PROSPECTUS - FALL 2008

100-level, 200-level, 300-level, 400-level

204-01 - INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL METHODOLOGY (1:30-4:30 W)

Course Description: Through selected reading and discussion about the nature of history, and through analysis and projects related to the conduct of historical research, students will be introduced to the art and technique of the discipline.

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 semester.

204-02 - INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL METHODOLOGY (1:30-4:30 M)

Instructor: Karl Qualls, Associate Professor of History. Ph.D., Georgetown University. His interests include post-World War II reconstruction, Stalin and Stalinism, comparative revolutions (political, social, and cultural), dictators, and more.

Availability: This course is taught every semester.

211-01 - HISTORY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (10:30 TR)

Course Description: This course examines the history of the African American Civil Rights Movement from the 1930s through the 1980s. The course moves from the establishment of the system of segregation and legal discrimination in the 1880s through the establishment of a new African American political and cultural presence in the 1980s. The movement as such begins with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s efforts to end segregation in education during the 1930s. African American national leaders and organizations added pressure for fair employment and for better treatment of African Americans in the military during World War II, and the issue of segregation emerged as a political and international issue in the emerging Cold War years of the late 1940s and 1950s. The Civil Rights Movement emerged as a mass-based national movement between the 1950s and 1980s, and incorporated the actions of mass protest, electoral politics, and cultural representation in a multidimensional quest for equality and social justice. This course examines the movement as a historical, cultural, and international process. Class format is discussion-based, and students should expect to write several short papers, and create a research presentation and formal report, and do a final project.

Instructor: Kim Rogers, Professor of History. Ph.D., University of Minnesota. Her teaching interests center on recent U.S. history, African-American history, and gender and family history. Research interests include biography and autobiography, oral history, and life-course analysis. Professor Rogers’ most recent book is Life and Death in the Delta. She has also published a book entitled Righteous Lives: Narratives of the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement, and has edited collections of essays on oral history interviewing, and trauma and autobiography.

Availability: This is the first time this course will be offered.

231-01 - MODERN FRANCE (10:30 MWF)

Course Description: This course covers France from 1789 to the present, studying events from a political and cultural angle. Themes include the legacy of the French Revolution, the growth of socialism, the development of modern life in Paris, the French empire, the impact of World War I and II, and the post-war world.

Instructor: Regina Sweeney, Associate Professor of History. Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley. Professor Sweeney teaches courses on modern Europe, France, and women's history. Her research on French cultural history focuses on gender, music, nationalism, and war.

Availability: This course is offered occasionally.

253-01 - RUSSIAN HISTORY TO 1894 (1:30 TF)

Course Description: This course will cover the history of Russia from earliest times through the reign of Alexander III. We will discuss the origins of Russia, including its religious, social, economic, and political structure. Special attention will be given to periods of turmoil--Mongols, Ivan the Terrible, Time of Troubles--as Russia began to define its position between East and West.

Availability: This course is taught every year.

274-01 - THE RISE AND FALL OF APARTHEID (9:30 MWF)

Course Description: The peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa in the early 1990s was widely hailed as the “South African Miracle.” This course asks why such a transition should be considered miraculous. In order to answer our question, we will begin with South African independence from Britain in 1910 and study the evolution of legalized segregation and the introduction in 1948 of apartheid. After reviewing opposition movements we will move to a discussion of the demise of apartheid and the negotiated political order that took its place. The course ends with an examination of the machinery and the deliberations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This story, and the individual stories of thousands of South Africans, will explain why today South Africa is in the words of Irish poet Seamus Heaney “a place where hope and history rhyme.”

Instructor: Jeremy Ball, Assistant Professor of History. Ph.D., UCLA. Professor Ball teaches courses in African political and ecological history, apartheid, the Atlantic slave trade, and human rights. His research focuses on the labor and business history of Angola, Portuguese colonialism, and oral history.

Availability: This course is taught occasionally.

283-01 - LATIN AMERICAN - US RELATIONS (3 TR)

Course Description: A study of political, economic, and cultural relations between Latin America and the United States from the early 19th century to the present. The evolution of inter-American relations is analyzed in light of the interplay of Latin American, U.S., and extra-hemispheric interests.

Instructor: Staff

Availability: This course is offered every year.