HIUS Courses

Levy

Course Topic: Global American Capitalism

This course examines the history of global American capitalism from the period of the nation’s founding through the present. Over the course of the semester, students will gain familiarity using a variety of historical approaches to answer questions like: What is capitalism? When is it American capitalism, as opposed to just capitalism? How have racism, sexism, and other systems of power shaped global American capitalism, and vice versa? And many more.

Levy

In recent years, the status of the United States as a global leader, including in economic matters, has come under question. Still, the United States remains deeply embedded in global networks of capital and trade. This course examines the history of global American capitalism from the period of the nation’s founding through the present. It addresses questions such as: What is capitalism? When is it American capitalism, as opposed to just capitalism? How has American capitalism functioned in a global marketplace? And vice versa, how has global capital affected Americans living at home and abroad? Students will practice answering these and other questions using a historical approach that includes working with archival documents including financial data, advertisements, and other kinds of corporate records. The history of global American capitalism goes beyond recording the activities of individual entrepreneurs and companies, but includes accounting for the ways cultures, including our own, deeply imbued with ideas about race, gender, religion, etc., have shaped the values and value of American capitalism.

Zunz

This course is an interpretive survey of American History covering the fifteen decades since the end of the Civil War. The main topics are the creation of a huge capitalist market economy, the ascent of the U.S. to world power and engagement in world affairs, and the many challenges of keeping a mass society democratic. There are two lectures and a discussion section each week. While a textbook supplies background, documents and iconography selected from primary sources emphasize the diversity of this nation’s past and highlight conflicting viewpoints. The heart of the class is the students’ engagement with the documents and iconography, in light of the lectures, and active participation in weekly discussions.

Varon

This course explores military events and developments from the period of the North American colonial wars through the end of the 19th Century. It combines lectures and discussion sections to address such topics as the debate over the role of military forces in a democracy, the interaction between the military and civilian spheres in American history, and the development of a professional army and navy. Although this is not a course on battles and generals, significant time in class will be devoted to crucial events and leaders in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the war with Mexico, the Civil War, the war with Spain, and conflicts between the United States government and its citizens and Native Americans. Students should emerge from the course with an understanding of the centrality of military affairs to the history of the American nation.

Janney

This course will examine the causes, fighting, and outcomes of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The course combines lectures, readings, films, and discussion to address such questions as why the war came, why the United States won (or the Confederacy lost), and how the war affected various elements of American society. The principal goal of the course is to provide students with an understanding of the scope and consequences of the bloodiest war in our nation's history--a war that claimed between 620,000 and 700,000 lives, freed nearly 4,000,000 enslaved African Americans, and settled definitively the question of whether states had the right to withdraw from the Union.

Balogh

This course will examine how Americans experienced some of the major events that shaped their lives. We will view what millions of Americans did by watching feature films, news reels, and footage from popular television shows and news broadcasts. We will also read primary and secondary texts that explore among other topics, the domestic impact of World War II, America's reaction to the atomic bomb, the rise of the military-industrial-university complex, the emergence of the Cold War, the culture of anxiety that accompanied it, suburbanization, the "New Class" of experts, the Civil Rights movement, changing gender roles in the work place and at home, the origins and implications of community action and affirmative action, the War in Vietnam, the Great Society, the counterculture, Watergate, the environmental movement, challenges to the authority of expertise, the decline of political parties, structural changes in the economy, the mobilization of interest groups from labor to religious organizations, the emergence of the New Right, challenge to big government, and the emerging role of digital media in politics. I will lecture on Mon and Wed. and discussion sections will meet later in the week to review assigned readings, films, and other materials. There will be a mid-term and final exam, one five to seven page paper and a group project. You will also be quizzed on the readings at the start of each discussion section. Readings will average about 125 pages a week. There will also be a required film each week that can be viewed through on-line subscription services or at the Library.

Milov

This course surveys dramatic transformations in US politics, society and culture since World War II. We will be guided by a set of questions that engage ideas about citizenship, international power, race, political parties, the structure of the economy, and identity: How has the United States shaped and been shaped by the global order during and after the Cold War? How have Americans advocated for rights and personal liberation, expanding the fabric of citizenship to include different kinds of identities? How have the parties changed—and what social, legal, and demographic forces forced these changes? To answer these questions we will read scholarly accounts of modern America, but we will also engage with a range of primary sources like newspapers, political reports, television, movies, and music.

Taylor

This course examines the expansion of the United States beyond the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, from 1800 into the twentieth century. It also explores the response of, and impact on, the native and Hispanic peoples who possessed that land - as well as the Asian peoples who migrated eastward across the Pacific to settle in the region. And we will consider the generation of new myths of American nationhood and character from the conquest of this region. There will be two lectures and one discussion section per week. The course features two collections of primary sources, and three books by historians. There will be a paper built through three installments as well as a mid-term and a final exam.

Gilliam

This three-credit course looks at Virginia's social, political, and economic history from early colonization until the end of the Gilded Age. The class will consider the following broad questions: (1) Why was the rise of an ideology of liberty and equality in Virginia accompanied by the rise of slavery? (2) How did wealthy planters and "common" people alike develop the radical political ideas that led them to revolution? (3) What roles did government play in the state economy? (4) What efforts did Virginians make to rid their state of slavery, and make the electorate as well as legislative representation more democratic, prior to the Civil War? (5) How did Virginians let themselves get drawn into the Civil War? (6) How did some Virginians work toward emancipation of enslaved African-Americans and liberal political reconstruction of the state in the 19th century while others tried to thwart such efforts? The course will devote the first three weeks of the class to the colonial period, and the balance of the semester to a deep-dive into the statehood period 1776-1900. Readings will average fewer than 125 pages per week. The principal readings will include: excerpts from Ronald L. Heinemann, et al., Old Dominion/New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia, 1607-2007; portions of Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery/American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia; Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832; William A. Link, Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia; and Elizabeth R. Varon, Appomattox: Victory, Defeat and Freedom at the End of the Civil War. There will be a short-answer mid-term exam and a single-essay final exam. There will be a short (2-3 page) writing exercise early in the semester to acclimate students to writing history based upon primary archival sources, such as those housed in the Special Collections Library. A major portion of each student's final grade will be based a 10-12 page term paper based on original research in primary source documents on a topic of the student's choice. Students will submit multiple drafts of the term paper during the final four weeks of the semester to obtain advice and guidance from the instructor. The class will meet twice each week. At each meeting, about an hour will be devoted to lecture and 15 minutes will be devoted to guided class discussions of the readings and other material.

Thomas

This course examines the history of the American business enterprise from the workshop to the multi-national corporation. The trend in recent business history research has been to emphasize the genealogy of the contemporary business organization. In part, we shall follow this trend and examine legal, political, economic, and institutional factors as they have helped to shape business enterprise. We shall also be discussing the rise of American business in a wider context, looking particularly at the relationship between government and the corporation. American business history is traditionally taught by the case study method; we will operate within tradition to an extent by focusing on the experiences of key individuals and businesses and relating them to problems and issues inherent in the rise of managerial capitalism. There are five books assigned for this course: Alfred D. Chandler. Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977); James Willard Hurst, Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century United States (Madison, 1955); Harold Livesay, Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business (New York, 1975); Alfred P. Sloan, My Years with General Motors (New York, 1990); Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York, 1911). Other assigned readings are available in a course packet. Readings average 150 pages per week. The course requirements are a midterm and a final. The first exam sequence will consist of an in-class exam (30% of the final grade) and a take-home essay (20%). The second exam sequence will also have take-home (20% of the final grade) and in-class components (30%).

Harold

This course examines the economic, cultural, and political lives of the US working class from the end of the Civil War to the present. Over the course of the semester, students will analyze how laboring women and men both shaped and were shaped by the rise of big business during the Gilded Age, the social upheavals of the World War I era, the economic hardships brought about by the Great Depression, the social policies of the New Deal, the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, and continuing debates over the meanings of work, citizenship, and democracy. Significant attention will be given to the organizations workers created to advance their economic interests. Thus, this course will explore the success and failures of the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Communist Party, the SEIU, and various Living Wage Coalitions( including those at UVA), among other groups. A major issue to be explored in our discussions of working-class movements will be the ways laboring people have been divided along racial, gender, ethnic, and regional lines. Since working-class history is about more than the struggle of laboring people to improve their material condition, this course will also focus topics such as workers’ leisure activities, customs and thoughts, and religious beliefs. Our readings and lectures will also look at workers’ contributions to the nation’s vibrant cultural landscape. For example, we will examine how artists from working class communities have shaped popular music, from the songs of Motown to hip-Hop productions of the 1980s.

Frank

Course Topic: Sexual Politics in the 20th Century United States

Who should be educated about sex and how? Who has the right to be sexual and with whom? How can the media portray sex? Questions such as these have underpinned intense political struggles in the 20th century United States. In this course, we will explore how sexuality has been central to American culture and politics through topics such as: same- and opposite-sex sexualities, trans identities, reproduction, commercialized sexualities, and inter-racial sexualities.

Gaines

This course surveys the major themes and issues in African American history from emancipation to the present, encompassing Reconstruction, the onset of state-sanctioned Jim Crow segregation, and the modern civil rights movement. We will examine the presence of African Americans in the American past, and the significance of that past for the present. In addition to works of historical scholarship, readings will be interdisciplinary, including fiction, poetry, non-fiction essays, and documentary films.

Balogh

Course Topic: Not in My Backyard: Citizen Participation at the Local Level, 1960 to the Present

This course is organized around research and writing related to the history of local citizen participation in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. We will begin by reading about major social movements like Civil Rights, the Women’s Movement and the Environmental Movement, in the 1960s and 70s, and Right to Life Movement in the Eighties. Using similar techniques, but more focused on place and property, we will look at the emergence a host of more localized grass roots movements, that emerged in the 1970s and that remain a powerful form of political expression today, like the resistance to an Amazon headquarters in Queens. Pejoratively labeled “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) we will study the dynamics of this explosion of grass roots participation and its evolution, including the emergence of YIMBYs (Yes in My Backyard.) Every student will be required to write a paper based upon primary research. They will also master the secondary literature related to their topic. The final length of the paper should be approximately twenty-five pages, not including footnotes. The course will meet to discuss common readings for the first four weeks and then students will meet individually with me to discuss their research and writing. We will meet as a group to present a précis of each student’s research proposal and a draft of the final paper. Students will be graded upon their participation, the quality of their research and the quality of their final research paper.

Zunz

Course Topic: Exploring American Democracy, with Alexis de Tocqueville as Guide

In this class, we read Tocqueville’s classic Democracy in America (1835, 1840) as starting point to write research papers on American democracy. This is an exceptionally rich source of ideas. The young French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville observed America with such brilliance during his American journey of the 1830s that he has helped Americans define themselves. Tocqueville is recognized as one of the world’s great theorists of democracy and the first to explore the importance of voluntary associations in American life. Readers of his Democracy in America confront vital issues of political moderation, racial integration, social justice, progress, equality, and the meaning of liberty in democracy. The class consists of weekly discussions of selected texts and preparation of a substantial seminar paper.

Dierksheide

Course Topic: Slavery and the Founders

This seminar examines the attitudes of three Founders--James Madison, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson--toward slavery while also paying equal attention to the hundreds of enslaved people that these men owned at their respective plantations: Highland, Monticello, and Montpelier.  Class visits to these sites, as well as an interdisciplinary focus that will include oral history, archaeology, and documentary evidence will help inform students' research and written work.

Hill Edwards

Course Topic: African-American History

This seminar will introduce graduate students to major trends in African-American history, from the colonial period to the end of Reconstruction. Important themes and debates will be highlighted, including the political, economic, social, and cultural experiences of people of African descent in the colonies that would become the United States of America. In this course, students will read major, new, and provocative work, including the scholarship on women and gender, economic history, legal history, and the history of the African disaspora. This seminar will help students define specific interests within the field and aid in preparation for examinations. Students will spend the semester writing a 15-20 page historiographical essay.

Peterson

This class explores the legal world of the late eighteenth century, from the period just before the Revolution to the ratification of the Constitution. Among other topics, the class covers debates over the economic and political conditions that shaped the constitutional moment, and the implications of those debates for constitutional interpretation. This course is cross-listed with LAW 9301.

Lovelace

Course Topic: Legal History of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement

This course will explore how actors involved in the U.S. civil rights movement engaged the Constitution and how these encounters shaped constitutional doctrine, social institutions, public discourse, and the movement itself. We will also examine the processes of mobilization and counter-mobilization, interrogate rights-based approaches to reform, and consider how the movement spurred constitutional change outside of the Article 5 process. The course is cross-listed with LAW 7180.

Taylor

This course examines the scholarship on the cultural frontiers between expanding European empires and the diverse native peoples of North America. It explores the epistemological issues raised by attempting to understand native peoples within a cultural heritage - history - derived from the European colonizers. We will read about fifteen books and thirty articles to get the full range of the relevant scholarship. This course seeks to prepare graduate students for comprehensive exams in the early republic. Each student will prepare six precis of selected readings and one review essays.

Janney

This course is designed to help students craft an undergraduate course on the first half of the US Survey (to 1877). Through both reading and discussion, we will focus on the big questions of the period and consider the various ways in which one might convey a narrative (or narratives) to undergraduate students. Attention will be given to pedagogy and content, with an emphasis on best practices in the classroom. By the end of the semester, students will be expected to have designed their own course complete with a syllabus, assignments, and several lectures.

Milov

Course Topic: History of the United States in the 1970s

In this course we will try to better understand the social, cultural, political and economic dynamics that linked the Great Society to the Reagan Revolution. To do so, we will engage with a variety of sources: we will read primary sources and scholarly texts; we will watch movies and television, examine advertisements, and listen to music. Fundamentally our goal is to understand not only the 1970s but ourselves—as people shaped by the ideas, institutions and battles of the decade.