Spring 2012 Course Descriptions
500-700 Level
500-level courses are for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Prerequisite for ALL 500-level courses: either the completion of six semester hours of 300-level History courses or the permission of the instructor.
SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE! Always check the University online schedule for the latest changes.
HIS 502 - African American History: Selected Topics
10778 M 6:30-9:20
Loren Schweninger
Examining America's great paradox--slavery in a land of liberty--the course examines important issues involving race and slavery in American history. Beginning with West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade, it will consider slavery during the colonial and national periods, emphasizing the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War. The course will ask, among other questions, how and why the "peculiar institution," as it was called, endured for nearly two-and-a-half centuries.
HIS 511A - Seminar in Historical Research and Writing: "Reconstruction in History and Memory"
12023 T 3:30-6:20
Mark Elliott
Writing and Speaking Intensive. Prerequisite of one 300-level Research Intensive (RI) history course.
No period of American history has been as subject to distortion in both popular culture and professional history as the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. From the films Birth of A Nation and Gone with the Wind to the scholarship of William Dunning and Claude Bowers, a wave of propaganda transformed the study of this period into a politically-charged partisan debate. This course will explore both the history and the historical memory of Reconstruction, using this period as an example to better understand the ideological stakes that can be involved in the recounting of history. The class will examine the evolution of historical writing on Reconstruction, and the portrayals of Reconstruction in popular culture, while weighing these portrayals against original primary sources from the era. Taking a “long” perspective on this era, the course will not restrict its focus to the years 1865-1877 but rather will follow the public debate over this historical period well into the 20th century. Student research projects may examine any aspect of the history or memory of Reconstruction.
HIS 511B - Seminar in Historical Research and Writing: "Democracy and Its Discontents: The Weimar Republic, 1919-1933"
10779 T 3:30-6:20
Emily Levine
Writing and Speaking Intensive. Prerequisite of one 300-level Research Intensive (RI) history course.
Part of a widespread democratic belt that extended across Central Europe to the Balkans following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Germany's Weimar Republic has also been labeled the "gamble that didn't stand a chance." But despite its ultimate decline, the Weimar Republic created one of the first integrative modern cultural worlds that included film, literature, theater, architecture, and increased gender awareness. This seminar examines the origins, rise, and ultimate fall of the first democratic experiment in Germany between 1919 and 1933 as an example of "modernity." Drawing on sources from Roth, Gropius, Mann, Schmitt, Hitler, among others in literature, philosophy, film, fine arts, architecture, and music, class discussions and research papers will attempt to reconcile Weimar's political unrest with these tremendous cultural achievements.
HIS 511C - Seminar in Historical Research and Writing: "The Transatlantic Slave Trade"
10780 W 3:30-6:20
Linda Rupert
Writing and Speaking Intensive. Prerequisite of one 300-level Research Intensive (RI) history course.
The transatlantic slave trade lasted for over four hundred years and was one of the largest and most disrupting movements of people in human history. This course introduces students to the broad economic, political, social, and cultural impact of the slave trade in Africa, the Americas, and Europe (the basic historical narrative); a range of documents and evidence which historians use to study the trade (primary sources); and a variety of ways in which historians have interpreted its significance (historiography).
Students will conceptualize, research, and write a major paper about a specific aspect of the slave trade in a particular time and place. The paper will based on the student's own careful reading of a selected collection of primary sources, as well as analysis of an appropriate sample of relevant historiography. All students are encouraged to choose a research topic which fits in with their wider historical interests.
HIS 520 - Southern History: "Memoir in Southern History"
10781 W 3:30-6:20
Watson Jennison
This course will examine southern U. S. history from colonial times to the present through the prism of memoir. We will read the memoirs of indentured servants, Indians, slaves, slaveholders, civil rights workers, and segregationists, among others, to examine the experiences of the people themselves. Through their memoirs, southerners did not just narrate their lives. They chronicled their legacies as well. We will examine southerners' use of their memoirs to both illuminate and obscure aspects of the southern past.
HIS 542 - Middle Ages: "Violence in the Middle Ages"
10783 TR 2:00-3:15
Richard Barton
“I’m going to get medieval on them....” We all know this famous phrase from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, in which the character of Marcellus promises a nasty end to his former tormentors. We are left to supply, from our own minds, the undoubtedly horrific violence that will ensue. But if this and other modern comments suggest that violence was both common and nasty in the Middle Ages, does the evidence produced by medieval people back up Tarantino’s suggestion? This course examines the meaning and consequences of violence during the Middle Ages. It is not a course in military history, nor will it focus simply upon a string of violent episodes. Rather, it attempts to get into the medieval mentality of violence, to understand how, why, and under what circumstances medieval men (and sometimes medieval women) resorted to violence in their interaction with their fellows. We will move topically through a selection of primary sources (Roland, Saga of Njall, records of disputes, some accounts of murder) and scholarly analyses of war and peace, feuding, dispute resolution, chivalry, and lordship, in order to grapple with some fundamental questions: how did medieval people define ‘violence’, if they did so at all? How did violence differ from ‘force’? Did medieval people consider violent acts to be necessarily bad? If so, under what circumstances? Were certain social orders and/or institutions more or less associated with violence? That is, was violence a component of lordship? Could and did peasants or women exercise violence? This course will investigate these and many other questions pertaining to medieval representations of force, violence, and social norms.
HIS 548 - Architectural Conservation
10784 T 2:00-4:50
Jo Leimenstoll
Overview of contemporary architectural conservation principles, practice and technology. A series of field exercises, group projects and investigation of an individual research topic expand upon lectures and readings. Same as IAR 548. Prerequisite: IAR 301, IAR 332, or written permission of instructor.
HIS 581 - African History: "Images of Africa in Film"
10785 R 6:30-9:20
Colleen Kriger
This course examines the ways Africa and Africans have been portrayed in a variety of film genres. We will be especially concerned with issues of content – that is, messages conveyed in film about Africa and Africans – although we will have to familiarize ourselves with film as a medium in order to learn how those messages are conveyed and how to analyze and decode them. In other words, this is a course primarily about Africa and African history and it is an extended exercise in critical thinking. We will look at stereotypes about Africa in film, where those stereotypes have come from, how and in what forms they persist over time, and responses to those stereotypes by politically aware and engaged filmmakers. Much of this course will therefore serve as an introduction to the vibrant worlds of Third Cinema, Black Independent Film, and African Cinema.
Prerequisite for all 600- 700 level History courses: Admission to a graduate program in history or interior architecture, or written permission of instructor.
HIS 624 - History of American Landscapes & Architecture
10787
M 6:30-9:20
Lisa Tolbert
This course is designed as an advanced reading seminar in the history of American landscapes and architecture. The course will introduce you to a variety of methods developed by architectural and cultural historians to interpret buildings and landscapes as cultural artifacts with historically specific meanings that must be understood in particular context over time. An important objective of the course is to go beyond classroom reading and discussion to application of specific scholars' arguments and methodologies through analysis of particular buildings and landscapes. (Same as IAR 624)
By the end of the semester you should be able to do the following:
- Identify and evaluate major periods in the development of the American landscape from the colonial era through the mid-twentieth century.
- Demonstrate an understanding of the ways that buildings and landscapes document cultural and social change over time.
- Define particular architectural styles, use specialized architectural vocabulary/terminology, and explain the differences between vernacular and academic building traditions.
- Compare and contrast the methodologies developed by a variety of scholars to interpret landscape and architecture as historical evidence.
- Use different interpretive approaches to evaluate a particular landscape or building in historical context.
HIS 626 - The Practice of Public History
10788
W 3:30-6:20
Benjamin Filene
This course is an introduction to what it is like to work to within a public history institution and what it takes to thrive in one. The course is structured around the theory and practice involved in building relationships with audiences, community partners, and colleagues. Throughout, the course links practical skill-- writing a mission statement, creating a marketing plan, writing a budget--with discussion of the broader purposes these tools are intended to accomplish. The course culminates in a collaborative class project that involves conceiving, planning, and writing a grant application for a local public history initiative. (Same as IAR 626)
See the M.A. FAQ for more information about the following:
HIS 690 - Internship
HIS 692 - Advanced Topics
HIS 697 - Independent Study
HIS 699 - Thesis
Written permission is required to register for these courses.
HIS 702 - Colloquium in American History
10793 702-01 Charles Bolton M 3:30-6:20
10794 702-02 Mark Elliott R 6:30-9:20
Issues of historical interpretation from Reconstruction to the present.
HIS 704 - Seminar in American History
10795 Graduate Faculty
Research and writing on selected topics in American history.
HIS 706 - Colloquium in European History since 1789
10796 R 3:30-6:20
Jeff Jones
Interpretations of selected historical problems from the French Revolution to the present.
HIS 708 - Seminar in European History
10797 Graduate Faculty
Research and writing on selected topics in European history.
HIS 709 - Introductory Research Seminar: "Public Culture in Twentieth-Century America"
10798 709-01 Tom Jackson W 6:30-9:20 (American)
In this course you will be expected to research and write an article-length paper on a problem of your choosing. The first third of the course will be devoted to examining important questions and methods in the history of 20th century US "public culture." As a group, we will consider several innovative scholarly articles that might serve as models for your research. Each student will report on a piece of scholarship that represents the “best practices” of his or her chosen sub-field. The professor has strengths in political history, cultural history, social movement history, and especially the history of the African American freedom movement. By early October, all students will be in possession of an important question and a body of sources likely to yield answers. Some students may already have projects in mind. Others should be willing to be guided to a researchable problem that will draw upon rich primary source materials available through the Jackson library, local collections, oral histories, or the Internet.
HIS 715 - Atlantic World Selected Topics: "The Atlantic Slave Trade"
10799 T 3:30-6:20
Linda Rupert
The transatlantic slave trade lasted for over four hundred years and was responsible for the largest migration of people in the early modern Atlantic world. This course introduces students to the range of significant historical themes and issues that played out in this process, the major trends in the historiography, and the variety of historical sources that are available. We will analyze the transatlantic slave trade as part of a sophisticated economic system and as a powerful shaper of societies and cultures across the Atlantic world, as well as a brutal racialized form of human exploitation. We will also explore the pedagogical challenges of teaching this complex and highly-charged topic. It is highly recommended that you take HIS 710: Atlantic World Colloquium before taking this course.
HIS 722 - Early America: "The American Revolution"
10800 W 6:30-9:20
Greg O'Brien
This graduate seminar will explore a variety of issues arising from the era of the American Revolution, ca. 1750-1789, including the causes of the conflict, ideology, social turmoil, the fighting of the war, the role of farmers, women, American Indians, free African Americans, slaves, and the immediate impact of the Revolution. We will explore fundamental questions about the conservative or radical nature of the Revolution, the creation of an “American” identity, and the historical memory of the era, among other issues. Students will complete weekly readings as well as a final historiographical or research paper. Grading will be based on discussion participation, book reviews, and the final paper.
HIS 724 - Selected Topics in 20th Century US History: "The Long Civil Rights Movement and Its Legacies, 1880-1990"
10801 T 6:30-9:20
Tom Jackson
This course will explore some of the best new scholarship on the sources, achievements, and unfinished agendas of the modern African American freedom movement. Of necessity we will need to understand the white society’s construction, defense, and re-making of segregation and racial privilege throughout the nation, not just in the South. We will examine local, national, and international conflicts and policy concessions over race. Keeping in mind that class and gender relations are changing at the same time, we will examine coalitions across class, gender, and national lines. We will begin by exploring the deep sources of black politics and protest traditions in communities going back to Reconstruction, often surviving, organizing, and resisting, despite harsh repression, exploitation and violence. We will grapple with a major paradox in a burgeoning interdisciplinary literature. On the one hand we speak and write about a continuous and long civil rights movement that won allies and achieved important gains well before the signal achievements of the so called “classical phase” beginning with the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954. On the other hand we still regard the 1950s-1970s as a period of monumental change when black protest drew upon and fed back into a broader “rights revolution” encompassing not only Blacks, but Latinos, women, immigrants, and the disabled, to name only a few. Historians are increasingly taking the pulse of a powerful white counter-movement willing to violently defend or quickly abandon neighborhoods, schools, and finally the Democratic Party of the “solid South.” We will try to view the movement from local, national, and international vantage points. We will examine the leadership and emergent issues of women as well as men – “in struggle,” in their workplaces, communities, streets, schools, police precincts, prisons, and local welfare offices. We will explore, the roots and achievements of the Black Power movement and its relation to concurrent and preceding civil rights politics. We will give some attention to the international “Cold War Civil Rights” context of mobilization and political reform culminating from the Spring of 1963 through the Summer of 1965. At that point we will consider the major policy concessions of the 1960s—the Civil and Voting Rights Acts and the War on Poverty. We will examine everyone from middle class women to Latino farm workers to gays and lesbians, prisoners, disabled people, and people mobilizing against environmental hazards in their neighborhoods. We will end by evaluating the ways in which conservative movements of homeowners, taxpayers, working class whites and others reacted to, yet echoed the rights discourse of black freedom and feminist movements. A survey of student interests will precede finalization of the reading list.
200-400 Level Courses | Advising Center | Catalog | Courses
