Department of History

Fall 2003 Course Descriptions
400-600 Level

HIS 401 - Individual Study

TBD
Staff

HIS 508 - Latin America and the United States: Twentieth Century

TR 4:00-5:15
Mary B. Floyd

Students will explore significant issues in the twentieth-century relations between Latin America and the United States, focusing on Central America, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela. We will examine traditional interpretations, contemporary arguments, and the Latin American context and perspective in the first six weeks of the course. Students will devote the remainder of the course to research, writing, and rewriting in completing a twelve- to fifteen-page research paper on a limited topic. Writing Intensive.

More information

HIS 511A - Seminar in African American History: Southern Slavery and the Law

R 6:00-8:50
Loren L. Schweninger

"All history is comparative," prize-winning historian Peter Kolchin recently wrote, adding that among the most exciting areas of inquiry in recent years has been a comparative analyses of slavery. Drawing on a rich body of recent literature, Southern Slavery and the Law will compare and contrast the legal aspects of slavery, analyzing the similarities and differences in the laws of different states during different time periods. It will ask such questions as how and why were these laws enacted and how effective were they in practice. Each student will write a research paper, using secondary and primary sources, on the laws of slavery in one state during the period from the American Revolution until the Civil War.
Writing intensive and permission of the department required.

HIS 511B - Seminar in Modern British History

T 6:00-8:50
Staff

"Goodbye to All That": Britons and the Great War, 1914-1918

"All changed, changed utterly -- a terrible beauty is born." -- William Butler Yeats, "Easter, 1916."

Yeats was referring to the period of civil unrest in Ireland immediately following the Easter Rising of 1916 when he penned these lines, but his observations are also particularly apt when applied to the effect that the First World War had on twentieth-century British society, politics, and culture. In 1914, Britain had reached the apotheosis of its power: it dominated the world both literally -- at that juncture, it ruled over nearly 400 million people on five continents -- and figuratively, as a center of global finance and culture. However, the advent of the Great War forced Britons to bid "goodbye to all that," as the terrible strain of four years of fighting nearly bankrupted the nation, wounded (both physically and emotionally) an entire generation of young men and women, and helped establish the foundation for the dissolution of the empire later in the century. In this course, students will examine how individual British men and women experienced the turbulent period between 1914 and 1918, focusing on the ways in which the social, cultural, political, and gender boundaries established during the nineteenth century were radically re-shaped by the events of those years. The course format will consist of a few weeks of group discussions of assigned readings selected from the work of historians (e.g. George Dangerfield, Mark Harrison), along with a variety of primary source documents (e.g. Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier). Students will then begin meeting individually with the instructor on a weekly basis to assist their progress in producing the required 15-20 page (for undergrads; 20-25 if grad students) research paper. Because the course's focus will be on broad socio-cultural and political changes produced by the war, possible topics for the research paper might include (but are by no means limited to) the experience of soldiers in the trenches, life on the "home front," new roles for women, the reception of conscientious objectors, or press coverage of the first "total war."
Writing intensive and permission of the department required.

HIS 511C - Seminar in African History: Central Africa and the Atlantic World

W 6:00-8:50
Colleen Kriger

How much and in what ways have Africans transformed societies and cultures in the Americas?  In this course we will examine this and other related questions by investigating the forced migration of Africans to the Americas.  Central Africa -- the homeland of close to half of all the peoples who took part in the Middle Passage -- will be the main area of focus.  We will consider and discuss major issues in the debates about the Atlantic slave trade and the degree to which African slaves were able to retain their ethnic identities, social institutions, and cultural values in the New World.Writing intensive and permission of the department required.

HIS 522 - "Marvelous Possessions": How Europeans "Produced" the Americas

MW 3:30-4:45
Phyllis W. Hunter

This topics course will examine how Europeans tooks possession of new world lands and peoples. For Europeans, enlightenment goals to catalogue uncharted lands and utopian aims to build new societies often collided with longings for riches and missionary crusades to convert souls. Each of these competing impulses generated different ways of possession, producing, and consuming the idea and experience of America. Through reading secondary sources in history, literature, and anthropology this course will explore different motives and methods that shaped cultural encounters with and images of the new world during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.

HIS 541 - Ancient World: Attila the Hun vs. The Romans

MW 2:00-3:15
Stephen Q. Ruzicka

Course focuses on the year 451, when Attila the Hun battled the Romans.

HIS 543 - Historic Preservation: Principles and Practices

T 9:30-12:20
Jo R. Leimenstoll

Change in historic preservation theory and practice since the 1800’s with emphasis on preservation of built environment and development of philosophical approach for designers to contemporary preservation projects.

HIS 571 - Modern European Thought: Selected Topics

TR 11:00-12:15
Paul Mazgaj

The great crises that shook European civilization in the twentieth century--the world wars, the economic collapse of the 1930s, the rise of fascist and communist regimes, and the Cold War--brought artists and writers into the public forum, creating what has been more recently labeled the “public intellectual.” This development has, in its turn, stimulated a lively debate on the proper role of the intellectual in the life of Western society. The emergence to the public intellectual, as well as the controversy that has accompanied it, was particularly acute in France where intellectuals have played a greater political role than in any other Western society. This course will focus on several stages in this debate. It will begin with an examination of the emergence of the intellectual in the decades just before War War I. Here we will look at contrasting "models" of the intellectual as they were first articulated during and just after the Dreyfus Affair. The focus will then shift to World War One and the Russian Revolution, both of which had a profound impact on intellectuals. Though most French intellectuals tended to distance themselves from political and social concerns in the 1920s, there was a major sea change in attitude by the early 1930s in response to the Great Depression and rise of fascism, particularly to the rise of Hitler's Third Reich. As intellectuals mobilized under the banner of the Popular Front, Paris became the Mecca of the "engaged" intellectual. The high point of "engagement" came in the wake of the defeat of France in 1940 and the German Occupation with the rise on existentialism. In the last segment of the course we will examine the role of existentialist intellectuals like Sartre, Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir in the politics of the Cold War. Film and fiction will supplement more conventional historical source material.

HIS 588 - Vietnam

M 6:00-8:50
James Anderson

In the eyes of many Americans, there is little separation between the image of "Vietnam" and the tragic outcome of US involvement in the Second Indochinese War. However, Viet Nam as a nation and the Vietnamese as a people have existed in the region for over two thousand years, fighting during much of this time for both political autonomy and cultural self-identity. During the course of its history, Viet Nam's military adversary and cultural ally has often been China. Conversely, Chinese leaders have long believed that their empire shared a special bond with Vietnam, which at times promoted the impulse to subjugate their smaller neighbor. This course will consider the history of wars fought on Vietnamese soil within the larger context of political, social and cultural change. The course themes include; resistance of foreign aggression as an integral part of the Vietnamese nationalist narrative, Vietnamese self-identity in the shadow of Chinese domination, the anti-colonial origins of the Vietnamese nationalist and Communist movements, and Vietnamese government's uneasy relations with border ethnic groups. It is mydesire that, after the completion of this seminar course, we will have a larger historical context in which we can more clearly evaluate the events of the past 50 years.

HIS 601 - Seminar in European History

TBD
Staff

HIS 602 - Seminar in European History

TBD
Staff

HIS 609 - Colloquium in American History before 1865

T 6:00-8:50
Peter S. Carmichael

A historiographical course on major topics in US history to 1865. Students will be expected to read a book per week, write a number of critical reviews, and give some oral reports. Permission of instructor is required.

HIS 611 - Seminar in American History

TBD
Staff

HIS 621 - Colloquium in European History to 1800

M 6:00-8:50
Jodi Bilinkoff

HIS 625 - Preservation, Planning, and Law

R 3:00-6:00
Melinda Coleman

An examination and analysis of the relationship of government programs and policies, community and regional planning strategies, and legal case precedents to the field of historic preservation.

HIS 626 - Management and Leadership in Public History

W 6:00-8:50
Kathleen G. Franz

This course will introduce students to basic principles in the administration of museums, historic sites, and other cultural resources, including fundraising, personnel and volunteer management, working with board members, and introduction to museum ethics. Students will learn basic principles in administration which will include writing mission statements, writing grants, fund raising. The class will explore some of the current debates in public history, and include a variety of introductory readings on museums, guest lectures by museum professionals, and field trips to museums and historic sites. Students will complete short writing assignments and a management-related final project at an area museum or historic site accompanied by a written report and class presentation.
Cross Listed with Department of Interior Architecture.

HIS 690 - History Internship

TBD
Staff

Field learning experience designed to extend information through courses and sharpen skills useful in an applied history career. Prerequisite- At least 12 hours in History M.A. program and permission from Department Head.

HIS 692 - Advanced Topics in History

TBD
Staff

HIS 697 - Directed Reading

TBD
Staff

HIS 699 - Thesis

TBD
Staff