PROSPECTUS - FALL 2008
100-level, 200-level, 300-level, 400-level
105 - MEDIEVAL HISTORY (9 TR)
Course Description: The development of European civilization in the period ca. 300 - 1300 will be covered in this survey course. It will consider such issues as the fall of Rome and the Germanic invasions, the creation and subsequent collapse of the Carolingian Empire, the emergence of feudalism, the rise of universities, and the creation of romantic literature.
Instructor: Stephen Weinberger, Professor of History. Ph.D., University of Wisconsin. His teaching interests center on medieval and Renaissance history, and European intellectual history, with an emphasis on feudal society. His current research involves conflict in medieval society, the hero, and Machiavelli. He has also published a study on social change in medieval Europe, focusing on peasants, women, aristocrats, and the church.
Availability: This course is taught every year.
117-01 - AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1877 (10:30 TR)
Course Description: This course is a survey of American history from European settlement through Reconstruction. Emphasis will be placed on themes central to the American experience: the variety of cultures that make up America; the historical development of regional identities; the creation of racial distinctions and their centrality in American history; changing gender roles in early America; and an exploration of how a "jumble of peoples" came together as a single nation with a distinctive identity and a multi-dimensional sense of national purpose.
Instructor: Matthew Pinsker, Pohanka Chair for Civil War History. DPhil., Oxford University. His research interests include U.S. political history, the Civil War era, and Abraham Lincoln. He teaches courses in U.S. political, legal and diplomatic history. His research focuses on the career of Abraham Lincoln, partisanship in the Civil War era, American constitutionalism, the Underground Railroad and the history of U.S. campaigns and elections.
Availability: This course is taught every semester.
117-02 - AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1877 (8:30 MWF)
Course Description: This course is a survey of American history from European settlement through Reconstruction. Emphasis will be placed on themes central to the American experience: the variety of cultures that make up America; the historical development of regional identities; the creation of racial distinctions and their centrality in American history; changing gender roles in early America; and an exploration of how a "jumble of peoples" came together as a single nation with a distinctive identity and a multi-dimensional sense of national purpose.
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau, Assistant Professor of History. Ph.D., Cornell. He teaches courses in the fields of colonial North America and American Indian History. His research and teaching interests include European (especially English and French) contact with Indians on the borders of North American empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the Atlantic World; the role of violence in colonialism; and the history of religious missions.
Availability: This course is taught every semester.
130-01 - LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY I (12:30 MWF)
Course Description: This course investigates the ancient American civilizations, the Iberian background of the conquest, the clash of cultures that created a new colonial society, and the early 19th century movements for independence.
Instructor: Staff
Availability: This course is taught every year.
150-01 - HISTORY OF SCIENCE (11:30 MWF)
Course Description: A global survey introduction to the history of science, technology, and medicine from ancient times to the present. The course emphasizes how scientific knowledge is created and used in the context of cultural, economic, social, and environmental change. Follows a comparative cultural approach, showing how knowledge of nature has developed in diverse places, including many parts of the non-Western world such as China, India, Mesoamerica, and the Middle East. Surveys major changes in ideas, institutions, and social context from the emergence of Western science in early modern Europe to the present.
Instructor: Jeremy Vetter. Assistant Professor of History. Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. He teaches the history of science and technology, environmental history, and the American West. His current research focuses on environmental knowledge production in the U.S. Great Plains and Rocky Mountains during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Availability: This course is taught every year.