Expanded Course Descriptions - Fall 2012
Fall 2012 (click to go to Summer 2012 listings)
HIS 300-01 RESEARCH SEMINAR
Professor Brian LaPierre
Reg. Code 1543
MWF 10:00-10:50
This course is a boot camp in the basic skills of the historian’s craft. During the course of a rigorous semester, raw students will be transformed into refined historians who can interpret sources critically, argue their positions rationally and write clearly and persuasively. In order to demonstrate their successful metamorphosis, students will be expected to participate actively in class, complete a number of assignments and exercises and to formulate, research, write and rewrite a major historical paper and present it to their classmates. Do you have what it takes to be one of the few and the proud? Take this course and find out.
Course Texts
John H. Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000), ISBN: 9780192853523.
Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2012), ISBN: 9780312610416.
William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style (New York: Longman, 1999), ISBN: 978-0205313426.
Grading
Attendance and Classroom Participation (10%)
Website Critique (10%)
Book Review (10%)
Preliminary Bibliography (5%)
Statement of Research Topic and Research Question (2.5%)
Preliminary Thesis Statement (2.5%)
Peer Review Report (5%)
Research Paper (Draft 15%, Final Version 25%)
Research Presentation (15%)
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HIS 300-02 RESEARCH SEMINAR
Staff
Reg. Code 3527
MW 2:00-3:15
See above for description.
Course Texts
John H. Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000), ISBN: 9780192853523.
Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2012), ISBN: 9780312610416.
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HIS 300-03 RESEARCH SEMINAR
Staff
Reg. Code 6159
TT 9:30-10:45
See above for description
Course Texts
John H. Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000), ISBN: 9780192853523.
Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2012), ISBN: 9780312610416.
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HIS 307-01 AFRICA 1500-PRESENT
Professor Doug Chambers
Reg. Code 6968
TT 2:25-3:40
This course is a general survey of Sub-Saharan African history, and will enable upper-division students to explore key themes in the changing experience of the continent and its peoples from the early modern era through the present. It is designed to give a basic working knowledge of particular regions as well as of general themes and long-term changes. We will cover issues such as identity and ethnicity, slavery and slave-trade, political history and Pan-Africanism, and independence and neo-colonialism. Our emphasis will always be on people and what they did over time, rather than “what was done to them.” Therefore we will focus on African agency throughout the twists and turns of African history since about 1500 CE.
There will be a range of assignments. These will include a library bibliography assignment, several map quizzes, a midterm, a couple of review essays, a current events project, and a take-home final exam essay.
The required text will probably be Kevin Shillington, History of Africa, 2nd ed. (1995).
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HIS 330-01 EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE
Professor Phyllis Jestice
Reg. Code 9150
MWF 9:00-9:50
This course is a study of European history from the fourth century C.E. until the death of German Emperor Henry III in 1056, the first half of the Middle Ages. This was a period of massive change in European society—the western half of the Roman Empire dissolved into a number of states controlled by invading German minorities, who gradually figured out how to create relatively stable states and stop killing each other all the time. The highlights of the course include the establishment of the Germanic states, the spread of Christianity and its implications, the glorious promise of the Carolingian Empire and what came of it, and the rise of a major state in what is now Germany. The central framework of the class will be political history, but we will also look at the culture, intellectual history (yes, even the early Middle Ages had intellectuals!), and general structures of society.
Required books:
Asser. Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (Penguin). ISBN 0140444092
Bitel, Lisa. Landscape with Two Saints. (Oxford UP) ISBN 0195336526
Geary, Patrick. Furta Sacra. (Princeton UP) ISBN 0691008620
Hen, Yitzhak. Roman Barbarians. (Palgrave MacMillan) ISBN 0333786661
Procopius. The Secret History. (Penguin) ISBN 0140455280
Riché, Pierre. Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne. (U. of Pennsylvania Press) (ISBN 0812210964
Grade will be based on the following components:
Midterm and final exam
Two 4-5 page analytical essays based on reading for the course
Frequent quizzes that focus on reading assignments
Attendance and participation
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HIS 333-01 EUROPE IN 19TH CENTURY
Professor Jeff Bowersox
Reg. Code 7109
MW 2:00-3:15
Modern Europe was made in the nineteenth century, and in many ways nineteenth-century Europe made the world we live in today. In this course we will examine Europe's "long nineteenth century" from the French Revolution to the First World War to understand fundamental transformations in politics, culture, economics, and society. We will focus in particular on the making of “Europe” in terms of shared experiences and identities, and we will do so through a wide range of topics – including revolution, reaction, nationalism, modernity, technology, warfare, imperialism, feminism, liberalism, conservatism, and socialism – and we will do so through a focus on both the big decision-makers and average Joes/Janes across the entirety of the continent.
Assessment: 2 exams, research essay, a number of smaller writing assignments
Books:
Balzac, Pére Goriot
Ibsen, A Doll's House
Rapport, Nineteenth Century Europe
Salmi, Nineteenth-Century Europe: A Cultural History
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HIS 349-01 MODERN BRITISH HISTORY
Professor To Be Hired Soon
Reg. Code (not processed yet)
MWF 10:00-10:50
“We may be a small country but we're a great one, too. The country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot, come to that.”
Hugh Grant as the British Prime Minister
Love, Actually (2003)
As the words of Hugh Grant’s fictional Prime Minister eloquently and comically demonstrate, Great Britain has had a profound impact on the world during the last several centuries. The country has produced artistic and political giants, launched industrialization and modern liberal democracy, and forged an Empire on which “the sun never set.” As particularly the latter example demonstrates, Britain’s history has not always been benevolent or proud. Yet it remains a rich and important field for the student of history.
This course is concerned with the social, political, cultural, and imperial history of modern Britain, from the early eighteenth century through to the present day. Using an array of both primary and secondary sources, we will examine many facets of British society, from high politics to popular culture. We will also consider the impact of Britain’s empire, both at home and throughout the world. Finally, we will look at issues of race, class, and gender, and attempt to better understand what it meant to be British, in different historical times and spaces.
Required books:
Levine, Philippa. The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset. (Longman) ISBN 0582472814
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. (Norton) ISBN 0393970124
Sparks, Randy J. The Two Princes of Calabar. (Harvard UP) ISBN 0674032055
Arnstein, Walter. The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in British History. Vol 2: Since 1688. (D.C. Heath & Co.) ISBN 0669246026
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HIS 360-01 MODERN MILITARY HISTORY
Professor Andrew Wiest
Reg. Code 9161
TT 9:30-10:45
This course takes an in-depth look at the development of modern warfare from the growth of national warfare under Napoleon to today’s war on terror. Paying close attention to both societal and tactical developments, the course endeavors to understand military history in the broadest sense. The fist portion of the course investigates the growth of total, industrialized war – focusing on Napoleon and the US Civil War. The course then moves on to a detailed investigation of total war at its height – in World War I and World War II. Next the course investigates the birth of modern limited war in the Cold War era, highlighted by Vietnam. Finally the course investigates the recent Revolution in Military Affairs and the modern technological battlefield.
Students will read four books related to the broad scope of military history. The books include: John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell (an account of trench warfare in World War I); David Glantz, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler; Andrew Wiest, The Boys of ’67: Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam (an investigation of a single company at war); and Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, Cobra II (the authoritative account of the war in Iraq).
Students will produce a book report on each reading. The reports will form 33% of the final grade. Students will take one midterm and a final – each counting for 33% of the final grade.
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HIS 370-01 MISSISSIPPI HISTORY
Professor Bo Morgan
Reg. Code 1544
TT 11:00-12:15
William Faulkner once said that “to understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” If that is true, this course should help you understand the world a lot better. We will trace Mississippi’s story from its early Native American cultures to its current complex, often misunderstood and maligned, engagement with modernity. On the way, we will see that at least parts of it were coveted, claimed, and to some extent governed by France, Britain, and Spain before it became an American territory in 1798 and ultimately a state in 1817. Also, we will encounter, and struggle to understand, land speculation, party and factional politics, banking, cotton, slavery, secession, Civil War, Reconstruction, sharecropping, segregation, populist and progressive reform, migration, industrialization, and a host of colorful personalities.
There is no suitable textbook, but you will read, and be quizzed about, Faulkner’s novel Absalom, Absalom!, Richard Wright’s autobiographical Black Boy, and John Dittmer’s account of the civil rights movement in Local People. The composite score on the reading quizzes will constitute 25 percent of the final grade. The other 75 percent will come from three equally weighted exams on class lectures. Ultimately, we will seek to disprove one Faulkner character’s contention that truly to understand Mississippi, “you’d have to be born there.”
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HIS 373-01 AFRICAN AMER SURVEY 1619-1890
Staff
Reg. Code 9167
MW 2:00-3:15
No further information available at this time.
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HIS 400-01 SENIOR HISTORY SEMINAR
Professor Max Grivno
Reg. Code 4930
TT 11:00-12:15
Slavery: A World History
Overview: Few institutions have had as profound an effect on history as slavery. Indeed, most civilizations have, at various points in their development, embraced slavery. Many of the world’s major philosophies, political systems, and religions have sanctioned the institution. In one of the first legal codes recorded, the eighteenth-century Babylonians enacted a series of laws governing slavery. Later, the Greek philosopher Aristotle justified slavery, claiming that “the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.” Judeo-Christian writers were untroubled by slavery. For example, in the Hebrew Bible the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) are followed immediately by laws governing the treatment of Jewish servants and slaves (Exodus 21:1-11). But slavery was not confined to the western tradition; it flourished among early civilizations in Sub-Sahara Africa, Mesoamerica, and Asia.
Slavery has worn many masks over its long history. Although slaves were always defined as outsiders, the lines between masters and slaves have been drawn in many different ways—slaves might be prisoners of war, adherents of a different faith, or people from different ethnic and racial groups. Most slaves have labored on agricultural estates and in mines, but they also served as administrators and scholars, and gladiators and soldiers. Some have risen to position of prominence in their society. Slavery reached its apogee between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries when some 9 million enslaved Africans were transported across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to toil—and die—in a plantation system whose ideological foundations rested upon racial difference. Although many assumed that slavery had died by the dawn of the twentieth century, it had lost little of its terrible vigor. Today, some 27 million people are held in bondage. Throughout the twentieth century, slave labor was harnessed to a range of economic activities: enslaved people toiled in Soviet gulags, built V-2 rockets at Peenemünde, and, perhaps most commonly, worked in extractive industries and the sex trade.
This course offers a broad overview of slavery from the dawn of human civilization through the present. It examines how slavery emerged in different settings, why people have either challenged or supported the institution, and how the enslaved tested and sometimes broke their shackles. As we explore these questions, students will read and discuss a range of primary and secondary sources, write reviews of books and Internet sites, craft a research project, and make oral presentations of their work.
Required Readings: In addition to book chapters and journal articles that are available on electronic reserves, there are five required books in this course.
Bales, Kevin, Zoe Trodd, and Alex Kent Williamson. Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-85168-641-4.
Dubois, Laurent and John D. Garrigus. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. ISBN: 978-0-312-41501-3.
Engerman, Stanley, Seymour Drescher, and Robert Paquett, eds. Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0-19-289302-5.
Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN: 978-0-19-505326-5.
Shaw, Brent D. Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. ISBN: 978-0-312-18310-3.
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HIS 4/527-01 REFORMATION EUROPE
Professor Phyllis Jestice
Reg. Codes 9165/9166
MWF 1:00-1:50
Sixteenth-century Europe was rocked by an unprecedented series of spiritual, social, and cultural upheavals, during the course of which unquestioned religious truths were overthrown, the unthinkable became everyday reality, and a lot of people got killed. Collectively, this process of transformation can be known as “the Reformation.” But just speaking of “the Reformation” is not enough. What was involved was much more than Martin Luther nailing theses to a church door. This class will consider the context of religious reform—the series of shifts in European technology and consciousness that made a break from medieval Christianity not only imaginable but necessary to part of the populace. We will certainly consider what happened, from Luther’s Wittenberg to Calvin’s Geneva to the creation of the City of God in Münster to deliberations in Rome. But the focus of the class will be “what difference did it make?” What was the impact in Europe when people disagreed with their ruler over religious policy? How did it affect the texture of daily life when governments imposed reform—or ordered its suppression?
Students can expect a midterm and final exam, two 4-5 page papers based on readings for the class, and regular journaling assignments.
Required books:
Hsia, R. Po-Chia, ed. The German People and the Reformation (Cornell UP) ISBN 081494850
Diefendorf, Barbara B. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Oxford UP) ISBN 0195070135
Rummel, Erika, ed. & trans. Scheming Papists and Lutheran Fools: Five Reformation Satires, 2nd ed. (Fordham UP) ISBN 0823214834
Janz, Denis, ed. A Reformation Reader. 2nd ed. (Fortress Press) ISBN 0800663101
Duffy, Eamon. The Voices of Morebath (Yale UP) ISBN 0300098251
Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake (Harvard UP) ISBN 0674007042
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HIS 4/530-01 FRENCH REV & NAPOLEON
Professor Brian LaPierre
Reg. Codes 9154/9155
MWF 11:00-11:50
Course Description
The French Revolution made heads roll and it made hearts flutter and it did both these things, often, at the same time. For all the lives it upturned and social instability it unleashed, the Revolution embodied a promise that, for many, justified the pain – the promise to build a new world of equity, reason and human harmony on top of an old world of political despotism, intellectual ignorance and human despair. That wish to remake and rectify society through revolution has captured the hearts and minds of reformist intellectuals, student radicals, social activists and ordinary citizens not only in Europe but throughout the world and not only in the eighteenth century but throughout the modern era as well. In this course, we will seek to recreate the French Revolution in all its rage and romance and in all its dimensions as a historical moment, social movement, and enduring myth.
Course Texts
Jeremy Popkin, A Short History of the French Revolution (New York: Prentice Hall, 2009), ISBN: 978-0205693573.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), ISBN: 978-0199539024.
Jakob Walter, The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), ISBN: 978-0140165593.
Grading
Two Quizzes (20%)
Three Exams (50%)
Two Papers (30%)
Course Texts for graduate students
Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), ISBN: 978-0691121888.
Lynne Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2004), ISBN: 978-0520241565.
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution (New York: Penguin Classics, 2008), ISBN: 978-0141441641.
William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), ISBN: 978-0198731740.
Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), ISBN: 978-0674016422.
Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007), ISBN: 978-0805082616.
Antoine de Baecque, Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths under the French Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2002), ISBN: 978-0415926171.
David Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of War as We Know It (New York: Mariner Books, 2008), ISBN: 978-0618919819.
Grading for graduate students
Eight Papers (65%)
Oral Exam (25%)
Discussion (10%)
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HIS 436-01 ANCIENT ROME
Professor Miles Doleac
Reg. Code 9454
T 6:30-9:15
This course investigates the institutional, social, and cultural changes in the Roman world from the emergence of Rome as the dominant power in the Mediterranean during her three Punic Wars with Carthage (264-146 BCE) through the civil wars of the first century BCE that culminated in the rise of Augustus to the literal shift of the empire’s political epicenter from Rome eastward to Constantinople by the emperor Constantine in 331. Stress is placed not only upon imperial administration and military endeavors, but on cultural and religious developments, and the social environment of Roman cities.
COURSE OBJECTIVE: Students will be asked to scrutinize, and become conversant in, a variety of primary sources (e.g., histories, imperial biography, poetry, satire, philosophical and religious texts, letters and inscriptions) from the period under investigation in the service of developing their ability to formulate an understanding of Roman history that is supported by primary evidence. Lectures, discussion and reading of secondary scholarship will be used to create a chronological and thematic framework for the course.
GRADING: The student’s grade is based on several short discussion papers that examine particular aspects of Roman history, participation in weekly class discussions, two quizzes, a mid-term exam and a 10-12 page final paper on a topic determined by the student in consultation with the instructor.
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HIS 463-01 CIVIL WAR
Professor Susannah Ural
Reg. Code 9158
MWF 10:00-10:50
The U.S. Civil War Era is one of the most studied periods in American history. Despite this interest, disagreements remain regarding the causes and consequences of the nation’s bloodiest war. This course looks at the divisions that led to the conflict, the war itself, and the difficult period of Reconstruction. Lectures and readings will focus on the defining themes of the era, while examining the impact of the war on the various peoples who comprised the Union and the Confederacy and how they, in turn, influenced the bloody conflict around them. In addition, the class will discuss how scholars have interpreted the war in the past and today. Successful students will emerge with a better understanding of the broad issues that shaped the period, the detailed experiences that defined it, and they will be conversant — in speech and in writing — in this defining American era. Assignments will include two book reviews, a midterm and final examination, and class participation. There is no primary textbook for this course. Instead, readings will come from the supplemental reader, Major Problems, and the additional books listed below.
Perman and Taylor, Major Problems in the American Civil War, 3rd edition
Walther, The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s
McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam
Storey, Loyalty and Loss: Alabama's Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction
Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem
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HIS 473-01 US FOREIGN RELATIONS
Professor Heather Stur
Reg. Code 9153
TT 11:00-12:15
This course explores the history of U.S. foreign relations from the founding of the United States through the 21st century. In this discussion-based class, we will examine the influences of politics, culture, ideas, economics, and social concerns on American relations with the world, and we will use the past to try and come to conclusions about the state of the world today. We will explore the ways in which issues on the home front have shaped U.S. foreign relations, as well as how world events have affected Americans at home.
Grades will be based on several short papers, exams, and class participation.
Required texts:
Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Concise Edition, Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson. ISBN: 978-0618376391
Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, Michael Hunt. ISBN: 978-0300139259 (or older edition ordered in the past so that students have the option to buy it used)
Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, Kristin Hoganson. ISBN: 978-0300085549
Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988, Brenda Gayle Plummer. ISBN: 978-0807854280
Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism, Walter LaFeber. ISBN: 978-0393323696
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HIS 479-01 TOPICS IN AMERICAN HIS
Professor Andrew Haley
Reg. Code 9148
TT 1:00-2:15
Knee-high to a Grasshopper: The History of American Children
Whether they were knee-high to a toad (the original 1814 idiom) or to a grasshopper, children have been at the very center of the American experience. They color the way their parents view the world and, through their own work, play, and politics, have shaped American history. This class examines the role that kids--from infants to teenagers--have played the history of the United States from the founding of the nation to the present day. Topics addressed will include parental anxiety about child raising, child labor, toys, babysitting, children and politics, and children in the mass media.
Students taking the class will read Miriam Forman-Brunell’s Babysitter, Jacobson’s Raising Consumers, Ritterhouse’s Growing Up Jim Crow, Senchez-Eppler’s Dependent States, and Nasaw’s Children of the City as well as a broad selection of historical and primary-source writings. They will also have the opportunity to view some landmark films that provide a window into the life of children. Course requirements include two in-class quizzes, a few short “think pieces,” and one research paper incorporating original research. Class participation is essential. Throughout the semester there will be a number of quizzes and at the end of the semester a major research paper is required.
Graduate students taking this course will have to complete additional readings and additional assignments.
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HIS 479-02 TOPICS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Professor Fred Smith
Reg. Code 9149
MWF 1:00-1:50
“1968, the Year That Rocked the World.”
As one might expect this course is based upon careful consideration of those remarkable events that occurred with such celerity and regularity in 1968. A quick computer inquiry or a glance at Mark Kurlansky’s book, a text for this course, reveals that 1968 was a most phenomenal year. Using the two books (listed below) and the entire 1968 run of “Time Magazine” covers, students will identify and justify a research topic centered or provoked by one of the remarkable incidents of 1968.
The fifteen – twenty page paper must adhere to the following.
1. The paper must argue that the phenomena under review was most important as either a derivative of previous notions, reforms, efforts, people, etc. or that it was most important due to its nature as a causative agent – it spawned new, refocused existing, energized the moribund, etc.
2. Every paper must include the results of at least one oral interview. The interviewee must have some memory of the chosen 1968 phenomena. The value of the information gleaned depends on the careful selection of your interviewees and careful planning before the interview(s)
Grades will be computed as follows:
Four “Times Magazine” quizzes @ 10% = 40%
Research paper = 60%
Required Texts:
Kaiser, Charles. 1968 in America: Music Politics, Chaos, Counterculture, and the Shaping of a Generation.
Kurlansky, Mark. 1968: The Year That Rocked the World
Time Magazine: available through Cook Library: microfilm, hard copy, online.
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HIS 485-01 TOPICS IN WAR & SOCIETY
Professor
Reg. Code 9162
MWF 12:00-12:50
A mystery class!
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HIS 710-01 PHIL & METH OF RESEARCH
Professor Andrew Haley
Reg. Code 1552
TH 6:30-9:15
History 710 is intended to expose graduate students to the techniques that professional historians employ to frame historical problems, collect and analyze sources, and develop an argument. The course has three specific objectives: introduction to the theoretical approaches historians employ; exploration of the methodological approaches historians use; and construction of a research prospectus that will help you for your master’s and/or PhD degree.
This course is a graduate seminar and all students must come to class willing to discuss the assigned topics. It is expected that you will have done the reading and will be prepared to raise questions. In addition to articles provided through the course website, the following books are required reading.
The Houses of History
Anna Green, New York University Press, 1999
From Reliable Sources
Howell and Prevenir, Cornell University Press, 2001
The Pursuit of History
John Tosh, 4th ed., Pearson-Longman, 2006
The Return of Martin Guerre
Natalie Zemon Davis, Harvard, 1984
All students will create an annotated bibliography, biographic essay, and research prospectus. There are also a number of smaller essay assignments due throughout the semester.
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HIS 711-01 SEM IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Professor Susannah Ural
Reg. Code 9159
W 3:50-6:25
This course focuses on the craft of historical research and writing at the graduate level. Students read and discuss a variety of books and articles that discuss this craft and then apply these lessons to their writing. The class and the instructor then critique these assignments, which the student revises and resubmits. The projects include book reviews and other small assignments, but the primary focus of the semester is a major research paper grounded in primary and secondary sources. This can become a chapter in the student’s M.A. thesis or dissertation, or it can be designed as an article that the student submits for publication in an academic journal. There are weekly reading and writing assignments, as well as written and oral critiques by the professor and the entire class. Weekly attendance is mandatory, as is active and respectful participation in seminar discussions.
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HIS 712-01 SEM IN EUR HISTORY
Professor Susannah Ural
Reg. Code 9160
W 3:50-6:25
This course focuses on the craft of historical research and writing at the graduate level. Students read and discuss a variety of books and articles that discuss this craft and then apply these lessons to their writing. The class and the instructor then critique these assignments, which the student revises and resubmits. The projects include book reviews and other small assignments, but the primary focus of the semester is a major research paper grounded in primary and secondary sources. This can become a chapter in the student’s M.A. thesis or dissertation, or it can be designed as an article that the student submits for publication in an academic journal. There are weekly reading and writing assignments, as well as written and oral critiques by the professor and the entire class. Weekly attendance is mandatory, as is active and respectful participation in seminar discussions.
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HIS 725-01 US HISTORIOGRAPHY I
Professor Max Grivno
Reg. Code 1553
W 6:30-9:15
No further information available at this time.
HIS 733-01 SEM IN CENTRAL EUR HIS
Professor Brian LaPierre
Reg. Code 9152
TU 6:30-9:15
Course Description
Stalin was the seminal figure in the history of the Soviet Union. He instituted its state-controlled command economy, collectivized its agriculture and censored its intelligentsia. He unleashed a policy of state terror that executed and incarcerated millions of Soviet inhabitants and created a cult of personality around his supposed universal genius. He expanded the Soviet system into Eastern Europe and East Asia, broke the back of the Wehrmacht and set the Soviet Union on an ultimately self-destructive Cold War competition with American capitalism. Using interpretive models like totalitarianism, neo-traditionalism, revisionism and Soviet subjectivity, this course will examine the personality and policies of the great dictator and the inner operation of the social, economic, political and cultural system that he constructed in the Soviet Union and exported abroad.
Course Texts
Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), ISBN: 978-0674022584.
Norman Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), ISBN: 978-0691147840.
Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov eds., Stalinism as a Way of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), ISBN: 978-0300101270.
David Hoffman, Cultivating the Masses: Soviet Social Intervention in its International Context, 1914-1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), ISBN: 9780801446290.
Oleg Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and his Inner Circle (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2008), ISBN: 9780300110661.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet
Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), ISBN: 9780195050011.
Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), ISBN: 9780674032316.
J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), ISBN: 9780300104073.
Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1990), ISBN: 9780822310853.
Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997), ISBN: 9780520208230.
Grading
Reaction Papers (25%)
Research Paper (40%)
Research Presentation (20%)
Discussion (15%)
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HIS 736-01 MODERN WAR & SOCIETY
Professor Staff
Reg. Code 7929
M 3:50-6:25
Mystery class!
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HIS 771-01 SEM IN U.S. HIS TO 1877
Professor Kyle Zelner
Reg. Code 8359
M 6:30-9:15
Topic—Community Studies: A Lens into the History of Early America
Community studies, a core component of the revolution in social history in the 1970s, are still alive and vital to the study of the past. The study of a single community—not limited to only geographical communities—often offers opportunities to learn about and understand broad historical themes in a unique way. In other words, a community study can be a lens into a broader issue, topic, or subject. There have been community studies which focus on religion, economics, race, gender, conflict, and a whole host of other subjects. In a different vein, a community study can also study the very idea of community and what that means for the people who live there. This graduate course will explore, in the seminar format, some of the most important community studies written in the past forty years, to come to a better understanding of the methodology of community studies, their historiography, their context, and the content they offer about Early America and its many diverse communities.
Some of the books (but certainly not all) we will tentatively read are:
Community as an Ideal:
Kenneth Lockridge. A New England Town: The First Hundred Years, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636-1736. (New York: Norton, 1985).
Community and Religion
David J. Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600-1871. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Community and Class
Billy G. Smith, The Lower Sort: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Community and Gender:
Elaine Forman Crane. Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change, 1630-1800. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998).
Community and Economy:
Cathy Matson. Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
Assignments will tentatively include book reviews of assigned readings, class discussion, a take-home comprehensive final, and a historiographical paper.
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HIS785-01 ORAL HISTORY SEM
Professor Louis Kyriakoudes
Reg. Code 9151
TU 3:50-6:25
I bet you can figure this one out.
Department of History
http://www.usm.edu/history
601.266.4333 • history@usm.edu