2007 | 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
HIST 202.900 The Origins of World War I
Kenney
R 5:30-8:40PM
Counts as a distributional course in History and Tradition for CGS students only.
On a warm Sunday afternoon in June 1914, the nephew of the Austrian Emperor and his wife were assassinated in a provincial capital in southeastern Europe. This set off a series of events that would lead to the First World War, a cataclysm that destroyed the confident, optimistic world of nineteenth century Europe and ushered in the horrors of the Twentieth Century. This course will examine European history from 1871 to 1914, focusing not merely on the traditional diplomatic narrative, but on the way that cultural, economic, and social developments played a role in leading Europe to throw itself off a cliff in the fateful summer of 1914.
HIST 204.900 City and Suburbs in US History
Wilkens
W 6:00-9:10PM
Counts as a distributional course in History and Tradition for CGS students only.
The relationship between cities and their suburbs is one of the most contentious issues on the contemporary political scene, yet it is an issue with deep historical roots. This course will examine the economic, political, and social development of urban and suburban communities in the United States since the 19th century. Major topics to be covered include: cultural perceptions of the city and the countryside, the impact of a changing economy, urban renewal, race and segregation, downtowns and shopping malls, and contemporary policy debates over regionalism and sprawl.
HIST 560.940 Encountering Nature in American Culture
Kropp
W 5:30-8:40PM
MLA SEM
This course will examine some of the ways Americans have "encountered" nature from the colonial era to the present. These encounters, whether physical, intellectual, spiritual, economic, or political, offer useful historical prisms. For the ways in which Americans, whether prominent or not, understood the role and place of nature tells a good deal about what they thought about civilization itself. Their sojourns in nature show up in a diverse array of activities, and not only in the romantic contemplation of wilderness. Clearing a field, taking an overland journey, camping in the woods, shopping at the Nature Company all generate certain perspectives on nature, culture and society at large. This course will concentrate on the ways Americans have narrated these encounters, and how their perspectives have changed over time. Among our topics will be to look at how encountering nature through the lens of settlement, nationalism, intellectual inquiry, corporeal experience, leisure, spirituality, gender, consumption and politics. We will examine a broad spectrum of primary sources, from the works of Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and Gene Stratton Porter to the diaries and scrapbooks compiled by ordinary camping vacationers. We will also read numerous scholarly analyses of these historical encounters.
Special Session (June 21 - August 11, 2007)
HIST 391.950 The Korean War and Its Legacies for U.S. - Korean Relations
Hurst
Crosslisted with: EALC 091.950
This course covers the history of the Korean War in the broadest sense. The post-war developments of the relations between the United States and the Republic of Korea is reviewed with reference to the broader geopolitical and historical context in Northeast Asia . In the postwar era Korean-Japanese relations, while externally peaceful and cooperative, have not been without their problems. We will look at unresolved issues between the two nations as well and the role the U.S. plays in mediating that relationship. The course will involve Korean history, examining conditions on the peninsula during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945, the anticipations of Koreans as Japan 's surrender approached, and internal Korean political cleavages generated by the occupation. It will also involve some diplomatic history, as we consider the emerging tensions between the U.S. and the USSR, the role of the United Nations in the division of Korea into two nations and the prosecution of the war itself, the outbreak of the war, and of course, the decision behind the entrance of the Chinese into the war. It is NOT a simply a military history, in which we analyze strategy and tactics, and follow in detail each and every battle.
First Session
HIST 001.910 Europe in a Wider World
Muskiet
MW 5:30-8:40PM
Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (All Classes)
In the one thousand years from Constantine to Henry VIII, the concept of ‘Europe' underwent many transformations. This course will cover the social, economic, political and cultural developments concomitant with the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, feudalism, the creation of dynastic kingdoms as well as the rise to power of the Roman Catholic Church and its subsequent loss of hegemony in the Reformation. Europe 's various (and often turbulent) relationships with her neighbors to the East, South and West will feature prominently in this discussion. Students will use both primary and secondary sources in this course.
HIST 026.910 Ancient Greece
Teuchtler
MTWR 2:40-4:15PM
Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (All Classes) | Crosslisted with: ANCH 026.910
The Greeks enjoy a special place in the construction of western culture and identity, and yet many of us have only the vaguest notion of what their culture was like. A few Greek myths at bedtime when we are kids, maybe a Greek tragedy like Sophokles' Oidipous when we are at school: these are often the only contact we have with the world of the ancient Mediterranean. The story of the Greeks, however, deserves a wider audience, because so much of what we esteem in our own culture derives from them: democracy, epic poetry, lyric poetry, tragedy, history writing, philosophy, aesthetic taste, all of these and many other features of cultural life enter the West from Greece. The oracle of Apollo at Delphi had inscribed over the temple, "Know Thyself." For us, that also means knowing the Greeks. We will cover the period from the Late Bronze Age, c. 1500 BC, down to the time of Philip of Macedon, c. 350 BC, concentrating on the two hundred year interval from 600-400 BC.
HIST 052.910 Modern Ireland
Burke
MW 5:30-8:40PM
Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (for students admitted before Fall 2006) | Elective for the Major in International Relations
This course is a survey of the political, economic, social and cultural history of Ireland from the late 18th through the late 20th centuries—from the Rebellion of the United Irishmen to the integration of the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland into the European Community. We will examine the patterns of competition, conflict and cooperation amongst the peoples who have inhabited the island of Ireland; and we will consider the often-contested understandings of "Irishness" that have emerged in these contexts.
HIST 126.910 Europe 1789-1890
Coffman
MTWR 1:00-2:35PM
Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (for students admitted before Fall 2006)
This course offers a survey of European politics, society and culture during the "long" nineteenth-century (1789-1890). Students will learn how the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars destroyed the "old regimes" and will discover how the "Europe" we recognize today emerged from that wreckage. Students will obtain an understanding of the major intellectual developments of the period, including Jacobinism, liberalism, romanticism, conservatism, nationalism, socialism and imperialism. We will explore the social and economic consequences of the Industrial Revolution, urbanization, and overseas trade and conquest. Supplemental primary source readings will include excerpts from works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Anatole France, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Darwin and Richard Wagner. This course should be useful not only for European history majors, but also for students who want to acquaint themselves with the historical contexts of much modern philosophy, literature, economics and sociology.
HIST 176.910 Afro-American History, 1550-1880
Engs
MTWR 4:20-8:40PM
Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (for students admitted before Fall 2006)
This course will explore the first 300 years of the African American presence in what became the United States. Beginning with the transatlantic slave trade, it will trace crucial evolutions in African American culture and society through a variety of crises and changes—most notably, the development of a unique form of bondage in the American South, resistance to that system by both free and enslaved African Americans, the mixed blessing that was the U.S. Civil War, and the struggle to given freedom meaning in the years of Reconstruction and its aftermath. The course will conclude with black Americans poised for the Great Migration from the countryside and the South to the cities and to the north and west of the United States.
HIST 206 Technology, Environment and the State in Chinese History
Alger
MW 5:30-8:40PM
This course will use insights from the fields of the history of technology and environmental history to explore key issues related to technological development and environmental transformation during China's history. This course will consider both broad historiographic debates about the relationship between political power, environment, culture and development in China, and also explore specific case studies relating to technology and environment in China. Approximately 2/3 of the course will focus on pre-20th century China, while the remainder will address contemporary issues. Key topics include water control, agriculture and land development, the technology of everyday life in Chinese society before industrialization, and Chinese culture and the human relationship to "nature." The course will conclude by placing in a historical context the political, economic and cultural debates that surround the current Three Gorges dam project.
HIST 320.910 Introduction to Environmental History
Pawley
TR 5:30-8:40PM
Crosslisted with: STSC 179.910, HSOC 179.910
During the last two centuries, a growing industrial society radically altered North American landscapes. Forests poured down rivers as lumber and grew into cities; mountains were blasted into concrete and gravel; lakes and rivers were dammed and channeled. Human networks of canals, railroads, and highways drew new lines across the land, while geometric fields of corn and soy grew up to feed exploding urban populations. Exotic species—corn, cattle, fire-ants and dandelions—transformed ecosystems as they spread across the continent. New ideas of wilderness prompted the creation of specialized "green" spaces, from suburban lawns to Yosemite and Yellowstone. Transformed by humans, these new landscapes structure our lives. In this course, we will use the tools of environmental history to confront these changes, to examine what choices and ideas shaped them, and to think constructively about living in the landscape that we have inherited.
Second Session
HIST 002.920 Europe in a Wider World 1450-1950
Gray
MW 9:00-12:10PM
Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (All Classes)
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." These developments led directly to the expansion of information, increase in brutality, and growth of global interdependence we think of as "modern." This course explores the social and cultural transformations of Europe precipitated by technological change and global exploration in the modern era, 1450-1950. Readings for this course will include historical essays and primary-source documents.
HIST 020.920 History of the United States to 1865: Imagined Worlds and Nations
Cohen
MTWR 2:40-4:15PM
Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (All Classes)
This course charts the trajectory of America, beginning with the Atlantic world and ending with the Reconstruction era, following the tumultuous route from colonial outposts, to the democratic republic, that descended into a bitter Civil War. We will examine the ways that Americans imagined and created first their colonies and then their nation, emphasizing the many, often conflicting pathways they envisioned. We will consider the extent to which conflicts over the meaning of America's boundaries and values—between men and women, people of different races and regions—took root and developed and together we will investigate how ideas about America shaped the creation of the United States, determining who could claim to be an American and who could not. Finally the emphasis on America's diverse and often diverging culture and society will become a means for us to explore the limits and fragility of democracy, both as a way of politically empowering citizens and as a political system that held the nation together.
HIST 027.920 Ancient Rome
Mark
MTWR 2:40-4:15PM
Fulfills History & Tradition Sector (All Classes) | Crosslisted with: ANCH 027.920
The Roman Empire was one of the few great world states-one that unified a large area around the Mediterranean Sea-an area never subsequently united as part of a single state. Whereas the great achievements of the Greeks were in the realm of ideas and concepts (democracy, philosophy, art, literature, drama) those of the Romans tended to be in the pragmatic spheres of ruling and controlling subject peoples and integrating them under the aegis of an imperial state. Conquest, warfare, administration, and law making were the great successes of the Roman state. We will look at this process from its inception and trace the formation of Rome's Mediterranean empire over the last three centuries BC; we shall then consider the social, economic and political consequences of this great achievement, especially the great political transition from the Republic (rule by the Senate) to the Principate (rule by emperors). We shall also consider limitations to Roman power and various types of challenges, military, cultural, and religious, to the hegemony of the Roman state. Finally, we shall try to understand the process of the development of a distinctive Roman culture from the emergence new forms of literature, like satire, to the gladiatorial arena as typical elements that contributed to a Roman social order.
HIST 051.920 Britain Since 1688
Allport
MTWR 1:00-2:35PM
Fulfills Distributional Course in History & Tradition (for students admitted before Fall 2006)
At the end of the seventeenth century ‘Britain' did not exist except in a geographical sense. During the following hundred years, however, the four countries of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were melded into a United Kingdom which became not only one of the European great powers, but also a global hegemon in its own right. This course will examine the creation of the UK and its progress through centuries of war, industrialization, and profound social and political change. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, including contemporary fiction and drama, we will chart the development of the ideas of British identity and nationhood, from Marlborough and Swift to Tony Blair and the Spice Girls.
HIST 204.920 A History of Mexicans in America
Alvarez
TR 6:00-9:10PM
SEM
Hispanics and Latinos represent the fastest growing minority group in the United States—approximately sixty percent of whom are of Mexican descent. Mexican Americans are distinct from other ethnic or racial groups, while also being a heterogeneous population within the United States. This lecture course introduces students to major themes in the history of Mexicans in America since 1848. Our exploration of that history includes discussions of social, political, and economic conditions Mexicans and Mexican Americans have confronted examinations of how those conditions differ over time and between regions, and explorations of important issues in contemporary Mexican American history. We will survey a variety of primary and secondary sources from different mediums to gain a better understanding of Mexican-origin populations as immigrants to the United States; internal migrants within the U.S., and settled residents and citizens throughout the nation.
