300-400 level courses are on special topics and are more advanced. They often presuppose some basic knowledge in the field and should be more difficult courses than courses at the 1-199 levels. The department is trying to insure that some 400 level courses, although substantially more difficult, are also small in size; they thus may be suitable for graduate students.
HIST 485 Emancipation and Its Aftermath, 1861 - 1900
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
SEM
This seminar is intended for students with some background in U.S. and/or African American history and a specific interest in the evolution of black society and culture between the flawed emancipation of the Civil War era and the beginnings of the Great Migration. This is a crucial period for understanding the re-configuration of national racism after emancipation and for insight into the values, perceptions, and goals that African Americans brought with them as they fled the South for the North and West. During these years they were no longer slaves, but they were still very much "oppressed black Southerners." What did these realities mean? For them and for the white majority of America?
Attention will be given to the evolution of black community, politics and economy from the War, through Reconstruction, and the renewed oppression that followed thereafter. Attention will also be given to the impact of external forces—such as the triumph of Northern capital, the rise of social Darwinism and of the new American imperialism.
