Course Descriptions

“Premodern World” is a lower-division, lecture course that provides an overview of global development from roughly 30,000 BCE to 1500 CE.  It introduces students to the main political, social, and cultural trends in a variety of societies while at the same time stressing the global perspective.  Considerable emphasis is thus paid to comparative history and the study of cross-cultural encounters.  This entry-level course aims to teach historical thinking as well as historical content, to impart a basic grasp of the premodern past as well as to stimulate the development of large-scale frameworks for historical analysis. Although this course has no prerequisites and assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, students are presumed to be capable of critical reflection upon both lectures and readings.

Texts:

-- R. Strayer, Ways of the World, A Brief Global History with Sources vol. 1

-- Anonymous, Epic of Gilgamesh, tr. D. Ferry

-- Jared Diamond, Collapse (selected chapters)

-- P. A. McAnany & T. G. Negron, "Bellicose Rulers and Climatological Peril" in Questioning Collapse, ed. P. A. McAnany & N. Yoffee

-- Asoka's Rock Edict XIII

-- Sima Qian, The First Emperor, tr. R. Dawson (selected chapters)

-- reading on Cleopatra (to be announced)

-- Marco Polo, Travels, tr. R. Latham  (selected chapters)

-- Ross Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta  (selected chapters)

Grading:

Exams (3 x 20% each) = 60%; quizzes = 15%; reading worksheets = 20%; attendance & participation = 5%.

Course Description
Geographically, linguistically, ethnically, and economically, China today is a land of diversity, characterized by striking regional variations. Yet underlying this diversity is a shared cultural heritage: a unifying set of historical, literary, and artistic traditions, philosophical and religious ideas, political institutions, and a common writing system. This course introduces the study of Chinese society and culture through an examination of the cultural unities and diversities, continuities and discontinuities that comprise the historical development of Chinese civilization. Topics include philosophy and religion; cosmology and the life cycle; literature and arts; science, technology and medicine; power and authority; gender, ethnicity, and cultural identity. This course provides a foundation for continued study of Chinese history and society for students who plan to go on to more specialized, upper-division courses including Chinese anthropology, history, literature, sociology, economics, law, policy, international business, art history, architecture, environmental science, and philosophy.

Course Goals
The primary learning goal for this course is to acquire a broad understanding of the historical development of civilization in China. This course adopts a "hands on" approach by asking students to consider primary historical evidence of both a textual and visual nature. Therefore, a second goal of this course is to develop one's ability to interpret texts and images as historical evidence by considering such material within its particular cultural, social, and political context. The ultimate goal of the course is to acquire a richer understanding of Chinese civilization and to develop research skills that will facilitate continued study of and coursework on China and East Asia.

This course carries a University Global Cultures Flag. The goal of this flag is to challenge students to explore the beliefs and practices of non-U.S. cultural communities in relation to their own cultural experiences so that they engage in an active process of self-reflection.

Course textbooks and readings
Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History of China,2^nd Edition (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Additional required readings consisting of primary historical sources drawn from a wide variety of archaeological, literary, and archival materials will be distributed electronically via the course website.

Grading
Final grades will be calculated according to the criteria below. Grades of plus/minus will be assigned as appropriate.

Class participation and attendance: 10%
Quiz: 5%
3 Tests: 60% (20% each)
Final exam: 25%

For more information about this course, consult the course website.

This course surveys the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam to the end of the fifteenth century. Students will be introduced to basic aspects of the political, social, and cultural dimensions of Islamic civilization from Spain to Iran as they changed over time.

In the midst of mapping this broad view, we will focus our attention on how specific historical figures and events contributed to definitions of Islamic identity, community, and authority. Central themes include the emergence of Sunni and Shi`i identities, the relationship of Muslims and non-Muslims, and the unique material and intellectual contributions of Islamic civilization to world history and other societies.

Required Books and Readings:

1. Jonathan A.C. Brown, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction

2.  Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (2002 edition only)

3.  D. A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ‘A’isha bint Abi Bakr

4. John Alden Williams, ed. and trans., The Word of Islam

5. Xerox packet of primary documents and articles

Grading:

4 exams @ 25% each = 100%.

This course introduces students to selected topics in Latin American history and culture through film, readings, documentaries, class discussion and lectures.  One goal is to explore significant influences that have molded Latin American history from the conquest through the early twentieth century.  Another is for students to develop their analytical capabilities to utilize both visual and written materials as they engage in discussion, write analytical essays, and prepare individual projects.

Texts:

Donald Stevens, Based on a True Story: Latin American History at the Movies, Scholarly Resources, 1998.

Other readings will be posted on Blackboard.

Grading:

Essays            6/9  (67%)

Outlines          1/9  (11%)

Discussion      2/9  (22%)

This one-semester course will explore the long history of  Spain from its beginnings in the stone age through the great social and economic upheavals of the twentieth century.  Beginning with an introduction to its geography and language, we shall touch on such topics as paleolithic settlement and art, the arrival of new groups (Celts, Greeks, Phoenicians), the Roman imperium, the Visigothic domination, the Islamic conquest and Christian reconquest (Reconquista), medieval kingdoms and their unification, the separate way of Portugal, the birth and death of  religious toleration, the rise and fall of Spain in the European state system, Hapsburg and Bourbon kings, the troubled nineteenth century and even more troubled twentieth, and finally, the emergence of one of Europe’s most democratic societies.   Wherever possible, the course will attempt to place Spain into the larger context of European and Mediterranean society.  Basic information will be conferred primarily through lectures by the professor.

Texts:

Simon Barton, A History of Spain (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004).

Olivia Remie Constable, Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).

John Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1715.

Richard Herr, An Historical Essay on Modern Spain.

Grading:

A course paper on some aspect of the history and culture of Spain (8-10 pages).  25%

A portfolio on the history and culture of Spain which should contain text and/or visuals that you find about  fighting in the Middle Ages.  25%

Two tests, 25% each

What can we learn about Latin American social worlds when we look at the place of Jews within it? Conversely, what we learn about Jewish social worlds when they unfold in Latin America?  This course examines both of these questions. Specifically, we consider the role of Latin America as both a refuge from and a source of anti-Semitism, a hub of immigration, a site of Zionism, and of Jewish success and philanthropy.  We also address themes of displacement, longing, belonging, marginalization, prejudice, immigration, community, cultural continuity, and memory, while considering Sephardi and Ashkenazi difference, and inter-generational conflict among Jewish Latin Americans. Overall, through reading, writing exercises, independent research and in-class films, the course is designed to provide students with an understanding of how Jews constructed individual lives and vibrant communities in predominantly Hispanic, Catholic countries of Latin America.

With these themes in mind, the course is divided into four units:

1. Historical literacy is a substantive introductory unit, which provides basic context from 1492 until the post-World War II period;
2. Jewish group identities in Latin American features readings on Jewish life and cultural forms in select national contexts (e.g. Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican Republic and others);
3. Memoir and personal narrative engages students in critical reading of creative non-fiction and quasi-ethnography that focuses on individual lives;
4. Contemporary realities explores current events, contemporary trends and popular culture in Jewish Latin America.

Finally, over the course of the semester, drawing on course motifs, students will produce their own research papers addressing a specific research question in the Latin American national context of their choice.

*Enjoy Latin American breakfast beverages served in class*

Note: This course carries the Global Cultures flag. Global Cultures courses are designed to increase your familiarity with cultural groups outside the United States. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from assignments covering the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one non-U.S. cultural group, past or present.

The course aims to acquaint students with the richness, complexity and diversity of historical experiences and cultural practices in Latin America through an array of source materials that include historical monographs, ethnography, testimonial literature, fiction, music, film, and documentaries.  Through a sample of case studies culled from throughout the region, the course will shed light on the processes, structures, and forces that have shaped Latin America.  Topics include:  pre-Columbian civilizations, Iberian expansionism and the Conquest of Latin America; Church in colonial Latin America;  sugar plantations in Brazil and the trans-Atlantic slave trade; Independence movements; agro-export economies; U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean Basin; populism, urbanization , and import-substitution industrialization; popular culture, art, literature and music; revolutionary alternatives; the Cold War in Latin America and state-sponsored violence; transnational flows of capital and labor.

Texts:

Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith, Modern Latin AmericaMark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote

Grading:

- Attendance and Classroom Participation (10%)

- Two in-class exams (30%)

-One 2-3 pp. book review (20%).

Essay topic for book review will be handed out one week in advance of due date.  Grade for book review will be based on organization, development and clarity of argument; substantiation of thesis through textual material; and elegance of prose.

-Final Exam (40%)

Introduction to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through each of the major disciplines represented in the program: language, literature, anthropology, geography, history, government, sociology, and economics. Core course required for a degree in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Meets with SLA 301 and GRG 309. May not be used to fulfill the foreign language requirement for any Bachelor’s degree. Course number may be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

Texts:

1.Slavenka Drakulic, 2005, They Would Never Hurt a Fly, Penguin

2. Heda Kovaly, 1997, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968. New York: Holmesand Meier

3. Bella Bychkova Jordan and Terry G Jordan-Bychkov, 2001, Siberian Village: Land and Life in the Sakha Republic, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

4.Additional readings might be recommended for individual lectures.

Grading:

Attendance and participation 30%

Book and other reading responses (3) 70%

The objective of this course is to give students an understanding of what it means to be Muslim, in terms of beliefs (cosmology and theology), practices (rituals and moral teachings), and culture. In order to achieve this three-part objective, we will read materials from various perspectives and of different genres. We will devote some time to the history of the foundations and civilization of Islam, for even if a religion is conceived in terms of universals and ideals, its actual manifestation is always tempered by history, culture and social realities. We will explore the meaning of Islam as a worldview and a moral system through examining its doctrinal, ritual, philosophical, moral and spiritual dimensions. This course is designed for students with no prior knowledge of Islam.

Grading:

Four Unit Tests, 10% each (40% total), One Midterm Exam, 20%, One Final Exam, 25%, Class Attendance, 15%

Text:

• David Waines, An Introduction to Islam (tentative) • Asma Afsaruddin, The First Muslims• Eric Geoffroy, Introduction to Sufism: The Inner Path of Islam• Excerpts from the following: -The Qur’an and the Bible, any translation - Imam Nawawi, Riyadh al-Salihin - Imam Ghazali, Inner Dimensions of Islamic Worship - John A. Williams, The Word of Islam - Omid Safi, Memories of Muhammad - John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, 4th edition

Topics in History

May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

This course is organized in three parts: the first two span the period between the third century BCE and the late eighteenth century, the third covers the nineteenth-twentieth centuries. Students will learn about the ways in which a range of destitute people, orphans, debtors and criminals were incorporated into complex and variable social and political institutions in the subcontinent in the past. They will learn about key legal provisions about the treatment of slaves established by ancient governments. They will also read about military and political structures that used male and female slaves in different ways in the medieval period. These structures, associated with the coming of Islam in the subcontinent, enabled slaves to establish relationships with each other as well as with their masters and mistresses. In the third segment, students will understand the ways in which legal, political and commercial processes associated with global histories of European empires, contributed to the large-scale shift in slave-using structures, the meanings of slavery and the privileges and protections that slaves had earlier enjoyed.

Texts:

1) I. Chatterjee and R.M. Eaton eds Slavery and South Asian History (Indiana University Press, 2006).

2) Arthashastra  Book III, Chapter XIII, Rules Regarding Slaves and Laborers, on www.mssu.edu/projectsouthasia/history/primarydocs/

3) Amitava Ghosh, ‘The Slave of Ms. H6’, from Subaltern Studies, Vol. 5.

4) Sunil Kumar, ‘When Slaves Were Nobles’, Indian Economic and Social History Review , 1998.

5) Pushpa Prasad, ‘Female Slavery in Thirteenth Century Documents’, Indian Historical Quarterly, 1985.

6) Excerpts from Ex-Slave’s Memoir, Tahmasnama: The Autobiography of a Slave (Bombay 1967)

7) Marina Carter, ‘Slavery and Unfree labor in the Indian Ocean’ and ‘Indian Slaves in Mauritius’.

8) Legal Documents : Lariviere ed. Contested Ownership of a Slave; Mr. Hunter Stands Trial for Injuring his Slave Documents, Criminal Judicial Consultations of 1799 from the British Library and the U.N. Report on Trafficking and Prostitution from 1956.

9) 2 Visual Sources:, the film Mughal-e-Azam (with English subtitles) and a documentary on YouTube, ‘Sarah Harris Rescues Prostitutes’.

Grading:

1) Posing Daily Question/Comment (on Blackboard): (40%)

2) Home-Written 5-page essay comparing historical readings with interpretation made in film (20%)

3) Home-Written 10-15 page discussion on a single theme (30%).

4) Final Essay in Class on media and politics in the representation of trafficking (10%).

This introductory, writing-intensive course surveys the history of the Mediterranean basin and European archipelago from about 300-1500. By mixing lecture, discussion, reading, and writing, we will trace the emergence of distinctive Latin Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic civilizations, which superseded the classical Greek and Roman ones. We examine how these new civilizations interacted to form western traditions of politics, religion, family structure, law, and economic thought.Course organization and optional textbook provide a basic chronological narrative. Our emphasis will be on historical thinking through critical work with a variety of primary sources and occasional secondary ones. This course has no prerequisites and assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, but students are presumed to be capable of critical reflection upon both lectures and readings.

Texts:

Augustine, Confessions (tr. Chadwick)

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People (tr. Farmer)

Benedict of Nursia, Rule (tr. Meisel / del Mastro)

Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works

Abelard and Heloise, Letters and Other Writings (tr. Levitan)

Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (tr. Raffel)

De Hamel, British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination

Grading:

4 short writing projects (2-3 pp) on assigned topics 20%

Revision of one of those short projects 10%

Manuscript project (group work) 10%

Final writing project (5-10 pp)first draft 20%

peer evaluation 10%

Small group work, quizzes, in-class writing 10%

Portfolio with second/third draft of final essay 20%

The reading and lecture course examines the historical development of the Mexican community in the United States since 1848, with an emphasis on the period between 1900 and the present.  The primary purpose of the course is to address time and place specific variations in the incorporation of the Mexican community as a national minority and bottom segment of the U.S. working class.  One of my central concerns is to explain two inter-related historical trends in this incorporation, steady upward mobility and unrelenting social marginalization.  I emphasize work experiences, race thinking, social relations, trans-border relations, social causes and larger themes in U.S. history such as wars, sectional differences, industrialization, reform, labor and civil rights struggles, and the development of a modern urbanized society. Also, I incorporate relevant aspects of the history of Latinos, African Americans, and Mexico.

Texts:

Manuel G. Gonzales, Mexicanos, A History of Mexicans in the US (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). Angela Valenzuela, “The Drought of Understanding and the Hummingbird Spirit,” Unpublished essay in my possession.

Emilio Zamora, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas, Mexican Workers and Job Politics during WWII (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009).

Emilio Zamora, “Guide for Writing Family History Research Paper.

Grading:

Mid-term examination (25%),

Final examination (25%),

Research paper (30%),

Two chapter reports (10%)

Film report (10%).

Daniel Boone. Davy Crockett. Nellie Bly.  Uncle Tom. Nancy Drew. Jacqueline Baker. Emma Goldman. Gloria Steinem. Hattie McDaniel. Bessie Smith. Pocahontas. Angela Davis. Bruce Lee. Lucille Ball. Tony Hawk.  What makes an American man?  What makes an American woman?  How do the answers change over time and why?

This course will emphasize the nineteenth century roots of contemporary American culture as we investigate the cultural work done by American models of how to be men and how to be women in the nation. We will ask questions about the intersections of race, class, gender, place, sexual orientation, and nation. What work do their words, images, and selves do in the larger social worlds they inhabit? What does it mean to be gendered raced, classed in this country? How do the patterns and models explored in the previous centuries feed our narratives, metaphors, and identities today?

Requirements

“Introduction to American Studies” will involve both lecture and discussion.  Students are expected to engage the day’s reading before the class meets, bring the reading materials to lecture, and be prepared to discuss them in the context of the class day.  Students in this course will be evaluated on a combination of in-class exams, research, and occasional assigned reading responses; participation and attendance are also important for the final grade in the class.

Possible Texts

E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era

Gail Collins, America’s Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines

Additional articles and films on reserves

Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

AMS 310 is an introductory course in American Studies—the interdisciplinary study of American culture and society. We will begin our journey by considering some of the critical transformations—both physical and ideological—that World War II brought to American society and culture.  Filled with televisions, cars, suburbs, malls and chain stores, the landscape that we know so well today came of age during this period.  Throughout the course, we will analyze how communities, broadly defined by differing variables like age, geography, gender, race, ethnicity, class and/or political persuasion, have wrestled with questions about identity, inclusion and exclusion in modern America. While the course will proceed chronologically, I have organized these topics around three separate themes: consumerism, youth culture, and multiculturalism.                 

Requirements

First exam (in-class): 20%

Second exam (in-class): 30%

Final exam (cumulative, 3 hours long): 50 %.

In addition to the graded assignments, regular attendance is expected.

Possible Texts

Clara Marie Allen and Constance Bowman Reid, Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory

Mary Brave Bird, Lakota Woman

Elva Treviño Hart, Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

Survey of United States history from the colonial period through the Civil War. Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Texts:

James Roark, Michael Johnson, et. al., The American Promise: A History of the United States, (Volume I: To 1877;Fourth Edition, Bedford-St. Martins, 2009).

Discussion Readings:David Weber, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, (Bedford-St. Martins, 1999).

Edward Countryman, What did the Constitution Mean to Early Americans?, (Bedford-St. Martins, 1999).

Kathryn Kish Sklar, Women’s Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870, (Bedford-St. Martins, 2000).

Robert Olwell, ed., The Presence of the Past: Primary Documents in American History, 1492-1865, (Kendall-Hunt, 2011).

Grading:

There will be three mid-term exams in this course as well as a final exam. The mid-terms will each address materials covered in the preceding third of the semester. The final will draw upon themes developed throughout the semester. One week before each exam I will make available a study guide which contains a short list of possible essay questions for the coming exam. On the day of the exam several of those questions will be selected at random and you will be required to answer one of the chosen questions. Each exam (except the final) will also include a list of ten terms drawn from the lectures and readings and you will have to briefly identify and describe the significance of five of those terms. No make-ups outside of the scheduled make-up session will be allowed or given. (See grading policy below.)

Grading Policy:

Final grades will be based upon only the highest three of your four exam scores. The lowest exam score will be discarded. You also have the option of choosing to take only three exams and let your score be calculated from them alone. If you miss an exam for any reason, you will automatically have played your “get out of one exam free” card. Thus, allowing for contingencies, you would be wise to save this card until the end of the semester. Each of the exams is worth a potential 100 points. No other "extra-credit" assignments of any kind will either be assigned or accepted. In accord with University policy, I will be assigning + and – grades. Final grades will be awarded according to the following scale: A 270 points or more, A- 264-269, B+ 255-263, B 240-254, B- 234-239, C+ 225-233, C 210-224, C- 204-209, D+ 195-203, D 180-194, D- 174-179, F 173 or fewer points.

Requirements include midterm and final exams (both essay format), a 2-page book review on Shopkeeper’s Millennium, and a quiz on one document chosen from the M. Johnson collection of primary documents.   (For rules on plagiarism, please see the dept’s policy online at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/about/academic-integrity.php) Study questions will be provided in advance of both exams.  Exams will test knowledge of both lectures and readings.  There will be a question devoted to South v. South on the final.  Texts:

Weeks one-three

Spain and Columbus; Humanism and the New World; Nature of the Colonial Enterprise; Regional histories of British America; The transatlantic Reformation; Puritanism and Personality; Witchcraft.Weeks four-six  

Slavery and Staple Crops:  British Caribbean and Chesapeake; American Revolution; Forging a New Government:  Articles of Confederation and the Constitution; Federalists and anti-Federalists; Washington and Hamilton; Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit.

Midterm (date tba): 75-minute essay question.

Weeks seven-nine

Thomas Jefferson’s legacy; Ambiguity of Jeffersonian Republicanism; War of 1812; Westward expansion; Industrial Revolution; Andrew Jackson and what is meant by Jacksonian Democracy; Compromise of 1820; early talk of disunion.Weeks ten-eleven (Quiz on Johnson document.)

Slavery and Abolition; Election of 1848 (Pro-slavery arguments); Compromise of 1850; the continuing vexing question of Slavery and its Expansion west; sectional politics (the census and redistricting); secessionism and the south.Week twelve to end of course

Sectional Politics: John Brown; Lincoln, Free Soil, and the Election of 1860; was the south “monolithic”—was the North?  Slavery and Disunion, Civil War and postwar America.

Grading:

Grades will be calculated according to the following percentages: Final exam 40%, Midterm 30%, Book Review 20%, and Quiz 10%.

The course will cover all aspects of American history to the end of the Civil War. The basic themes of the course will be the emergence of an American identity, the evolution of American self-government, and the expansion of American territory.

Texts:

Required text: H. W. Brands et al., American Stories, 2nd ed., vol. 1, with My History Lab.

Grading:

There will be fifteen chapter exams, taken online, worth a total of 40 percent of the semester grade. There will be three in-class essay tests, worth 20 percent. There will be three take-home essays, worth 20 percent.There will be no comprehensive final exam.

A = 90 to 100. B = 80 to 89. C = 70 to 79. D = 60 to 69. F = 0 to 59.

This class will survey American history through the Civil War, keeping a collective mind openabout which and why certain facts, stories, events, and people are key to understanding our past.It draws on two popular American history books that offer complementary, sometimes conflicting,interpretations of the American story to illuminate the rich textures of the nationʼs history as wellas the particular challenges faced in its writing. Using these authorities as a starting point,participants will work collaboratively to expand their understanding of American history and toengage in the type of thinking required to “do” history.

Texts:

Johnson, History of the American People

Zinn, A Peopleʼs History of the United States (available free online, but without page numbers)

Davidson and Lytle, After the Fact, vol. I

Additional readings, available as posted on Blackboard

Grading:

Grades will be determined on the basis of individual quiz grades (20%), four in-class essays (35%), team work: journal preparation, templates, peer evaluation (20%), and a final exam (25%).

Lectures, readings, videos, maps, and photos are used to provide students with asurvey of US history from Reconstruction to 2000. As such, students will study significant aspects of thenation's political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic history and will be challenged to understand the why ,how,  and so what  of this history. Students begin with learning about what happened and then proceed toquestions of causality and consequence.Moving from what happened  to why or how , and, then, to so what  students will sharpen their skillsin critical thinking.  Both exams will include essay questions to encourage students in their writtencommunication skills . Along the way, students will consider some of ethical dilemmas confronted byAmericans who lived long ago. Students will examine issues of personal responsibility  and socialresponsibility  as they learn about how previous generations understood these responsibilities.

Texts:

 • Selected articles or documents posted on Bb.

 • Of the People: A History of the United States, vol. 2, concise edition, By James Oakes, et. al.2010, 2011, or 2012 editions are acceptable.

 • Voices of Freedom, 3rd Edition, vol. 2, edited by Eric Foner

 • The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, by BruceSchulman

 • Articles and documents about Ethics and particular ethical issues, posted on Bb.

Grading:

1st Midterm Exam, Monday 2/18/13 Essay question; 18.5% course grade

2nd Midterm Exam, Monday, 4/8/13, Short answer questions; 18.5% course gradeEthical Reasoning discussions and assignments; 33% course grade (see last page)

• Reflections on Ethics Journal, 8%

• Essay on Ethical Issue, 15%

• Participation in Friday discussion groups, 10%

Lectures, readings, videos, maps, and photos are used to provide students with a survey of US history from Reconstruction to 2000.  As such, students will study significant aspects of the nation's political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic history and will be challenged to understand the why, how, and so what of this history.  Students begin with learning about what happened and then proceed to questions of causality and consequence.

Texts:

• America:  A Concise History, vol. 2, 4th edition by James Henretta, et. al.

• Reading the American Past:  Selected Historical Documents, vol. 2, From 1865, ed. by Michael P. Johnson

• The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.

• The Seventies by Bruce Schulman.

• Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, by Robert A. Divine.  Optional but recommended.

• The Constitution of the United States (see appendix of Henretta text)

Grading:

Exams:  There will be 4 exams

• 1st Midterm Exam, 25%, essay and short answer questions

• 2nd Midterm Exam, 20%, multiple choice,

• 3rd Midterm Exam, 25%, essay and short answer questions

• Final Exam, 30%, essay, short answer questions, multiple choice

This class will survey over 150 years of modern American history, keeping a collective mind open about which and why certain facts, stories, events, and people are key to understanding our past.   It draws on two popular American history books that offer complementary, sometimes conflicting, interpretations of the American story to illuminate the rich textures of the nation’s history as well as the particular challenges faced in its writing. Using these authorities (as well as the basic Outline of U.S. History) as a starting point, participants will work collaboratively to expand their understanding of American history and to engage in the type of thinking required to understand and “do” history.

Texts:

U.S. Government,  Outline of U.S. History, chs. 8-15.

http://www.america.gov/publications/books/history-outline.html

Johnson, History of the American People

Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

Grading:

Grading will be determined on the basis of individual quiz grades (25%), team project grades (15%), peer evaluation (5%), two midterms (10 and 15% respectively), and one final exam (30%).

The purpose of the course is to acquaint students with US history from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the 21st century, time permitting.  The course follows discrete themes, breaking into five thematic sections arranged chronologically: the search for order in an age of transformation; the rise of the Regulatory State; the rise of Semi-Welfare State; the rise of the National Security State; and the triumph of conservatism.  In the first third of the semester, we will focus on American society and politics and the economy at the grassroots.  During the last two-thirds of the semester we will examine the most important development of the 20thand 21st centuries—the growth of federal power and authority at home and abroad.

Texts:

James W. Davidson et al., USA Narrative History (1st ed.), Vol. II

James W. Davidson and Mark H. Lytle, After the Fact (6th ed.), Vol. II

William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (Bedford Books edition, edited by Terrence J. McDonald)

Richard Wright, Black Boy

Michael B. Stoff et al., eds., The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age

This course examines the history of Mexican women in the United States in the twentieth century. Starting with the Mexican Revolution, which led to the first significant migration of Mexicans to the United States, we will look at lives and roles of Mexican and Mexican American women in this country and along the U.S.-Mexico border. We will explore how race, gender, class and religion shape the experience of Mexican American women, and how the writing of their history has changed in the last one hundred years.

Texts:

Vicki L. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows (Oxford)

W. K. Stratton with Anissa Zamarron, Boxing Shadows (Texas)

A packet of required readings is available at Jenn’s on Guadalupe at Dean Keeton.

Additional required readings are available on Blackboard.

This class will look at the history of the political, economic and cultural relations between the United States and Africa from the early origins of the slave trade to the present. It explores the role of the US in historical global contexts. The class is intended to elucidate historical developments both in the US and on the African continent, and should satisfy students with a strong interest in US history as well as those interested in the place of the US in the African Diaspora.  The semester is divided into four parts, each covering a major theme.

Course Objectives

To develop a base of African and US history and increase the level of awareness of the African Diaspora in the US. 

To obtain a well-rounded approach to the political, economic, and cultural connections between the United States and Africa.

To reevaluate perceptions of Africa, to recognize the vibrant nature of African culture, and to apply new knowledge to the different cultural agents active in US popular culture, such as music, dance, literature, business and science.

To help students understand present-day politics in Africa at a deeper level and to obtain a better understanding of racial conditions in the US.

To learn how to assess historical materials -- their relevance to a given interpretative problem, their reliability and their importance -- and to determine the biases present within particular scholarship. These include historical documents, literature and films.

Texts:

1. Joseph E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture  (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005 second edition).

2. Curtis A. Keim, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind (Westview Press, 1999).

3. Alusine Jalloh, ed., The United States and West Africa (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008).

4. Kevin Roberts, ed., The Atlantic World 1450-2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

5. Karen Bouwer, Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: the Legacy of Patrice Lumumba (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

6. Gendering the African diaspora : women, culture, and historical change in the Caribbean and Nigerian hinterland / edited by Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

Grading:

i. Public Lecture Review 10%    

ii. First  Examination 25%

iii. Book Review 20%

iv.   Book Review 20%

v. Second Examination 25%

This survey course will examine the history of Native American societies in North America from the earliest records to the present. We will explore the diverse ways in which Indian societies were structured, the different ways that indigenous peoples have responded to colonization and the complex history of European/Indian relations. Attention will be paid to political, social, economic and cultural transformation of Native American societies over time. We will cover, among other things, the following topics: disease, religion, trade, captivity narratives, warfare, diplomacy, removal, assimilation, education, self-determination, and gaming.

Texts:

1. Colin G. Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of the American Indian History (Boston: Bedford St. Martins) – third edition. 

2. Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman (New York: Harper Collins, 1990) 

3. Douglas C. Sackman, Wildmen: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2010). 

4. David Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (New York: Longman, 2006). 

Grading:

Assessment for this class will be based on class participation, a mid-term examination, one short paper, 2¬4 reading quizzes, in-class participation, a book review, and a final examination. 

The final grade breakdown is as follows: 

Midterm: 100 points 

Paper: 50 points 

Final exam: 100 points 

Book Review: 25 points 

Reading quizzes: 10 points each 

In class participation: 25 points.  

The Black Power movement was a distinct period from the late 1960s and early 1970s that emphasized racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values, and secure black autonomy. The range of black power ideology ranged from the desire to create an all-black nation-state to the promotion of black economic power. This course will look at the major organizations, key figures, and ideologies of the black power movement.

Texts:

Negroes with Guns by Robert F. Williams  (read: weeks 1-2)

Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam by Tate (weeks 3-5)

Die, Nigger, Die by H. Rap Brown (weeks 6-8)

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur (weeks 9-11)

Carl Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power by Leonard Moore (weeks 12-14)

Under the Influence by Erin Patton (week 15)

Grading:

Exams will be given approximately every five weeks and the group project is due at the end of the semester.

Exam 1: 25%

Exam 2: 25%

Exam 3: 25%

Group Project: 25%

Course designed for sophomore students interested in studying history

“History is, indeed, an argument without end,” wrote the great American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. This sophomore seminar for history majors will read, discuss, argue, and write about a wide range of books, articles, and primary sources in order to consider the nature of historical inquiry. We will explore what constitutes sound historical thinking, including how scholars choose sources, pose questions, construct arguments, and converse with each other in print—and use these insights to model our own thinking, research, and writing. Students will keep a blackboard journal, write short response papers, and develop a written framework for a historiography project.

Texts:

Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre,1984.

Thomas Bender, ed., The Antislavery Debate, 1992  (available electronically, PCL)

Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods, 1997

Edward Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 1995.

Additional articles and primary sources will be posted or linked on Blackboard.

Grading:

Six short papers 40%

Research project framework 30%

Journal 15%

Participation 15%

Survey of the ancient Mediterranean from ca. 3000 BC to AD 476. Focus on

the development of ideas and institutions in the Greek and Roman worlds

and on the active cultural exchange among the diverse civilizations of

the broader region that shaped Greek and Roman history and cultural

 identity.

The reading and lecture course surveys change and continuity in the history of Texas within the context of U.S. history and Mexico-U.S. relations.  Special attention is given to Mexico-U.S. relations, politics and social relations between 1900 and 1970, as well as the home front experience of Texans during the Second World War.  The overriding theme is the incorporation of Texas into the national socio-economy from the state’s early “colonized” status to its modern position as a fully integrated part of the nation.  The course is organized around our readings.  The De la Teja/Marks/Tyler text provides a synthesis of Texas history while the Zamora text provides a closer examination of home front experiences.  The two chapters from the Campbell book will serve as a basis for an examination of the post-war period extending into 2001.

Three semester hours of Texas history may be substituted for half of the American history requirement.  Course materials, including a copy of my resume, this syllabus, lecture notes, bibliographies, and notes on interviewing techniques, will be available on Blackboard (http://courses.utexas.edu), UT’s course management site.  Call the ITS help desk (475-9400) if you have problems accessing the site.

Texts:

Randolph B. Campbell, Chapter 16, “Modern Texas, 1971-2001,” In Gone To Texas, A History of the Lone Star Stateby Randolph B. Campbell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003): 438-67.

Jesús de la Teja, Paula Marks, and Ron Tyler, Texas, Crossroads of North America (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004).

Emilio Zamora, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas, Mexican Workers and Job Politics during WWII(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009).

Grading:

Research paper (35%), 5 chapter reports (25%), and 4 film reports (40%).

Covers the period from Rome's foundation through Caesar's murder in 44 B.C.  The emphasis placed on the last two centuries of the Republic when problems accumulated and solutions did not.  All the factors contributing to the Republic's fall will discussed:  political, military, social, economic, religious, etc.Grading:2 quizzes (each 25%) requiring essay answersFinal exam (50%) requiring essay answers

Texts:

M. Cary & H.H. Scullar, A History of Rome (3rd ed.)Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic (Penguin)Sallust, Jugarthine War & The Conspiracy of Catiline (Penguin)Optional:Appian, Civil Wars (Penguin)

In this course, we will survey the development of modern science from the time of Isaac Newton to the present, and will examine the growth of scientific ideas and institutions and their changing place in Western society.

Texts:

Thomas L. Hankins, Science and the Enlightenment,

Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Writings (ed. James Secord),

Bruce J. Hunt, Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein,

James D. Watson, The Double Helix (Norton Critical Ed., ed. G. S. Stent),

plus a packet of xeroxed readings.

 Grading:

Grades will be based on three essay exams (25% each) and a short paper on a topic to be assigned (25%).

This course explores a selection of topics and episodes in the history of science and mathematics. It has four interlocking goals: to provide an overview of the history of science and math (for general education and to better comprehend subjects that you may eventually teach); to enable you to put these historical perspectives and context to work in pedagogy; to sharpen your independence of thought; and to improve your writing skills.

Students will design and prepare Two 5E Lesson Plans (each having a minimum length of 1200 words). Detailed instructions will be distributed separately. You will select the subject of these lesson plans from a variety of options. Once graded, you will incorporate corrections into your lesson plan, to electronically post the revised product, which will improve your grade. There will be several quizzes and writing assignments. All students will take a Midterm Exam, designed to test the extent to which you have followed, engaged, and learned from the topics discussed in class and in the readings. Furthermore, you will have to do a Presentation of one of your lesson plans to a group of peers. (You will also write Comments on other presentations.) Finally, all students will have to take a Final Essay Exam (about 800 words) in the classroom during Finals Week.

NOTE: this course involves a weekly discussion session with the Teaching Assistant from the History Department. You are required to attend one such session per week, to carry out work for the course.

This is an upper-division history course. The assigned readings vary in length, and we encourage you to read thoughtfully rather than waste your time skimming and forgetting. Some of the readings will be from primary sources (such as writings by prominent scientists), other readings will be from secondary texts (such as by historians). You will also be required to do additional research and reading for the lesson plans; so keep this in mind when budgeting your time for this course. Classes will be conducted as a mixture of lecture and discussion. Accordingly, attendance and participation are important, as you can also see from the grading distributions below. Attendance will be taken daily, and will be used in evaluating your overall grade for class participation. You are welcome to speak up at any time.

Texts:

There is a required Course Packet, available for purchase only at Jenn’s Copies on 2518 Guadalupe at Dean Keaton. Also, additional readings are available online, on Blackboard.

Grading:

This course is listed as having a Substantial Writing Component; therefore, much of your final grade will be based on written expression. The grading breakdown is as follows:

Class participation 10% (for speaking; minus absences, see below)

Quizzes and Assignments    16%

First Lesson Plan    16%

Midterm Exam    16% (in class)

Second Lesson Plan 16%

Presentation    10%

Final Exam    16% (in a classroom, during Finals Week)

This course explores a selection of topics and episodes in the history of science and mathematics. It has four interlocking goals: to provide an overview of the history of science and math (for general education and to better comprehend subjects that you may eventually teach); to enable you to put these historical perspectives and context to work in pedagogy; to sharpen your independence of thought; and to improve your writing skills.

Students will design and prepare Two 5E Lesson Plans (each having a minimum length of 1200 words). Detailed instructions will be distributed separately. You will select the subject of these lesson plans from a variety of options. Once graded, you will incorporate corrections into your lesson plan, to electronically post the revised product, which will improve your grade. There will be several quizzes and writing assignments. All students will take a Midterm Exam, designed to test the extent to which you have followed, engaged, and learned from the topics discussed in class and in the readings. Furthermore, you will have to do a Presentation of one of your lesson plans to a group of peers. (You will also write Comments on other presentations.) Finally, all students will have to take a Final Essay Exam (about 800 words) in the classroom during Finals Week.

NOTE: this course involves a weekly discussion session with the Teaching Assistant from the History Department. You are required to attend one such session per week, to carry out work for the course.

This is an upper-division history course. The assigned readings vary in length, and we encourage you to read thoughtfully rather than waste your time skimming and forgetting. Some of the readings will be from primary sources (such as writings by prominent scientists), other readings will be from secondary texts (such as by historians). You will also be required to do additional research and reading for the lesson plans; so keep this in mind when budgeting your time for this course. Classes will be conducted as a mixture of lecture and discussion. Accordingly, attendance and participation are important, as you can also see from the grading distributions below. Attendance will be taken daily, and will be used in evaluating your overall grade for class participation. You are welcome to speak up at any time.

Texts:

There is a required Course Packet, available for purchase only at Jenn’s Copies on 2518 Guadalupe at Dean Keaton. Also, additional readings are available online, on Blackboard.

Grading:

This course is listed as having a Substantial Writing Component; therefore, much of your final grade will be based on written expression. The grading breakdown is as follows:

Class participation 10% (for speaking; minus absences, see below)

Quizzes and Assignments    16%

First Lesson Plan    16%

Midterm Exam    16% (in class)

Second Lesson Plan 16%

Presentation    10%

Final Exam    16% (in a classroom, during Finals Week)

This course explores the history of American foreign relations from the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. During this period, the United States established many of the patterns of thought and behavior that have characterized the nation in more recent times. Understanding these early years of America's relationship with the wider world can help us gain important insight into current dilemmas, debates, and controversies.

The course aims for both breadth and depth. Some lectures and readings are aimed at providing a broad view of the political and ideological currents that fed into the making of foreign policy. Other lectures and readings go into depth on particular topics - the American Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, the Texas Revolution, and especially the the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars that marked the emergence of the United States as a world power.

There are no prerequisites for the course, but students are expected to have a basic grasp of U.S. history from 1776 to 1914.

This lecture course surveys the political, social, economic, and intellectual history of England (and, after the Union with Scotland in 1707, of Great Britain) from the end of the Interregnum to the conclusion of the War for American Independence.  It focuses on the transformation of England/Britain from an agrarian realm characterized by an absolute monarchy, an intolerant church, and a stagnant economy into a commercial and manufacturing society characterized by a vibrant public sphere, parliamentary rule, a dynamic economy, and unparalleled degrees of civil and religious liberty.  Over the course of this period, England/Britain emerged as a world power overseeing a vast commercial and territorial empire stretching across four continents.  As such, the lectures place English/British history firmly within its European and global contexts.

The major topics covered include the rise of capitalism; Stuart royal absolutism; the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89 and the consolidation of parliamentary government; the Financial Revolution and the fiscal-military state; the British Enlightenment, the public sphere, and civil society; commercialization, urbanization, and consumer society; overseas expansion and imperial transformation; party politics, patriotism, and extra-parliamentary radicalism; the rise of political economy; the American Revolution and the formation of a territorial empire in South Asia; movements for parliamentary reform; and the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

Texts:

Paul Kléber Monod, Imperial Island: A History of Britain and Its Empire, 1660-1837 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

Steven C. A. Pincus, England’s Glorious Revolution, 1688-1689: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006).

Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001).

Grading:

Attendance and Participation (10%)

Two Papers (or Short Take-Home Exams) (50%)

Take-Home Final Exam (40%)

This course studies the history of the thirteen colonies and the United States during the last third of the eighteenth century, with a concentration on the origins, nature, process, and effects of the American Revolution.  Specific topics include: American colonial society in the mid-eighteenth century, the French and Indian War, the collapse of the colonial system in British North America, the War for Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, the launching of the national government, and the beginnings of American party politics.

Texts:

(tentative list):

Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History   

Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia

Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence

Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Grading:

In addition to the final examination (which will be comprehensive) there will be two midterm exams.  Each of the midterms will count 25% of the course grade.  The final examination will count 50% of the course grade.  The exams will consist of short-answer and essay questions on the material from the classes and readings (including any handouts that may come your way from the instructor). 

This course is about the age of discovery and the overall effects of East-West contacts in the early modern period.  After a discussion of trade and cultural relations on the eve of the age of discovery, we will look at the expansion into South and Southeast Asia of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French from approximately 1400 to 1800, the period when European explorers, freebooters, merchants, missionaries, and administrators went to “the Indies” in search of adventure, riches, spices, souls, and power.  We will examine the backgrounds to that expansion, the technology that made it possible, the cultures that the Europeans came into contact with, the scientific and cultural repercussions of expansion, and the trade between Europe and Asia, not only of goods, but also of ideas.

Texts:

J. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony

J.H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance

K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade & Civilization in the Indian Ocean

Metcalf & Metcalf, A Concise History of India

D.R. Sardesai, Southeast Asia: Past & Present

Grading:

Requirements for the course include the assigned readings, two map assignments, two book reports, a mid-term and a final.  Percentages for the grade:  25% for each paper, 25% for each exam.

This class examines U.S. history from the perspective of Chinese who were the first targets of racially defined immigration restrictions. As such, Chinese have played key roles in the evolution of U.S. immigration restrictions, their enforcement, limits regarding citizenship; permanent residency, and the underlying racial ideologies and conceptions of national belonging.

This course offers an overview of the history of Chinese in America with an emphasis on Chinese American identity and community formations under the shadow of the Yellow Peril. Using primary documents and secondary literature, we will examine structures of work, family, immigration law, racism, class, and gender in order to understand the changing roles and perceptions of Chinese Americans in the United States from 1847 to the present.

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Texts:

Kwong and Miscevic, Chinese America; excerpts from _Island_, _Chinese American Voices_, _Longtime Californ'_,

Grading:

Midterms on lectures and assigned texts. Research paper on Chinese American history.

This course begins by examining the transition from defeat and military occupation to the economic miracle of the 1960s.  Japan’s epoch-making high-speed growth then established the model for a new kind of accelerated development that has since unfolded across Asia.  This political and economic transformation was also a social and personal one, encompassing the remaking of family structures and ideologies.  The greatest lessons may lie in the aftermath of high-speed growth, especially in the transformations that accompanied the deflation of the economic bubble after 1990.  The semester concludes with a consideration of present trajectories and possible futures.

Texts:

1. Jean-Marie BOUISSOU, Japan: The Burden of Success (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002).

2. John W. DOWER, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II (W.W. Norton/New Press, 1999).

3. R. Taggart MURPHY, The Weight of the Yen (W. W. Norton, 1997).

4. OCHIAI Emiko, The Japanese Family System in Transition (Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1996 [orig. 1994]).

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

5. Handouts, online, and electronic reserve readings as specified over the course of the semester

Grading:

• two midterm exams (worth 22.5% each; the first midterm exam is divided into two equal

parts)

• two essays on class readings (15% each)

• final essay(s) (20%)

• active class participation (5%)

This course investigates the political, constitutional, economic, and social causes of disunion and the American Civil War.  It seeks to provide students with an understanding of how the stability of the Union was affected by key developments of the period 1829-1861, including the growth of slavery, the rise of abolitionism, the development of modern political parties, economic modernization, immigration, and territorial expansion.

 Texts:

(tentative list):

William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (second edition, edited by Blight)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War

Grading:

In addition to the final examination (which will be comprehensive) there will be two midterm exams.  Each of the midterms will count 25% of the course grade.  The final examination will count 50% of the course grade.  The exams will consist of short-answer and essay questions on the material from the readings (including any handouts that may come your way from the instructor) and lectures.

This course surveys the history of colonial Spanish America from first encounters to independence. An underlying focus will be to explore the dynamics of scholarly analysis, tracing how and why historians and social scientists have revisited and provided alternative (revisionist) interpretations of key themes. These include: the arrival of humans in the Americas, alternations in the pre and post contact indigenous (Maya, Aztec, Inca) and Iberian worlds, processes of conquest and early colonization, ecological and demographic trends, the consolidation of imperial power (governmental, economic, religious and social institutions), changing dynamics of gender, race and class; the Bourbon Reforms; and precipitating variables for independence.

Texts:

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain (Penguin 1963)

Richard Boyer, Colonial Lives: Documents in Latin American History 1550-1850 (Oxford University Press 2000).

Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s  Choices:  An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico (University of New Mexico Press 2006)

Grading:

Students must pass a map quiz to receive a grade in the course. There will be a midterm and a final examination. Study sheets will be handed out a week prior to each examination and there will be a review in class of the materials to be covered.  Students should be prepared to discuss the assigned readings in class as well as show their comprehension of the material in examinations and essays.  Additionally students will write one (4-5) page essay based on the Boyer readings.   A sheet will be handed out suggesting possible topics or students may develop their own topic with the approval of the professor. Each examination and writing assignment will count equally in assigning a final grade. From time to time students may be presented with opportunities for extra credit through attendance at scholarly presentations or Internet assignments.  A brief outline of the lecture topics as well as terms and concepts to know will be handed out prior to each topical segment and will be posted on Blackboard.

This course traces the history of the politics of religion, and of the religion of politics, in modern Latin America, with special emphasis placed on the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the region. Chronologically, the course covers begins with a brief survey of the colonial period and then gives special attention to the national period running from independence (circa 1820) up to the Cuban Revolution (circa 1960), after which Church and state entered significantly new and distinctive phases (e.g. Liberation Theology). Thematically, we will examine the various causes of Church-state tension in the aftermath of Latin American independence, and the Church’s multifaceted response sto the gradual rise of political liberalism, nationalism, and secularism. In the second half of the course, we will emphasize significant national cases (e.g. Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala), allowing the course to branch out in a more comparative sense as we proceed. As the focus on questions of devotion as well as power implies, we will not just be looking at the way in which the Church responded to changing political circumstances after the demise of the colonial regime, but at changes in religious practice and meaning, and how these were experienced by ordinary people.

Texts:

John Schwaller, The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America: from Conquest to Revolution and Beyond

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

Austin Ivereigh (ed.) The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival 

Edward Wright Rios, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887-1934

Shorter readings (supplied)

Grading:

Reading responses, 60%

Final essay, 40%

Texts:

John Schwaller, The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America: from Conquest to Revolution and Beyond (New York: New York University Press, 2011)Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (London: Penguin, 2003)Austin Ivereigh (ed.) The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival (London: ILAS, 2000) (NB: often out of print: required chapters provided on Blackboard) Edward Wright Rios, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887-1934 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009)

Grading:

There is no final exam. Instead there will be weekly (five) writing assignments.

This course explores Cuban/U.S. relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Our exploration of Cuban/U.S. relations prompts students to grapple with issues of empire and transnationalism, both as actual historical processes and as analytical tools that can be used to examine historic and contemporary phenomena. Drawing upon monographs, travel writings, primary documents, fiction, and audio/visual materials, students will examine the complex interactions between the island’s population and their U.S. American neighbors across all facets of society. A particular emphasis will be placed on the social and cultural engagements between Cuba and the United States before the Cuban Revolution in an effort to grasp the profound impact of the Cold War on the conceptualization of Cuban history and society in the post-1959 period. While this is a course primarily rooted in Cuban history, it does not attempt to provide a “national” survey of the island’s past. Instead, it invites students to think about writing post-national histories of Cuban/U.S. interaction, one that explores the multiple connections and alternative principles of affiliation that exist among Cubans and U.S. Americans.

Texts:

Achy Obejas, Memory Mambo

C. Peter Ripley, Conversations With Cuba

Coursepack Readings

Grading:

3 Tests at 25% each: 75% of final grade

Active Class Participation: 25%

This course examines the historical experiences of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean (often called “Afro-Latin America”). The guiding questions of this course are: What is Afro-Latin America? Where is it? How can we write the histories of African descended peoples in the region we call “Latin America”? Can the histories of Africans and their descendants be contained within the confines of “nation”? Are there alternative frameworks (transnational and/or Diasporic) that can better enhance our understanding of these histories? While the course will begin in the slavery era, most of our attention will focus on the histories of Afro-Latin Americans after emancipation. Topics we will explore include: the particularities of slavery in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution and its impact on articulations of race and nation in the region, debates on “racial democracy,” the relationship between gender race, and empire, and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from “transnational” and “diaspora” perspectives. While historians have written most of the work we will read in this course, we will also engage the works of anthropologists and sociologists who have also been key contributors to this scholarship. Thus, the course has a three-fold objective:

1)   To deepen our understanding of the diverse histories of Africans and their descendants in the region.

2)   To continually probe the ongoing tension between national and transnational processes that is embedded in much of this scholarship.

3)   To explore alternative frameworks that might enhance our understanding of the histories of people of African descent in the region.

Texts:

Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution

Lara Putnam, The Company they Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870-1960

George Michael Hanchard, Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988

Grading:

Active Class Participation                                         20%

Map Assignment                                                       25%

Short Essay                                                                15%

Final Paper                                                                40%

This upper-division seminar provides a forum for exploring some spiritual and intellectual encounters of “East” and “West,” with a focus on ideas of mind, spirit, and consciousness. “East” and “West” are relative and relational terms, directions rather than places. They are relative, mutual, and shape-shifting. As metaphors they are generative and multivalent; when one starts to look, one finds many Easts and Wests at play, as various as the “Oriental philosophy” of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Xuanzang’s “journey to the West” to discover the Heart Sutra, and the Zen journeys of the West Coast beatniks. In this exploration of comparisons and connections, we will encounter a full house of canonical figures including Zhuangzi, Zhu Xi, Avicenna, Ibn ‘Arabi, Hume, Swedenborg, Blake, Nietzsche, Tagore, and Jung, along with some brilliant but less well known thinkers. We will spend much of our time in the open spaces between civilizational control systems. Many of the texts are dense and difficult, reflections of deep and often distant traditions. They need to be read slowly and with care. They also repay sincere inquiry with new vistas and unexpected bounties.

Texts:

Readings include Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory; Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci; and many online readings TBA.

Grading:

1. Participation in class discussion:  one overall grade, worth 20% of the course grade.

2. Eight papers of 1.5 pages each on weekly readings (altogether, 40% of the course grade).

3. Midterm essay (20% of course grade).

4. Final essay (partial revision of midterm essay; 20%).

In this seminar, we will examine how electrical technologies have affected the world economy and the lives of ordinary people over the past century and a half.  We will look at the growth both of the electrical power systems on which we have all come to rely and of the telecommunications networks (telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, and the Internet) that now connect us together.  We will give particular attention to the electrical history of the Austin area, which provides particularly revealing instances of many of the developments we will be discussing.

Texts:

David Nye, Electrifying America,

plus a course packet.

Grading:

This course carries a Writing Flag.  Grades will be based on a class presentation (10%), a 4-5 page paper on a topic related to the presentation (15%), a 16-20 page research paper (45%), a short written critique of another student's draft paper (10%), and class participation (20%).

This seminar course examines the relationship between the intellectual project of the Enlightenment and the political and social transformations that unfolded in western Europe and North America from the beginnings of the Dutch Revolt in the 1560s to the decade following the Paris Commune of 1871.  What was the connection between intellectual enlightenment and social-political revolution in the West?  The central theme of the course is the contemporary intellectual comprehension of far-reaching social, political, and economic change.  The seminar sessions involve close readings and extensive discussions of the writings of major European intellectuals who sought to understand, analyze, and criticize the upheavals and transformations taking place around them.  Authors read and discussed include Hugo Grotius, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Bernard Mandeville, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Constant, G. W. F. Hegel, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx.

Texts:

René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy (Hackett, 2011).

John Locke, Political Writings (Hackett, 2003).

Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees and Other Writings (Hackett, 1997).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings (Hackett, 1987).

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Univ. Chicago Press, 1977).

Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays (Hackett, 1983).

Benjamin Constant, Political Writings (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988).

G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (Hackett, 1988).

Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (W. W. Norton, 1978).

Grading:

1. Class attendance and participation – 30% of final grade.

2. Weekly reading responses – 20% of final grade.

3. Mid-term analytical essay – 20% of final grade.

4. Final analytical essay – 30% of final grade.

This upper-division, writing-intensive seminar examines the emergence of a recognizably European culture in the context of changing Mediterranean cultures. Through reading, discussion, and writing, students consider the variety of political, legal, religious, military, intellectual, and even amorous encounters facilitated by the Sea. From urban centers of the merchant  elites, to the peasant agriculture of grape and olive, from translators and other such middlemen, to  sailors and pirates, the human element informs students’ composition of three essays of graduated difficulty.  Expect about 100pp of reading a week; weekly quizzes and/or reading worksheets.

Texts:

In addition to primary sources such as financial documents, maps,  letters, crusading literature, local histories, and travel diaries, readings may include selections from the following:

Abulafia, Great Sea (2011)

Benison, Great Caliphs (2011)

Braudel, Mediterranean and responses, e.g. by Shaw, Molho

Dursteler, Renegade Women (2011)

Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (1999)

Green, Catholic Pirates (2010)

Harris, ed., Re-Thinking the Mediterranean (2005)

Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea (2000)

McCormick, Origins of the European Economy (2001)

Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (1937) and responses, e.g. by Brown, Squatriti

Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005)

Grading:

Three essays of graduated length and difficulty, each with peer-reviewed first drafts and office visits with the professor (10%, 20%, 30%); weekly quizzes and/or reading worksheets (30%); regular attendance and participation (10%).

Since the late 1980s, the African film industry has undergone radical changes that reflect increased globalization, the availability of new production and distribution methods, and the rise of a new generation of African filmmakers. This revolution is characterized by the low-budget, direct to video films commonly referred to as Nollywood.  While these films have drawn criticism for their low production values and popularization of negative cultural stereotypes, the Nigerian video industry has become the third largest film industry in the world, sweeping across the continent and throughout the global diaspora.  

This course examines the rise of Nollywood and the genesis of a popular African art form. It assesses aspects of African culture such as gender roles in the society, cultural beliefs, westernization, education, and social constructs that are depicted in the films. One major way to evaluate these will be through examination of African women, who play diverse roles in the films. Women have been the bedrock of African societies ensuring continuity in traditions and families as well as socializing the young generations. Using films and the readings, this course seeks to highlight the status of African women, and to understand the changing roles of women in Africa.   

Through a combination of films and readings, students will explore how Nollywood, in comparison to Hollywood, depicts the society and culture of Nigeria and Africa as a whole.  Each week addresses a different theme in an attempt to introduce students to the various dynamics that shape African cultures, societies and governments.  Additionally, this course seeks to engage students in a debate about how popular films affect historical imaginations and memory.  While these images have previously been the product of Hollywood and European films, this course will introduce Nollywood as an African alternative to how films depict, and people understand, their history. 

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

1.     To increase the knowledge and understanding of African history, culture, and society.

2.     To identify key themes in African history that transcend national boundaries.

3.     To help students understand the social, cultural, political, and economic agents that have affected African history, particularly the role of women and gender.  

4.     To assess the viability of film as a historical source.

5.     To understand popular perceptions about Africa depicted in films and how they lead to misunderstandings of the past.

Texts:

Haynes, Jonathan, ed. Nigerian Video Films. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000.

Rosenstone, Robert A. Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Saul, Mahir and Ralph A. Austen, eds. Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century:

Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010.

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Women Filmmakers of the African & Asian Diaspora: Decolonizing the Gaze, Locating Subjectivity  Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (May 1, 1997).

Kathleen Sheldon, ed. Courtyards, Markets, City Streets: Urban Women In    Africa. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.

Toyin Falola and Nana Akua Amponsah. Women's Roles in Sub-Saharan Africa. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2012.

Kathleen M. Fallon. Democracy and the Rise of Women's Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

*There will also be several journal articles assigned throughout the semester.  These will be available through the university library’s online databases and posted to the course documents section of the class Blackboard page.

Grading:

Assignment              Due                         Points

Attendance              Every class session 50

Book/Film Review   Week 6             100

Conference Report  Week 10             50

Final Paper              Week 15             200

Discussion Posts   See syllabus for deadlines 100

Southern Africa is one of the continent's rich and varied regions, a region that holds cradle of humanity historical sites as well as thriving modern cities and everything in-between. Designed to both introduce students to the history of the region and give an in-depth historical understanding of contemporary dynamics, the course focuses on two countries as case studies for understanding the region. Each year the country case studies may change; this year, 2013-14, the case countries will be Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Course Objectives: a) Students will understand the precolonial history of the region, and especially the impact of European colonialism on contemporary Southern Africa; b) Students will learn research methods in history; c) Students will learn how to write original research papers. Welcome!

Texts:

Gretchen Bauer, Politics in Southern Africa: State Society in Transition 

Kathleen Sheldon, Pounders of Grain, A History of Women, Work...

George Ndege, Cultures and Custom of Mozambique

Terence Ranger, Bulawayo Burning

Yvonne Vera, Butterfly Burning

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

Grading:

20% Attendance & Participation 

30%  Three Analytical Essays (x10% each)

10% Two map quizzes 

10% Proposal and Bibliography

30% Final Essay

This course will seek to identify the different ways in which religion has helped to define the political, social and philosophical structures of Latin America from colonial times to the present.  Readings and discussion will focus on the historical influence of the institutional Roman Catholic church on Latin American society.  The course will also explore the role that folk religion--from cofradias to millennialist movements--has played in the Latin American experience. Finally, the course will examine important changes in traditional Latin American religiosity in the twentieth century, including the impact of Liberation Theology and the growing influence of non-Catholic religious sectors.

Texts:

Virginia Garrard-Burnett, On Earth As It Is in Heaven: Religion and Society in

Latin America (Rowen and Littlefield, 2000)

Supplemental reader

Grading:

Grades for this course will be based on students’ participation in class discussions based on readings and on the satisfactory completion of the following written assignments:

3 essays based on readings and discussion, 3-5 pages each in length

1 research paper of between 15-20 pages.  Students will submit outlines, drafts, and rewrites of the term paper.

Final grade:

25%: essays

75%: research paper

How do radical new perspectives originate and take root? How do yesterday’s “self-evident” truths seem anything but self-evident today? In this course we will examine how different historical experiences and currents of thought intersected in the world of the Portuguese-Jewish community of early modern Amsterdam, the world into which the great philosopher Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza was born.  We will need to become immersed in three vastly different contexts: Spanish-and-Portuguese Catholic, Dutch Calvinist, and traditional Jewish. We will study how elements of these cultures converged among the Jews of 17th-century Amsterdam, producing conflicts, dilemmas, and new insights that are peculiarly “modern.” We will focus in particular on questions of religious authority.

Requirements

We will try to bring some of the conflicts in Spinoza’s environment to life with role-playing exercises in class. Students will write three 5-6 page essays in preparation for these exercises (together, 60% of the grade). In addition, they will write a 5-page essay on a topic, related to the course, of their choosing (30%). Attendance and participation will be evaluated (10%). Plus/minus grades will be assigned.

Readings will include excerpts from:

Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe.

Lu Ann Homza, Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance.

Joseph Perez, The Inquisition in Spain.

Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation.

Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza.

Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus.

Herbert Rowen, Johann de Witt.

Richard Popkin, History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Descartes.

This course aims to introduce students to the problems faced in historical research via the scrutiny of the sources and historical writings on one of the most contentious episodes in the history of the British in India. The year 1857 saw the most violent and widespread attempt ever made to destroy the British empire in South Asia. It was ferociously suppressed after a war of re-conquest lasting over a year. Various episodes in this struggle entered British imperial folklore and legend, while Indian nationalists gave them radically different meanings. Students will be required to critically examine texts and images (including video-film) generated by these controversies and confront them, in turn, with the primary sources. The readings/viewings are designed with this end in view.  The crafting of coherent prose narratives from primary sources is a major focus of this course.

Texts:

There is no required textbook; all the readings and notes will be available on the course website.

Grading:

quiz on background knowledge = 5%

participation & presentations = 15%

reading response papers = 25%

analyses of primary sources = 25%

final long paper = 30%

We associate slavery with plantations, a rural institution, yet most slaves in the Americas wound up in cities, working as peddlers, artisans, barbers, pilots, healers, soldiers, and a variety of other occupations. Cities afforded slaves relatively more freedoms. In Spanish and Portuguese America it was common for urban slaves to purchase their own freedom through the institution of slave-for-hire, and cities witnessed the development of large free-colored communities.  Although cities enjoyed a larger presence of the government, often entire neighborhood remained outside state control, sheltering maroon communities (runways slaves). Finally, although port-cities were more connected to the European Atlantic world, they were also connected to the African world. Africa survived in cities just as it did in remote rural plantations. Students will read recent new works on urban slavery in the Portuguese-, Dutch-, French-, British-, and Spanish -American worlds, but also in Africa itself (Sierra Leone, Luanda, Ouida, Anobamo)

Texts:

Rebecca Shumway, The Fante and the Transatlantic SlaveTtrade (the city port of Anobamo, in Fante-Asante land, currently Ghana)

Robin Law. Ouidah. The Social History of a West African Slaving "Port," 1727–1892. (the city port of Ouidah,  part of the kingdom of  Dahomey, currently in Benin)

Roquinaldo Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade (the city port of Luanda, in Portuguese Angola)

Mariza de Carvalho Soares, People of Faith: Slavery and African Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Rio De Janeiro (Rio, in Brazil)

James H. Sweet. Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (covers three cities, two in Brazil and one in Portugal: Recife, Rio, Lisbon)

Grading:

Weekly papers: 80 % grade

Participation-attendance: 10 % grade

Final paper: 10 % grade

This undergraduate seminar focuses on India's classical epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.  Emphasis will be placed on understanding the epic characters in relation to the heroic traditions of premodern India, as well as on the role of the epics in contemporary Indian political and religious culture.  Although the ancient Sanskrit epics will be treated at greatest length, we will also explore regional-language versions of the narratives from the middle ages.  In the first ten weeks of the course, the class format will vary between lectures by the instructor and group discussion. During the final five weeks, students will be engaged largely in thinking and writing on a topic of their choice.  By the end of the semester student will have become familiar with India's epic traditions, gained greater appreciation of the humanistic value of epic literature worldwide, and improved their ability to express themselves in writing.

Texts:

1)  Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan, The Mahabharata (Columbia University. Press, 1997)

2)  Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good (Oxford University Press, 2010)

3)  R. K. Narayan, The Ramayana (Penguin Classics, 2006)

4) Numerous articles and essays provided on Blackboard.

Grading:

5 reading responses     25%

2 drafts of analytical paper   25%

research paper proposal      5%

2 drafts of research paper   25%

attendance & participation  20%

Material culture is a term borrowed by a vast number of academic disciplines from the study of archaeology, anthropology and folklore.  It refers to all categories of historical artifacts—things that range in status from artistic masterpieces to the lowly stool, from architectural monuments to hedgerows, from religious rituals to factories and industrial products.  All this and much more are now studied avidly by a growing number of historians in the hope of revealing overlooked evidence of past lives that both compliment and reach beyond the historian’s traditional “comfort zone” with the written text. 

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution.  We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas.  We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of artisans, consumers and their societies within specific historical contexts that are simultaneously local, regional and global.

Texts:

obert Blair St. George, Material Life in Early America.

Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire, and nation : explorations of the history of science in the Iberian world

Neil Kamil, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Disappearance and Material Life in early New York,” in American Furniture 1995; also selections from Fortress of the Soul.

Jules Prown,  American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture

Henri Focillon, The Life of Form

Jones, Michael Owen, Handmade Object and its Maker

Deetz, James, In Small things Forgotten

Humes, Ivor Noel, Martins Hundred

SY Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico

Grading:

Enthusiastic participation in discussion counts for a high percentage of your final grade (35%).  Readings will range from one or two articles to a book weekly.  This is a writing course so requirements include a weekly 2 pp paper from all students on the main problems and questions posed by the readings (35%).  There will be a final paper and class presentation on an artifact of the students’ choice (30%).

This course introduces students to the study of business in American history.  The course carries the writing flag and the independent inquiry flag.  As such, students will engage in a number of concise research projects designed to investigate business topics while also acquiring new research skills.  One project will be a team exercise in which five groups of students will use Silicon Valley as a microcosm to investigate different themes in the American economy.  A second project introduces students to legal records as they consider why Americans expressed such fear of new, giant enterprises in the early 20th century.  A third project asks students to use archival documents to consider the nature of corruption in industrializing America, c. 1870-1900.  A fourth project concerns companies’ own efforts to use visual images to try to shape debates about free enterprise during World War II.  The last project will be an independent research paper of the student’s own choosing (subject to my approval).   Papers will vary in length.  The first few papers will be three pages in length.  The last research essay (which counts 25% of your grade) will be 10 pages in length.

Texts:

Scott A. Sandage, Born Losers

Richard White, “Information, Markets, and Corruption: Transcontinental Railroads in the Gilded Age,” Journal of American History 90 (Jun., 2003): 19-43.

Naomi R. Lamoreaux, The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895-1904

Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul

Christophe Lécuyer, Making Silicon Valley

Grading:

60% of a student’s grade will be based on the first four research papers; (each paper will count 15% each toward the student’s final grade)

25% of a student’s grade will be based on the final research project

15% of a student’s grade will be based on class discussion

In this course, students will examine, through discussions,  lectures, and an extended exercise in historical role playing, the precipitant events and ideas leading up to the American Declaration of Independence in July 1776.  The first half of the semester will be comprised of lectures, readings, and discussions on the Imperial Crisis between Britain and the British American colonies.  The second half of the semester will be organized around the “Reacting to the Past” game: “Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution, in New York City, 1775-1776” (created by William Offutt). At the start of the game, students will each be assigned a “character” (who might be a patriot, loyalist, or neutral, wealthy, “middling,” poor, or slave) who they will portray through the subsequent six class sessions, moving through time from the spring of 1776 until the summer of 1776.  Students must individually determine, describe, and depict how they believe their character would respond to historical events, and attempt to persuade others to support their position. Collectively, the class will decide if New York City will decide to join the revolution and declare independence or support the King in his effort to suppress the rebellion. During this half of the course, besides their active participation in the “game,” students will each write several “position papers” explaining their assigned character’s perspective on changing events.

Texts:

Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, (1974).

Theodore Draper, A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution, (1997).    

Richard Ketchum, Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York, (2002).

William Offutt, Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City, 1775-1776, (2011).

Alfred Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution,  (1999).

Grading:

Participation 20%

Book report  20%

Take-home exam 30%

Position papers 30%

In 1846, Archibald McMillin a North Carolina planter wrote to his wife during one of his many sojourns in the domestic slave trade. He informed her that he “could not sell in Darlington or Sumpter, [South Carolina,]” but that he was going to spend the day” in Charleston looking at sales at auction.”  Perhaps Charleston would prove a better market then the other cities, but if not, he would probably go further into the Deep South. Like the invention of the cotton gin was to the expansion of slavery into western territories, the domestic slave trade represented “the lifeblood of the southern slave system” according to historian Steven Deyle.  More than one million African Americans entered the domestic market and found themselves in coffles traveling by foot to various markets or were placed on boats and taken down the Mississippi River. Some traveled by ship along the Atlantic seaboard to port cities with large markets such as Savannah. 

This course will explore the inner-workings of the domestic slave trade from the perspectives of slaveholders, speculators, and the enslaved.  Students will have the opportunity to analyze maps, letters, diaries, newspaper advertisements, and legislation relating to the domestic slave trade. 

Texts:

Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. New York:

 Harvard University Press, 2001.

Johnson, Walter, ed. The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas. New

 Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Shermerhorn, Calvin. Money Over Mastery Family Over Freedom: Slavery in the

 Antebellum Upper South. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Tadman, Michael. Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South.  Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

Recommended Readings:

Bancroft, Frederic. Slave Trading in the Old South. 1931. Reprint, Columbia: University of

South Carolina Press, 1996.

Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press,

 1970.

Catterall, Helen Tunncliff, ed. Judicial Cases Concern American Slavery and the Negro, 5

vols.  Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1926-37.

Deyle, Steven. Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2005.

Gudmestad, Robert. A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave

Trade. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

Hadden, Sally. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. New York:

 Harvard University Press, 2001.

Martin, Jonathan. Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South. New York:

Harvard University Press, 2004.

Rothman, Adam. Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South.

 New York: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Electronic readings will be distributed or placed on Blackboard

Grading:

Attendance and Participation 10%

Response Papers 10%

Mapping and Historical Marker Project 10%

Primary Document Analysis 10%

Oral Presentation 20%

Research Proposal and Bibliography 5%

Rough Draft of Final Paper 10%

Final Paper 25%

Race has been key in defining citizenship since the founding of the United States of America. From the earliest treaties with Indians to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Jones Act, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, race has outweighed citizenship in determining the rights of individuals in this country. In this course we will use primary and secondary sources to analyze how race and citizenship have functioned for populations of color in the United States. We will examine events in U.S. history and consider how citizenship impacts the histories of various groups as well as the writing of their histories

Texts:

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, George Lipsitz

A packet of required readings will be available at Jenn’s on Guadalupe at Dean Keaton.

A few required readings will be available on Blackboard.

The bulk of the reading for this course will be from materials you collect for your research project.

Additional readings to be determined.

Grading:

This has been designated and designed as a writing-intensive course. As such, writing will be a significant part of the workload for this course, and the bulk of your grade will be determined by your writing.

The final paper will count for 50% of the final grade. Class participation will count for 20% of your final grade. The remaining thirty percent will be based on shorter writing assignments.

This course intensively examines U.S. women's history between World War II and the 1970s. In doing so, it also explores popular perceptions of womanhood, manhood and sexuality that became central to the cultural politics and social conflicts of the postwar period. By weaving together these topics – women’s history, popular culture, and postwar social movements – we raise fresh questions about well-known episodes of U.S. history. Why, for example, do most Americans remember Rosa Parks only as a demure seamstress who initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she was too tired to give up her seat to a white? If every young woman hoped to be like Donna Reed or June Cleaver in the fifties, then where did the sixties movements come from? We also explore how various groups (e.g., suburban girls, working-class women, civil rights activists, immigrants, and others) negotiated ideas of family, work and sexuality. In doing so, we examine roots of issues that continue to have political purchase today, such as reproductive rights, sexuality, job equity, welfare, race, and ethnicity.

Course Activities:This is primarily a discussion seminar, but class will occasionally include short lectures and films. Readings include historical documents, memoirs, scholarly articles and full-length historical studies. The course has a writing flag, and is designed to help you develop skills in historical writing and analysis. Students will write regularly to encourage critical thinking and class discussion of readings. Graded assignments include weekly reading summaries, a short media research paper based on popular magazines of the postwar era; and a “Postwar Women’s Memoir Project” based on interviews with women who came of age between World War II and the 1970s.

Texts:

* Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland

* Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media 

* Gilmore, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States

* Grace, Nancy M. and Ronna C. Johnson, eds., Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers

* Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

* Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (noted as NJC on syllabus)

* Santiago, Esmeralda. Almost a Woman

* Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography

Grading:

10% Attendance, promptness, class participation

30% 350-word weekly analyses of readings (6 essays, 5% each)

20% Media research essay, 5 pages 

35% Final Postwar Women’s Memoir Project essay, 8-10 pages

5%  Group Presentation on Memoir Projects

Within the construct of African American Business history, race, contemporary American popular culture and global capitalism, this course will focus on an important aspect in the contemporary political economy of black Americans. Specifically, the commodification (sale) of black culture provides the conceptual frame for an examination of the phenomenon of both the superstar black athlete as an entrepreneur and the Hip Hop Superstar as an entrepreneur in post-Civil Rights America. The emphasis in this course, then, is to critically examine and analyze the impact of a multiplicity of societal, cultural and economic factors in the post-modern information age, propelled by new technologies in the New Economy of Global Capitalism.  Also, consideration will be given to the new diversity as it impacts on the political economy of African Americans.

Proceeding from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course considers both the financial successes of superstar black athletes and hip hop entrepreneurs as well as their emergence as cultural icons, contrasted with the comparatively overall poor performance of Black Business not only within the intersection of race, gender, class, but also within the context of transnationalism in the globalization sale of African American Culture in post-Civil Rights America. But who profits?

Most important, why is it that business receipts for African Americans, who comprise almost thirteen percent of this nation's population, amounted in 2007 to only .5%, that is, less than one (1) percent of the nation's total business receipts? In addition, why is it that among the various occupational categories in which blacks participate in the nation's economy, especially as businesspeople, that black entertainers and sports figures are the highest paid? What does this say about race, class, gender and hegemonic masculinities in America at the turn of the new century?

Texts:

Boyd, Todd,      Young, Black, Rich and Famous:  The Rise of the NBA, The Hip Hop Invasion and the Transformation of American Culture

Curry, Mark,         Dancing With the Devil: How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of Hip Hop

Daniels, Cora,     Black Power, Inc: The New Voice of Black Success

Johnson,  Magic,    32  Ways to Be a Champion in Business

Kitwana, Bakari,   Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America

Lafeber, Walter, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism, New Expanded Edition

Oliver, Richard, Tim Leffel, Hip-Hop, Inc. : Success Strategies of the Rap Moguls   

Pulley, Brett, The Billion Dollar BET: Robert Johnson and the Inside Story of BET

Smith-Shomade, Beretta, Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black Entertainment Television           

Walker, Juliet E. K. History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship

Chaps, 6-11; Course Packet “The Commodification of Black Culture”   

Grading:

Critical Book Review Analysis                           25%

    (5 reviews, 2-3 pages 5 points each)

Class Discussion/participation                             25%

Oral Summary of Research Paper                         5%

Seminar Research Paper (15 pages)                    45%

In a New York Times Magazine article, Toni Morrison eloquently described the dilemmas of black female identity in a now oft quoted phrase: “…she had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything.  And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may well have invented herself.”  By examining the ways in which black women in the United States sought to “invent” themselves as historical agents despite economic, social, and political challenges, Morrison’s statement will, in many ways, form the basis of our intellectual journey.  To that end, the course will use primary sources, historical monographs, and essays to provide a chronological and thematic overview of the experiences of black women in America from their African roots to the circumstances they face in the present era.  This seminar class will be discussion driven and will address the following topics: the evolution of African American women’s history as field of inquiry; African American women historians; the trans-Atlantic slave trade; enslavement in the United States; abolition and freedom; racial uplift; urban migration; labor and culture; the modern civil rights movement; organized black feminism; hip-hop culture; AIDS and the Black Women's Health study.  Additionally, the course will draw upon readings written by and about African American women with a particularly emphasis on their approach to gender and race historiography.

Texts:

Wilma King and Linda Read, eds. African American Women (forthcoming, Blackwell Publishers)

Assata Shakur, Assata

Tiffany Gill, Beauty Shop Politics

Daina Ramey Berry, Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe

V.P. Franklin and Bettye Collier-Thomas, Sisters in the Struggle

Willie Lee Rose, A Documentary History of Slavery in North America

Carroll Parrott Blue, The Dawn at My Back: Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing.

Deborah Gray White,ed.  Telling Histories:  Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower.

Grading:

Class Engagement     10% 

 Posting Responses to the Week’s Readings    10%

Cultural Critique    20%

Outline of Research Paper with Annotated Bibliography    25%

Final Research Paper and Presentation    35%

In this seminar students will explore the experience of American women, in sickness and in health.  Students will learn about medical and biological views of woman and women’s health, the social context of those views, the development of medical practices and, indeed, a new medical specialty, for the treatment of illness and debility. This study of American women focuses on the 19th and 20th century and looks at the experience of Native-American women, African-American women, Latinas, working class women, and white middle- and upper-class women.  Health topics include menarche and menstruation, childbirth, birth control and abortion, gynecological disorders and reproductive organ cancers, as well as mental health and mental illness.

Texts:

• Judith Walzer Leavitt,  Women and Health in American, 2nd ed.,  University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.

• Tina Cassidy, Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born.  Grove Press, 2006

• Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Birthing a Slave:  Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South.  Harvard University Press, 2006.

• Sarah Stage, Female Complaints:  Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women’s Medicine.  W.W. Norton & Co., 1979.

• Andrea Tone, Devices and Desires:  A History of Contraceptives in America.  Hill & Wang,  2001.

• Jael Silliman, et. al, Undivided Rights:  Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice.  South End Press,  2004.

• Barron H. Lerner, M.D.  The Breast Cancer Wars:  Fear, Hope, and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America.  Oxford University Press, 2001

Grading:

Class participation = 30% of course grade

Writing assignments = 70% of course grade

Three 3-5 page essays = 14% each; for total of 42% of course grade;

8-10 page essay = 28% of course grade

This course examines Mexico’s Revolution through both its armed and post-revolutionary phases, from 1910-1940. During the semester we will focus on several key questions. What kind of revolution was the Mexican Revolution: an agrarian, political, social, cultural, or even mythical process? What caused and drove it? What did ordinary people think about the revolution and how far did they shape its course or simply suffer its consequences? Did “many Mexicos” just produce many revolutions, or can a broad narrative be discerned? What were the main contours of the post-revolutionary regime, and how different were they to those of the old regime? The course will consist of lectures, group discussions of set readings, primary documents, and folk songs (corridos), and occasional viewings of theater films made during (or about) the revolution. By the end of the course you will have a broad theoretical sense of what constitutes a social revolution and a detailed knowledge of Mexico’s revolutionary history that will help you to make up your own mind about the $64K questions: did twentieth-century Mexico truly experience a revolution? If so, how “revolutionary” was it?

Texts:

Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution

Leslie Bethell (ed.), Mexico since Independence

David Brading (ed.), Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution

Luis González y González, San José de Gracia: Mexican Village in Transition

Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz

Stephen E. Lewis and Mary Kay Vaughan, The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940

John Womack Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution

Grading:

Map quiz, 5%

Reading papers, 60%

Final paper, 35%

This course covers essential developments in Greek history during the Archaic and Early Classical Periods (ca. 800-400 B.C.). Emphasis will be divided between political/military history and ancient Greek society and culture (e.g. gender and class, religion, economy, performance). The course will consist of two hours of lecture per week plus a required one-hour discussion section. Particular attention will be paid to the interpretation of ancient sources, both written works and the archaeological remains.

This course carries a Global Cultures flag.

This lecture course traces the development of American cultural history from the time of the Puritan migration of 1630 through the end of the Civil War in 1865.  The basic premise of the course is that cultural history can best be understood by examining common themes that cut across such wide-ranging fields as religion, literature, art, science, philosophy, and popular culture.  Building from this base, the course explores such themes as the opposition of "young" America to "old" Europe, the continuing struggle between the individual and the community, the significance of the frontier, the impact of evangelical Protestantism, the idea of an American "mission," the emergence of industry, the paradox of liberty and slavery, and the awakening of regionalism and pluralism in opposition to the mainstream.

The course format consists of formal lectures (with questions and discussion encouraged) and several designated discussion periods.  Assigned reading is not always discussed in class but must be completed all the same.  Prior knowledge of basic U.S. history is helpful.

Requirements

Two in-class tests (20% and 35% of the course grade) and a final exam (45%).  A student who makes at least a B on the first test may substitute a 10-page paper in place of the second test with the approval of the instructor.

Possible Texts

Five or six paperbacks and some articles including material like the following:

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"

John Kasson, Civilizing the Machine

David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

Upper-division standing required. Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

White Protestant males and their ideas dominated America up until the time of the Civil War.  For better or worse, this progressively becomes less true after this time.  Americans faced with what the philosopher William James called “a booming buzzing confusion” developed many new ways of coping with massive change.  In addition to such conventional historical topics as politics and economics, we will examine the fine arts, architecture, technology, science, social reform, literature, photography, documentary film, and literature.  We will also note the roles and lives of immigrants, minority groups, and women in the conversation.

Requirements

Three exams, all non-cumulative.

Possible Texts

Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick

John Kasson, Amusing the Millions

Willa Cather, My Antonia

Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion

Donald Worster, The Dust Bowl

William Doyle, An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi

Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

Upper-division standing required. Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?  

Texts:

Possible texts-

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. 

Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights. 

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

This upper division course examines the history of Blacks in the United States from the West African Heritage to the Civil War and provides a critical examination on central issues under scholarly debate in the reconstruction of the Black experience in America. The course thus engages the debate on the evolution of African-American slavery as a social, economic and political institution, with a special focus on antebellum slavery, including plantation slavery, industrial slavery, and urban slavery in addition to slave culture.

Also, the course assesses the institutional development of the free black community, during the age of slavery, with emphasis on free black protest activities, organizations, and leaders. Equally important, information is provided on the business and entrepreneurial activities of both slave and free blacks before the Civil War to underscore the long historic tradition of black economic self-help. Invariably, those slaves who purchased their freedom were slaves involved in various business enterprises. Also emphasized in the course are the various ways in which slave and free black women responded to slavery and racism before the Civil War, giving consideration to gender issues within the intersection of the dynamics of race, class, and sex.

The course format is primarily lecture, with informal class discussion, utilizing in part the Socratic method of teaching/pedagogy (especially useful for students who are pre-law), as we examine topics that broaden historical consciousness and critical thinking skills, such as: the role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade; the historical forces that contributed to the origin of racism in Colonial America; the anomaly of black plantation slave owners in a race-based slave society; how white economic disparities and hegemonic masculinities were played out in class subordination and racial oppression; why race takes precedence over class in assessing the black historical experience; the extent to which judicial cases provide a pragmatic assessment of the realities of slave life; the extent to which American law supported the racial subordination of slave and free blacks; whether or not the economic and political imperatives that prompted antebellum African American settlement in West Africa can be considered colonialist in design and intent.

These and other questions will bring to the forefront the central issue of the agency of African Americans in their attempts to survive racism and slavery in attempts forge their own political and economic liberation. This course, consequently, emphasizes both the deconstruction of prevailing assessments and interpretations of the African American experience as well as provides information for a new reconstruction of the Black Experience from slavery to freedom. In each instance, emphasis will be on exploring different historical interpretations of the Black Experience.

African American slaves did not lead a monolithic slave experience. They shared life-time, hereditary, involuntary servitude, racial oppression and subordination. But many manipulated the institution and slave codes in attempts to mitigate that oppression. Others, such as Nat Turner and Dred Scott used other means to bring about an end to their servitude, while free blacks also fought to end slavery as well as improve their economic, societal and legal status.

The primary purposes of this course, then, are 1) to develop an understanding of the nature of historical inquiry and 2). to heighten historical consciousness 3), encourage critical thinking and analysis of historical material and 4) to recognizing the difference between what might have happened and what actually happened to blacks, both slave and free blacks during the age of slavery to the Civil War.

Texts:

Franklin, John H. and Alfred Moss, FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM, 9th ed

Holt, T. and Barkley-Brown, E. MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY, vol 1

Owens, Leslie, T

HIS SPECIES OF PROPERTY: SLAVE LIFE AND CULTURE IN THE OLD SOUTH

Tyler, Ron and Lawrence, R. Murphy, The Slave Narratives of Texas

Walker, Juliet E. K., FREE FRANK: A BLACK PIONEER ON THE ANTEBELLUM FRONTIER

Walker, Juliet E. K., THE HISTORY OF BLACK BUSINESS IN AMERICA: CAPITALISM, RACE, ENTREPRENEURSHIP

White, Deborah G.  AREN’T I A WOMAN:  FEMALE SLAVES PLANTATION SOUTH

Grading:

MID-TERM EXAM    35%

RESEARCH PAPER   30%

EXAM 2 (TAKE-HOME)  35%

This course will examine the traumatic conflagration of 1914-18 that set the stage for the violent twentieth century. Once called "The Great War" by the generation that fought it, it was optimistically dubbed by some "the War to End All Wars." When it failed to achieve this noble goal and military conflict again rocked the world during the 1940s, the earlier struggle was rechristened World War I or the First World War, names by which it has been known ever since. This one-semester course will utilize lectures, readings, poetry, photographs, and film to *trace back into the 19th century the social,diplomatic, and military threads that ultimately combined to produce the First World War *explore the successive crises of the early 20th century leading up to the decisive events of 1914 that set the conflict in motion *examine in depth the course of the war, its effect upon the various participants, the evolution of military technology which it inspired, the profound social and economic changes which it wrought, and the life of the millions who were involved either on the battlefield or on the homefront *consider the outcome of the war and its many repercussions for the history of the twentieth century.

Texts:

E. M. Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (the classic World War I novel)

Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That (the most famous WW1 memoir) (extensive selections)

Short selections, including documents and poetry. Required Films: Paths of Glory and Gallipoli

Grading:

Grades will be based primarily on two examinations during the term, a non-cumulative final examination, and a short paper (8-10 pages) on a subject of the student's choosing. (Discussion and class contributions will also be taken into consideration.)

This course reaches back to the first centuries of Protestantism in Central Europe, from about 1400 to about 1700. The Czech Lands, under the names of Bohemia and Moravia, and under the dominion of the Habsburg Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, were heavily implicated in the various breaks from and returns to Catholicism, as the reformation started by Luther gave way to the counter-reformation of the organized Catholic Church, resisting the fracturing of its One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. This hotbed of religious dissidence pitted newly emerging Protestant groups on several sides of each doctrinal and political issue that arose as the region sought its religious identity: Utraquists, Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Czech Brethren, and others.  

The course will explore the theologies, politics, and personal identities that emerged, and passed away in this era through the accounts in primary sources, including the writings of the reformers as well as through the lenses provided by current scholarship. In addition, the course examines the visual arts and music (especially hymns) that played such a huge role in this battle for land, power, hearts, and minds shaping the lives of believers and non-believers alike. The course concludes with an examination of the evolutions within Catholicism reflected in the Catholic catechism as a result of the Counter-Reformation.

Prerequisites: none

Readings: The reading list will consist mainly of primary sources, available digitally in the public domain and scholarly articles to which the students have digital access through the library. In addition, there will be some required film viewing and music recordings.

Grading: attendance and participation 10%, multiple précis (one page written assignments) throughout the semester 40%, mid-term 20%, final exam 30%

This course explores the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe. Focusing on the Jewish societies in the Russian and Austrian Empires, the course seeks to map the Jewish experience from the late 1700s until the first decades of twentieth century through topics such as secularization, urbanization, migration, antisemitism, political movements, and war. We study the destruction of the Jewish societies in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust as well as Jewish memory and renewal in Eastern Europe since the end of Communism. 

Course Goals

• Examine the cultures of Jews in Eastern Europe as well as the historical forces that transformed these societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Explore a variety of primary source materials and discuss their use as historical evidence.
• Write analytical, thesis-driven essays based on close reading of the course materials.

Required Course Books

• Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001).
• Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War and The Victory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001).
• Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (New York: Public Affairs, 2007).
• Israel J. Singer, The Brothers Ashkenazi (Orig. 1936, New York: Other Press, 2010).

Electronic Readings

*The YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews of Eastern Europe.  The YIVO Encyclopedia can be accessed using this link: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/

Assignments and Grading

• Attendance and Participation, 10%
• Article Response (Sept. 30), 10%
• Midterm (Oct. 14), 20%
• Essay Ashkenazi (Nov. 9), 25%
• Take-Home Final Exam (Dec. 8), 35%

**All readings and other course materials are required.**

From French bread riots to the Irish potato famine, the history of food offers new ways to understand change in modern Europe. In this new course, you will learn how national cuisines reflect politics, economics, identity, and culture. Topics in this course will include the ways foodways intersect with famine, war, national politics, geography, cultures and imperial trade. You will learn how the industrialization of Europe shaped food technologies, transport, and consumer behavior. Far from just learning about the history of cheese, you will delve into the ways food reflected changes in technology, national boundaries, and war time strategies. This course will offer an opportunity to think more critically about the development of the global networks that brought food to tables throughout Europe.

Texts:

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables

Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Accounting for Taste, The Triumph of French Cuisine

Suzanne Freidberg, French Beans and Food Scares

Reay, Tannahill, Food in History

Jean-Louis Flandrin, Massimo Montanari, Food: A Culinary History

James Vernon, Hunger, A Modern History

Roger Scola, Feeding the Victorian City

John Dickie, Delizia! The Epic History of Italians and Their Food

Grading:

Participation: 20%

Short essays, revisions: 20%

Final Paper (Approx. 3,000 words): 40%

The way people choose to resist repression or persecution is shaped by many things, including their convictions, the situation they face, and their internalization of traditional models. In this course we will focus on the way traditional narratives of Jewish resistance and martyrdom have been created, and how they have shifted over the centuries (from antiquity to modern times) in response to changing historical experience. We will examine how the “athletic” Jewish martyrs of the Hellenistic period gave way to the pious and suffering types of the medieval period, and how modern events produced Jewish narratives that glorified physical resistance and decried “passivity.”

Among the questions we’ll ask are the following: How have Jews weighed their choices in responding to oppression and persecution? In what circumstances have they favored martyrdom; in what circumstances have they rejected it? How have they viewed the option of physical resistance? When have they viewed dissimulation (deception, concealment) as the best course of action?  How have their attempts to memorialize episodes of resistance favored certain responses and minimized others?

Texts:

David Biale, Power in Jewish History.

James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak.

Tessa Rajak, “Dying for the Law: The Martyr’s Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature.”

Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World

Jonathan Huener, “Auschwitz and the Politics of Martyrdom and Memory, 1945-1947,” Polin 20.

Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli  National Tradition.

Oz Almog, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew.

Grading:

The final grade will reflect class participation (10%) and grades received on a short paper (20%) a mid-term exam (30%) and a final exam (40%).

Topics in European History.

May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

This class will investigate the principal trends and issues of modern Argentine history, which has been marked by its share of social and political unrest and of economic booms and busts. Designed to provide the student with a broad knowledge of Argentina, the course devotes its attention to the period from independence (c. 1810) through to the present. No doubt, students will discover that, despite sharing many trends with other Latin American nations, Argentina’s history has been unique. The principal question remains: Why has such a talented people as the Argentineans had a turbulent and violent history—including a Dirty War and the “disappearance” of up to 30,000 citizens?

Texts:

Three books on Argentina of the student’s choice

Grading:

Each student will complete a total of five separate assignments: a map assignment, 3 five-page book essays, and a final essay examination. The student's final grade will be based on the total number of points that the student amasses on each of the assignments:

- map assignment 50 points or 5% of the final grade

- 3 written book essays 600 points or 60% of the final grade

- final exam 350 points or 35% of the final grade

The two major aims of this course are: 1) introduce students to the deeply intertwined history of US-Latin America Relations and 2) prepare each student for a potential experience in Latin America (or with Latino communities in the United States) through study abroad, research, and/or community engagement. The history of US actions towards Latin America has encompassed everything from a sentimental desire to “help the less fortunate” in developing countries through aid, to direct and indirect military intervention when the internal circumstances of a particular country have been perceived to threaten US interests. Latin American states have, in turn, attempted to establish confraternal solidarity among statesmen in the early 19th century against European incursions, to confronting and/or cooperating with an emerging imperial power to the north.  This course will allow students to deepen their knowledge of this history by exploring the historical development of the inextricably intertwined and long-standing relationships between the US and Latin America from the late 18th century until the present. Readings and lectures will allow students to consider and debate the political, economic, cultural, racial, and scientific dimensions of these relationships. These discussions are intended to allow students to consider the implications of “cultural citizenship,” a political identity that extends beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. One of the inalienable “rights” that comes with this kind of citizenship includes the right to apply  -- and the right to go beyond -- the knowledge gained through readings, lectures, and discussions by identifying a particular issue concerning US-Latin American relations that they would like to explore further through a research, community engagement or study abroad experience.

Required Readings:

Peter Smith, Talons of he Eagle: Latin America, The United States, and the World (Oxford University Press, 2013) Fourth edition.

Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Desserts: Indian Raids and the US-Mexican War (Lamar Series in Western History) (Yale, 2008)

Steven Palmer, Launching Global Health: The Caribbean Odyssey of the Rockefeller Foundation (U Michigan Press, 2010)

Course Reader available at Jenn’s Copies 220 Guadalupe St.

Assignments:

Participation & answers to weekly discussion questions                                  20%

Short 3-5 page Position Papers:                                   3 worth 20% each = 60% total.

Annotated Bibliography & Final oral presentation                                          5%

Final Paper (10-15 pages):                                                                               15%

This course is a study of one of the most traumatic periods in South African history. It is also a study of a people’s agency and resilience in the face state sanctioned terror. With a brief detour into the deeper past of South Africa to contextualize the rise of apartheid, the course will predominantly focus on the period since 1948. We will study the social, political, economic, and cultural history of a nation in the grip of legalized oppression from the perspectives of women, children, and men - of all "racial" backgrounds - who lived through that particular period. Since the course focuses on both oppression and agency, and the in-between-spaces, students are advised that some of the course content (books, audio, and video material) will include violent scenes – apartheid was violent by definition. The course will NOT cover everything, but aim for a deeper understanding of some of the key moments that illuminate apartheid in the history of South Africa. Course Objectives: a) Students will come away with a greater appreciation of not only of the history of that country, but of Southern Africa, and the United States’ role in supporting the apartheid regime as well as the anti-apartheid movement in South African and abroad. b) Students will greatly improve their critical reading and writing skills. c) Students will have a greater understanding of South Africa – and the continent’s – postcolonial opportunities and challenges. Samukele, Kamohelo, Welcome!

Texts:

• Robert Ross, A Concise History Of South Africa

• Nelson Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

• Steve Biko (and Aelred Stubbs, ed.), I Write What I Like: Selected Writings

• Mamphela Ramphele, Across Boundaries

• Nadine Gordimer, July’s People 

• J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood

Grading:

  10% - Two Map Quizzes (5% each)

  20% - Attendance and Participation

  50% - Weekly Journal (2 typed pages each week)

  20% - Final paper (10 pages).

This course examines the different historical experiences of mainland China and Taiwan in the context of the East Asian model of development.  Owing to a shared cultural heritage and historical links, both China and Taiwan have displayed some features in their postwar developments that are identified as characteristic of the East Asian region.  But striking contrasts across the strait existed in political systems, economic development strategies, and cultural attitudes.  To what extent these differences explain the different economic performances between the two sides of the strait in the postwar years?  How has the Taiwan experience influenced the patterns of economic growth in China during the reform era?  Will Taiwan's democratization play a role in the future political development in mainland China?  These will be among the major topics to be explored in this course.

Texts:

K. Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution through Reform

J. F. Copper, Taiwan: Nation-State or Province?

J. T. Roberts and A. Hite, eds, From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change

Grading:

Class participation: 10%

Mid-term: 25%

Final exam: 25%

Short essay: 10%

Research paper: 30%

This course is organized in three parts: the first two span the period between the third century BCE and the late eighteenth century, the third covers the nineteenth-twentieth centuries. Students will learn about the ways in which a range of destitute people, orphans, debtors and criminals were incorporated into complex and variable social and political institutions in the subcontinent in the past. They will learn about key legal provisions about the treatment of slaves established by ancient governments. They will also read about military and political structures that used male and female slaves in different ways in the medieval period. These structures, associated with the coming of Islam in the subcontinent, enabled slaves to establish relationships with each other as well as with their masters and mistresses. In the third segment, students will understand the ways in which legal, political and commercial processes associated with global histories of European empires, contributed to the large-scale shift in slave-using structures, the meanings of slavery and the privileges and protections that slaves had earlier enjoyed.

Texts:

1) I. Chatterjee and R.M. Eaton eds Slavery and South Asian History (Indiana University Press, 2006).

2) Arthashastra  Book III, Chapter XIII, Rules Regarding Slaves and Laborers, on www.mssu.edu/projectsouthasia/history/primarydocs/

3) Amitava Ghosh, ‘The Slave of Ms. H6’, from Subaltern Studies, Vol. 5.

4) Sunil Kumar, ‘When Slaves Were Nobles’, Indian Economic and Social History Review , 1998.

5) Pushpa Prasad, ‘Female Slavery in Thirteenth Century Documents’, Indian Historical Quarterly, 1985.

6) Excerpts from Ex-Slave’s Memoir, Tahmasnama: The Autobiography of a Slave (Bombay 1967)

7) Marina Carter, ‘Slavery and Unfree labor in the Indian Ocean’ and ‘Indian Slaves in Mauritius’.

8) Legal Documents : Lariviere ed. Contested Ownership of a Slave; Mr. Hunter Stands Trial for Injuring his Slave Documents, Criminal Judicial Consultations of 1799 from the British Library and the U.N. Report on Trafficking and Prostitution from 1956.

9) 2 Visual Sources:, the film Mughal-e-Azam (with English subtitles) and a documentary on YouTube, ‘Sarah Harris Rescues Prostitutes’.

Grading:

1) Posing Daily Question/Comment (on Blackboard): (40%)

2) Home-Written 5-page essay comparing historical readings with interpretation made in film (20%)

3) Home-Written 10-15 page discussion on a single theme (30%).

4) Final Essay in Class on media and politics in the representation of trafficking (10%).

This course examines the principal themes of traditional Hinduism, the dominant religion of the Indian subcontinent.  It gives special attention to the historical development of the tradition and its relation to social and cultural life in India.  To the extent possible, the course will examine different forms of religious expression created within India.  These include written texts which have been significant in the Hindu tradition, but they also comprise rituals that have been central to religious life, patterns of social action that embody Hindu values, and images and architecture that display the form and powers of the world.

Flag: Cultural Diversity in the U.S.

This course will examine the history of American empire, and the migrations and immigrations produced by that history, from a comparative and transnational perspective.  The course will pay particular attention to the expansion of American influence in Asia, as well as Asian migration to and from the United States, and the issues of race, gender, class and national identity that arose as a result of those movements.  We will also examine how the history of empire have changed and challenged notions of citizenship and belonging, often expressed in racialized and gendered terms.

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history. May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

Flag: Cultural Diversity in the U.S.

This course examines the South Asian diaspora in United States. We will focus on Americans who trace their descent to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. While studying the history and culture of South Asian America, we will discuss globalization, transnationalism, migration, assimilation, formation of a diaspora, discrimination, and gender and sexuality, all major themes in Asian American Studies. The course is arranged chronologically and thematically. We will start in the early twentieth century following the journey of the first South Asian migrants to arrive in California. The second part of the course will focus on the effects of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act. Topics covered include economic and social reasons for immigration, adaptation to American life, cultural and religious assimilation, changing family structures, and discrimination and exclusion. We will end the semester by discussing South Asian American life in the twenty-first century.

American Capitalism, 1865-2000: A History of Innovation and Economic Rights

Tracing the history of the American economy from 1865 to 2000, this course is organized around three themes: 1) innovation; 2) economic rights; and 3) the role of the state.  Students will examine sources of innovation in terms of the role played by entrepreneurs, efforts the state has made to foster innovation, and the role of corporate institutions.  Economic rights concern problems of union recognition and discrimination in the job market.  But the topic of economic rights also includes rights of companies in the marketplace and in negotiations with workers.  Both the topic of innovation and economic rights leads you to the study of the role of the state.  Scholars and the public at large have strikingly varied views about the proper role of the state in the economy.  In this course, students will evaluate past experiences in order to arrive at their own assessment of the state’s impact on innovation and economic rights.

Texts:

Possible readings include selections from the following books:

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie

William Cronon,  Nature’s Metropolis

David Von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America

Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal

Christophe Lecuyer, Making Silicon Valley

Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis

 Nancy MacLean, Freedom is Not Enough

 AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage

 Kirk Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts

Grading:

Grading: Three papers will count 75% of your final grade; class discussion will count 25% of your final grade.  The three essays will each be four to five pages in length.

Course description

Why have Jews been hated and mistrusted for so long? How, if at all, does judeophobia differ from other types of xenophobia or racism?  In which societies have we historically seen intense hatred or mistrust of Jews? Where do we see it today? And where do we see the opposite phenomenon: philosemitism?

In this upper-level undergraduate course, we tackle these and related questions. We identify distinct types of judeophobia/antisemitism over 2,500 years, identifying continuity and change in antisemitic discourse.

Although our primary focus is on antisemitism in contemporary and historical Christian and Muslim societies, we begin in the antisemitic bedrock—Ancient Greece and Rome. We also look at antisemitism in peripheral societies which have had few Jews, if any (e.g., Japan). Finally, we consider judeophobia among Jews themselves—that is, the enduring phenomenon in which some Jews have not only internalized anti-Semitic discourse but have become “self-hating.”

Throughout the course, we use antisemitism to explore more general ideas in social theory, including globalization, and the nature of conflict related to race, ethnicity, class, and ideology. Perhaps most surprising and disturbing—this being a university—we look at the repeated role of intellectual elites in generating and justifying new forms of judeophobia, and in so doing, perpetuating this ancient hatred.

This seminar is designed as a reading course in history, literature, and politics, and as a class in professional writing. Its scope will include not only the literature, history, and politics of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, but also the interaction of British and other societies throughout the world. One point of emphasis will be the history of the British Empire and Commonwealth in its Asian and African as well as early American dimensions. Another point will be a focus on historical, literary, and auto-biography (Disreali, Woolf, Lawrence, Orwell, Gandhi, etc.).

In a general way, the seminar upholds the principles of the Modern History Faculty at Oxford-to enhance (1) intellectual curiosity, (2) conceptual clarity; (3) flexibility, that is, the capacity to engage with alternative perspectives and new information; (4) accuracy and attention to detail; (5) critical engagement; (6) capacity for hard work (7) enthusiasm for history, literature, and politics; and (8) historical imagination and understanding, that is the ability to speculate and compare, alongside the possession of appropriate historical knowledge and the capacity to deploy it.

Texts:

Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians is required, then a choice of five other books from the list below plus six others to be decided upon in consultation with the instructor:

      Robert Blake, Disraeli

      Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey

      Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf

      T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

      Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life

      Judith M. Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope

The Zionist movement and the immigration to the Land of Israel have generated a real change in the history of the Jewish people in modern times. During the course of seventy years only the Zionists succeeded in establishing a state for the Jews and to fulfill their nationalistic goals. The current course aims to examine the Zionist ideology and the immigration process from the formative years of 1880s until the present days, and focuses on various issues relating to the Zionist ideology, patterns of migration, migration policy, patterns of settlements and colonization, political conflicts and Zionist parties.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Lecture questions ....…………….……………………………….........................    5%

Class participation ………………………..……………......................................   10%

Quizzes ....…………….…………………………………….................................  20%

2 Assignments ...…………………………………….............................................  25%

Final exam ....…………………………………………..........................................  40%

100%

COURSE OUTLINE:

The Zionist ideology and the origins of the State of Israel

• Shimoni, Gideon. The Zionist ideology. Hanover: University Press of New England [for] Brandeis University Press, 1997, pp. 85-126.
• Hertzberg, Arthur. The Zionist idea: a historical analysis and reader. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997, pp. 179-198; 201-230.

Five waves of Migration, 1882-1939

• Sachar, Howard. A history of Israel: from the rise of Zionism to our time. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, pp. 3-35; 71-85.
• Alroey, Gur. “Galveston and Palestine: Immigration and Ideology in the early Twentieth Century”. American Jewish Archives Vol. L VI1 2004: 129-150.

• Hyamson, Albert Montefiore. Palestine under the Mandate, 1920-1948. London: Methuen, 1950, pp. 51-69.

Patterns of Jewish Settlements in Palestine

• Curtis, Michael and Chertoff, Mordecai S. (eds.). Israel: Social Structure and Change. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, c1973, pp. 95-135.
• Eckardt, Alice L. and Eckardt, Roy A. Encounter with Israel: a challenge to conscience. New York: Association Press, 1970, pp. 419-432.

The Zionist Parties until 1948

• Horowitz, Dan and Lissak, Moshe. Origins of the Israeli polity: Palestine under the mandate. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, pp. 120-156.
• Sachar, Howard. A history of Israel: from the rise of Zionism to our time. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, pp. 188-194.

The Birth of Israel

• Sachar, Howard. A history of Israel: from the rise of Zionism to our time. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, pp. 279-309; 315-347.

Immigration to the State of Israel

• Sachar, Howard. A history of Israel: from the rise of Zionism to our time. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, pp. 395-424.
• Curtis, Michael and Chertoff, Mordecai S. (eds.). Israel: Social Structure and Change. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, c1973, pp. 333-347.

Israeli society – Demographic profile

• Smooha, Sammy. Israel: Pluralism and Conflict. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, pp. 48-69.
• en Rafael, Eliezer, and Peres, Yohanan. Is Israel One?: Religion, Nationalism, and Multiculturalism Confounded. Leiden: Brill, 2005.

Sectors in Israeli Society

• Dowty, Alan (ed.). Critical issues in Israeli Society.Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004, pp. 109-126.

• Curtis, Michael and Chertoff, Mordecai S. (eds.). Israel: Social Structure and Change. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, c1973, pp. 409-418.
• Dowty, Alan (ed.). Critical issues in Israeli Society. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004, pp. 71-93.
• Eckardt, Alice L. and Eckardt, Roy A. Encounter with Israel: a challenge to conscience. New York: Association Press, 1970, pp. 73-79.

• Ben Zadok, Efraim. Local communities and the Israeli polity: conflict of values and interests. Albany: State University of New York Press, c1993, pp. 189-208.

Israel and its Arabs Neighbors

• Bickerton, Ian J. and Klausner, Carla L. A history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2010, pp.1-14; 390-400.

Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism and Post-Colonialism

• Dowty, Alan (ed.). Critical issues in Israeli Society.Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004, pp. 223-247.
• Laqueur, Walter. A history of Zionism. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, c1972, pp. 589-599.

• Shapira, Anita. "Politics and Collective Memory: The Debate over the 'New Historians' in Israel". History and Memory 7(1), 1995: 9-40.

Description: This lecture course explores the most significant political, religious, social, economic and cultural developments in seventeenth-century England. The unifying theme of the course is the problem of revolution, and the lectures investigate the causes, nature and development of the two revolutions of the seventeenth century--the Puritan Revolution of the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. The lectures are topical and therefore do not follow a strict chronological order. All of the lectures are slide-illustrated.

Prerequisites: Upper-division standing

Reading:

R. Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain

C. Herrup, A House in Gross Disorder

 L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy

M. Gaskill, Witchfinders

B. Coward, Oliver Cromwell

J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government

W. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries

Assignments: Three exams (75%) and one final essay or term paper (25%)