Fall 2015
This course examines the black experience in America from emancipation to the present. We will study African Americans’ long struggle for freedom and equality, and learn about their contributions to and influence on America’s social, political, and economic development. We will also study the history of race and racism, explore how its meaning and practice has changed over time, and how it shaped—and continues to shape—the lives of all persons in America. Central to this course is the idea that African American history is American history, and that the American experience cannot be understood apart from the struggles and triumphs of African Americans. Course topics include: emancipation and Reconstruction; the age of Jim Crow; the Great Migration and the New Negro; the civil rights and Black Power movements; mass incarceration; and struggles for justice and equality in the present. In addition to readings from assigned books, students will analyze and interpret a variety of primary sources, including film, music, and visual art. Class meetings will alternate between lectures and discussions. Assignments will include a midterm, a final exam, two topical essays, and short responses to weekly readings.
Fall 2015
Fifty years after the 1960s, Americans still debate what and how much changed during the era, as well as whether what changed was good for the United States or bad for it. This course will explore what was at stake in the legal, social, political, cultural, and intellectual developments of the "long 1960s"—roughly from the mid-1950s until the mid-1970s. Topics covered will include the legal history of the African American and other civil rights movements; free speech and political protest; the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement; the student movement and the New Left; Second Wave Feminism, the sexual revolution, and the gay rights movement; the Warren Court criminal procedure revolution; Black Power and radical movements; poverty, alcoholism, and skid row; hippies and the counterculture; and the rise of the New Right. Grades will be based on weekly 1-2-page papers responding to the readings and on class participation.
Fall 2015
Prerequisite: HIEU 2031, HIEU 3559 (Hellenistic) or equivalent; or instructor permission.
This course examines the political, military, and social history of Greece from the end of the Persian Wars (479 BC) to the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BC). This is the age of the creation of Athenian democracy and Athenian Empire, as well as of the growing tensions with Sparta that eventually resulted in the Peloponnesian War. Understanding these developments is crucial to understanding all Greek history. This class will proceed by discussion, including discussion of five five-page papers written by each student (due variously throughout the term) distributed before the class in which they will be discussed. There will also be two exercises (on working with ancient evidence) and a final exam.
Undergraduates are permitted to take this class as a graduate class or for 4511 credit; in the latter case they would write four rather than five papers but otherwise fulfill the stated requirements of the course.
Reading is substantial, averaging approximately 200 pages/week, and will be drawn from the following:
- The Landmark Thucydides (R. Strassler, ed.; Free Press)
- Plutarch, Greek Lives (Oxford World Classics)
- J. M. Moore, Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy (California)
- Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History vols. 4-5 (Loeb/Harvard)
- Xenophon, Hellenica (Penguin)
- C. Fornara, Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge)
- and readings on the Collab course website
Fall 2015
Prerequisite: HIEU 2031, HIEU 3559 (Hellenistic) or equivalent; or instructor permission.
This course examines the political, military, and social history of Greece from the end of the Persian Wars (479 BC) to the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BC). This is the age of the creation of Athenian democracy and Athenian Empire, as well as of the growing tensions with Sparta that eventually resulted in the Peloponnesian War. Understanding these developments is crucial to understanding all Greek history. This class will proceed by discussion, including discussion of five five-page papers written by each student (due variously throughout the term) distributed before the class in which they will be discussed. There will also be two exercises (on working with ancient evidence) and a final exam.
Undergraduates are permitted to take this class as a graduate class (HIEU 5021) or for 4511 credit; in the latter case they would write four rather than five papers but otherwise fulfill the stated requirements of the course. This course fulfills the histoyr colloquium and second writing requirements.
Reading is substantial, averaging approximately 200 pages/week, and will be drawn from the following:
- The Landmark Thucydides (R. Strassler, ed.; Free Press)
- Plutarch, Greek Lives (Oxford World Classics)
- J. M. Moore, Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy (California)
- Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History vols. 4-5 (Loeb/Harvard)
- Xenophon, Hellenica (Penguin)
- C. Fornara, Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge)
- and readings on the Collab course website
Fall 2014
Prerequisite: HIEU 2031, HIEU 3559 (Hellenistic) or equivalent; or instructor permission.
This course examines the political, military, and social history of Greece from the end of the Persian Wars (479 BC) to the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BC). This is the age of the creation of Athenian democracy and Athenian Empire, as well as of the growing tensions with Sparta that eventually resulted in the Peloponnesian War. Understanding these developments is crucial to understanding all Greek history. This class will proceed by discussion, including discussion of five five-page papers written by each student (due variously throughout the term) distributed before the class in which they will be discussed. There will also be two exercises (on working with ancient evidence) and a final exam.
Undergraduates are permitted to take this class as a graduate class or for 4511 credit; in the latter case they would write four rather than five papers but otherwise fulfill the stated requirements of the course.
Reading is substantial, averaging approximately 200 pages/week, and will be drawn from the following:
- The Landmark Thucydides (R. Strassler, ed.; Free Press)
- Plutarch, Greek Lives (Oxford World Classics)
- J. M. Moore, Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy (California)
- Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History vols. 4-5 (Loeb/Harvard)
- Xenophon, Hellenica (Penguin)
- C. Fornara, Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge)
- and readings on the Collab course website
Fall 2015
This upper-level lecture class assumes a basic knowledge of Roman history. It will cover the most tumultuous period in Roman history, that which stretches from 133 BC to the establishment of Octavian (Augustus) as the first emperor in 27 BC. This was the age of the great generals (Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar); of great oratory (Cicero), of amazing changes in the city of Rome itself, in Italy, and in the ever-growing provinces; an age of shifting political alliances, howling crowds, and the eventual transformation of a Republic into a monarchy. How did this come about? Could the Republic maintain an empire, or was the dominance of one man unavoidable? We will read mostly primary sources in translation, averaging about 140 pages a week; there will be sporadic discussions, a midterm, a final, one 5-6 page paper, and one 10-12 page paper. Reading will be drawn from:
- H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero (fifth edition, 1982)
- Plutarch, Makers of Rome and The Fall of the Roman Republic (Penguin)
- Sallust, Jugurthine War and Conspiracy of Catiline (Penguin, transl. Woodman 2007)
- Julius Caesar, Civil Wars and Gallic War (Oxford)
- M. Tullius Cicero, On Government and Selected Political Speeches (Penguin)
- and a course packet
Fall 2015
Examines the history of deaf people in the United States over the last three centuries, with particular attention to the emergence and evolution of a community of Deaf people who share a distinct sign language and culture. We will read both primary texts from specific periods (by writers like Laurent Clerc and Alexander Graham Bell) and secondary sources (such as R.A.R. Edwards' _Word Made Flesh_ and Carol Padden and Tom Humphries’ _Inside Deaf Culture_). We will also view a few historical films. Among other topics, we will consider how hearing society has treated deaf people and the reasons for this treatment; how deaf people have explained and advocated for themselves; how the deaf community complicates our understanding of linguistic and ethnic minorities and of disabled people in history of the United States; the impact of technology; and what changing constructions of deafness reveal about the history of American culture in general. While students can expect some lecture, the class will also feature discussion and small-group activities. Requirements will include two papers (four and seven pages), quizzes, a final exam, and active, informed participation. The class will be taught in spoken English with a sign language interpreter.
Fall 2015
HIAF 3021 is a lecture and discussion course on the history of southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with an emphasis on the country of South Africa.
The course is especially concerned with the ways in which people expressed their political beliefs through popular culture. It begins with a look at the precolonial African societies of the region, before moving on to a study of conquest, colonialism, the rise and fall of apartheid, and the recent rebirth of African independence.
By the end of the nineteenth century, all of the African peoples of southern Africa had been conquered by European powers and incorporated into Dutch, British, Portuguese, and German colonial empires. Conquest had not come easily. Every society in the region resisted European domination fiercely, sometimes for many decades before being finally defeated. Colonialism and African responses to it dramatically reshaped societies in southern African, transforming political and economic systems, gender and class relations, even religious beliefs.
Resistance to colonialism assumed new forms in the twentieth century, as Africans began to bridge ethnic divisions to create multi-ethnic trade unions, churches, political parties, and liberation movements. Particularly in South Africa, African nationalism was influenced by nonracialism, uniting blacks and progressive whites in the ultimately successful struggle against apartheid.
Course materials include biographies, memoirs, fiction, music, and film, as well as academic studies. Students will take periodic quizzes on the readings and write two blue-book exams, a mid-term and a final.
Fall 2015
HIST 4501, The Sixties: Photography, America, and the World, looks at how photography shaped the ways in which Americans interpreted and reacted to tumultuous events across the globe. Our focus will be on America's most influential magazine -- Life -- which employed some of the finest photojournalists of the era and reached tens of millions of readers every week. We will also consider how other media challenged Life's images and, in turn, affected Americans' understanding of world events.
Across the globe, 1960s was a dynamic period. The Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the Cold War and anti-colonial struggles, the women's and environmental movements, and rock & roll and student protests fascinated Americans, generating concern, support, and sometimes fierce opposition. Relatively few people were directly involved in these events. Many found that their attitudes toward them were shaped by what they saw in popular media. Looking at the photographs and at people's responses to them will help us understand the history of the times.
Students will develop a research topic in which they explore the ways in which the photographs in Life and other media depicted a particular aspect of the Sixties, in the United States or globally, and shaped the ways Americans responded to it.
