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Majors must take two seminars (or their equivalent) in two different geographic areas: Asia, Europe, Latin America, Russia, or the U.S. Seminars with a broader geographic focus, such as HIS 328, can be sorted into one of these categories based on the focus of your research paper.
FALL 2006
History 315.01 "The United States and Vietnam." This course examines the historical context of United States intervention in Vietnam from 1945 to 1975, with an emphasis on the social, economic, and political turmoil within Southeast Asia as well as the Cold War concerns that led American leaders to wage a full-scale war against an elusive and ill-defined "enemy" during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. The course will also consider the ongoing legacy of the United States loss in Vietnam and its impact upon recent American history. Sources utilized in the seminar present a wide array of perspectives and experiences, including policy documents from leaders in Vietnam and the United States, memoirs by soldiers, reminiscences by reporters, and accounts by others who witnessed the war. Students will be expected to initiate and carry the class discussions, define a major research project, produce an original paper, and present an oral report on their topic. The class will first focus on common readings
and discussions, then shift to individual research and class reports. Prerequisites: History 112 and additional course work in history at the 200 level. 4 credits. Mr. Hietala
History 326.01 "History of Nineteenth-Century American Popular Culture." Students in this seminar will examine the creation and expansion of American popular culture in the nineteenth century as they focus on diverse cultural forms: dime novels, newspapers, music, sports, cartoons, material culture, theater, minstrel shows, magazines, etc. The seminar will focus particularly on how ideas and structures of race, class, and gender were changed and reinforced by American popular culture. Research papers will analyze popular culture in a historical context to consider how popular culture created or changed power dynamics in American society. Prerequisites: History 111 plus any 200-level American History course or permission of instructor. 4 credits. Ms. Purcell
History 330.01 TBA. Medieval/Early Modern Europe. Anticipated prerequisites: Either History 233, 234, or Humanities 140.
History 332.01 "Gender and Empire in Victorian Britain." This course will examine the centrality of women, gender, and sexuality to British colonialism in the "long nineteenth century." Readings in common will synthesize primary and secondary accounts in the context of three related investigations: women's experience in the empire through travel, emigration, and philanthropy; the role of a national imperial identity in metropolitan feminist and reformist movements; and the gendered nature of both colonial encounters abroad and British imperial culture at home. We will also consider the impact of poststructuralist and postcolonial theory on studies of gender and empire. The second half of the course will be devoted to developing a paper of original research; students have the option of extending the focus of this project to include twentieth-century issues like colonial nationalism and immigration. Prerequisite: Either History 101, 236, or 295 (British Empire), or Women and Gender Studies 111. Ms.
Prevost
History 342.01 "Stalinism." This seminar will concentrate upon the major historiographical divide over Stalinist Russia and evaluate the evidentiary bases that sustain these interpretations. Traditional historiography of this era has concentrated upon the "totalitarian" model, and has depended upon official documents, as well as the memoirs and public statements of major figures and émigrés. More recent interpretations have sought to complicate the story, and give voice to more ordinary historical actors-as preserved in the archives of the secret police, in private diaries, and in the collections of unprinted denunciations and letters to the editors of Soviet publications and Soviet leaders. Through scrupulous reading of some major representatives of these views, as well as through careful consideration of representative examples of the various sources, participants in the seminar will develop a better understanding of the historiographical issues and the way that these issues inform historical researc
h. The first part of the seminar will depend upon our common reading, but students will also select a project of their own on which to work the entire semester, culminating in a written paper and oral presentation to the seminar. Prerequisite: History 242 or its equivalent. 4 credits. Mr. Kaiser
SPRING 2007
History 323.01 "The Art of Biography." This seminar will explore the complex blend of objective and subjective elements which necessarily comprise the writing of biography. Using American biographies as our texts, we will examine problems related to sources, including the use of interviews, correspondence, diaries, the popular press, legal records, and, of course, autobiographies. In addition, we will trace trends in the theoretical literature, considering how shifts from psychoanalytic theory to post-structuralist and feminist theory have influenced both writers' and readers' approaches to biography. Students in this seminar will be asked to consider questions of ethics and literary style, as well as questions of logic and veracity, as they examine both the theory and the practice of biography. There will be an opportunity to experiment with the writing of biography. There will also be the opportunity to employ current theories of biography in writing a historiographical critique of the existing biogr
aphical literature on selected American subjects. Prerequisites: History 112 and one 200-level course in American history. 4 credits. Ms. Brown
History 329.01 "Latin America and the United States." As the saying goes, Latin America lies too far from God and too close to the United States. This proximity has affected Latin American economics, demographics, culture, and politics. The seminar will begin with common readings. This year those common readings will focus on US attempts-both official and unoffical-to democratize and modernize the region. Students will then write a research paper using primary documents. These papers could focus on any one of a number of issues that were central to US-Latin American relations such as hemispheric security, economic affairs, democracy, and socialism. A reading knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese is helpful but not required. Prerequisite: History 201, 202, or 204. 4 credits. Mr. Silva
History 331.01 "The Family in Europe." The focus of this seminar will be the European family between the Middle Ages and the birth of the modern era in Europe (approx. 1450-1800). We will examine the factors that contributed to the development of modern family structures as well as evaluate the regulation of family life, the roles within families and the relationship between ideology and practice during the periods of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Prerequisite: HIS 233, 234, 241, or HUM 140, or permission of instructor. 4 credits. Mr. Spohnholz
History 339.01 "The Holocaust: Interpretation, Memory, and Representation." This seminar will examine the origins and execution of the Nazi genocide during the Second World War, as well as realities for and responses of European Jews. We will explore the scholarly debates about the actions and motivations of perpetrators, victims and bystanders in various European countries. The course will also turn to key issues in the memorialization and representation of the Holocaust after 1945 and focus on the "texture of memory" of Holocaust memorials and museums in Germany, Israel, and the United States. Prerequisite: HIS 238, 239, or permission of the instructor. 4 credits. Mr. Pegelow Kaplan
History 375.01 "Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Portraits of the Chairman." This seminar will examine the various stages of the life of Mao: his childhood, his rise to prominence in the revolution, and his roles first as Chairman of the Communist Party and later as the undisputed ruler of the People's Republic. Themes for this course will include Mao's family life and his struggles against rivals both inside and outside of the Party; this course will also consider his thoughts on peasant organizations, guerrilla warfare, intellectuals and elites, literature and art, mass will and energy, and the continuing revolution. As well, the course will analyze changing depictions of Mao both by himself and by other individuals of differing political persuasions. Readings will include Mao's early autobiographical account, selected biographies published in the West over the past decades, and portions of Mao's speeches and writings relevant to our themes. Prerequisite: 4-cedits in East Asian History. Mr. Hsieh.
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