B. Cooperman
TH 6:00pm-8:30pm (TLF 2108)
An examination of some of the major theoretical movements operative in the humanities and social sciences in recent decades, their impact on the writing of history, and their contested place in the academy. In particular we will focus on different understandings of knowledge in the construction of historical narrative, exploring issues of narrativity, structuralism and post-structuralism, the “cultural” and “linguistic” turns, approaches to the visual, and discussions of the relation between memory and history. For each topic, we will attempt to link discussion of theory with specific historical works in order to assess how explicit and implicit reliance on theoretical constructs has changed historical writing and analysis.
D. Sicilia
TH 3:30pm-6:00pm (TLF 2108)
This course – the second part of a two-semester series for first-year graduate students – explores critical issues in U.S. history from 1877 to the present through some of the best historical work addressing those issues; and develops students' skills as readers and critics of historical literature. Key assignments are class participation; a bibliographic essay on one of the weekly topics; and analytical essays that synthesize course readings.
A. Goldman
TU 12:30pm-2:30pm (TLF 2110)
This course will introduce students to the study of family, gender, and sexuality in early modern China (roughly 1000-1900). Some of the themes that will be explored include: traditional Chinese family and kinship systems, gender and the state, social constructions of gender (including femininities and masculinities), sexuality and literary representation, and the body in text and practice. The sources (in translation) that will be read for the course range from a twelfth-century ritual handbook, to plays, women’s poetry and letters, memoirs, and a seventeenth-century erotic novel. Readings for the course will be paired – at times reading historical monographs alongside historical sources, and at times contrasting different methodological approaches to a common historical subject of inquiry. The course will give equal weight to history and historiography – that is, we will try to read these texts to gain a better understanding of certain aspects of early modern Chinese conceptions and practices regarding family, gender, and sexuality, while at the same time always paying attention to the methodologies and interpretive stances of the historians behind the texts.
L. Mar
WE 3:30pm-6:00pm (TLF 2110)
The majority of Americans trace their ancestry to other countries. Whether one's roots are European, African, Latino, Asian or Native American, the migration and meeting of diverse peoples is central to American experience. In this course, we explore scholarly debates about US immigration history, a vast, rich set of conversations about interpreting American society, politics, and culture. This course offers a graduate level exploration of the field of immigration and ethnic history. It will be especially useful for American historians and American studies scholars, though a single semester can only be a starting point for a field in which so much has been published.
K. Holum
WE 6:00pm-8:30pm (TBA)
The topic is the emergence, nature, and evolution of the Classical Greek city-state (polis) as a social, political, and religious community between the Greek Dark Age (ca. 850 B.C.) and the Roman period. Focus will be on the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. and on Athens, but we will draw in Sparta and other examples for comparison. The theoretical approach will be evaluation and critique of the traditional philological-positivist method used in Classical Mediterranean historiography.
M. Vaughan
TUTH 11:00am-12:15pm (KEY 0126)
This session in readings in modern Mexican history
will complement History 475 on modern Mexico (Tues. Thurs. 11-12.15). We will examine the major arguments about the causes and processes of the Mexican Revolution of 1910; look at samples of three generations of scholarship on post-revolutionary state and society formation in political, social and cultural history; move in depth into the hot new period of the Cold War and the student rebellion of 1968 and end with the demise of the PRI, the onslaught of neoliberalism, and the painful transition to pluralism. Class requirements: three book reviews and a final reflective, historographical paper.Time to be scheduled among participants.
R. Bell
TU 3:30pm-6:00pm (TLF 2100)
This course examines major themes in early American historical writing. Themes for this year include encounters, migration, power, profit, work, bodies, belief, knowledge, words, things, atlantic worlds, and politics. Weekly reading will be extensive and will be accompanied by a schedule of review-writing. This course aims to engage students with various techniques of historical writing as well as with many of the texts featured on the comprehensive exam. Grading will be determined by performance in class, in the review assignments and in two take-home exams.
K.Olson
W 6pm-8:30pm (KEY 2120)
The course will start with an analysis of works that interpret broadly United States Internationla relations. These include studies by Anders Stephenson, William Appleman Williams, John L. Gaddis, Michael Hunt, Michael Lind, and Melvin Small. The major portion of the course will cover the 20th Century with weekly readings, reports and discussions. Each week will have a theme that incorporates policy, ideology, historiography, and presidential world view.
The course requires two short papers. The first paper of six pages is due the class before spring break and the second paper of twelve pages is due the last class meeting. In addition to these two papers, the weekly meetings will require from each student several one-page papers.
L. Rowland
MO 6:00pm-8:30pm (TLF 2100)
The principal goal of this research seminar is the production of an original, article-length essay grounded in primary sources. Although students may work on any aspect of the history of the U.S. South, the instructor will be best able to provide guidance for projects pertaining to the nineteenth century or early twentieth century. The seminar will meet weekly throughout the semester, with students expected to follow a prescribed schedule of bibliographical work, historiographical contextualization, research, rough drafts, oral presentations, and final drafts. Early selection of a promising topic is critical, as is the identification of relevant and accessible primary sources; students planning to enroll in the seminar are therefore encouraged to confer with the instructor before the end of the fall semester.