PROSPECTUS - SPRING 2009

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: 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.

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

Instructor: John Osborne, Associate Professor of History. Ph.D., Stanford University. Teaching interests center on British and modern European history, with specialization on World War I, industrialism, and leisure. Present research interest includes the applications of new technology to history.

Availability: This course is taught every semester.

205 - GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY (9 TR)

Course Description: Examines the interaction between humans and the natural environment in long-term global context. Explores the problem of sustainable human uses of world environments in various societies from prehistory to the present. Also serves as an introduction to the subfield of environmental history, which integrates evidence from various scientific disciplines with traditional documentary and oral sources. Topics include: environmental effects of human occupation, the origins of agriculture, colonial encounters, industrial revolution, water and politics, natural resource frontiers, and diverse perceptions of nature.

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 occasionally.

211-02 - U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS (1:30 TR)

Course Description: This course explores changing practices and issues at stake in U.S. presidential campaigns from the early republic to the present day. Students will examine major themes in American presidential campaigns such as the rise of popular parties, the evolution of fundraising rules, the shifting role of the media, recurring policy debates and the dynamic nature of the electorate.

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 offered occasionally.

211-02 - HIST OF THE AFRICAN AMER CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1:30 MR)

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 multi-dimensional 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 course will be offered occasionally.

211-03 - NIXON, REAGAN AND BUSH (10:30 TR)

Course Description: Will examine the postwar conservative movement of the 1950s: religious conservatives, political//racial conservatives, social conservatives (the ones who hated "mass culture") and libertarians. Then look at each president to examine the ways that each man appealed--& how successfully--to various conservative constituencies. Reading: historiography, writings of
conservatives, media campaigns, analyses.

Availability: This course will be offered occasionally.

244 - MODERN BRITAIN SINCE 1688 (10:30 MWF)

Course Description: This course will cover he political, economic, and social development of Great Britain, domestically and internationally, as a major power in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the abandonment of that role in the 20th century.

Availability: This course is offered every year.

254-01 - RUSSIA: QUEST FOR THE MODERN (1:30 TF)

Course Description: This course will chart the turbulent history of Russia over the last century. It will include: four revolutions (1905, two in 1917, 1990/1991), two world wars, a civil war, and the execution of thousands. Despite these calamities, people survived. We will look at everyday Russians and other nationalities to see how they negotiated this turbulent period. Cultural, social, economic, and political themes will dominate the course as will questions of nationality and gender.

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 year.

257 - EUROPEAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY (9 TR)

Course Description: This course examines the main currents of Western thought from the 17th century to the present with emphasis on the interaction of ideas and social development.

Instructor: Stephen Weinberger, Professor of History. Ph.D., University of Wisconsin. His teaching interests center on Medieval and Renaissance history, and European intellectual history, and the history of film. His current research involves conflict in medieval society, and censorship in the American film industry.

Availability: This course is taught every year.

271-01 - AFRICAN HISTORY SINCE 1800 (9:30 MWF)

Course Description: In this course we will study the political, social, economic and ecological forces that have shaped African societies since 1800. We will examine in depth the Asante kingdom in West Africa, the Kongo kingdom in Central Africa, and the Zulu kingdom in Southern Africa. European's colonization of Africa and Africans' responses will be a major focus of the course.

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 every year.

272-01 - ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE 1450-1850 (10:30 TR)

Course Description: During several centuries of European colonization in the New World, a thriving slave trade forced the emigration of millions of Africans across the Atlantic, an immigration far larger than the simultaneous immigration of Europeans to the same regions. We will address not only the workings of the slave trade on both sides (and in the middle) of the Atlantic, but also the cultural communities of West and West-Central Africa and encounters and exchanges in the new slave societies of North and South America. Through examination of work processes, social orders, cultural strategies and influences, and ideas about race and geography, across time and in several regions, we will explore the crucial roles of Africans in the making of the Atlantic world.

Availability: This course is taught occasionally.

275-01 - THE RISE OF MODERN CHINA (1:30 MR)

Course Description: The history of China from the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 to the rise of China as a global economic and political power in the twenty-first century. Topics include issues of cultural change and continuity, the growth of modern business, women's rights, urban and rural social crises, the rise of modern nationalism, Communist revolution, the political role of Mao Zedong, post-Mao economic reform and social transformation, human rights, and prospects for Chinese democracy.

Instructor: David Strand, Professor of Political Science. Ph.D., Columbia University. His field is 20th century Chinese politics and history with related interests in comparative social and political development.

Availability: This course is taught occasionally.

279-01 - THE HISTORY OF FILM (1:30 TR; film lab 3:00-6:00 T)

Course Description: This course will trace the development of the film industry from the late nineteenth century up to the present. We shall consider the social, political, economic, and cultural influences that helped to shape different film styles. The focus will be divided evenly between American films and those of Europe and Asia.

Availability: This course is taught each spring.