Attention: This schedule is subject to change. Before registering for classes, check the on-line schedule of classes to confirm course numbers, times, and availability.
History Department Course List Main Page
HIST 319C: Special Topics in History: Gender, Sexuality and Power: Women in Colonial and Revolutionary America
MTuWThF: 9am-12:00 pm Lyons
This course uses the lens of sexuality to explore gender, power and womens experiences in colonial and Revolutionary America. Early Americans understandings of sex, the body, and gender were radically different than those held by modern Americans. Sexuality and gender were fundamental to structure social structure and were used to regulating power. The course pays special attention to dominant and alternative constructions of sexuality, and the diversity of colonial experience.
HIST319D: America in the Movies: Major Themes in 20th Century American History
MTuWThF: 9 am-12:00 pm Malka
This course uses Hollywood films to explore some of the major themes and events in 20th century American history. Movies have played a pivotal role as one of the most influential and popular instruments of mass culture. We will view a range of movies and evaluate how they reveal, support, mold and challenge American values and beliefs. We will start with the Great Depression of the 1930s and then follow Americans as they emerged from World War II and then plunged into the Cold War. This course focuses on the second half of the twentieth century and explores, for example, the major transformations in American life with the rise of the Civil Rights movement, the New Left and the second wave of feminism. We will examine the strengths and limitations of films as they contribute to our understanding of 20th century America.
HIST319K: Special Topics in History: History of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1950-2000
MTuWThF: 1-4:00 pm Kellett
This course will trace the development of American rock ‘n’ roll and other forms of popular music from the post-Second World War period through the end of the twentieth century. Popular music will be studied both as a cultural product (How is it made? What does it sound like?) and as a social text (What can it tell us about the individuals who made it, and the society in which it was made?). Special attention will be paid to the role of African-American cultural influences in the development of predominantly white rock music, as well as the ways in which European (especially British) performers have made contributions to the genre over the years. The course will consist of lectures, class discussions and listening exercises.
HIST329Q: Special Topics: The British Empire in Film
MTuWThF: 1-4:00 pm Reed
This course will examine depictions of the British Empire in motion pictures, from Hollywood blockbusters to films made by South Asian, African, and Pacific filmmakers. The class will engage students with the major themes in the history of the British Empire, from the origins of the Atlantic empire in the 17th century to the decline of the British Empire during the 20th century. In the course, we ask how films can be used as historical sources, critically appraising their representations of the past and carefully considering the role of present politics and historical memory in these representations.
HIST329R: Special Topics in History: Cities and Modernity in the Americas, 1880-1970s
MTuWThF: 1-4:00 pm Benmergui
This seminar class will focus on the experience of modernity in urban centers in the United States and Latin America by exploring how cities and urban societies changed over time. Beginning our investigation in the 19th century, we will explore the impact of industrialization and the transformation of the urban space, social mobilization and spatial segregation, the growth of mass transit and urban renewal. We will study urban politics, consumer culture, and spatial, racial, and gendered patterns of urban growth. Suburbanization, the reshaping of downtowns, federal responses to urban crisis, and the era of popular housing are also topics that will be covered in our class. Notions of race, gender, ethnicity and class are key to understand how space and societies were historically constituted.
In exploring Cities and Modernity in the Americas we seek to understand that there is not one particular way of defining what modern life is. Rather, we want to understand how cities and societies of the Americas experienced their modernity and in what ways they helped to define particular identities and subjectivities. In what ways societies experienced their urban space and how they contributed to transform and define the built environment? How did societies establish and maintain distinctive social and cultural identities in the American Metropolis?
We seek to explore these questions through close readings of classic texts and readings that provide the most profound grasp of the dynamics of the discipline. From a variety of historical, literary, and artistic sources, and from the several perspectives of important scholars and theorists, students are exposed to the critical works and ideas that have formed the core of US and Latin American urban history and the study of cities in the Americas.
Given the nature of the winter term, there are no books assigned. Students will find all the material available for every day in Blackboard. Enrollment for this class implies the obligation of reading all the materials –readings, sources, and non-text materials- available on Blackboard.
HIST332: Renaissance Europe
TBA: Web online Soergel
Prerequisite: HIST111 or HIST112; or permission of instructor. Intellectual developments in Italy and Northern Europe from 1300 to 1550 and their influence on the arts and religion; social and economics trends, including the rise of the commercial economy in cities; the family and the role of women in society; expansion of Europe overseas and the beginnings of colonization; emergence of the state and consequent changes in political theory. This course is taught entirely online. Please make sure your email address is listed correctly in Testudo. You may contact the instructor with questions at psoergel@umd.edu.
HIST360: Women and the Civil Rights Movement
TBA: Web online Barkley Brown
This course examines the twentieth century U.S. civil rights movement from the vantage point of women, considering both women's involvement in the legal campaigns and political protests and the impact of civil rights struggles on women's condition, status, and identity. Surveying events, organizations, and personalities through the twentieth century, we will consider issues which have preoccupied social movement theorists and political activists alike: developing and sustaining social commitment, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of formal organization, raising money, maximizing political influence, and securing long-range objectives. We will also examine competing definitions of leadership; class, race, and gender dynamics within the movement; and the cultural dynamics of political organizing and social change. This course is taught entirely online. Please make sure your email address is listed correctly in Testudo. You may contact the instructor with questions at barkleyb@umd.edu.
HIST419G: Special Topics in History: Iraq: From the Origins of the Modern State to the Current Crisis
MTuWThF: 9:00 am-12 pm Wien
HIST436: French Revolution and Napoleon
TBA: Web online Sutherland
The causes and course of the French Revolution with emphasis on the struggle among elites, popular intervention, the spread of counterrevolution, the Terror as repression and popular government, the near collapse of the Republic, and the establishment and defeat of dictatorship. This course is taught entirely online. Please make sure your email address is listed correctly in Testudo. You may contact the instructor with questions at barkleyb@umd.edu.