As such, students will study significant aspects of thenation's political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic history and will be challenged to understand the why, how,  and so what  of this history. Students begin with learning about what happened and then proceed toquestions of causality and consequence.Moving from what happened  to why or how , and, then, to so what  students will sharpen their skillsin critical thinking.  Both exams will include essay questions to encourage students in their writtencommunication skills . Along the way, students will consider some of ethical dilemmas confronted byAmericans who lived long ago. Students will examine issues of personal responsibility  and socialresponsibility  as they learn about how previous generations understood these responsibilities.

Texts:

 • Selected articles or documents posted on Canvas.

 • Of the People: A History of the United States, vol. 2, concise edition, By James Oakes, et. al.2010, 2011, or 2012 editions are acceptable.

 • Voices of Freedom, 3rd Edition, vol. 2, edited by Eric Foner

 • The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, by BruceSchulman

 • Articles and documents about Ethics and particular ethical issues, posted on Canvas.

Grading:

1st Midterm Exam 18.5% course grade

2nd Midterm Exam18.5% course grade

Ethical Reasoning discussions and assignments; 33% course grade (see last page)

• Reflections on Ethics Journal, 8%

• Essay on Ethical Issue, 15%

Lectures, readings, videos, maps, and photos are used to provide students with asurvey of US history from Reconstruction to 2000. As such, students will study significant aspects of thenation's political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic history and will be challenged to understand the why, how,  and so what  of this history. Students begin with learning about what happened and then proceed toquestions of causality and consequence.Moving from what happened  to why or how , and, then, to so what  students will sharpen their skillsin critical thinking.  Both exams will include essay questions to encourage students in their writtencommunication skills . Along the way, students will consider some of ethical dilemmas confronted byAmericans who lived long ago. Students will examine issues of personal responsibility  and socialresponsibility  as they learn about how previous generations understood these responsibilities.

Texts:

 • Selected articles or documents posted on Canvas.

 • Of the People: A History of the United States, vol. 2, concise edition, By James Oakes, et. al.2010, 2011, or 2012 editions are acceptable.

 • Voices of Freedom, 3rd Edition, vol. 2, edited by Eric Foner

 • The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, by BruceSchulman

 • Articles and documents about Ethics and particular ethical issues, posted on Canvas.

Grading:

1st Midterm Exam 18.5% course grade

2nd Midterm Exam18.5% course grade

Ethical Reasoning discussions and assignments; 33% course grade (see last page)

• Reflections on Ethics Journal, 8%

• Essay on Ethical Issue, 15%

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.
    
The course incorporates a wealth of resources 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. Reading materials for the course can be accessed in Canvas.

This course partially fulfills the legislative requirement for American history.

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

Richard Middleton and Anne Lombard, Colonial America. A History, 1565-1776,

4^th 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. [Joyce Chaplin ed., Norton Critical Edition (New York, 2012)].

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

Fred Anderson, The War that Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War (New York, 2005).

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).

Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen:  Two Centuries of Work in Essex County Massachusetts, 1630-1850 (Chapel Hill, 1994).

Essay on assigned primary sources (5 pages) – 15%

Comparative essay on Dunn and Parent (7 pages) – 25%

Comparative essay on either Ulrich and Vickers 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.

This course introduces students to the histories of people of Asian descent in the United States, from the late sixteenth century to the present. Through historical works, literature, films, primary sources, and popular culture, students will explore the making of Asian America as a dynamic site of identity construction, political protest, community formation, social movement building, and a vibrant field of intellectual and historical inquiry. The course will focus on four broad themes: 1) the causes and effects of migration and settlement in the development of Asian American communities; 2) the role that Asian Americans have played in shaping U.S. social, political, and cultural institutions; 3) the diverse individuals and groups which make up this broad category of people we designate as Asian Americans, and their unique and sometimes shared experiences of oppression, marginalization, racism, and political empowerment; and 4) the ways in which the experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class have intersected with other marginalized groups in U.S. society. Throughout the course, we will explore these themes within global and transnational contexts to identify shared connections across borders—physical, imagined, and otherwise.

Required course materials:

    Shelley Sang-Hee Lee, A New History of Asian America (Routledge, 2013);

    Additional reading assignments will be available for download on Canvas.

Grading breakdown:

30%   Exam 1

30%   Exam 2

30%   Exam 3

10%   Attendance and participation

Description

This course explores the history of social movements for rights in twentieth-century America. Whether they used a language of equality, justice, freedom or liberation, an array of social groups in modern America forged struggles and organizations that advocated for recognition of their rights. And yet there was no unanimity about the meaning of rights; the course examines changing and often conflicting interpretations, focusing on Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, women, working-class people, and gay men and lesbians. Instead of isolating them from each other, we use both comparative and relational approaches to the history of these movements. We strive not only to make sense of similarities and differences, but how they influenced each other. It what ways, for instance, did the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s inspire the Women’s Liberation Movement? Such an approach can lead to surprises; in Austin, for example, African American and Mexican American attorneys filed suit for school desegregation on the same day. A goal is for students to get a sense of how historians approach their work, thus readings include original historical documents and memoirs in addition to scholarly analyzes. This is primarily a lecture course, but some classes are devoted to group projects.

Possible readings:

Selected historical documents and articles

Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry:  A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High

Carlos Bulosan, American is in the Heart: A Personal History

Charles Denby, Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal

José Angel Gutiérrez, The Making of a Civil Rights Leader: José Angel Gutiérrez

Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Wilma Mankiller, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People

Requirements:

Midterm                                                                                                          25%

Final exam                                                                                                      35%

3 short quizzes on lecture terms (5% each)                                                  15%

1 500-word writing assignment on a selected reading (15%)                      15%

2 historical documents analyses (Submission grade, 5% each)                    10%

Attendance is required. Extra credit opportunities are available

The Black Power movement was a distinct period from the late 1960s and early 1970s that emphasized racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values, and secure black autonomy. The range of black power ideology ranged from the desire to create an all-black nation-state to the promotion of black economic power. This course will look at the major organizations, key figures, and ideologies of the black power movement.

Exams will be given approximately every five weeks and the group project is due at the end of the semester.

Exam 1: 25%

Exam 2: 25%

Exam 3: 25%

Group Project: 25%

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. 

Toobtain a well-rounded approach to the political, economic, and cultural connections between the United States and Africa.

To reevaluate perceptions of Africa, to recognize the vibrant nature of African culture, and to apply new knowledge to the different cultural agents active in US popular culture, such as music, dance, literature, business and science.

To help students understand present-day politics in Africa at a deeper level and to obtain a better understanding of racial conditions in the US.

To learn how to assess historical materials -- their relevance to a given interpretative problem, their reliability and their importance -- and to determine the biases present within particular scholarship. These include historical documents, literature and films.

1. Joseph E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture  (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005 second edition).

2. Curtis A. Keim, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind (Westview Press, 1999).

3. Alusine Jalloh, ed., The United States and West Africa (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008).

4. Kevin Roberts, ed., The Atlantic World 1450-2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

5. Karen Bouwer, Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: the Legacy of Patrice Lumumba (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

6. Gendering the African diaspora : women, culture, and historical change in the Caribbean and Nigerian hinterland / edited by Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.           

i. Public Lecture Review 10%    

ii. First  Examination 25%

iii. Book Review 20%

iv.   Book Review 20%

v. Second Examination 25%

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

Students will write three short papers, several very brief responses to readings, complete two group research projects and develop a research paper framework.  Students use on line sources for the group projects and campus archives of their choice (The Briscoe Center for American History, The LBJ Presidential Library, the Harry Ransom Center etc) for research frameworks.

Readings:

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

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

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

the Texas Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Plus articles available on line

Writing flag

Grading:

Three short papers 30% (10% each)

Two group projects 30% (15% each)

Research project framework 25%

Preparation and Engagement 15%

Survey of the ancient Mediterranean from ca. 3000 BC to AD 476. Focus on

the development of ideas and institutions in the Greek and Roman worlds

and on the active cultural exchange among the diverse civilizations of

the broader region that shaped Greek and Roman history and cultural

 identity.

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

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

Texts:

Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb,

John Hersey, Hiroshima,

Michael J. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory,

Herbert York, The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb,

Richard Polenberg (ed.), In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer,

plus additional readings to be posted on Canvas.

Grading:

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

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

Students will design and prepare Two 5E Lesson Plans (each having a minimum length of 1200 words). Detailed instructions will be distributed separately. You will select the subject of these lesson plans from a variety of options. Once graded, you will incorporate corrections into your lesson plan, to electronically post the revised product, which will improve your grade. There will be several quizzes and writing assignments. All students will take a Midterm Exam, designed to test the extent to which you have followed, engaged, and learned from the topics discussed in class and in the readings. Furthermore, you will have to do a Presentation of one of your lesson plans to a group of peers. (You will also write Comments on other presentations.) Finally, all students will have to take a Final Essay Exam (about 800 words) in the classroom during Finals Week.

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

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

Texts:

There is a required Course Packet, available for purchase only at Jenn’s Copies on 2518 Guadalupe at Dean Keaton. Also, additional readings are available online, on Canvas.

Grading:

This course is listed as having a Substantial Writing Component; therefore, much of your final grade will be based on written expression. The grading breakdown is as follows:

Class participation 10% (for speaking; minus absences, see below)

Quizzes and Assignments    16%

First Lesson Plan    16%

Midterm Exam    16% (in class)

Second Lesson Plan 16%

Presentation    10%

Final Exam    16% (in a classroom, during Finals Week)

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

Students will design and prepare Two 5E Lesson Plans (each having a minimum length of 1200 words). Detailed instructions will be distributed separately. You will select the subject of these lesson plans from a variety of options. Once graded, you will incorporate corrections into your lesson plan, to electronically post the revised product, which will improve your grade. There will be several quizzes and writing assignments. All students will take a Midterm Exam, designed to test the extent to which you have followed, engaged, and learned from the topics discussed in class and in the readings. Furthermore, you will have to do a Presentation of one of your lesson plans to a group of peers. (You will also write Comments on other presentations.) Finally, all students will have to take a Final Essay Exam (about 800 words) in the classroom during Finals Week.

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

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

Texts:

There is a required Course Packet, available for purchase only at Jenn’s Copies on 2518 Guadalupe at Dean Keaton. Also, additional readings are available online, on Canvas.

Grading:

This course is listed as having a Substantial Writing Component; therefore, much of your final grade will be based on written expression. The grading breakdown is as follows:

Class participation 10% (for speaking; minus absences, see below)

Quizzes and Assignments    16%

First Lesson Plan    16%

Midterm Exam    16% (in class)

Second Lesson Plan 16%

Presentation    10%

Final Exam    16% (in a classroom, during Finals Week)

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

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

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

Charles Edel, Nation-Builder;

Jonathan Dull, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution;

Louis Pérez, The War of 1898;

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues.

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 halves 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 does the unification of East and West Germany affect Germany's future 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 class examines U.S. history from the perspective of Chinese who were the first targets of racially defined immigration restrictions. As such, Chinese have played key roles in the evolution of U.S. immigration restrictions, their enforcement, limits regarding citizenship, permanent residency, and the underlying racial ideologies and conceptions of national belonging.

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

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Iris Chang, The Chinese in America; excerpts from _Island_, _Chinese American Voices_, The Coming Man

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

This upper-division course combines lecture, group work, and discussion to introduce the political, social, economic, and cultural phenomena that made the Italian peninsula such a lively place between 1350 and 1550. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, we examine cultural production in many realms of human experience, emphasizing the ethical questions that individuals faced.


This course aims to teach the analysis of historical evidence. By semester’s end, you will have read some of the most influential and controversial works from this period. You will be able to put them in historical context, to describe how historians use them, and to explain why they remain compelling today. 

This course has no prerequisites and assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, but students are presumed to be capable of critical reflection upon both lectures and readings.
THIS COURSE CARRIES A GLOBAL CULTURES FLAG AND AN ETHICS FLAG.

Readings may include:

Boccaccio, Decameron, selections

Petrarch, selected letters 
Alberti, excerpts from On the Family
Machiavelli, Mandragola 
Castiglione, The Courtier, selections
Vasari, Lives of the Artists, selections

Quizzes and in-class writing
Reading worksheets 
Two essay exams

The modern Russian Empire was both authoritarian and revolutionary. It was both a nation state and an empire that covered one-sixth of the world’s land mass. Politically dominated by Russia and Russians, its population was a diverse mix of ethnicities, religions, classes, cultures, and environmental topographies. In 1917, the Russian Revolution changed the world and set the political agenda for the entire 20^th century and beyond.

In this course we will examine fundamental issues regarding political, social, cultural life in the modern Russian Empire during the reign of the Romanov dynasty from 1613 to 1917.

Themes include:

·      autocracy as a political system

·      political opposition and the revolutionary movement

·      national & imperial identity at the crossroads of Europe and Asia

·      poverty & modern industry in a predominantly rural society

Required readings include:

Lindsey Hughes, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia, 1613-1917

Valerie A. Kivelson and Ronald Grigor Suny, Russia’s Empires

B. Engel & C. Rosenthal, eds., Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar

Additional required readings will be on-line on the course Canvas site (approximately 100-150 pages a week)

Grading & Assignments

Map Exercise - 10%

Three In-Class Exams, 20% each

Each student will be assigned to a social group (for example: Russian peasants, Russian nobles, Russian Jews, Central Asian nomads, Muslims, Caucasus mountain people, etc) and will be responsible for group readings, presentations, and a group online exhibit on daily life, housing, work, faith, dress, and food, 30%

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

COURSE BOOKS. The following books should be purchased:

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

The Confederate War, by Gary W. Gallagher

The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters, by James McPherson

A Short History of Reconstruction: Updated Edition, by Eric Foner

There will be two exams during the semester as well as a final exam.  Each of the tests will count 30% of the course grade.  The exams will consist of short-answer and essay questions on the material from the classes and readings (including any handouts that may come your way from the instructor).  There will be quizzes given during class.  Quizzes will count 10%.

Objects (furniture, textiles, tools, maps, books, guns, candles,  kitchen ware, buildings, settlements, monuments, ships, tombs ) often shed more light about past societies than text themselves. This course explores the past of the colonials Americas (from north to south) by paying attention to the objects these societies left behind. We’ll gain new insights on the history of slavery, education, travel, technology, science, architecture, urbanism  in the Americas.

Texts:

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich  The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich  et al. Tangible Things: Making History through Objects 

Grading:

2 object analysis (25% each). Two online museum exhibits on sets of colonial objects (theme of online exhibit to be approved by instructor beforehand)

Participation and class attendance through quizzes  (50%)

Participation and class attendance (25%)

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

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

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

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

John Charles Chasteen. Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. Third edition (New York: Norton, 2011) ISBN: 0393911543

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

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

i>clicker remote for in class discussions

Course Packet (TBD)

Map quiz                                           5%

Overall Attendance and Participation in Friday Discussions 15%

Mid-Term                                           25%

Paper             30%  (25% paper; 5% prep for paper)

Final Exam    (During Exam Week)                                              25%

This course studies the processes that led to the carving out of the Indian subcontinent into various nation-states, the biggest of which were India and Pakistan in 1950. It will survey changes spanning the late eighteenth to the mid- twentieth century and survey the gradual consolidation of British colonialism through the redrawing of social, economic, religious, political boundaries and identities. The course outlines the growth of modern political forms and structures, like nation-state and political parties; the reshaping of social institutions of caste and family by colonial laws; the reorganization of consciousness and expression in terms of technologies of print, theater and cinema and the final cataclysms of Partition and the establishment of new nation-states, India and Pakistan in 1947-50.

The course has two aims: the first, to acquaint students with a basic chronology of events, their protagonists and the processes within which each of these events unfolded; the second, to familiarize students with key outlines of the debates among historians around each of the themes touched on above.

Texts: TBA

Grading is based on attendance and participation in the classroom (20%), a two-page report on a film (20%), one four-page book-review (20%) and a final exam (40%).Grading Policies: LETTER GRADES OF A, B+, B, C+, C, D, F will be given in this course in the following fashion: total of 90-100= A; 80-89= B+; 70-79=B; 60-69=C+; 50-59 C; 40-49=D; Under 40 is a Fail or F

The republic of India was the largest of the many Asian and African states that emerged from the retreat of Western empires after 1945. It emerged in unpropitious circumstances of bloodshed and acute poverty, but has uniquely avoided both civil war and dictatorship through the decades that followed. Students in this course will explore the dangers that beset the fledgling democracy and the many efforts needed to sustain and widen it. They will also study efforts at economic development in a changing world.

This course will teach students two distinct and graduated forms of analytic writing. One is the art of reviewing: it begins with learning to summarize (present the main points of another text concisely) and is completed by learning the skill of evaluating texts in comparison with other texts.

Textbooks:

Ramachandra Guha India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. New York: Harper Collins, 2008. Paperback edition. ISBN: 9780060958589. Required

Mukulika Banerjee Why India Votes? London: Routledge 2014. ISBN 978-1-138-01971-3 Required

Articles and documents from J-Stor and other sources will be available through Canvas.

Grades will be assigned on the basis of

* two short analytic papers (c. 1000 words, 15% + peer review 5% each)
* a book review (20%)
* a final essay peer review (10%) and final essay (20%).
* Attendance and participation 10%.  
* Peer reviewers will be graded on the basis of the knowledge, understanding and linguistic proficiency displayed in their review comments.
* Plus/minus grades may be used where appropriate.

This first half of this course uses documentaries, film, lectures and readings to provide an overview of Caribbean history from 1492 to the present. The prominent theme will be to explore how the dynamic among differing conquerors, natives, and slaves forged the distinctive Caribbean nations of the present with their Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Danish and United States cultural heritages. The focus throughout will be to measure the extent to which these distinctive cultural and colonial heritages shaped historical development. Topical themes include: contact between European and Native cultures, piracy, the impact of sugar and slavery, colonialism, de-colonization, the impact of the U.S. as a Caribbean power (Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands), Caribbean revolutions (Cuba, Grenada), the Caribbean in the twenty-first century.

Grading:

During the first part of the course students will pick a topic for a research paper using primary sources.  During the second part of the semester they will meet as a class and individually with the professor as they research, write and rewrite a 10-15 page essay.

Discussion of films and readings  30%

Research paper 70%

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

Keeping debates over periodization in mind, the course adopts a long nineteenth century (roughly 1760s-1930s) as its historical timeframe, and will proceed somewhat chronologically, but more importantly, thematically. Each week we will examine a particular historical theme of the 19^th century that will help us better think through how to conceptualize “Latin America” geographically and temporally. Students individually and in groups will read and analyze a combination of articles, chapters from books, and primary sources to better understand the implications of major regional trends (and exceptions) including: the Bourbon Reforms; the transnational causes and local effects of Independence; the caudillo question; the US-Mexican War; slavery, manumission, and emancipation; processes of republican territorial nation-state formation as linked to changing racial, ethnic, class, labor, and gender relations; the emergence of international trade networks; urbanization; and health and hygiene campaigns.

Texts: TBA

1 critical review (approx. 800-1200 words) of Smoldering Ashes (15%)

1 critical review (approx. 800-1200 words) of Contentious Republicans (15%)

1 critical review (approx. 800-1200 words) of The Hour of Eugenics (15%)

Each critical review will have the option for a re-write.

2 short responses to a prompt (each 400-800 words) 10% each = 20%

2 short critical analyses of primary sources (400-800 words) 10% each = 20%

Participation 15%: Based on attendance (5%), active participation (5%), and leading the seminar at least once in the semester (5%).

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

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

Book analysis essay = 100 points
Classroom presentations =  100 points
Outline of research paper =  50 points
Class attendance =  50 points
Final research paper =  700 points
                             Total possible points 1000

This course focuses on the life and work of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), particularly his conflict with Church authorities and his condemnation in 1633. We will also put Galileo’s work in several broader contexts: the development of science in the 16th and 17th centuries; court life and patronage in early modern Italy; and the history of relations between science and religion.

This course carries flags for Writing, Global Cultures, and Independent Inquiry. We will emphasize clear and effective writing, attention to cultural differences, independent research in primary sources, and active class discussion.

Texts:

Richard Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible,

Maurice Finocchiaro (ed.), The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History,

Maurice Finocchiaro (ed.), The Essential Galileo,

Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter,

plus additional readings to be posted on Canvas.

Grading:

Each student will co-lead a class discussion during the semester, and will write:

— a short paper (3–4 pages) on a topic related to the class presentation;

— a longer research paper (16–20 pages), a draft version of which the student will present and circulate to the class for discussion;

— a formal critique (2–3 pages) of another student’s draft paper.

Course grades will be +/–  will be based on the class presentation (10%), the short paper (10%), the presentation of the draft of the longer paper (10%), the final version of the longer paper (45%), the critique (10%), and participation in class discussions (15%).

The Indian Rebellion of 1857: War of Independence or Sepoy Mutiny?

This course carries the Independent Inquiry and Writing flags. The instructor will deliver two introductory lectures so that the course will be accessible to students who have not studied the history of the Indian subcontinent before. It will require students to formulate research questions (Independent Inquiry) and work with primary sources such as those listed below.

The course will have two phases: in the first phase we will consider how historians have debated the characterization of historical events (‘historiography’). In the second phase, students will analyze English-language primary (usually contemporary) sources in order to construct an evidence-based historical narrative, supported by references to the primary sources.

Texts include primary sources such as:
1. John Wilson, The Indian Military Revolt viewed in its religious aspects. London, 1858
2. Sitaram From Sepoy to Subedar translated by J.T. Norgate. third printing. London 1911.
3. Anon. A Lady's Diary of the Siege of Lucknow. London, 1858.
4. Syed Ahmed Khan The Causes of the Indian Revolt.  Benaras, 1873.
5. British House of Commons. Parliamentary paper of 1859, No. 162. "Evidence Taken at the Trial of the King of Delhi."

Grading:

Two short analyses of sources (10% x 2)
Four peer reviews (4x 5%)
Research prospectus 10%
Draft I 10%
Draft II 10%
Final paper 20%
Attendance & participation 10%

Plus/minus grades may be given, as appropriate.

Slavery was prevailing labor institution in the early modern world. It was not associated with race. When the Iberians arrived in the New World, Southern European had slaves of all colors: Greeks, Turks, Moors, Guanches (the natives of the Canary Islands), and Sub-Saharan Africans. This was also true of all Islamic societies in the Mediterranean. The Ottomans and the Mamelukes held white Christians, Russians, and Sub-Saharan Africans as slaves. The word slave, in fact, is a reference to white Slavic captives. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Native Americans became slaves and captives of the Europeans by the hundreds of thousands. Natives themselves enslaved rivals, including Europeans. In this world of generalized, nonracial slavery, however, slaves had some rights to self-manumission and even property.  Many slaves could even become powerful, as in the case of the mameluke troops among the Ottomans. Islam and Christianity  limited the power and sovereignty of masters held over slaves. Religious institutions could intervene and remove slaves from abusive masters.  In the European Mediterranean, blacks were not only considered slaves but also saints, ambassadors, queens, kings, and generals. By the 19^th century, this world of slaveries had been completely transformed. Slavery was now associated exclusively with Africans in America. Blacks became chattel with no rights. The constitution of the independent Republic  of Texas in 1841, for example, held that any black who was manumitted could not reside in the Republic. It was illegal for blacks to be anything other than slaves. This course explores how in the 1700s slavery became racialized and industrialized, leading to legal regimes the world had never witnessed before. This transformation of slavery also triggered new resistance movements, including  abolitionism. By the early 1800, abolitionism, resistance, and revolutions led to the dismantling of the first wave of racialized, industrialized slavery in the Americas and to the end of the Atlantic slave trade. Yet a “Second Slavery” emerged in the 19^th century that thrived in the Age of Abolitionism and the ending of the African trade. It was a form of racial slavery that was brutal as the previous one but that no longer relied on slaves from Africa, but from the displacement of salves within the American continent. This slavery powered the industrial revolution and the transformation of the US into a global power. This course explores this massive changes in the history of slaveries in the Americas and focuses particularly in the racialization and industrialization of slavery.

Texts:

Andres Resendez, The Other Slavery
 Robin Blackburn The Making of New World Slavery

Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848

Ira BerlinGenerations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves

John Thornton Africa and Africans in the Making of the New World

James H. Sweet. Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World 

Linda M. Heywood Njinga of Angola Africa’s Warrior Queen

Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World

Grading:

Weekly papers: 60 % grade
Participation-attendance: 10 % grade
Final paper: 30 % grade


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

Primary documents (supplied)

Grading:

In-class participation (20%)

Reading reviews (x4 @ 10%) = 40%

Research for final paper (10%)

Final paper (30%)

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

Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, (1974).

Theodore Draper, A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution, (1997).    

Richard Ketchum, Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York, (2002).

William Offutt, Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City, 1775-1776, (2011).

Alfred Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution,  (1999).

Participation 20%

Book report  20%

Take-home exam 30%

Position papers 30%

Within the construct of African American Business history, race, contemporary American popular culture and global capitalism, this course will focus on an important aspect in the contemporary political economy of black Americans. Specifically, the commodification (sale) of black culture provides the conceptual frame for an examination of the phenomenon of both the superstar black athlete as an entrepreneur and the Hip Hop Superstar as an entrepreneur in post-Civil Rights America. The emphasis in this course, then, is to critically examine and analyze the impact of a multiplicity of societal, cultural and economic factors in the post-modern information age, propelled by new technologies in the New Economy of Global Capitalism.  Also, consideration will be given to the new diversity as it impacts on the political economy of African Americans.

Proceeding from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course considers both the financial successes of superstar black athletes and hip hop entrepreneurs as well as their emergence as cultural icons, contrasted with the comparatively overall poor performance of Black Business not only within the intersection of race, gender, class, but also within the context of transnationalism in the globalization sale of African American Culture in post-Civil Rights America. But who profits?

Most important, why is it that business receipts for African Americans, who comprise almost thirteen percent of this nation's population, amounted in 2007 to only .5%, that is, less than one (1) percent of the nation's total business receipts? In addition, why is it that among the various occupational categories in which blacks participate in the nation's economy, especially as businesspeople, that black entertainers and sports figures are the highest paid? What does this say about race, class, gender and hegemonic masculinities in America at the turn of the new century?

Anderson, Maggie, Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy

Jones, Marvin D. Fear of a Hip Hop Planet: America’s New  Dilemma

Marable, Manning, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems Race, Political Economy, and  Society

Rhoden, William C. Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete

Smith-Shomade, Beretta,   Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black Entertainment Television

Stoute, Steve, The Tanning of America:  How Hip Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of a  New Economy

Walker, Juliet E. K. “History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship”          

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

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

Critical Book Review Analysis                           25%

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

Class Discussion/participation                             25%

Oral Summary of Research Paper                         5%

Seminar Research Paper (15 pages)                    45%

What defines an American? Is it the love of liberty, the pursuit of justice, the urge to invent, the desire for wealth, the drive to explore? The purpose of this seminar is to examine--through reading, discussion, and writing—the historical origins of and perspectives on “American identity,” to investigate the stories about ourselves and our past that we have developed to illustrate and confirm its elements, and to assess ongoing claims to American exceptionalism.  

Readings may include:

Crevecouer,  “What is an American?”  

Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic

David R. Jansson, “American National Identity and the Progress of the New                                              South”

Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick  

Kao and Copulsky, “The Pledge of Allegiance” 

Tom Englehardt, The End of Victory Culture

Jim Cullen, The American Dream

Hackney, “The American Identity”

Grades will be determined on the basis class participation and attendance (15%), short papers (40%), individual and collaborative visual presentations (5%), and a 7 to 10-page research paper project (assembled in stages) (40%). Plus and minus will be used in assigning a course grade.

This course intensively examines U.S. women's history between World War II and the 1970s. In doing so, it also explores popular perceptions of womanhood, manhood and sexuality that became central to the cultural politics and social conflicts of the postwar period. By weaving together these topics – women’s history, popular culture, and postwar social movements – we raise fresh questions about well-known episodes of U.S. history. Why, for example, do most Americans remember Rosa Parks only as a demure seamstress who initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she was too tired to give up her seat to a white? If every young woman hoped to be like Donna Reed or June Cleaver in the fifties, then where did the sixties movements come from? We also explore how various groups (e.g., suburban girls, working-class women, civil rights activists, immigrants, and others) negotiated ideas of family, work and sexuality. In doing so, we examine roots of issues that continue to have political purchase today, such as reproductive rights, sexuality, job equity, welfare, race, and ethnicity.

Course Activities:This is primarily a discussion seminar, but class will occasionally include short lectures and films. Readings include historical documents, memoirs, scholarly articles and full-length historical studies. The course has a writing flag, and is designed to help you develop skills in historical writing and analysis. Students will write regularly to encourage critical thinking and class discussion of readings. Graded assignments include weekly reading summaries, a short media research paper based on popular magazines of the postwar era; and a “Postwar Women’s Memoir Project” based on interviews with women who came of age between World War II and the 1970s.

* Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland

* Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media

* Gilmore, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States

* Grace, Nancy M. and Ronna C. Johnson, eds., Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers

* Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

* Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (noted as NJC on syllabus)

* Santiago, Esmeralda. Almost a Woman

* Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography

10% Attendance, promptness, class participation

30% 350-word weekly analyses of readings (6 essays, 5% each)

20% Media research essay, 5 pages

35% Final Postwar Women’s Memoir Project essay, 8-10 pages

5%  Group Presentation on Memoir Projects

In this seminar students will explore the experience of American women, in sickness and in health.  Students will learn about medical and biological views of woman and women’s health, the social context of those views, the development of medical practices and, indeed, a new medical specialty, for the treatment of illness and debility. This study of American women focuses on the 19th and 20th century and looks at the experience of Native-American women, African-American women, Latinas, working class women, and white middle- and upper-class women.  Health topics include menarche and menstruation, childbirth, birth control and abortion, gynecological disorders and reproductive organ cancers, as well as mental health and mental illness.

•           Judith Walzer Leavitt,  Women and Health in American, 2nd ed.,  University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.

•           Tina Cassidy, Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born.  Grove Press, 2006

•           Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Birthing a Slave:  Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South.  Harvard University Press, 2006.

•           Sarah Stage, Female Complaints:  Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women’s Medicine.  W.W. Norton & Co., 1979.

•           Andrea Tone, Devices and Desires:  A History of Contraceptives in America.  Hill & Wang,  2001.

•           Jael Silliman, et. al, Undivided Rights:  Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice.  South End Press,  2004.

•           Barron H. Lerner, M.D.  The Breast Cancer Wars:  Fear, Hope, and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America.  Oxford University Press, 2001

Class participation = 30% of course grade

Writing assignments = 70% of course grade

Three 3-5 page essays = 14% each; for total of 42% of course grade;

8-10 page essay = 28% of course grade

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

Texts:

Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution

Gilbert Joseph and Jurgen Buchenau (eds)., Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution
David Brading (ed.), Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution

Luis González y González, San José de Gracia: Mexican Village in Transition

Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz

Stephen E. Lewis and Mary Kay Vaughan, The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940

John Womack Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution

Grading:

Map quiz, 5%

Reading papers, 60%

Final paper, 35%

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.

OVERVIEW.  This lecture course will examine the history and political development of the United States Constitution from the decade preceding the drafting of the Constitution through the beginning of the Jefferson presidency.  The States that fought for independence from Great Britain were led by the Continental Congress and united by the Articles of Confederation.  A focus will be on the experiences of the leaders during the American Revolution and under the Articles of Confederation that gave rise to the idea that the Articles needed to be replaced by a new, stronger national government.  The Constitutional Convention and the ratification process will be closely examined.  The need for and passage of the Bill of Rights will also be examined.  After the new government is formed, the emphasis will be on the question of how the three branches of government gave shape to the theory that the Constitution had given form.  The presidencies of Washington, Adams and beginning of Jefferson’s will be studied, along with the role of the legislative branch and the rise of an independent judiciary and the concept of judicial review and supremacy.    

COURSE BOOKS. The following books should be purchased:

Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788. by Pauline Maier

Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789. by Joseph J. Ellis

George Washington, Nationalist. by Edward J. Larson

There will be two exams during the semester as well as a final exam.  Each of the tests will count 30% of the course grade.  The exams will consist of short-answer and essay questions on the material from the classes and readings (including any handouts that may come your way from the instructor).  There will be quizzes given during class.  Quizzes will count 10%.

This course examines the cultural history of America, 1865 to the present, focusing on Americans' uses and encounters with technology. Topics of discussion will include the railroad and modernity, the rise of mass culture through the radio, the growth of suburbia, the space race, the birth of Silicon Valley, and activism on social media, among other areas.

Syllabus forthcoming.

This upper division course examines the history of Blacks in the United States from the West African Heritage to the Civil War and provides a critical examination on central issues under scholarly debate in the reconstruction of the Black experience in America. The course thus engages the debate on the evolution of African-American slavery as a social, economic and political institution, with a special focus on antebellum slavery, including plantation slavery, industrial slavery, and urban slavery in addition to slave culture.

Also, the course assesses the institutional development of the free black community, during the age of slavery, with emphasis on free black protest activities, organizations, and leaders. Equally important, information is provided on the business and entrepreneurial activities of both slave and free blacks before the Civil War to underscore the long historic tradition of black economic self-help. Invariably, those slaves who purchased their freedom were slaves involved in various business enterprises. Also emphasized in the course are the various ways in which slave and free black women responded to slavery and racism before the Civil War, giving consideration to gender issues within the intersection of the dynamics of race, class, and sex.

The course format is primarily lecture, with informal class discussion, utilizing in part the Socratic method of teaching/pedagogy (especially useful for students who are pre-law), as we examine topics that broaden historical consciousness and critical thinking skills, such as: the role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade; the historical forces that contributed to the origin of racism in Colonial America; the anomaly of black plantation slave owners in a race-based slave society; how white economic disparities and hegemonic masculinities were played out in class subordination and racial oppression; why race takes precedence over class in assessing the black historical experience; the extent to which judicial cases provide a pragmatic assessment of the realities of slave life; the extent to which American law supported the racial subordination of slave and free blacks; whether or not the economic and political imperatives that prompted antebellum African American settlement in West Africa can be considered colonialist in design and intent.

These and other questions will bring to the forefront the central issue of the agency of African Americans in their attempts to survive racism and slavery in attempts forge their own political and economic liberation. This course, consequently, emphasizes both the deconstruction of prevailing assessments and interpretations of the African American experience as well as provides information for a new reconstruction of the Black Experience from slavery to freedom. In each instance, emphasis will be on exploring different historical interpretations of the Black Experience.

African American slaves did not lead a monolithic slave experience. They shared life-time, hereditary, involuntary servitude, racial oppression and subordination. But many manipulated the institution and slave codes in attempts to mitigate that oppression. Others, such as Nat Turner and Dred Scott used other means to bring about an end to their servitude, while free blacks also fought to end slavery as well as improve their economic, societal and legal status.

The primary purposes of this course, then, are 1) to develop an understanding of the nature of historical inquiry and 2). to heighten historical consciousness 3), encourage critical thinking and analysis of historical material and 4) to recognizing the difference between what might have happened and what actually happened to blacks, both slave and free blacks during the age of slavery to the Civil War.

Franklin, John H. and Alfred Moss, FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM, 9th ed

Holt, T. and Barkley-Brown, E. MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY, vol 1

Owens, Leslie, THIS SPECIES OF PROPERTY: SLAVE LIFE AND CULTURE IN THE OLD SOUTH

Tyler, Ron and Lawrence, R. Murphy, The Slave Narratives of Texas

Walker, Juliet E. K., FREE FRANK: A BLACK PIONEER ON THE ANTEBELLUM FRONTIER

Walker, Juliet E. K., THE HISTORY OF BLACK BUSINESS IN AMERICA: CAPITALISM, RACE,    ENTREPRENEURSHIP

White, Deborah G.  AREN’T I A WOMAN:  FEMALE SLAVES PLANTATION SOUTH

MID-TERM EXAM                         35%

RESEARCH PAPER                        30%

EXAM 2 (TAKE-HOME)                 35%

Course Description: Spanning almost a century of Russian literature, this course highlights a gallery of fictional and real rebels and revolutionaries.  What was their cause?  Who supported them?  How were they portrayed in popular novels of the time?  We will supplement textual analysis of prose and poetry with the study of historical documents in order to understand the complex historical, moral, and cultural dimensions of such enduring phenomena as revolution, rebellion, and terrorism.

 Course Materials:

• Pushkin, Aleksandr.  The Captain’s Daughter (1836)
• Pushkin, Aleksandr.  “In the Depths of Siberian Mines” (1827)*
• Turgenev, Ivan.  Fathers and Sons (1862)
• Bakunin, Mikhail.  The Revolutionary Catechism (1865) vs. Nechaev's Catechism of the Revolutionary (1869)(excerpts)*
• Dostoevsky, Fyodor.  The Demons (1873)
• Vera Zasulich's memoirs (excerpts from Five Sisters: Women against the Tsar)*
• Andreyev, Leonid.  “The Seven That Were Hanged” (1909)
• Bely, Andrei.  Petersburg (1913)
• Related documents and articles*

*Included in Course Packet

Grade Evaluations: 

a. Two Response Papers (10% each):  Response papers should reflect your thinking on assigned reading.  Format: 3-5 pages (at least 1,000 words), Times New Roman, 12 pt.  You will be evaluated on the depth and quality of your reflections, clarity of style, and cohesive argumentation.  After you receive your paper back, you will have about a week to revise and resubmit it.  Detailed instructions will be provided two weeks before the due date.

 b. Three In-Class Exams (10% each): Each exam will test your knowledge of material discussed in class and read independently at home.

 c.  Presentation (10%): Individually or in pairs, you will prepare a 5-10-minute oral presentation on one of the topics offered in the beginning of the semester.  You will discuss your presentation with your instructor no later than two weeks in advance.

d. Final Paper  (30%):  You final paper may draw on one of your response papers.  It should include  your reflections on the topic supported by textual evidence from assigned works.  Detailed instructions will be available mid-semester.  Format: 8-10 pages (at least 2,500 words), Times New Roman, 12 pt.

 e. Participation (10%):  Your instructor will determine this part of the grade based on your preparedness and participation in class.  There are three components of success: regular attendance, advance reading/preparation of assigned materials, and insightful, well-formulated comments during discussions.

This lecture course surveys the political, economic, social, and intellectual history of Western Europe and its expansion overseas from the late Middle Ages to the early Industrial Revolution.  In doing so, the class examines why the transition to modernity took place in the westernmost part of the Eurasian landmass.  How and why, between the late fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries, did the decline of medieval Christendom eventually lead to the emergence of modern society in the West?  In exploring this question, the course places early-modern Western Europe and its imperial expansion in the contexts of long-term and global history.

Books:

1. R. R. Palmer, Joel Colton, and Lloyd Kramer, A History of Europe in the Modern World, Vol. 1: To 1815

2. Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History

3. Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions That Made Modern Europe, 1648-1815

Examinations and Grading:

There are three take-home essay exams that focus on major themes and topics covered in the course lectures and assigned readings.  The two mid-term exams each count for 25% of the final grade and the final exam counts for 40%.  Attendance and participation count for the remaining 10% of the final grade.

Europe was long thought to have undergone a process of “secularization” in the modern era, beginning roughly with the sixteenth century and becoming largely unstoppable by the nineteenth.  According to this narrative, “God” was supposed to have slowly disappeared from the political, social, and cultural arenas; the supernatural, the divine, and the sacred were supposed to have receded from daily life; and the European world was supposed to have found itself  “disenchanted.”  More recently, however, historians and critical theorists have begun to reassess this story, finding instead mutually-evolving processes of disenchantment and re-enchantment, as new formations of the divine and the sacred appeared on the intellectual and emotive landscape.  Some theorists now talk about “varieties of secularism” at play in the modern world, while others have resuscitated a language of “political theology” to discuss the ever-complicated relationship between the state, sovereignty, power, and the sacred or divine. 

            This course will introduce students to key themes and methodologies of intellectual history and social theory by exploring the dueling approaches to secularization and sacralization in modern European thought.  In the first two weeks, we will read recent theoretical works on the sacred and the secular (essays from Peter Berger, Simon Critchley, Charles Taylor, and others).  With theoretical tools in hand, we will turn to the period between 1800 and 1945 to read classic works in philosophy and social theory that thematize the sacred and the secular.  Drawing on founding works in social and human sciences (from sociology,  psychoanalysis, philosophy and beyond), we will investigate related sub-themes of violence, sacrifice, ritual,  redemption, the sublime, and transcendence.  We will also discuss select artworks from the Romantic period through Surrealism as a means to enhance our discussion of these themes. 

            Central to our concerns will be the sacred and secular formations of modern ethics.  We will observe on the one hand how modern thinkers have sought to establish ethical systems on purely immanent and secular grounds, even as they intentionally or unintentionally retained notions of the divine and the sacred (e.g., Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone).  On the other hand, we will grapple with explicitly religious works that nonetheless establish ethics on what might seem like secular-humanist foundations (e.g., Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling).  We will read works that seek to explicate the structure of religions and their guidelines for comportment according to social categories of the sacred and profane or the taboo (Émile Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religion; Roger Caillois’s Man and the Sacred; Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo); and we will read works that seek to rediscover and/or re-insert the sacred into the modern and profane world (e.g., George Bataille’s Theory of Religion; Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” and “Theses on the Philosophy of History”; Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption). 

            The course lends itself naturally to the requirements of the Flag in Ethics and Global Leadership.  Our readings themselves concentrate on the question of the secular and sacred foundations of ethical systems and decisions.  As a final project, worth 35% of the grade, students will be asked to identify and analyze a sacred, secular, or taboo function that governs moral presuppositions.  They may find such a function represented in a film, a novel, an artwork, a legal decision, a U.N. declaration, etc.  Their task will not be to assess whether or not the practice is “right” or “good” or “ethical,” but rather to analyze the practice in terms of its (usually unstated) sacred, secular, taboo, or ritual context.  They will be asked to ground their analysis in one or more of our core readings.

Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (excerpt)

G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History (excerpt from the introduction)

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality (Books I and II) (but may substitute The Gay

            Science, Book IV)

Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religion (selections)

Roger Caillois, Man and the Sacred (selections)

George Bataille, Theory of Religion (selections)

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (selections)

—, “The Uncanny”

Franz Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption (selections)

Simon Critchley, Faith of the Faithless (selections)

Peter Berger, Desecularization of the World (introduction)

Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornell West, The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere

Journal                         10%

Short Essay 1                        20%

Short Essay 2                        20%

Final Essay                           35%

Class Participation                  15%

This course will examine the complex relationship between the Church and the Jews over two millenia. It will analyze ideas and policies regarding Jews as expressed in both elite and popular culture, from theology and canon law to church art and popular preaching. It will also survey the factors which led to striking changes in attitudes and policies over time, with emphasis on the interplay of the theological legacy and evolving realities.

Revised Standard Version of the Bible (any edition)

The course will make used of a website designed specifically for it by the instructor. The website includes many of the readings. Other assigned readings will be posted on Blackboard.

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

The long 1960s was a tumultuous time even by Latin American standards. Revolutionaries, indigenous leaders, students, feminists, liberation theologians, hippies and other groups proposed new ways of seeing the world, addressing social problems and participating in politics. In this course we will address some of the following questions: What was the impact of the Cuban revolution in Latin American politics? How did student movements develop in the region and what was their political and cultural influence? What role did the left play in the transformation of education, medicine, and social policy? How did gender roles and women’s participation on public life change during this time? 

May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

This course will provide a history of the island’s relationship with the United States focusing in particular on questions of law and capitalism. The course will center around two questions: What is Puerto Rico to the United States? And how did we get to the present moment of crisis? In answering these questions we will focus in particular in the ways that law has racialized islanders and conceived them as unprepared and undeserving of rights. This conception has thus shaped the way that capitalism has worked as a force in shaping the islands possibilities throughout the 120 years of its relationship with the US.

Readings (subject to change):

• Jorge Duany, Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know, (New York: Oxford UP, 2017).
• Reconsidering the Insular Cases: The Past and Future of the American Empire, Gerald Nueman and Tomiko Brow-Nagin, eds. (Caimbridge: Harvard UP, 2015).
• Charles Venator-Santiago, Puerto Rico and the Origins of US Global Empire: The Disembodied Shade, (New York: Routlidge, 2015).
• Joanna Poblete, Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai’I, (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2017).
• Kelvin Santiago-Valles, “ ‘Our Race Today [is] the Only Hope for the World:’ An

African Spaniard as Chieftain of the Struggle Against ‘Sugar Slavery’ in Puerto Rico, 1926-1934” Caribbean Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2007), pp. 107-140.

• Gervasio Luis Garcia, “I am the Other: Puerto Rico in the Eyes of North Americans, 1898,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jun., 2000), pp. 39-64.
• Solsirée del Moral, “Negotiating Colonialism ‘Race,’ Class, and Education in EarlyTwentieth-Century Puerto Rico,” in Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano, eds. Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.)
• Eileen J. Findlay, “Love in the Tropics: Marriage, Divorce, and the Construction of Benevolent Colonialism in Puerto Rico, 1898-1910,” in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of the U.S. and Latin American Relations, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.)
• Ellen Walsh, “The Not-So-Docile Puerto Rican: Students Resist Americanization, 1930,”Centro Journal, Vol. XXVI, No. I (Spr. 2014), pp. 148-171.

Grade breakdown (subject to change):

-      Attendance and class participation (20%)

-      News Journal (20%): Given that the history of Puerto Rico in crises is quite literally being written daily, an essential part of this course will be to keep track of the events on the island as they relate to the topics of our course. Students will explore the ways in which media sources report on and interpret contemporary issues and events in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican community in the United States. Each week you will read a minimum of two articles about PR and Puerto Ricans and craft a brief (3-4 sentence) written summary of them in your own words.

• One of the articles must explore the relationship between the island and the United States (e.g. through politics, economics, migration); the other article can report any aspect of current life in PR or for mainland based Puerto Ricans. Please note the title, date and source of your newspaper articles and include a web address.
• The articles and summaries will be kept in an on-going journal and collected four times during the semester.
• Sources should be legitimate media/ news sources and not simply entertainment or opinion blogs or websites. Acceptable examples include NY Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, BBC, Guardian, etc. Sources in Spanish are acceptable. Bring your journals to each class. We will begin each meeting with a brief news update.
• Please come to class prepared to discuss the current events on the island as these will feature prominently in our course.

-      Short Paper (20%) – One 4-5 page paper

-      In-class examination (20%) or 2^nd short paper (will depend on size of class)

-      Final examination (20%)

May be repeated for credit when the topic titles vary.

May be repeated for credit when the topic titles vary.

This seminar is designed as a reading course in history, literature, and politics, and as a class in professional writing.  In addition to the required reading listed below, each student draws up an individual reading list in consultation with the professor.

The scope of the seminar includes not only the literature, history, and politics of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland but also the interaction of British and other societies throughout the world.  One point of emphasis will be the history of the British Empire and Commonwealth in its Asian and African as well as early American dimensions. 

Another point will be a focus on historical and literary biography—and autobiography—for example, not only Disraeli, Virginia Woolf, T. E. Lawrence, and George Orwell but also Gandhi.

The main requirements of the course are met by students reading a book or its equivalent each week and by submitting a weekly critique of the reading.  Each of the weekly essays is circulated to all other members of the class who make annotations on style as well as substance.  The class thus becomes as much a course in professional writing as one in which individual academic interests are pursued. The class also meets together with the British Studies faculty seminar at three o’clock Friday afternoons.  This is a requirement of the course. The seminar upholds the principles of the Modern History Faculty at Oxford—to enhance (1) intellectual curiosity; (2) conceptual clarity; (3) flexibility, that is, the capacity to engage with alternative perspectives and new information; (4) accuracy and attention to detail; (5) critical engagement; (6) capacity for hard work; (7) enthusiasm for history, literature, and politics; and (8) historical imagination and understanding, that is the ability to speculate and compare, alongside the possession of appropriate historical knowledge and the capacity to deploy it.

Texts:

The following books are required -- plus other books (one a week) to be decided upon in consultation with the instructor:

Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians; Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf; Norman Davies, The Isles

Course Requirements:

Grades are determined by attendance and participation in discussion (25%) and the quality of the weekly critiques (75%). 

The class also meets together with the British Studies faculty seminar at three o’clock Friday afternoons.  This is a requirement of the course.

Biography:

Professor Louis's teaching fields are the British Empire/Commonwealth and the history, literature, and politics of nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain.

Professor Louis has recently published Ends of British Imperialism: the Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization (2006). He has written or edited more than thirty books including Imperialism at Bay (1977) and The British Empire in the Middle East (1984). His edited publications include The End of the Palestine Mandate (1986), The Transfers of Power in Africa(1988), Suez 1956 (1989), The Iraqi Revolution (1991), and Churchill (1993).