Corcoran Department of
History

HIUS 4501 (5)

Seminar in United States History

"America and Scotland in an Age of War and Revolution"

Jim Ambuske

This course will allow students to explore the transatlantic relationship between peoples living in Scotland and in British America (and later with Americans in the newly independent United States) between 1754 and 1815. Historians have long struggled how best to characterize the direct connections between these two peoples as well as the ways in which they related to each other within the framework of British Empire and in the aftermath of the American Revolution. Commerce, emigration, military service, religion, imperial politics, and the Enlightenment all bound Scots and Americans together in one way or another over this period. Those same ties, however, created tension between Scotland and America in the second half of the eighteenth century and in the early decades of the nineteenth century. We will probe both aspects of this history during our time together.

We will spend the first five weeks of the term together discussing readings in common as well as research methods in anticipation of students crafting a 25-30 page final paper. We will then meet sporadically as a group to workshop research proposals and rough drafts. 

Students will develop a research topic and question in consultation with me that reflects their particular interests as they relate to the course. In addition to the major research paper, students will complete three other short writing assignments that will help them prepare for the task of tackling the longer essay. 

HIST 7001

Approaches to Historical Thinking

Mark Thomas

This course will explore various perspectives on how historical knowledge is produced, conveyed and debated.  The focus will be on both the methods and the methodologies of historical inquiry.

HILA 4511 (1)

Colloquium in Latin American History

"Cohesion and Contestation in Latin American History"

Herbert Braun

This is a seminar on Latin American history and on its historiography, that is, how it is studied and written about by historians.   We will read and analyze ten historical monographs for underlying themes and approaches, from the early colonial period to the virtual present.   Students will write and present four interpretive essays of five pages each, and a final essay between ten and twelve pages. 

• Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests:  Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570
• R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination:  Plebeian Society in Colonial   Mexico City, 1660-1720
• Sarah Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens:  Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854
• Richard Graham, Feeding the City:  From Street Market to Liberal Reform in Salvador, Brazil, 1780-1860
• James Sanders, Contentious Republicans:  Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Colombia
• Brooke Larson, Trials of Nation Making:  Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810-1910
• John Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution
• Peter Winn, Weavers of Revolution:  The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism
• Herbert Braun, The Assassination of Gaitán:  Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia
• Janice Perleman, Favela:  Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro