“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 This entry-level course aims to teach historical thinking as well as historical content, impart a basic grasp of the premodern past, and  stimulate the development of large-scale frameworks for historical analysis.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 (3 x 25% each) = 75%; reading worksheets (4 x 5% each) = 20%; attendance & participation = 5%.

Introduction to Chinese Culture and Civilization

Course Description:

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

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.

This course presents the major themes of North African history from the sixteenth century to today. North African history intersects several fields of study (European, African, and Middle Eastern studies) and Muslims, Christians, and Jews have made their homes here, marking the region with multi-religious and multi-linguistic traditions. Looking in particular at that part of North Africa known in Arabic as the Maghrib (today’s Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania), the course begins in the early modern Mediterranean period.  At this time, merchants and privateers linked Europe and the Middle East from the Maghreb's ports, and in the interior, caravans of scholars and slaves linked the region to sub-Saharan Africa. Our attention then moves into to the period of European ascendency, when France in particular established itself as the preeminent power in North Africa, beginning with the invasion of Algeria in 1830 and culminating in the 1912 French protectorate in Morocco.  The period of European colonial rule came to an end in the decades after the Second World War, and the course concludes with the challenges faced by post-colonial states during the Cold War and the rise of Islamist political opposition movements in the 1990s.

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

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

Texts:

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

Grading:
Paper #1: 10% (2 pages)
Midterm: 20%
Paper #2: 20% (3-4 pages)
Final: 30%
Map Quizzes (4 Total, each 2.5%): 10%
Course Participation/Engagement: 10%

Course Overview: In this course, we examine the central cultural characteristics of the Western heritage after the Reformation and discuss their transformation up to the present. A chronological narrative of the history in question will be provided by the lecturer and the textbook, but the most significant portion of our time together will be devoted to the examination of a number of central questions within western society since the Reformation. We will attempt to formulate an understanding of “western civilization” and its central concerns and transformations, with a particular attention paid to economy and politics in their relationships to culture and freedom. We will discuss such issues as the construction of political authority and its relationship to emerging conceptions of political liberty, revolution, popular sovereignty, and political economy. We will examine and explain the emergence of the central characteristics of modern Western society, including mass society, democracy, colonialism, secularism, political sovereignty, and the nation-state. Focus in the course is away from memorization of factual information about European history and toward reading, discussion, interpretation and criticism of texts that exemplify certain moments in the western tradition. By reading, discussing, analyzing and criticizing these sources, students will receive an introduction to the tasks involved in “thinking like a historian.”

Prerequisites:  Students taking this course are assumed to be capable of an informed, critical stance toward the claims of the lecturer. No previous knowledge of the subject matter is assumed.

Possible Texts:

Mark Kishlansky et al., Civilization in the West, vol. 2

Jean Calvin, Golden Book of the True Christian Life

John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (selections)

Émile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise

Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel

J. M. Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire / Economic Consequences of the Peace (selections)

Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (selections)

Additional readings will be distributed in class or are available on the Internet

Assignments & Grading:

Compliance with syllabus policy 0%

Compliance with attendance policy 0%

Paper 1 @ 15%

Paper 2 @ 25%

Final paper @ 30%

Average of regular quizzes @ 30% each (I will drop your two lowest scores)

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

Essays     6/10  (60%)

Outlines 2/10  (20 %)

Discussion 2/10  (20%)

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.

Texts:
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.

Grading:
Mid-term examination (25%),
Final examination (25%),
Research paper (30%),
Two chapter reports (10%)
Film report (10%).

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.   

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

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

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

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

Grading:

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.

     Lectures, readings, videos, maps, photos, and in-class discussion provide students with a survey of US history from Reconstruction to 2000. As such, students will study significant aspects of the nation’s political, economic, cultural and diplomatic history and will be challenged to understand the why, how, and so what of this history. Students begin with learning about what happened and then proceed to questions of causality and consequence.
     Moving from what happened to why or how, and then, to so what, students will sharpen their skills in critical thinking. To help develop written communication skills, students will answer essay questions on two exams and write a short essay. Along the way, students will consider some of the ethical dilemmas confronted by Americans who lived long ago.  Students will examine issues of personal responsibility and social responsibility as they learn about how previous generations made certain decisions or supported particular public policies.

     Lectures, readings, videos, maps, photos, and in-class discussion provide students with a survey of US history from Reconstruction to 2000. As such, students will study significant aspects of the nation’s political, economic, cultural and diplomatic history and will be challenged to understand the why, how, and so what of this history. Students begin with learning about what happened and then proceed to questions of causality and consequence.
     Moving from what happened to why or how, and then, to so what, students will sharpen their skills in critical thinking. To help develop written communication skills, students will answer essay questions on two exams and write a short essay. Along the way, students will consider some of the ethical dilemmas confronted by Americans who lived long ago.  Students will examine issues of personal responsibility and social responsibility as they learn about how previous generations made certain decisions or supported particular public policies.

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

Texts:

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

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

Richard Wright, Black Boy

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

Grading:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This course partially fulfills the legislative requirement for American history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following books are available at the Bookstore.

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

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

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

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

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

Marking Scheme:

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

HIS 317L - Establishing America, 1565-1815
Fall 2018                                                                                                                Alan Tully, Professor

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

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

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

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


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

Readings:

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

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

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

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

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

Attendance: Students are expected to attend all classes. After two absences students will be penalized one half mark for each missed class from the assigned total of 5 marks for full attendance.
Test and Examination:  There will be a test made up of multiple choice questions, short answer questions and one longer essay question in the second class period of Week 8 – Mar. 7. There will be a final examination in this course during the end of term examination period.

Marking Scheme:

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

The course is a survey of African-American history from the slave trade to the recent past. It is an introductory examination of the black experience and is designed to bring to life the voices and history of African Americans. The course is organized chronologically, with an emphasis on the ideas, actors, and organizations that contributed to the African American experience. By the end of the semester, students will have an understanding of how African Americans have contributed to the making of America, the problems that they face, and how African Americans have defined themselves, their history and culture, and their struggle for equality.

Texts:
Deborah Gray White, Mia Bay, and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans with Documents, Combined Volume
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision  

Grading:
Attendance & Participation:  20%                  
Document Essays:               25%                
HistoryMakers Mixtape:        15%               
Midterm Exam:                    20%
Final Exam                          20%

Focusing on the migration and settlement of Asians in North America, this course explores major themes concerning the histories of immigration, race, gender, ethnicity, class, labor, and international relations.  We will trace the trajectory of American racialization of Asians from exclusion as inassimilable aliens to post-World War II celebrations as the model minority through changing conceptions of racial difference, evolving laws and government institutions, and shifting representations of ethnic identities and communities. Working with primary sources by and about Asians, we will explore how Asians have influenced understandings of national belonging and citizenship, ethnic identity and community, assimilation and acculturation, multiculturalism, labor and economic development, political participation, and transnationalism in influencing the emergence of the United States as a nation of immigrants.

Texts:

Shelley Lee, A New History of Asian America (Routledge, 2014).
Cathy Schlund-Vials et al ed., Asian American: A Primary Source Reader (Yale University Press, 2016).
Additional required readings will be posted to Canvas.

Grading:

15% Class attendance and participation
20% Midterm (Oct. 25)
30% Final Exam (Dec. 16, 9:00-12:00 noon)
10% Family Immigration Narrative (Sept. 8)
25% Timeline project (rolling deadlines): presentations on Fridays starting Week 3

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 4 WEEKS.
Exam 1: 25%
Exam 2: 25%
Exam 3: 25%
Exam 4: 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.  
To obtain a well-rounded approach to the political, economic, and cultural connections between the United States and Africa.
To reevaluate perceptions of Africa, to recognize the vibrant nature of African culture, and to apply new knowledge to the different cultural agents active in US popular culture, such as music, dance, literature, business and science.
To help students understand present-day politics in Africa at a deeper level and to obtain a better understanding of racial conditions in the US.
To learn how to assess historical materials -- their relevance to a given interpretative problem, their reliability and their importance -- and to determine the biases present within particular scholarship. These include historical documents, literature and films.
 
1. Joseph E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture  (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005 second edition).
2. Curtis A. Keim, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind (Westview Press, 1999).
3. Alusine Jalloh, ed., The United States and West Africa (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008).
4. Kevin Roberts, ed., The Atlantic World 1450-2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).
5. Karen Bouwer, Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: the Legacy of Patrice Lumumba (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
6. Gendering the African diaspora : women, culture, and historical change in the Caribbean and Nigerian hinterland / edited by Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.    

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

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

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

Readings:

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

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

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

the Texas Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Plus articles available on line

Grading:

Three short papers 30% (10% each)

Two group projects 30% (15% each)

Research project framework 25%

Preparation and Engagement 15%

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.

The reading and lecture course surveys change and continuity in the history of Texas within the context of U.S. history and Mexico-U.S. relations.  Special attention is given to Mexico-U.S. relations, politics and social relations between 1900 and 1970, as well as the home front experience of Texans during the Second World War.  The overriding theme is the incorporation of Texas into the national socio-economy from the state’s early “colonized” status to its modern position as a fully integrated part of the nation.  The course is organized around our readings.  The De la Teja/Marks/Tyler text provides a synthesis of Texas history while the Zamora text provides a closer examination of home front experiences.  The two chapters from the Campbell book will serve as a basis for an examination of the post-war period extending into 2001.
            Three semester hours of Texas history may be substituted for half of the American history requirement.  Course materials, including a copy of my resume, this syllabus, lecture notes, bibliographies, and notes on interviewing techniques, will be available on Blackboard (http://courses.utexas.edu), UT’s course management site.  Call the ITS help desk (475-9400) if you have problems accessing the site.

Texts:
Randolph B. Campbell, Chapter 16, “Modern Texas, 1971-2001,” In Gone To Texas, A History of the Lone Star Stateby Randolph B. Campbell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003): 438-67.
Jesús de la Teja, Paula Marks, and Ron Tyler, Texas, Crossroads of North America (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004).
Emilio Zamora, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas, Mexican Workers and Job Politics during WWII(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009).

Grading:
Research paper (35%), 5 chapter reports (25%), and 4 film reports (40%).

The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century produced several fundamental shifts in the way people have viewed the natural world and their own place in it. In this course we will examine the roots and course of this revolution and trace the main outlines of the new world it helped to create.

This course carries a global cultures flag.

Texts:

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

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

James Gleick, Isaac Newton,

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

plus additional readings posted on Canvas.

Grading:

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

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

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

Otis, Laura. Müller’s Lab. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Watson, James D., and Gunther S. Stent. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. New York: Norton, 1980.

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

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

Midterm Essay Exam (30%)

Final Essay Exam (35%)

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

Participation (15%)

This course will explore the diverse variety of genetic and eugenic practices that began to emerge early in the 20th century and which remain, in contemporary reprogenetic practice, of vital importance today. While the most famous examples of eugenic policy remain those implemented in Nazi Germany and the infamous sterilization laws in the US and elsewhere during the inter-war years, in reality eugenic science influenced research, law, and social policy on every continent throughout the 20th century. Its legacy is often to be seen in today’s genetic research. The course will trace the radical changes in the field of genetics since the early the 20th century and consider the debate over the relationship between eugenics and modern genetics.

The course will range across a wide geographical area, looking at eugenic and genetic practice in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as well as Europe and North America.
Core Texts
Philippa Levine, Eugenics: a Very Short Introduction (2017)
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History (2016)

Book extracts and articles from scholarly journals will also be assigned; these are listed in the relevant weeks below.

Students will also read historical primary sources in the form of older (no longer used) textbooks in these fields (e.g. Paul Popenoe and Roswell Johnson, Applied Eugenics (New York: Macmillan, 1918) and James V. Neel and William J. Schull, Human Heredity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1954)
Grading Policy
The course will be graded on the basis of one in-class mid-term (20% of grade), two five-page papers (30% each), and class participation (20%). The take-home assignments will be made available on Canvas two weeks before each is due. The in-class exam will test basic knowledge of the subject and the ethical issues at the heart of the course, while the take-home papers will rely on case studies fashioned around the ethical issues and consequences of the topic (and thus fulfilling the E&L flag requirements).  Organized classroom debates will be frequent and the class participation grade will be derived from these occasions.

Grading will be on a plus/minus scale. Grades ending in .5 or above will be rounded up; grades ending in .49 and below will not.

In grading written work, I will look at depth of analysis (to distinguish between the implications of the readings versus simple summaries of the texts), ability to synthesize, insights from a variety of different texts, and quality of writing.  


Topic areas
Week 1: Introduction & Research Methods
Hilary Rose, ‘Eugenics and Genetics: The Conjoint Twins?’ New Formations (2006)

Week 2: Varieties of Eugenics
Extracts from Nancy Leys Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (1992)
Extracts from Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics (1995)
Paul Weindling, ‘Compulsory Sterilisation in National Socialist Germany, ‘German History 5 (1987)

Week 3: The Origins of Genetics
Extracts from Elof Carlson, Mendel's Legacy: The Origin of Classical Genetics (2004)
R. Olby, ‘William Bateson's introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment,’ British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987)
S. F. Gilbert, ‘Bearing Crosses: The Historiography of Genetics and Embryology,’ American Journal  of Medical Genetics 76 (1998)
Staffan Müller-Wille and Marsha L. Richmond, ‘Revisiting the Origin of Genetics,’ in Heredity Explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850-1930 (2016)

Week 4: Eugenics in America
Extracts from Nicole Hahn Rafter, White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies, 1877–1919 (1988)
Extracts from Paul Lombardo (ed.), A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome (2011)

Week 5: Eugenics across the World
Sumiko Otsubo and James R. Bartholomew, ‘Eugenics in Japan: Some Ironies of Modernity, 1883–1945,’ Science in Context 11 (1988)
Extracts from Francesco Cassata, Building the New Man: Eugenics, Racial Science and Genetics in Twentieth-Century Italy (2011)
Marius Turda, ‘“To End the Degeneration of a Nation”: Debates on Eugenic Sterilization in Inter-war Romania,’ Medical History 53 (2009)

Week 6: Genetics Comes of Age
Leslie Roberts, ‘Controversial from the Start,’ Science 291 (2001)
Naomi Attar, ‘Raymond Gosling: the man who crystallized genes,’ Genome Biology 14 (2013)
Extracts from Nikolai Krementsov, International Science Between the World Wars: The Case of Genetics (2005)
M. Susan Lindee, ‘Genetic Disease Since 1945,’ Nature Reviews: Genetics 1 (2000)

Week 7:
Human Heredity
Extracts from Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat (1997)
Extracts from Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (1981)
Diane Paul, ‘Did Eugenics Rest on an Elementary Mistake?’ in her The Politics of Heredity
Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nurture Debate (1998)

Week 8: REVISION SESSION & IN-CLASS EXAM

Week 9: War, Nuremberg and Eugenics
Extracts from Paul Weindling, Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical War Crimes to Informed Consent (2005)
Gordon Chang,  ‘Social Darwinism versus Social Engineering: The 'Education' of Japanese Americans during World War II,’ in Amir Weiner (ed.) Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population Politics in a Comparative Framework (2003)
Extracts from Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (1997)

Week 10: The Population Bomb and the New Family Planning
Extracts from Ian Dowbiggin, The Sterilization Movement and Global Fertility in the Twentieth Century (2008)
Alison Bashford, ‘Nation, Empire, Globe: The Spaces of Population Debate in the Interwar Years,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 1 (2007)
Veronica Pearson, ‘Population Policy and Eugenics in China,’ British Journal of Psychiatry 167 (1995)

Week 11: The Rise of Reprogenetics
Extracts from Lyn Morgan, Icons of Life: A Cultural History of Human Embryos (2009)

Week 12:  Genetic Screening and Counselling and the Science of Disability
Extracts from Alexandra Stern, Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America (2013)
Extracts from Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening (2008)

Week 13: Making Better Babies?
Extracts from Martin Pernick, The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of Defective Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915 (1999)
Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson, ‘Moral Enhancement, Freedom and the God Machine,’ Monist 95 (2012)
Extracts from John Harris,  Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (2007)

Week 14: Class, Race and Genetics
Extracts from Michael Yudell, Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the Twentieth Century (2014)
Extracts from Rebecca Skloots, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2011)
W. Provine, ‘Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing’, Science 182 (1973)

Week 15: What’s Next for Genetics?
Extracts from Steven Lipkin, The Age of Genomes: Tales from the Front Lines of Genetic Medicine (2017)
Extracts from Hilary Rose, Genes, Cells, and Brains: The Promethean Promises of the New Biology
(2014)

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

Alaa Al Aswani, The Yacoubian Building (Cairo: AUC, 2004)

Latifa al-Zayyat, The Open Door (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000).

James Jankowski, Egypt: A Short History (Oxford: One World, 2000)

James Jankowski, Israel Gershoni, Egypt, Islam and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900-1930 (Oxford, 1986),

Selma Botman, “The Liberal Age, 1923-1952,” Cambridge History of Egypt, Vol. II, 

Magda Baraka, The Egyptian Upper Class Between Revolutions, 1919-1952 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1998), pp. 141-209.

Michael Haag, Alexandria: City of Memory (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2004),

Hamied Ansari, Egypt: The Stalled Society (New York: SUNY, 1986  

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

This lecture course surveys the political, social, economic, and intellectual history of England (and, after the Union with Scotland in 1707, of Great Britain) from the end of the Interregnum to the conclusion of the War for American Independence. It focuses on the transformation of England/Britain from an agrarian realm characterized by an absolute monarchy, an intolerant church, and a stagnant economy into a commercial and manufacturing society characterized by a vibrant public sphere, parliamentary rule, a dynamic economy, and unparalleled degrees of civil and religious liberty. Over the course of this period, England/Britain emerged as a world power overseeing a vast commercial and territorial empire stretching across four continents. As such, the lectures place English/British history firmly within its European and global contexts.

Books:
1. Paul Kléber Monod, Imperial Island: A History of Britain and Its Empire, 1660-1837 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
2. Steven C. A. Pincus, England’s Glorious Revolution, 1688-1689: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006).

Grading:
Attendance (10%)
Two Mid-Term Essay Exams (50%)
Final Essay Exam (40%)

This course investigates the creation of the United States from the thirteen colonies to 1800, with a focus on several events: the origins of the conflict between the colonists and Great Britain; the resulting American Revolution; the Articles of Confederation; the Constitutional Convention and the launching and implementation of the new government.  The goal is to provide students with an understanding of the major events and leaders during the last third of the eighteenth century.   
Classes will usually consist of both a lecture and discussion. Unless authorized by SSD, no laptop computers or similar devices may be used or open during class. The use--any use--of phones in class is not permitted.
The following books should be purchased:

1. Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804
2. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence
Primary source materials, and other articles, will be assigned for additional readings during the semester.

There will be two exams.  The first will be a mid-term and the second will be a final exam during the last scheduled class period.  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).  Enrollment in this course constitutes a commitment on your part to be present at both of these examinations.  Exams will not be given ahead of schedule, nor will any make-ups be given, for any reason.  There will be a paper of 6-8 pages in length that will count 30% of the course grade.  In addition to the two exams, unannounced short, objective-question quizzes will be given frequently at the beginning of class, testing mastery of recent course material. These quizzes will constitute 10% of a student’s course grade.

Description: Hitler and the Nazis have given twentieth-century Germany a world-historical significance it would otherwise have lacked. Even from our vantage point, the Nazi regime is still one of the most dramatic and destructive episodes in western European, indeed, in world history. Nazism is synonymous with terror, concentration camps and mass murder. Hitler's war claimed the lives of tens of millions and left Europe in complete ruins. The danger resides in the temptation to view all of German history from the end of the nineteenth-century onwards as merely the pre-history of Nazism, thereby failing to deal with each period on its own terms. And what do we do with the more than half a century of German history since 1945? With the defeat of  Nazi Germany in 1945, the course of German history appears to have experienced a radical break. New political and social systems were imposed upon the two sides of the divided Germany by the victors. The hostilities of the Cold War appeared to ensure a permanent division of Germany, which in 1961 assumed a compelling symbolic form, the Berlin Wall. But in 1989, the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe revolutionized East Germany as well. The Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany were once again joined together in one nation. What exactly this newest version of the German nation will look like in ten or twenty years is still unclear. 
In the first half of the course, we will begin by discussing the origins and effects of  World War One(1914-1918), then move on to the German Revolution(1918-1919) and the Weimar Republic(l9l8-l933), the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and the Holocaust. The questions we will focus on here are: Was Germany’s first experiment with democracy between 1918 and 1933 doomed to failure? What factors contributed to the rise of Nazism and how did the Nazi regime affect Germany and Europe? Were all vestiges of Nazism destroyed in 1945? In the second half of the semester we will discuss the history of  Germany in the Cold War(1945-1989). We will end by talking about the consequences of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989 to the present). Here, the main questions will be: Did, West and East Germany follow fundamentally new paths? What clues can be found in the histories of the Federal Republic in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic in East Germany since 1949 that may indicate the possibilities for change in the future? How has the unification of East and West Germany affected Germany's role in Europe and the world?

Required Reading:

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

Assignments/Grading:

(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history.

(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.

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

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

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 20th 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

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 required to participate in class-wide timeline project

Each student will be required to make short presentations to the class on historical artifacts and art works. 

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

European society changed so rapidly and extensively between 1050 and 1200 that medievalists often call it a "renaissance," ( a period of rebirth not to be confused with the later Italian Renaissance.) During this period, agricultural technologies changed, new forms of religious life developed, schools and universities emerged, cathedrals were built, towns became self-governing, and royal governments experimented with new forms of administration and law. Though a reading of primary documents - including love letters, memoirs, accounts of religious visions, chronicles of urban revolts, court poetry, theological treatises, and artistic creations – this course examines a series of these intellectual, religious, social, and political developments.

The goals of this course are for students 1) to identify the important events and figures in this period of rapid change; 2) to learn to read and analyze different types of medieval documents;  3) to understand how historical arguments and accounts are constructed from the analysis of primary documents; 4) to understand the interconnections between economic, social, religious, and cultural developments; and 5) to construct and write their own historical analyses.

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

Primary source materials, and other articles, will be assigned for additional readings during the semester.

There will be two exams.  The first will be a mid-term and the second will be a final exam during the last scheduled class period.  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).  Enrollment in this course constitutes a commitment on your part to be present at both of these examinations.  Exams will not be given ahead of schedule, nor will any make-ups be given, for any reason.  There will be a paper of 6-8 pages in length that will count 30% of the course grade.  In addition to the two exams, unannounced short, objective-question quizzes will be given frequently at the beginning of class, testing mastery of recent course material. These quizzes will constitute 10% of a student’s course grade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

i>clicker remote for in class discussions

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

Description: The Indian Subcontinent can teach us a great deal about diversity in the cultures of the past, as well as the conditions under which that diversity can also disappear rapidly. This course studies both the flourishing and the disappearance of pluralism in the subcontinent between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. It begins with ‘caste’ and ‘religion’ in the subcontinent, moves to the gradual consolidation of British colonialism, the redrawing of social, economic, religious, political boundaries and identities and ends with the growth of modern political forms such as political parties, and ends with the cataclysms of Partition in 1947.

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

2) familiarize students with an understanding of the differences between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ sources in the understanding of any past

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

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

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

2) Rudyard Kipling, Kim (2005 paperback) ISBN-13, 978-0486445083

3) Kushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan (1994 paperback) ISBN-13, 978-080232215

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

Africa has a long history of trade, migration, and exchange throughout the Indian Ocean world. This course seeks to understand the history of Africa by examining the people, goods and ideas that traversed its shores by exploring the many interconnections that have existed in pre-colonial societies, how these relationships changed because of colonial impositions, and the subsequent decolonization struggles and post-colonial issues. Most of African history is studied from the perspective of the Atlantic. However, this course will examine African history from the perspective of the Indian Ocean. As a result, students will broaden their understanding of what it means to be African, how African movements have been influenced by external forces, including actors beyond Europe and America, and will conclude by examining South-South issues that are relevant to the continent today. Students will engage in both primary and secondary source analysis throughout the course, including examinations of film and literature, in addition to various primary sources related to each week’s discussion.  The goal of this course is to understand the complexities of African history from a more unique vantage point offered by the Indian Ocean world.

Course Objectives:
1)    Students will increase their knowledge and understanding of African history, culture and society. This includes becoming aware and critical of misunderstandings and perceptions of Africans and their history.
2)    Students will identify key themes in African history that transcend national boundaries.  This includes the economic, political, cultural and social agents, which have influenced Africa’s history.
3)    Students will learn how to analyze primary source documents and apply this to their written work.
4)    Students will learn how to analyze secondary sources, including film and literature, and apply this to their written work.

Course Materials:
Books:
Alpers, Edward, Nancy Clark and William Worger. Africa and the West: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to Independence. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 2001.

Jayasuriya, Shihan De Silva and Richard Pankhurst. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2003.

Hawley, John C., ed. India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

Alpers, Edward. East Africa and the Indian Ocean. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009.

Films:
Captain Philips
Moolade
Lost Kingdoms of Africa: Great Zimbabwe
Rain in a Dry Land
Zanzibar Soccer Queens
Wooden Camera
The Flame Trees of Thika
General Idi Amin Dada
Tabu

Articles: all articles can be accessed electronically through the UT library website and are listed on the course schedule.

Course Requirements:
Primary Source Analysis: 20% of final grade
Students will find five primary sources that fit a particular theme discussed in this class. They can be acquired from digital archives or from a local archive/museum/library, etc. First, students must pick a theme to address (see course schedule). Then, students must narrow their topic through a process of secondary and primary research. Details of this process will be discussed in class. The final product will be an analytical essay, which uses the primary and secondary sources to support a student-generated thesis. All submissions should be 3-5 pages, double-spaced, size 12, times new roman font.

Response Paper: 20% of final grade
Students must respond to a current event occurring in Africa during this semester and explain how it connects with classroom content and discussions. Students should use classroom readings, films, lectures and discussions as well as outside sources that reflect scholarly works. Contemporary media outlets are also useful, but must be contextualized appropriately. An essential component of this assignment is a thorough examination of the multiple impacts and layers to current events when considering their historical context and contemporary impacts. Students’ papers must include an introduction with a strong, clear thesis, specific points clarifying this thesis, and a clear and concise conclusion. All submissions should be 3-5 pages, double-spaced, size 12, times new roman font.

Book Review: 10% of final grade
Students are required to evaluate and analyze a book from the reading list. Reviews should not just restate the information in the book, but must be analytical and show the students reflections on the topic. Things to discuss in a book review could include the following: synthesis of argument, historical content, writing style, any criticisms or confusions encountered or the impression the book made on you personally.  Students can also focus on important themes within the book or connections to the course specifically. Opinions are welcome; however, they must be well supported and explained. Be sure to proofread, include an introduction and conclusion. All submissions should be 3-4 pages, double-spaced, size 12, times new roman font.

Film Review: 10% of final grade
Students may evaluate any of the films included in this syllabus. Film reviews should include an analysis of the film, not a simple retelling of the plot.  Analysis can include opinions, but they must be well supported and clearly explained. Things to consider is the historical context of the film (both when it was filmed and setting of the film), analysis of the acting performances, structure of film (including plot flow), music and visual analysis, and contributions (or not) to class content. Most importantly, be sure to discuss the role of Africa and Africans in the film, and others with which they interact.

Research paper  40%



Course Schedule:

Week One: Course Introduction: What is the “Real” Africa?
Reading: Curtis Keim, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind. Boulder: Westview Press, 2014.
Preface, Ch.1 & 2 (pg. 1-34)

This week will include an overview of the course and its expectations. Additionally, a heavy focus will be on misconceptions and stereotypes of Africa often harbored by American students. The goal is to discuss and discard these misconceptions in order to facilitate a more open and honest conversation about Africa and Africans in the remainder of the semester.


Pre-Colonial Africa
Week Two: Pre-Colonial Cultures
Reading:
Jayasuriya, Shihan De Silva and Richard Pankhurst. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2003.
      Ch.3, (pg. 53-80)
Alpers, Edward. East Africa and the Indian Ocean. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009.
    Ch. 2 & 6 (pg. 23-38 & 99-128)

    Film: Lost Kingdoms of Africa: Great Zimbabwe

Students will learn about various pre-colonial African cultures, including the Great Zimbabwe, Mozambican cultural identities, Swahili gender traditions and West Indian Ocean influences on food networks.  Students will begin to understand the complicated relationships that existed in pre-colonial Africa and how these relationships affected local cultures in different ways.
 
Week Three: Pre-Colonial Economies
Reading:
Hawley, John C., ed. India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
    Ch. 1 & 3, (pg. 17-54 & 77-94)
Alpers, Edward. East Africa and the Indian Ocean. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009.
   Ch. 1 (3-22)

Students will learn about the slave trade and the Indian ocean, pre-colonial negotiations of power and privilege, and pre-colonial trade networks highlighting East Africa.  Students will compare their existing knowledge of the Atlantic slave trade system with their readings on the slave trade in the Indian Ocean. Students will begin to understand the complexities and contributions of Africans to global world systems, illustrating how Africans have influenced societies throughout the world. Additionally students will understand various free movements of people and trade, especially highlighting the Indian Ocean region.

Week Four: Pre-Colonial Migrations
Reading:
Hawley, John C., ed. India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
       Ch. 8, (203-230)
Alpers, Edward. East Africa and the Indian Ocean. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009.
     Ch. 3 & 4 (pg. 39-78)

This week’s focus is on pre-colonial migrations. Students will examine the movement of Africans, such as Siddis to various regions in South Asia. Additionally, students will examine the movements of people on the various African Islands in the Indian Ocean. Students will also examine historical Mugadishu in order to understand the pre-colonial urban-rural relations that existed in East Africa. The goal of this week is for students to begin to see Africa and vibrant, active and continually changing; that Africa did not begin to “develop” as a result of colonialism, but has been thriving and developing before Europeans arrived.


Colonial Infiltrations
Week Five: Europeans Arrive: early Europeans, the Portuguese and the Dutch
Reading:
Santos, Aurora Almada. “The Role of the Decolonization Committee of the United Nations Organization in the Struggle Against Portuguese Colonialism in Africa: 1961-1974.” The Journal of Pan African Studies, Vol 4, No. 10 (January 2012), 248-260.
    Film: Tabu

This week students will begin to examine early stages of colonialism, highlighting the migration of Portuguese and Dutch sailors around the Cape of Good Hope and into East Africa. Students will discuss the impact these explorers had on local economies, cultures and peoples. In addition, students will begin to question the different styles of colonialism, and their connections to modern day Africa.

Week Six: African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean
Reading:
Indrani Chatterjee, “Abolition by Denial: the South Asian Example,” in Gwyn Campbell (ed), Abolition and its Aftermath in the Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia, pg. 137-153.
Jayasuriya, Shihan De Silva and Richard Pankhurst. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2003.
      Ch.1-2, (pg. 7-52)

Students will examine the movement of Africans into the Indian Ocean as a result of increased colonial influences. The slave trade and then slavery were abolished by the British in the early 19th century. Other countries followed suit throughout the century. Students will begin to see the complicated relationships the Atlantic slave trade had on East Africa, understanding shifts in legal and illegal trade, and how this influenced the development of the region, including its global impacts. Students will also begin to understand the influence on changing technologies in the 19th century and how they influenced free and coerced movement of people, goods and ideas around Africa.

Week Seven: European Intrusion: the British and the French
Reading:
Jayasuriya, Shihan De Silva and Richard Pankhurst. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2003.
      Ch.5, (pg. 99-122)
    Film: The Flame Trees of Thika

Students will examine the “Scramble for Africa,” specifically looking at French and British colonization of Africa, noticing how their policies differed from each other and from previous colonial powers. Additionally, students will understand the long lasting implications these policies had on Africans, their livelihoods and their agency.


Post-Colonial Issues
Week Eight: Decolonization: an Indian Ocean Perspective
Reading:
Wood, Sally Percival. “Retrieving the Bandung Conference…Moment by Moment.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 43 (Oct 2012), 523-530.
Lee, Christopher J. “At the Rendezvous of Decolonization: the Final communique of the Asian-African Conference, Bandung, Indonesia, 18-24 April 1955.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 11(2009), 81-93.
Brennan, James. “Lowering the Sultan’s Flag: Sovereignty and Decolonization in Coastal Kenya.” Comparative Studies in Society and History.” 50(2008), 831-861.
    Film: Rain in a Dry Land

Students will learn about processes of decolonization in various African countries, by firstly examining it through and Indian Ocean lens. This means, understanding the events and significance of the Bandung Conference in 1955. Additionally, students will begin to understand the multi-faceted challenges Africans experienced in the decolonization process and how this varied from colony to colony.

Week Nine: Post-Colonial Political and Economic Issues
Reading:
Alemazung, Joy Asongazoh. “Post-Colonial Colonialism: An Analysis of International Factors and Actors Marring African Socio-Economic and Political Development.” The Journal of Pan African Studies. Vol. 3, No. 10, (Sept 2010), 62-84)
Jerven, Morten. “The Quest for the African Dummy: Explaining African Post-Colonial Economic Performance Revisited.” Journal of International Development. Vol 23 (2011), 288-307.

This week students will examine the specific political and economic issues various countries experienced in the decolonization process. Images of contemporary Africa are rife with discussions of underdevelopment or failed states. This week we will examine the role decolonization and neocolonialism played in these issues.

Week Ten: Case Study: Uganda and Postcolonial Policies
Reading:
Nyeko, Balam. “Exile Politics and Resistance to Dictatorship: The Ugandan Anti-Amin Organizations in Zambia, 1972-29.” African Affairs. 96(1996), 95-108.
Leopold, Mark. “Legacies of Slavery in North-West Uganda: The Story of the ‘one-Elevens’.” Africa. 76(May 2006), 180-199.
Langan, Mark. “Cultivating Success in Uganda: Kigezi Farmers and Colonial Policies.” Book Review. Journal of Modern African Studies. 48 (September 2010), 514-516.
Young, Nicholas. “Uganda: Ally Gone Bad?” Foreign Policy in Focus. (May 2011), 1.
Film: General Idi Amin Dada

This week, students will examine the decolonization of Uganda as a case study in postcolonial policies. Students will discuss the complicated figure of General Idi Amin Dada to understand how such dictators could come to control newly independent countries, various post-colonial and neocolonial implications, and what this meant for Africans in Uganda and throughout the continent.


Week Eleven: Case Study: Tanzania, Nationalism, Language and Identity
Reading:
Aminzade, Ronald. “The dialectic of Nation Building in Postcolonial Tanzania.” The Sociological Quarterly, 54(Summer 2013), 335-366.
Schneider, Leander. “Colonial legacies and Postcolonial Authoritarianism in Tanzania: Connects and Disconnects.” African Studies Review. 49(Apr. 2006), 93-118.
    Film: Zanzibar Soccer Queens

This week, students will examine the case study of Tanzania, whose system of decolonization emphasized national pride and nationalism over individual cultural groups and ethnicities. Students will understand the complexities of transitioning from colonial governments and governing post-colonial multi-cultural and extremely diverse populations and what this meant for policy makers in the 20th century. Language and identity in Tanzania are targeted as illustrating one way Africans dealt with this complexity.

Week Twelve: Case Study: South Africa and Race Relations
Reading:
Muyeba, Singumbe and Jeremy Seekings. “Race, Attitudes and Behaviour in Racially-Mixed, Low-income Neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa.” Current Sociology. Vol. 59, (2011), 655-671.
Bornman, Elirea. “Patterns of Intergroup Attitudes in South Africa After 1994.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations. Vol. 35, (2011), 729-748.
Solomon, Hussein. And Sonja Theron. “Behind the Veil: India’s Relations with Apartheid South Africa.” Dec. 2010.
Hofmeyr, Isabel and Michelle Williams. “South Africa—India: Connections and Comparisons.”  Journal of Asian and African Studies. Vol. 22, (2009), 5-17.
    Film: The Wooden Camera

South Africa has a long and complicated racialized history, linked to colonization, which did not officially end until 1994. Students will learn about the various ways these historical legacies have played out in South African history and how they directly impact the nation today. Additionally, students will also learn about the complex ethnic diversity that exists within South Africa, including the legacy of Indians that settled there in the 19th century.

Week Thirteen: Case Study: Somali Pirates
Reading:
Weitz, Richard. “Countering the Somali Pirates: Harmonizing the International Response.” Journal of Strategic Security. Vol.2, No.1, (Sept. 2009), 1-12.
Lucas, Edward. “Somalia’s ‘Pirate Cycle,’: The Three Phases of Somali Piracy.” Journal of Strategic Security. Vol.6, No.1, (Spring 2013), 55-63.
Davey, Michael. “A Pirate Looks at the Twenty-First Century: The Legal Status of Somali Pirates in an Age of Sovereign Seas and Human Rights.” Notre Dame Law Review. (Vol. 85, No. 3, 2010), 1197-1230.
Collins, Victoria. “Dangerous Seas: Moral Panic and the Somali Pirate.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. Vol.45, No.1 (2012), 106-132.

Film: Captain Philips

This week, students will learn about how colonialism left an economic and political legacy of corruptness and destruction, and begin to examine how Africans and the international community deals with the result of this. Often, African problems, such as Somali pirates, are treated ahistorically especially in western media. This case study will delve into the historical elements, which provide the background for understanding why Somali pirates exist in the form they do today and why the international community has reacted in the way it has.


Contemporary Concerns
Week Fourteen: South-South Relations
Reading:
Strauss, Julia C. “china and Africa Rebooted: Globalization(s), Simplification(s), and Cross-cutting Dynamics in ‘South-South’ Relations.” African Studies Review. 56 (April 2013), 155-170.
Taylor, Ian. “India’s Rise in Africa.” International Affairs. 4 (2012), 779-798.
Cornelissen, Scarlett. “Selling Africa: Japan’s G8 Politics and Its Africa Diplomacy.” Global Governance. 18 (2012), 461-470.

South-South Relations are emerging as increasingly significant in contemporary literature and media, especially focusing on economic relationships between Africa and India and China.  Students will learn that there is a long history of interaction, which existed in pre-colonial, colonial and now post-colonial times. They will understand how these interactions have changed over time, and what implications these developments have for Africans, both in areas of economic development and socio-political implications.

Week Fifteen: Contemporary Issues and the New Diaspora
Reading:
Cook, Susan and Rebecca Hardin. “Performing Royalty in Contemporary Africa.” Cultural Anthropology. 28(May 2013), 227-251.
Clark, Msia Kibona. “Representing Africa! Trends in Contemporary African Hip Hop.” The Journal of Pan African Studies, 6(Sept 2013), 1-4.
Morris, Ray. “Africa’s Moment.” World Policy Journal. (Winter 2012/2013), 1-2.
Riedl, Rachel Beatty. “Transforming Politics, Dynamic Religion: Religion’s Political Impact in Contemporary Africa.” Africa Conflict and Peacebuilding Review, 2(Fall, 2012), 29-50.
Prah, Kwesi Kwaa. “The Language of Development and the Development of Language in Contemporary Africa.” Applied Linguistics Review. 3(Oct. 2012), 295-313.
    Film: Moolade

This week students will be exposed to variety of different contemporary issues affecting Africans, such as local/urban identity struggles, development of Hip Hop, religion, language development and female genital mutilation. Students will finish the semester understanding the diversity and range of experiences, problems and issues Africans must deal with on a daily basis. Additionally, students will examine how contemporary media outlets treat these issues and modern Africa in general.

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

While age-old scientific concepts were being overturned by the rise of modern physics, Europe was torn apart by wars of unprecedented scale. This history course analyzes these developments, examining the rise of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics against the stage of international political upheavals. Following the life of Albert Einstein, the course focuses on conceptual developments (from the 1880s through the 1940s) and intellectual conflicts. It also studies the lives of physicists such as Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, in the context of changing cultural and political environments. We'll read and discuss various materials: manuscripts, letters, accounts by historians, physicists, essays, and even secret transcripts of controversial conversations. The material will be understandable even to students with no significant background in physics. Among the topics involved are the following: What was Einstein's personal life? How did relativity and the quantum clash with earlier conceptions of nature? Why did physics become so apparently difficult to understand? In Europe and America, how did scientists behave in times of international catastrophe? How were the academic and social orders affected by the development of nuclear weapons?

Texts:
• Jürgen Neffe, Einstein: A Biography (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
• Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon and Schuster, 2008).
Assignments:
• Two reading reaction essays, of 650 words each.  
• Final Research Paper, of at least 2500 words. A draft of the introduction or outline of the Research Paper will be expected 3 weeks before the final due date; for critical feedback. The subject of the final Research Paper will be designed by each student under advisement with the Instructor. The writing assignments will equal 50% of the grade for the course.
 
Grading:
Class participation                            10%
Presentation                                     10%
Writing Assignments & Quizzes        20%               
Subject Comprehension Exam         30%               
Final Research Paper                       30%               
minus absences     – 0.5 course points per unexcused absence.

In this seminar, we will examine how electrical technologies have affected the world economy and the lives of ordinary people over the past century and a half.  We will look at the growth both of the electrical power systems on which we have all come to rely and of the telecommunications networks (telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, and the Internet) that now connect us together.  We will give particular attention to the electrical history of the Austin area, which provides particularly revealing instances of many of the developments we will be discussing.

David Nye, Electrifying America,

plus a course packet.

This course carries Independent Inquiry and Writing Flags.  Grades will be based on a class presentation (10%); a 2-3 page report based on the topic of the presentation (10%); a 12-15 research paper (10% for a draft version; 40% for the final version); a 2-3 page critique of another student’s draft paper (10%); and participa­tion in class discussions (20%).

This course examines seminal texts and significant episodes in the intellectual and political history of Western Europe and its Atlantic colonies during the later seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries.  In doing so, the seminar aims to understand the intellectual and cultural revolution known as the Enlightenment as well as the relationship between it and the political revolutions of the period, particularly the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century (c. 1640-1660), the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689, the American Revolution of 1775-1783, the French Revolution of 1789-1815, and the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804.

Books:
1. Margaret C. Jacob, ed., The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents, 2nd edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017).
2. Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (Modern Library, 2003).
3. Lynn Hunt, ed., The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996).
4. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Hackett, 1980).
5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, trans. Donald A. Cress (Hackett, 1992).
6. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. James W. Ellington, 2nd edition (Hackett, 2001).
7. Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro, trans. Henry R. Bishop (Digireads, 2011).

Grading:
Attendance and Participation (20%)
Weekly Reading Responses (15%)
Mid-Term Essay (25%)
Term Paper (40%)

There is something intrinsically mysterious about money. Throughout history, how does money become created? What problems arise from the processes and power to create money? This course will investigate how financial crises have arisen in the past and to what extent they transpired because of wrongdoing. We will study the origins of the Great Depression and of the financial crisis of 2008. We will also study the development of the recent financial crises in Iceland, Greece, and Puerto Rico.
 
In the Renaissance, it was illegal to create gold in England. The British government still believed that it might be possible to create precious metals through alchemical experiments, and if so, anyone with such a power might generate enough wealth to constitute a danger. Nowadays, we no longer worry about alchemists, yet money has been detached from precious metals, collateral, and even paper. Money consists essentially of digital numbers in bank accounts. What is the historical process by which money became abstract numbers that can be created as loans? We will study how loans and the creation of money “out of nothing” have led to hyperinflation in countries such as Germany, Argentina, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
 
This is a writing seminar. Students will write and revise two Essays. Each student will also propose a research topic, to be approved by the Instructor, to prepare a longer Research Paper.
Texts:
•  John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (New York: Penguin/Plume, 2006).
•  Michael Hudson, Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy (ISLET-Verlag, 2015).
•  Mervyn King, The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy (New York: Norton, 2015).
•  David Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America (New York: Public Affairs, 2013).

Grading:
Class Participation 20%
Essays and Quizzes 20%
Research Paper 30%
Final Exam 30%
minus absences  –1 course point per unexcused absence.

This course interrogates the historical origins of the regional category of “Latin America.” It examines the kinds of trends and forces of the 19th century that contributed to its conceptual emergence and to its political, economic, and cultural significance on the global stage. “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 21stcentury. This course, therefore, takes into consideration perspectives offered by 19th-century historical actors from the region and outside it, and from contemporary scholars interested understanding region’s emergence and historical significance for the 19th century.

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

This class is also intended to help students understand the different audiences that historians address, from public history in the digital age to scholarly historical writing. As a group, students in the class will select from an array of available primary sources in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin America Collection at UT Austin to develop and curate an online exhibition that tells a compelling story about Latin America’s 19th century.
The online exhibit will be visible worldwide. In that sense, this class will also allow students to expand their understanding of digital humanities in the age of social media. Linked to this exercise in public history is the final 3,000-4,000 word research paper students will write.

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

Required Texts:
Please note: there is no required textbook for this class. ALL readings listed in the syllabus, however, are required readings.

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 upper-division research seminar takes students through Niccolò Machiavelli’s chief writings. We consider the local, regional, Mediterranean, European, and global aspects of his work. Through class discussion and short written assignments (20%), students will identify a research topic in consultation with the professor.
 
There are no prerequisites but His 343g “Italian Renaissance” (offered Spr 2016) is strongly recommended.
Readings will include:
Machiavelli: The Prince; The Discourses; The Art of War; Mandragola; Clizia; The Florentine Histories; selected letters and short writings (buy the required translations)
Black: Machiavelli (the best recent biography)
Najemy, ed.: Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli
Course packet of scholarly articles

Each student will write a historiography essay (15%); draft a prospectus (20%); and complete a major research paper (30%). Students will give two oral presentations, one at the prospectus stage (5%), and one upon completion of the research paper (10%).

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

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

Lectures, discussion, reading, and research on selected topics in the field of history.

May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

Designed for History majors. 

History 350L and 350R may not both be counted unless the topics vary.

Course carries Writing flag. 

Black slavery in the American South was just one type of slavery. It resembled forms of slavery in the integrated sugar plantations of the early- modern and nineteenth-century Caribbean and Brazil. Yet in the American South, plantation slavery did not rely on the Atlantic slave trade. Urban slavery differed from plantation slavery. In Spanish America, for example, Africans were brought as slaves only to become within a generation “settlers” of city-ports (merchants, stevedores, shipbuilders, tailors) and citizens of towns. The first settlers of North America were not Puritans and Pilgrims but Afro American manumitted slaves in places like Florida.  Not all slaves were black Africans. The colonial states of Carolina and Georgia, for example, captured and exported tens of thousands of Native American into the Caribbean as slaves.  In the wake of the epidemiological devastation brought about by European diseases, Native Americans created new communities often by raiding neighboring enemy groups and incorporating outsiders as slaves (or family).  This course will examine the history of the many slave trades in the Americas. We will rely on readings that are primarily biographical in nature.
This is a reading and writing intensive seminar.  You will receive training on how to identify the argument of books and chapters within books. You will improve basic writing skills and develop new ones, particularly on how to organize and justify a research proposal. You will also learn how to use citations appropriately to back up your arguments.
 
Texts (a monograph per week) some examples:
 
Karl Jacoby The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire
Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade
Jon F. Sensbach. Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World
 
Weekly papers: 70% grade
Final paper: 30 % grade

International aid agencies and modern humanitarians take for granted the poverty of all South Asian women. The question that is seldom asked is how did so many women become so poor? Have women always been poor in the subcontinent? How can we measure poverty and wealth across time and cultures? This course tries to discuss such questions by combining legal, political and social histories of the subcontinent between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries.

This course carries a Writing Flag. Writing Flag classes meet the Core Communications objectives of Critical Thinking, Communication, Teamwork, and Personal Responsibility, established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Writing Flag courses are designed to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline, in this case, History.

The goals of the course are to teach students two distinct and graduated forms of historical writing. One is review: it begins with learning the skills of summary (presenting the main points of another text concisely), and is completed by learning skills of evaluating texts in terms of their ‘sources’, interpretative methods, persuasiveness in comparison with other similar texts. Students will acquire a familiarity with writing reviews of both published and unpublished writing by commenting on the essays published by established authors as well as by their not-yet-published peers. They will learn to ask the same questions of both. A second form of writing students will learn is that of narrative: ie the arranging of documents, events according to a timeline that establishes an unfolding ‘story’. Historical narrative begins with ‘primary’ sources, taken from the time in which they occurred. At each stage of writing they will be asked to develop careful citation practice, develop the ability to give and take peer criticism, and learn to revise multiple drafts. The end result is to ensure that students write a substantial essay which brings both narrative and reviewing skills together with good citation practice.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

1) Reading and Writing: Most readings for this course will be available on Canvas or online at University of Austin Library. Students are expected to read the assigned texts ahead of the class, and be willing to discuss their responses to these texts in class without prompting from the Instructor. The success of the class depends largely on the willingness of students to discuss their ideas and questions in class. Each student should bring to class each week a basic list of 3 questions on the readings. After discussion in class, this list of questions is submitted to the instructor and contributes 20 points to the total grade earned by a student. Questions should be about the author’s arguments and methods, or something that catches your attention but is unexplained in the text, etc. When writing, use the questions you have asked on your readings to form the key organizing principles of your paragraphs. The components of an organized essay are a strong thesis statement in the introductory paragraph, clear and consistent paragraphs with clear opening statements in each, succinct conclusion. Good spelling will count as well.

In addition to regular questions, all students will write 1) a 500-word summary of an article (10 points, 2 of these points will be for correct citation of sources acc. To the Chicago Manual)

2) a 8-10 page essay presenting a summary and review of multiple articles and some primary documents ( 20 points)

3) 3 sets of peer-reviews (15 points)

4) a 15-page final essay reviewing a debate on dowry (20 points)

2) Participating in Class-Discussion: (for 15 points) The assessment of oral discussion shifts in its emphasis from the beginning to the end of the semester. IN the beginning, a student’s ability to speak coherently will be sufficient; by the middle, a student’s ability to synthesise old and new readings, to remember the beginning and be able to refer to it in discussion will be

favorably assessed; in the end, bringing all the older readings to bear upon the latest readings or viewing materials and being able to discuss these in a clear and mature fashion will be rewarded.

3) Attendance: Students will be allowed no more than one unexplained absence, unless there is a serious, documented, medical or personal problem.

This writing intensive seminar allows students already familiar with the history of the civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century to more deeply explore themes that can be addressed only briefly in a large course. We concentrate primarily on African American and Mexican American struggles for civil rights, but also address the Asian American and Native American movements. Using a comparative approach allows for unique insights into the complex histories of places like Texas, California, and elsewhere. Students consider the distinctiveness of each movement while also viewing them in relation to each other. We also explore how historical understandings of race, national origin, gender and class impacted these movements. This comparative perspective encourages new understandings of mid-twentieth century U.S., more broadly speaking.

In the first part of the class, students concentrate on readings, discussions, and brief assignments. Students then deepen their understandings of the civil rights era by researching and writing a 5,000 word research paper about a specific struggle at the University of Texas or Austin. These original research papers are based on archival collections at the University of Texas, newspapers, and published scholarly works. Students work closely with the professor to identify topics and sources. As a class, we also work on improving students’ writing skills, and the project is broken down into a series of shorter assignments leading to the final draft. Most of this history has received next to no historical attention, so this research has significance beyond the classroom. At the end of the course, students thus present papers in a conference-like format.

Readings (Please note: these are possible texts, the final syllabus will include fewer texts.):
Biondi, Martha. The Black Revolution on Campus

Goldstone, Dwonna. Integrating the 40 Acres: The 50-Year Struggle for Racial Equality at the University of Texas

Green, Laurie. Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle

Maeda, Daryl J. Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America
Oropeza, Lorena. ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era

Phillips, Kimberley L. War! What is it Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (8^th edition) NOTE: Be sure you purchase the correct edition.

Grading:
10% Participation (completion of readings, participation in class discussion)

15% Archives activity
60% Research paper. This is a cumulative grade based on a series of assignments from the initial planning stages to final submission of the papers.

15% Presentation
There is an attendance policy; unexcused absences over a certain number result in point deductions from the final grade.

Most of America’s earliest settlements were coastal communities.  Indeed, in human terms, bodies of water: oceans, lakes, rivers, bays, sounds, tidal pools, ponds, and streams helped define both the extent and limits of local, regional, and ultimately global history and culture.  Water simultaneously connected and separated through the movements of highly mobile populations which communicated through exploration, war, commerce, migration, and travel along routes sometimes millennia old during a time when travel by boat was far simpler than overland travel.  Hence, American history can be understood within the broad, transoceanic web of human geography called Atlantic history and culture.  The purpose of this course is to explore the social and cultural history of American coastal communities from an interactive perspective.  Ultimately, then, we are concerned with water and water-mediated culture as fundamental modes of contact and communication in the pre-industrial world.

Selected readings will include: H. Magnusson and H. Palsson, The Vinland Sagas (on the Vikings); M. Kurlansky, Cod, N. Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex; and Marcus Rediker’s book on pirates, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.  

This course meets substantial writing requirements.  Students will read about a book a week or substantial articles from a multidisciplinary list.  One film will be shown.  Attendance is mandatory.  Students must contribute regularly to class discussion and turn in brief (2 page maximum) weekly writing assignments analyzing the reading for that week.  These readings should not be considered standard book reviews; rather, they take the form of focused essays about problems, issues, and questions that the student wants to ask in the seminar, so they are intended to help facilitate discussion.  A 5-page final essay will propose an article to be included in a (fictitious) collection of essays about the major themes to emerge from this course.  Grades: weekly papers (50%); discussion (30%); final essay (20%).

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

This undergraduate seminar focuses on the impact of Barack Obama’s watershed presidency on American democracy.  

The course utilizes President Barack Obama’s personal biography and political trajectory as a prism to view larger conflicts, debates, transformations, and setbacks in the black freedom struggle and the relationship between race and democracy at the local, regional, national, and global levels. Barack Obama’s watershed 2008 presidential election inspired hopes for a “post-racial” future that confronted harsh political, cultural, and economic realities that at times reinforced entrenched racial divides. In other instances, Obama’s election opened new opportunities for Americans and citizens around the world to forge a more radically multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic future

Students interested in black politics, civil rights, social policy and the deep connections between the historical development of racial justice struggles and contemporary policy debates and challenges would find this course of interest.


Students will be evaluated based on four criteria:
1)    Weekly three-paragraph critical analysis of the readings.
2)    Book Review of Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power
3)    Book Review of Dyson, The Black Presidency
4)    Class participation

Readings: We will a total of five books during the semester

The course books will focus on Obama, the historical and political land that shaped him, and the one he helped to transform as a student, community organizer, state senator, U.S. senator, and two term president. We will read, study, discuss, and critique several different kind of works related to Obama including his own memoir; a critical political and intellectual biography; the first policy assessment of his presidency by a group of historians; a critical overview of his presidency by a journalist; and the meaning of his iconography to black Americans.  

Assignments

A weekly three-paragraph response on the assigned reading is due by 5 PM the day before our seminar. Each student should read everyone’s essay before the start of class and provide comments, both positive and critical, that will be used for class discussion. Your responses should be submitted in the “Discussion” section of Canvas which will allow you to post your response as well as comment on the responses of others.

Each paragraph should be five sentences and consider the following:
1.    How does the author approach race and democracy in shaping Obama? How does the history being explored connect to our contemporary understanding of black and Africana identity and what are the theoretic and political implications of the work, both historically and contemporaneously?
2.    What’s the argument being laid out and how persuasive do you find it to be? Examine the sources in the bibliography and endnotes to consider the way in which the author has marshaled their evidence.
3.    How does the work merit analytically and stylistically? Does the author’s analysis seem persuasive and insightful, even when you disagree?
4.    Think about the readings in tandem, both thematically, chronologically, and theoretically. How does America’s complicated racial history and legacy shape the social, political, and cultural contexts that Obama imbibes on his journey intellectualy, personally, and politically?
5.    Meetings with Professor Joseph: All students are required to meet with Professor Joseph one-on-one once during the semester.   

Midterm Assignment: Complete rough draft of final historiographical essay.

Final Assignment: African American Intellectual History

Students are required to write a critical 10-page essay assessing President Barack Obama’s impact and influence on American democracy as both a political leader and symbolic figure.

Based on our readings this semester, what makes Barack Obama such a historic figure? What are his most important successes and failures? Did Obama’s presidency lead to greater racial progress in the United States and around the world? If so, provide three specific examples of why. If not, provide three examples of why not. If, as I suspect, his presidency proved a more complicated and contingent phenomenon, outline the nuances here as well. As a candidate in 2008, Obama offered himself as part of the “Joshua Generation” standing on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s shoulder. Yet many critics alleged that President Obama’s use of drone strikes, his failure to prosecute Wall Street crimes, and his unwillingness to promote radical policies to promote racial and economic justice betrayed King’s legacy. Others countered that his support for equal pay for women, the passage of the Affrodable Care Act, promotion of environmental protection, and effort to scale down mass incarceration offered definitive proof of Obama’s social justice commitments. Given what we have read in great detail this semester about the world that shaped Obama—from both his and various critics, journalists, and historians’ perspective—what will future Americans and world citizens define as his enduring legacy?


Our semester reading list provides a sample of many of these issues, but of course is not exhaustive. How has this scholarship impacted the real world and what are its flaws, omissions, strengths, and weaknesses?
 

Please source your speech/policy paper with a bibliography and endnotes. This final project is due in Professor Joseph’s GAR office by 6PM on Monday, December 3, 2018.

Class Schedule

Part 1. The Making of Barack Obama

September 10    Obama, Dreams From My Father, pp.
        Garrow, Rising Star, pp.

September 17     Obama, Dreams From My Father, pp.
        Garrow, Rising Star, pp.

September 24     Obama, Dreams From My Father, pp
        Garrow, Rising Star, pp.

October 1    Obama, Dreams From My Father, pp
        Garrow, Rising Star, pp


Part 2. Barack Obama, Race, and American Democracy

October 8    Dyson, The Black President
        Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power

October 15    Dyson, The Black President
        Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power


Part 3. A Place Where All Things are Possible: The Black Presidency, Part 1

October 22    Dyson, The Black President
        Baker, Obama: The Call of History

October 29    Dyson, The Black President
        Baker, Obama: The Call of History

November 5    Dyson, The Black President
        Obama: The Call of History

November 12    Dyson, The Black President
        Obama: The Call of History

Part 4. The Age of Obama is the Age of Ferguson and Mass Incarceration: The Black Presidency, Part 2


November 19    Zelizer, The Presidency of Barack Obama
        Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power,

November 26    Zelizer, The Presidency of Barack Obama
        Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power

December 3        Zelizer, The Presidency of Barack Obama
Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power,        

December 10    Zelizer, The Presidency of Barack Obama
Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power







Assigned Readings

Books can be found at the MAIN Co-op, on Guadalupe, under HIS 382/unique# 39345. They are also on reserve at the Benson Latin American Collection Library in SRH 1 and can be borrowed for 24 hours. In addition, those that are offered as e-books for checkout from UT are noted below.


Coates, Ta-Nehisi; We Were Eight Years in Power (New York: One World, 2017).

Ewing, Adam; The Age of Garvey: How A Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

Gay, Roxane; Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (New York: HarperCollins, 2017).

Guy-Sheftall, Beverly ed.; Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought (New York: The New Press, 1995).

Jackson, Lawrence P.; The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

Joseph, Peniel E.; Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama (New York: Basic Books, 2012).

Kelley, Robin D.G.; Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994).

Kendi, Ibram X.; Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (New York: Nation Books, 2014).

Marable, Manning and Leith Mullings, eds.; Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

McDuffie, Erik S.; Sojourning For Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Durham, NC: Duke University press, 2011).

Obama, Barack; Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004).

Rickford, Russell; We Are An African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Spencer, Robyn C.; The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and The Black Panther Party in Oakland (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).

Wilkerson, Isabel; The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Random House, 2010).


Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 512-471-6259 (voice), 512-410-6445 (video phone) or via email ssd@austin.utexas.edu For more information on available services, please see  http://diversity.utexas.edu/

By UT Austin policy, you must notify Professor Joseph of any pending absence to observe a religious holy day at least 14 days in advance of the day you wish to take an absence. If you miss a class to observe a religious holy day, you will be given an opportunity to complete any missed work within a reasonable time after the absence.

For information on UT policies on Student Conduct and Academic Integrity, please see http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/conduct/

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.

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

REQUIRED TEXTS

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale

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

Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

This course surveys the rich and controversial history of the United States since the nation’s entry into the Second World War, arguably the most important breaking point in American history.  Above all, the course focuses on the rise of the United States as a global power, the expansion of rights for women and minorities, and the debate over the appropriate role of the federal government in regulating the American economy and society.  At the end of the course, students should be prepared for more specialized coursework in recent American history.  The course also aims to encourage students to think like historians.  That is, it encourages students to evaluate primary sources and competing opinions about the past and arrive at their own conclusions.  

Likely texts include:

Michael C.C. Adams, The Best War Ever:  American and World War II

Joshua B. Freeman, American Empire:  The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home, 1945-2000

Robert B. Horwitz, America’s Right:  Anti-Establishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound:  American Families in the Cold War Era

Ann Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Course requirements will be one midterm, a paper of approximately 5 pages, a final exam, and several quizzes scattered throughout the term.

Description: This is a lecture course on postwar American culture and society with special emphasis on the 1950s and 1960s. Issues to be discussed include the domestic impact of the Cold War, the effects of McCarthyism on politics and the entertainment world, the problems of affluence in the 1950s, the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, the cultural relationships between the United States and the rest of the world, as well as conflicts between blacks and whites, the middle class and blue-collar workers, men and women, parents and children. The lectures will deal primarily with cultural and intellectual history, while the reading draws heavily on novels, journalism and social criticism.  Therefore, no one should enroll in this course who has not already taken at least one, preferably upper-division, course in 20th century American history.  Nor should anyone take the course if they are unfamiliar with trends in modern American literature, art, music, and movies.  In addition, since students will be asked to write two 10-15 page papers (there are no exams) based on the reading, you should not register for the course if you are unaccustomed to writing in-depth analytical essays, especially about novels.

Texts: Partial List, All Required:   

• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
• John Updike, Rabbit Run
• Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
• Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
• Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night
• Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II

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.

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

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

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

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

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Attendance and Participation: 20%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 45%

This course deals with the long and difficult process by which a principle of freedom of conscience emerged in early modern Europe – a principle that is still contested in many parts of the world. In late medieval Europe, such an idea was unimaginable. Over many centuries the Church had exercised authority in matters of belief, and the Church’s power was embedded in the social fabric in myriad ways. The Reformation of the sixteenth century shattered not only the unity of the Church, but perceptions of its authority and of the bonds of community. Yet it was by no means obvious to anyone that a person should be free to believe what seemed true to him or her.

In this course we will travel back in time to Reformation Europe during the bitter religious wars between Catholic and Protestant powers. In the wake of these wars (and other episodes of religious violence), pragmatic ideas about how to keep civil peace emerged. So did new ideas about freedom of individual conscience. Why were such ideas so threatening? Why did they seem to so many people downright immoral? How did a psychological and intellectual shift take place that allowed ordinary people (as well as brilliant thinkers) to change their minds and come to support freedom of conscience? To answer these questions we will examine important episodes like the Dutch Revolt against Spain, the Inquisition trial of Galileo, and the English Civil War; we will read from works by authors who struggled to envision a society without religious controls; and we will examine the underground world of “forbidden best-sellers” and popular ideas about freedom of religion.

Each of you will choose a historical figure from a list provided by me. (You may also choose a figure not on the list, in consultation with me.)  You will read more deeply about this person and represent his or her opinions in mock debates we will stage in class. Your grade will be based on the following: 10% attendance and participation, 20% a review of a book on your “person,” 20% blog participation, 30% a paper on a topic related to your “person,” 20% final exam.

Suggested to buy (all can be obtained cheaply online as used books):

Joseph Perez, The Spanish Inquisition

Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith

May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

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

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

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

You are encouraged to participate in South Asian American life in Austin. I will bring to your attention relevant films, lectures, art, music, and dance performances. Assignments for this course will help you in improving writing and communication skills. Our class meetings will be a blend of lectures and discussions.

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

In addition to exploring the scope and contours of women’s activism, the course will emphasize on four key themes: 1) how cultural understandings of gender may have shaped these movements; 2) tensions between ideas of women’s rights that emphasized equality of the sexes and those that emphasized difference; 3) the question of whether you can write a universal history of women or need to write separate histories along lines such as race, class, region, religion, sexual preference, and more; 4) power relations not only between men and women but among women. 

COURSE MATERIALS

SHORT READINGS will be available on Canvas. 
POSSIBLE BOOKS:
Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. 1968.
Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965.
Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

OTHER COURSE MATERIALS: Films, photographs, original historical documents

EVALUATION

Short assignments                                                               10% total      

Unit quizzes (3)                                                                     10% total

Unit in-class essay exams (3)                                            60% total

Take Home Final                                                                  20%

Extra credit   1-2 points added to final grade

Attendance: Unexcused absences beyond those allowed result in a point deduction from final grade.

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

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

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

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

Texts:

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

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

Course Requirements:

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

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

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


Course Goals:

Primarily, this course aims to equip participants with tools for reading and researching about the past. Further, it provides a useful introduction to medical history across cultures for those considering a career in medicine or public health. It shows how people define illness according to particular social and cultural categories overtime. Through specific case studies, the course provides participants with an historical framework to interpret current debates in health policy and disease management.

Description:

This course is concerned with the history of race as an organizing principle of empire. How have ideas of race and racialization provided justification and motivation for imperial formations? In conversation with other parts of the world, this course will focus on empire, race and social movements in the Americas. We will examine how the pursuit and maintenance of empires by Western states was (and is) deeply tied to notions of race, with particular attention to legal thinking. As part of the course, we will also explore various (and contested) critiques of empire, anti-colonial movements and their corresponding “freedom dreams.”

Learning outcomes:

• Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of concepts, theories and debates related to race and empire.
• Students will engage broad historical patterns and trajectories of imperialism that will help them to think critically about the contemporary world.
• Students will be able to explain the contexts and problem-spaces that gave rise to anti-colonial movements in various locales.
• Students will gain deeper knowledge of the workings of power and hegemony broadly defined.
• Students will strengthen critical thinking and analytical abilities through discussion, collaboration and various types of assignments.

 Readings:

• Fanon, Frantz. Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks.
• Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism.
• McKittrick, Katherine. Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis.
• Coulthard, Glen Sean. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition.
• Grandin, Greg. Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of New Imperialism.
• Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents.
• Stoler, Ann Laura. (Ed). Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History.
• Briggs, Laura. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico
• Anghie, Antony.  Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law.
• Kale, Madhvi. Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery and Indian Indenture in the British Caribbean.
• Kelley, Robin D.G. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.    
• Carpentier, Alejo. The Kingdom of this World.                  

Grading:

• Attendance and Participation 10%
• Short Response Papers 20%
• In-class exam 20%
• In-class exam 20%
• Final 30%