HIST Courses

For the most updated list of courses offered and more information including course times, locations, and enrollments, please see SIS or Lou's List. Faculty information can be viewed in the Faculty Directory.

HIST 2214: The Cold War

Hitchcock

Course Topic: Global politics, 1945-1990.

An exploration of the geopolitical and ideological conflict that shaped world affairs from 1945 to 1990. Topics include: the origins of the cold war; the division of Europe; the 'hot wars' in Asia; the rise of the Third World; the impact of the cold war on the home front, from McCarthyism to Civil Rights; the rise of dissident movements; the unraveling of the cold war order; and the meaning of the cold war today.

HIST 3559: New Course in General History

Leonard

Course Topic: Conquest of India: Birth of Modern Imperialism

This course takes as its subject the early conquests and consolidation of the British Empire in India, above all in the critical region of Bengal. As such, it focuses on the intersection of what are typically treated as distinct historical vectors: 1) territory-based South Asian history, typically taught in sequence—ancient, medieval, and modern; and 2) the history of early modern European seaborne exploration, expansion, trade, and conquest. At the same time, the course will take up as a central concern the emergence of Eurocentric historical dynamics, as the dynamism emanating from the Atlantic world system comes to draw the entire globe into its purview. This fact is signalized in the dumping of East India Company tea in Boston Harbor and in the crisis of the Enlightenment, something thinkers such as Adam Smith and Denis Diderot each attempted to address. The conquest of India will thus be treated as a crucial moment when the early modern Atlantic world bursts its bounds. Our story picks up with the “crisis” or (as historians increasingly view it) the inflection point of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century—the decline of centralized authority emanating from Delhi, the emergence of regional states and regional variations upon a broadly “Mughal” political culture in the Indus and Gangetic river valleys, and emerging threats at the periphery, especially the Afghans and the Marathas in the Deccan, powers who will eventually meet outside the gates of Delhi at the Third Battle of Panipat (1761). It will then take up the emergence of seaborne trade to the East Indies from Europe, the rise of the great East India companies (especially the latecomers, the English and the French), how those companies operated on the Asian mainland, particularly on the Indian subcontinent, and how the subcontinental trade came to fit within broader military and commercial strategies. The second half of the course would be devoted to an in-depth study, based chiefly on primary sources, of the emergence in the second half of the 18th century of the English East India Company as a major territorial power in India, defeating in the process other Europeans (Dutch and French), other international merchant princes (Armenians), as well as (some) late Mughal officials. Central to the course will be the questions: What is distinctive in modern world history about East India Company imperialism in India? Whether (and how) the British empire in India grows out of, or disrupts, the region's prior historical dynamics? And, How and to what extent were the challenges the "India Question" posed addressed, postponed, or simply avoided in the crisis of the British Empire generally associated with the American Revolution and the emergence of a "second" British Empire in the period 1756-1776?

HIST 4501: Major Seminar: 1944. The Ideological Origins of Our Times

Owensby

An intensive consideration of markets, society, and capitalism through three seminal texts, all published in 1944: Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, and Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery.

HIST 4511 - HIST 5559 - RELJ 5559: Race, Religion, and Rights in Global Perspective

Loeffler

Can international law check the modern spread of racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia? Or is international law itself compromised by its origins in Western imperialism and nationalism? Since the early twentieth century, international lawyers, professional diplomats, and political activists have consistently dreamed of outlawing racial and religious hatred, along with related forms of intolerance and prejudice. This new interdisciplinary course surveys those attempts to define and proscribe racial and religious hatred from World War I down to the present. Our goal is to examine both how advocates and academicians have imagined and debated the interrelated categories of race and religion in international law – and the question of law’s horizons and limits in confronting difference itself. Our course will follow a broad periodization of three eras. We will begin with the diplomatic efforts to ban racial discrimination and build international minorities protection at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. From there we will move on to the 1940s and 1950s, examining the rise of international human rights law in relation to genocide, Western ecumenicalism, anticolonialism, and nationalism. We will conclude with an extended look at the attempts to construct two international legal conventions concerning racism and religious intolerance during the heyday of decolonization and the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s. Our goal in the third section will be to answer a deceptively simple question: Why did the United Nations successfully create an International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 1965 that has become a core instrument of international law, while the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief failed to pass into law? A particular focus of our course will be to use the historical case of antisemitism, an “exceptional” form of ideological animus that does not fall neatly into either the categories of racism or religion-based hatred, in order to probe the definitional problems in reducing any particular form of identity-based discrimination into law. We will also comparativize antisemitism through discussion of Islamophobia, and we will put both of those categories into explicit dialogue with color-based racism and misogynism. Two special features attend this course. First, this course is its development in the context of the University of Virginia Race, Religion, and Global Democracy Lab. Students will be invited to participate informally in the work of this growing initiative to develop multidisciplinary scholarship using podcasting, digital humanities, and public-facing scholarly fora along with collaborative student-faculty research. Second, the course is structured as a hybrid 4000-level and 5000-level seminar, with an enrollment divided between advanced history department majors (HIST 4511), and graduate students in History (HIST 5559) and Religious Studies (RELJ 5559). There will be different requirements for the undergraduate and graduate cohorts.

HIST 4991: Distinguished Majors Special Seminar

Lambert

Open only to fourth-year students in the Distinguished Majors Program in History. In this seminar, students will write and revise their DMP theses.

HIST 5000: Introduction to Scholarly Editing

Stertzer

Digital editing has come to represent an expansive range of approaches, procedures, and goals for what, at present, is synonymous with a web-based delivery of edited content. Though this definition focuses on the medium of access, and how it has changed from print to digital, the scholarly editor's responsibilities have remained unchanged; those engaged in editing historical and literary materials both seek to make objects accessible and to provide contextualization for their interpretation.

This course will explore all aspects of conceptualizing, planning for, and creating a scholarly digital edition. It provides a basic introduction to the various types of digital editions, the practice of editing in the digital age, and a survey of the many digital tools available to serve project goals. Approaching a digital edition means taking time to think about how end-users will want to work with a particular edition. Beginning with the research and analytical needs of end-users in mind, editors are better able to develop effective editorial strategies that will result in a dynamic, useful, and usable, digital edition. In this course, students will engage in hands-on learning and group discussions related to project conceptualization, editorial policies and processes, and the selection and use of digital tools that can serve the needs of researchers and other end-users.

This course is designed to do two things: 1) it gives a very practical introduction to working with historical documents by showing students how scholarly editions are produced through hands-on work. You will learn the process of document collection and control; to read carefully and precisely, and transcribe texts accurately; strategies for document selection and organization; to research thoroughly for context, and construct annotations, indexes, glossaries, and data visualizations; digital project/edition conceptualization, design, and management; and grant proposal planning and writing. 2) It gives a theoretical basis for understanding the abstract questions that arise when working with old texts—What role does the scholar play in interpreting the document? How much should s/he interfere with the text to make it understandable? What are the challenges and opportunities of digital texts/editions for the reader and the editor? How can digital tools (both established and experimental) be used to make historical texts discoverable and intellectually accessible? What can editors and digital humanists do to ensure long-term preservation and sustainability of digital editions?

HIST 8001: MA Essay Writing

Rossman

Writing of the MA essay (for second-semester History graduate students)

HIST/AMST 3559: Cultures of U.S. Imperialism

Von Eschen

Course Topic: Cultural History of Imperialsm

Our inquiry will focus on the intersection of culture and politics as we chart U.S. imperial engagements and shifting U.S. relationship with the world from the late nineteenth century to the present. Exploring popular culture as a critical space of meaning making, we will pay particular attention to the role of race, gender, and sexuality in constructing power relations. We will consider cartoons, film, music, and art, and later digital media including video games, as spaces where U.S. foreign relations are imagined, enacted, and contested.

HIST/AMST 5559: Transnational Radicalism; Haymarket to Pussy Riot 2019

Von Eschen

Course Topic: History Transnational Radicalism

Transnational Radicalism from Haymarket to Pussy Riot This course will survey a broad range of radical movements including late nineteenth century movements that sought alternatives to capitalism, racism, and sexism; mid-twentieth century anti-colonial, civil rights, peace and war-war movements; and late twentieth-century and twenty-first century movements centered on environmental justice, human rights, and economic, racial and gender equality. Broadly considering radicals as thinkers, activists, and artists who attempted to understand the “root” of injustice and inequality, and to provide alternative visions of society, we will approach these movements through a consideration of their key ideas and critiques, their visions for a better world, and the music, art, and culture of the movements. In addition to coming to class prepared to discuss the weeks readings, music and art, all students will do a final project on a particular radical formation.

HIST 5559: Race, Religion, and Rights in Global Perspective

Loeffler

Can international law check the modern spread of racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia? Or is international law itself compromised by its origins in Western imperialism and nationalism? Since the early twentieth century, international lawyers, professional diplomats, and political activists have consistently dreamed of outlawing racial and religious hatred, along with related forms of intolerance and prejudice. This new interdisciplinary course surveys those attempts to define and proscribe racial and religious hatred from World War I down to the present. Our goal is to examine both how advocates and academicians have imagined and debated the interrelated categories of race and religion in international law – and the question of law’s horizons and limits in confronting difference itself.

 

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