2005 | Summer Courses
When possible, syllabi are provided along with course descriptions. Please note that instructors may alter readings and assignments as needed.
History 201-206 seminars are open to history majors only during pre-registration. If the course does not reach its enrollment maximum, it will be open to all students beginning with drop/add on a first-come first-serve basis.
12-Week Evening Session (May 16 - August 5, 2005)
HIST 344.900 European Intellectual History
DiLiberto
R 6:00-9:10PM
This course will explore the ideas and assess the roles of intellectuals in European politics, culture, and society from the First World War to the fall of communism in the East-Central Europe and the Soviet Union. Part I will consider intellectuals and the experience of the Great War, followed by the intellectual and cultural responses to the crisis of liberal ideas and institutions, the ascent of communism, fascism, and National Socialism, and the problems of intellectual collaboration with and resistance to dictatorship. Part II begins with the post-1945 intellectual responses to war and genocide and the effects of the legacies of repression and exile on the European intelligentsia. We will then examine intellectual commentaries on and critiques of European political decline, Americanization, decolonization, the cultural and political divisions of the Cold War, the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern and Central Europe, and the fall of Soviet communism.
HIST 331.900 American Diplomatic History since 1776
Ritter
T 6:00-9:10PM
U.S. Diplomatic History since 1776 is a survey course designed to provide students with an introduction to the signal events and principal interpretations of American foreign policy from the birth of our nation to the end of the Cold War. The lectures and readings for this course will introduce students to the origins and effects of the ideals and traditions that guided the United States during the two centuries in which it evolved from a struggling new nation to a world power.
HIST 435.940 American Radicalism
Johanningsmeier
W 6:00-9:10PM
MLA SEM
It is still fashionable to celebrate the downfall of authoritarian Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. At the same time, the demise of many of the ambitious utopian projects conceived by radical activists and intellectuals of the twentieth century has led to a deep reassessment of goals, strategies and ideals among many American dedicated to progressive social change. In this course, we will critically examine the major themes, problems, and personalities of 20th-century American radicalism. We will address the question of what useful or promising legacies remain from earlier radical visions of a profoundly-transformed social and economic order. We will be focusing on the history of various forms of left radicalism in the U.S., beginning with the late 19th-century socialists and continuing through the "New Left" of the 1960s. However, we will also be discussing anarchism, feminist and African-American influences, radical unionism, post-modernism, and right-wing radicalism.
First Session (May 17 - June 24, 2005)
HIST 001.910 Europe in a Wider World
Moyer
MTWR 10:40-12:15PM
The rise and growth of European civilization, from the decline of the Roman Empire, through the Middle Ages, to the religious Reformation and the beginnings of overseas expansion.
HIST 021.920 US History, 1865-Present
Ohlers
MTWR 4:20-5:55PM
This course covers the social, political, and economic history of the nation from the Civil War to the present. Topics to be discussed include the causes and course of the Civil War, Reconstruction, politics in the Gilded Age, late nineteenth-century urbanization and immigration, Populism, Progressivism, the sociology and politics of the twenties, the New Deal, post-World War II America, the turbulence of the sixties, and contemporary affairs.
HIST 206.910 Race in World History
von Joeden Forgey
TR 5:30-8:40PM
SEM
What role has race played in the history of the modern era? This seminar will examine the history and politics of race categories and practices in a comparative context from the Enlightenment to the present. We will focus on understanding the historical contexts in which race theories are created, proliferated and become institutionalized. Specific topics will include: the intellectual history of race-thinking; case studies (including the United States, New Zealand, and Europe's overseas colonies); slavery; racialist Anti-Semitism; Nazi Germany and apartheid in South Africa as "racial states"; race and war; genocide (specifically the role of race in the Rwandan genocide); and historical approaches to the struggle against racism. Readings will include the classic works of racist thought, anti-racist literature, texts in international law, novels and poetry, and historical treatments. Films will also be shown. Students will be expected to write a final research paper based on primary sources.
HIST 317.910 Islam and the West
von Schlegell
TR 5:30-8:40PM
An in-depth examination of the images of Islam in Europe during the Middle Ages, the Latin Christendom's understanding of Islamic belief system, its polemical attacks on the person and the message of the Prophet of Islam, its attitude to the crusades and to jihad, among other topics. Discussion of the Western mystique of Islam as it developed during the period of Europe 's massive colonial expansion and its royal governments. Included in our study are the popular and literary European motifs of Islam's sexual promiscuity and its decadent harems, and more particularly, the construction of a whole set of attitudes, methodologies, and imperial control that has been designated as "orientalism." We will also examine the survival of medieval images of Islam in today's Western thinking.
HIST 431.910 World at War
Allport
MTWR 10:40-12:15PM
Historians disagree as to the exact start-date of the Second World War—did it begin with the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, or with the German attack on Poland two years later, or with the critical entry of the Soviet Union and United States in 1941? No-one, however, disputes the profound effects of the war on global history. At least 60 million people were killed, and untold millions more permanently injured or forced to flee their homes and families; whole cities were destroyed by ground warfare and aerial bombardment; and the world became grimly accustomed to the practice of industrialized genocide. On the other hand, the war also encouraged technological progress—penicillin, the transistor, and the space program were all products of wartime innovation; and it accelerated the fall of the European colonial empires. This course examines the origins, process, and outcome of World War Two, analyzing the conflict from the perspective of grand strategy and politics, but also from the point of view of the ordinary men, women and children who were caught up in its momentous events.
HIST 575.940 Public Culture
St. George
TR 5:30-8:40PM
This seminar will be exploring the range of activities that make up what we commonly call "public culture." The term signals an insistence that culture be located in public view and contingent on visible actions. At the same time, it conjures the significance of public institutions—family (at times), church, archive, library, hospital, museum, schools of all sorts, state— as possessed of pivotal cultural agency. In such activities as historic preservation, heritage tourism, and participant archaeology, public culture offers a new set of phenomena that are transcultural, hybrid, constantly open to appropriation and being reworked to new local purposes, including debates on the irregular impact of globalization and modernity. Requirements for this course includes preparation and presentation of one's weeks readings, a seminar paper, and oral presentation of the paper's argument.
Second Session (June 27 - August 5, 2005)
HIST 002.920 Europe in a Wider World, 1450-1950
Fisher-Gray
MW 9:00-12:10PM
In 1605, Francis Bacon noted that the discovery of printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass had "changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world." The same might be said today of the internet, nuclear weapons, and globalization, all of which have their roots in these fifteenth-century developments. This course will explore the implications for the West and the world of expanding information, increasing brutality, and growing global interdependence over the history of modern Europe . We will examine the growth of literacy and spread of dangerous ideas, from science to religious reform to communism. We will look at nation-states: their revolutions, rivalries and wars. And we will place the history of Europe in world context (after all, the three seminal inventions identified by Bacon had their origins in China , and not in Europe itself!). Readings for the course will include historical essays and primary-source documents.
HIST 011.920 The World: History and Modernity
Van Beurden
MTWR 2:40-4:15PM
An explanation of major themes, milestones, and debates in the history of the global community since 1300. Using examples from around the world, the course will explore such issues as the causes of war and revolution; the impact of religion, science and technology on human communities; the development of global systems of slavery, colonialism, and labor migration; the rise of nationalisms; and perceived differences between "East" and "West," and "tradition" and "modernity." The course will also introduce students to the art and science of historical inquiry using primary sources, maps, pictures, and material culture.
HIST 020.910 History of the United States to 1865
Ohlers
MTWR 4:20-5:55PM
The introductory survey of American history through the Civil War will seek to examine the process by which European, Indian and African cultures came to meet in the New World . It will trace the emergence of distinctly "American" habits of thought, behavior, and political institutions over the course of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries and, finally, will analyze the contradictions within the national fabric that led to the temporary breakup of the union.
HIST 201.920 What were the Crusades?
Novikoff
MTWR 1:00-2:40PM
SEM
This course is offered as an introduction to the history and historiography of the crusades. With the word "crusade" entering into modern political discourse this class may perhaps prove especially relevant to the modern-day history student. The course will discuss both the major crusading expeditions of the Middle Ages (such as the I-V crusades), but also the concept of a crusade as first articulated by Pope Urban II in 1095. Put another way, the course seeks to offer students an introduction to both the social and military history surrounding the crusader movement and the intellectual background to the ideology. Consideration will also be given to the role of women, Jews, and Muslims during the crusading era and how the period helped set the stage for later relations between Europe and the Middle East .
HIST 201.921 Jewish-Christian Relations
Bregoli
TR 5:30-8:40PM
SEM
The interest in the history of Jewish-Christian relations has grown constantly since the Holocaust and as a result of recent efforts at interfaith dialogue. This course offers an introduction to Christian attitudes toward Jews, as well as to changing Jewish perceptions of Christians, from the early Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century. We will examine theological arguments, polemical and apologetical literature, disputations between Jews and Christians, as well as artistic representations. We will also focus on the impact of the Reformation and the Renaissance, early modern eschatological expectations, and the question of religious tolerance. This is a reading intensive course. You will be asked to close-read primary texts for in-class discussion in addition to secondary literature. All texts will be in English. There are no prerequisites for the course, but previous knowledge of European history is desirable.
HIST 203.920 American Racism
Palmer
MW 5:30-8:40PM
SEM
This course will examine and discuss racism as a Western thought developed in fifteenth century Europe and how it was eventually transplanted into pre-colonial (17th century) America. Students will examine and discuss racism as a social construction and do a comparative analysis of racism on these two continents and how racism became a peculiar institution in America and institutionalized throughout the society. We will look at the earliest attempts to resist this notion in colonial America up until the Civil War and then the resurgence of racism in the twentieth century and attempts to resist thereafter, up until today.
