This course introduces students to the practice and writing of history through topical approaches. Students will explore methodological approaches to historical inquiry, conduct research projects, and improve their writing skills. Open to majors and minors only or by permission of instructor. Topics include:
Christianity and Politics in America since 1945
Evangelical voters and white Christian nationalism have become hot topics, but religion has long played an important role in the U.S. political arena. This junior historiography seminar will survey how historians have written about the relationship between Christianity and politics in America since the end of World War II. We will explore the role of the Protestant church in public life, Billy Graham's rise to fame, and the work of Christians and other religious leaders in shaping U.S. Cold War policy and engagement with the world. We will also give attention to different histories of the Religious or Christian Right and its 1970s marriage with the Republican Party, which has become one of the most successful political partnerships in American history. Finally, we will consider histories charting Christians' role in national debates over civil rights, immigration and refugee policy, LGBTQ+ movements, and environmental justice.
Native American and Indigenous Histories
This historiography seminar examines the sources, methodologies, and theoretical approaches that scholars use to write Native American and Indigenous histories. The course highlights the field of ethnohistory, the interdisciplinary study of indigenous societies and cultures that draws from history, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and art history. The readings address the histories of First Nations peoples of North America, Central America, and South America, and explore a variety of topics, including native governance, sovereignty and resistance, lands and removals, wars, indigenous slavery, relations with the environment, gender and sexuality, and reproductive rights. The course is organized to illustrate major trends in ethnohistorical scholarship, and highlight shifts in themes, methods, and narrative frameworks over the last five decades.
Mexico-U.S. Borderlands
Studies of the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands have been at the forefront in the development of transnational history frameworks as well as comparative discussions about borderlands histories. This seminar engages the fields of Native American Studies, Chicanx Studies, Mexican history, and U.S. Western history to trace the historiography of a region that has undergone a series of extensive transformations in the last three hundred years. In the modern era, it changed from a periphery of the Spanish empire, to provinces of northern Mexico, and finally, to the southwestern region of the United States. The area is a site of complicated and overlapping histories marked by processes of colonialism, diaspora, nationalism, and deterritorialization. With particular attention to issues of race, gender, place and power, prominent historiographical themes for the course include: the frontier thesis; war and displacement; transborder and transcultural communities; labor and transnational capitalism; extractivism and environmental justice; and migration and militarization. Cross-Listed as: LLAS 304.
The Fascist Revolution: Politics Culture and Society
This seminar closely studies the period known as Fascist Italy (1922 to 1945). Through a close analysis of the politics, culture, and society of Italy under Fascist dictatorship, we study the causes, character, and ramification of the Italian abandonment of democracy in the wake of World War I. Because it is a historiographic seminar, we examine the central debates of the field, such as whether Mussolini ruled primarily through coercion or consent, the extent of Fascist race ideology, and whether the regime was "modern" or "backward-looking." Other major themes include: Fascist cultural modernism, gender and Fascism, and the Italian road to empire and World War II. This course uses primary sources such as translated documents, memoirs, and diaries, as well as contemporary historical analyses.
Gender and Sexuality in Colonial Latin America
This historiography seminar examines the sources, methodologies, and theoretical approaches that shape the history of women, gender, and sexuality in colonial and nineteenth-century Latin America. A variety of interdisciplinary approaches and concerns are considered from an historical perspective, especially in relation to the fields of Latin American History, Women's/Gender History, and Sexuality Studies. The readings represent ethnic, racial, and class-based distinctions among women in Latin America, and emphasize the importance of using diverse approaches in reconstructing gender history and culture, particularly for indigenous and African women. The course is organized to illustrate major trends in the historical scholarship on colonial Latin America, and highlight the shift over the last three decades from the study of women to gender and, most recently, sexuality and back to women again.
Historiography is the study of how historians write history and how the field has evolved over time. In this class our emphasis will be on how the historian came to his or her conclusions, not simply on the conclusions themselves. We will also consider each work in relation to other books in the field. Students will analyze both primary and secondary sources to understand how history is conceived and written. Cross-Listed as: LLAS 301.
Histories of the French and Haitian Revolutions
Many histories have been, and continue to be, written about these revolutions and they differ from each other substantially. This course examines this scholarly literature, taking into account the choices historians make as they compose their narratives. We will examine the roles of race, class, and gender in these accounts, why different events and social groups are featured centrally in some but not others. And we will consider such controversial criteria as "accuracy," "truth," "evidence," and even "fact" all of which are interpreted in numerous ways within the historian's craft.
Histories of U.S. Empire
Was/Is the United States an empire, and if so, what kind of empire was/is it? This upper-level colloquium will familiarize history majors and other advanced students with scholarly debates over the history of U.S. imperialism and engagement in the world. Course readings draw from the writings of U.S. historians from the early twentieth century through the present. Particular attention will be given to the impact of the Cold War and the influence of the "cultural" and "transnational" turns on how historians have approached empire.
Interpreting Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction
This junior colloquium will address major debates and approaches within the historiography of the United States Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. Students will explore how American racial politics and new scholarly approaches have shaped major debates over the causes and consequences of civil war and national reconstruction. The class will take both a chronological and topical approach to historiographic analysis. We will begin by reading work from the Dunning School and critical challenges to Dunning from historians on the Left, such as W. E. B. Du Bois in his 1935 study Black Reconstruction. To understand the impact of new methods and sources, we will examine the multi-decade collaboration of social historians called the Freedmen and Southern Society Project. In the second half of the course, we will explore more recent trends in scholarship, including economic history and cultural history, as well as gender and sexuality studies and critical race theory. Finally, the class will conclude by considering historical interpretations of Civil War and Reconstruction in U.S. popular culture, through film, fiction, and drama. Students will write their own historiographic analysis on a chosen topic within Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction scholarship.
The Mexican Revolution
Studies of the Mexican Revolution have been at the forefront in the development of modern Latin American social, political, and cultural history. The studies have also contributed to comparative discussions in world history about the meanings of revolutionary experience in the twentieth century. However, historians and other social scientists have reached no consensus about the Mexican Revolution from its periodization to its actual existence. This seminar will examine the competing set of interpretations, alongside primary sources, to analyze the origins, course, and legacy of the Mexican Revolution. Prominent historiographical themes for the course include: conflict between elite liberalism and mass mobilization; agrarian reform and unionization within a capitalist project of development; corporate representation of social interests; the institutionalization of revolution; race, gender, and class in nationalist rhetoric; and the role of art, education, and science/technology in state formation. Cross-Listed as: LLAS 302.
Re-Assessing European Global Encounters
The twentieth century national movements of liberation, from modern European colonialism, initiated new histories of the previous early modern age of exploration (1300-1800), from the point of view of the enslaved, the conquered, the exploited, and the newly liberated. Each student will be writing a historiographical essay revealing changing interpretations of one distinctive global encounter. Historians are re-assessing, on the Mediterranean, both the Crusades and piracy and kidnapping. Scholars specializing in trade or colonialism of a particular nation-state, such as Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, England, and France are re-considering specific settlements and trading ports on the Atlantic and Pacific Rims. Class work will enhance student skills: we shall be discussing exemplary recent historical films and histories and we shall learn how to efficiently find diverse viewpoints through online and printed sources.
Reel History
This course will examine some of the ways that the history of France has been represented in films. Joan of Arc, The Return of Martin Guerre, Ridicule, The Rise to Power of Louis XIV, Danton La Nuit de Varennes, Abel Gance's Napoleon, and Night and Fog are among the great movie classics to be analyzed. We will also deal with recent theoretical work on "historical" cinema. Are images as valid as written text when making meaningful connections with the past?
Writing the History of the Middle East
This course is a junior seminar on recent developments in the research and writing of history as practiced by professional historians of the modern Middle East. We will look at the history of historical writing about the region and the transformative developments in the field over the last thirty years or so. The objective is to cultivate your awareness of historiography and historical criticism. Historiography can be defined as the history of historical interpretation. Historical criticism refers to how we understand history as an object of study. To appreciate various modes of inquiry in the field, we will read exemplary texts embodying established traditions and new departures as well as critical works on the ideological roots of particular fields of history.
Writing World History
This junior seminar investigates various approaches to writing world history. The course is designed to help history majors understand historiography and historical criticism. By studying recent approaches to world history, students will learn how historical debate shapes the writing of history, how historians approach and critique each other's work, and how different styles of historical research and writing have developed over time.