Look For These Courses
The following new courses will be offered by the Department of History in the Spring 2010 semester. For a complete list of courses offered by the Department of History please visit WebSTAC.
L22 2030 History: Freshman Seminar: The Enigma of Thomas Jefferson
David Konig
Monday
3-6pm
An introduction to the study and use of history through an intensive examination of the lfe and times of an individual--Thomas Jefferson. Who was Thomas Jefferson, and why has his reputation undergone so many changes? How did this hero of abolitionists and a man hated by slaveholders in his own lifetime become a figure derided today for being a slaveholder with an African American mistress? How did a champion of small government become a hero of the New Deal and then an inspiration for anarchists? Do these transformations merely prove that the study of history is more a study of the people who write history--including ourselves--than of the past? This course is designed to understand how professional historians and the general public discover and use the past. Class meetings will be devoted to examination of narrative materials, critical scholarship, and primary sources.
L22 301A/02 History: Historical Methods
The Psychology of Race and Class in 20th Century America
Sonia Lee
Wednesday
2-5pm
Americans conceptualizations of race and class hierarchies have shaped fundamental social relationships. Discourses of poverty and racism, however, have always been dominated by moral assessments of those who are deemed to be worthy and unworthy of aid rather than purely economic calculations of highest productivity. This course will analyze the shifts that have occurred within Americans understanding of race and poverty throughout the twentieth century, paying special attention to the rise of psychology as a field of knowledge that has increasingly dominated changing definitions of racial differences, racial identities, family relationships, political protest strategies, and the moral worth of the poor. A fundamental question that will guide this course will be: has psychology become a tool of liberation or has it simply become a new tool of oppression for poor racial/ethnic minorities? This course will utilize a number of primary and secondary sources designed to help students learn how to read, write, and research as a historian.
L22 3225 History/EnSt/LatAm: Environmental History of Latin America
M. Andrea Campetella
Tuesday/Thursday
2:30-4
Environmental history is a relatively new approach to Latin American history that focuses on the relationship between nature and society. Taking nature seriously forces us historians to revise our understanding of social change, the rise and fall of civilizations, and contemporary problems of political instability. And by putting current environmental debates into historical context, we can contribute to a fuller understanding of the complexity of environmental problems. Topics studied will include: the relation between desertification and imperial domination in colonial Mexico; the role of tropical products such as bananas and coffee in nation-building and economic development in the Caribbean; the different way in which human groups have used the Brazilian Atlantic forest throughout time; and the challenges and dilemmas of contemporary environmental policies and politics.
L22 3444 History/EuSt/IAS: Thinking the Post-War World: Intellectual & Cultural History since the Holocaust
Eric Oberle
Monday/Wednesday
1-2:30
This lecture course examines European and world thought from the intellectual and artistic response to Nazism to the postmodern and cosmopolitan globalism of the present. Topics include: art and political commitment before and after World War II; existentialism in France; the intellectual responses to the Cold War, such as the theory of totalitarianism; the "Critical Theory" of the Frankfurt School and the rise of Marxist humanism; the student movements of 1968; the critique of technological society; structuralism and post-structuralism; contemporary feminist theory; postmodernism and post-colonial theory.
L22 3520 History/IAS/LatAm: Conquest & Colony: Cultural Encounters in the New World
M. Andrea Campetella
Tuesday/Thursday
11:30-1
This course will study the contrasting patterns of colonization in the New World, as this hemisphere was once termed by Europeans. Traditionally, such comparative studies have focused on the cultural differences among the European colonizers--the English, the French, the Spanish, and so on. As the different groups confronted and dealt with each other in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they established widely varying patterns of living that would impact the histories of their descendents for generations to come.
L22 49MG History: Advanced Seminar: Metropolitan Urbanism
Maggie Garb & Eric Mumford
Thursday
1-4
This team-taught advanced seminar will address the history and theory of a variety of metropolitan environments from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Readings will move from the nineteenth century state-centered urbanism of Paris or Vienna, through the colonial remaking of cities like Manila or Caracas and their connections to urban reform and the City Beautiful movement in the U.S., then through the rise of planning, zoning, auto-centered cities, federal interventions like urban renewal, the emergence of the preservation movement and new urbanism.
L22 49SC History/IAS: Advanced Seminar: Incredible India?
Shefali Chandra
Tuesday
3-6
Today, India's Department of Tourism works to attract visitors from far and wide with the slogan, "Incredible India!"--a publicity campaign that extols the country's exceptionalism. Yet, images of India as unique and exotic, exceptional yet unchanging, are anything but new. They have been absolutely foundational to everything from British explorer Richard Burton's translation of the Kama Sutra, to the hit TV series "Jewel in the Crown," the global explosion of Bollywood, the scholarly study of the "subaltern," and the proliferation of yoga studios in North America and Europe! How, and why, did India become 'incredible'? Reaching to intellectual and social history, and to cultural studies methods, this course explores the mechanisms for the production of popular perceptions about India. While students are not expected to have prior knowledge of Indian history, the course requires independent research projects on a range of historical and contemporary issues. NO prior course work in South Asian history is required, but students should be familiar with conducting independent research.