AMH 5930 – American Cultural History, 1880-1940
Dr. Benjamin Wise
Description:
This graduate seminar will explore American cultural history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our primary aim will be to consider the methods of—and methodological dilemmas posed by—cultural history. Our seminars will center on several guiding questions: What do historians talk about when they talk about “culture”? How can claims about culture be empirically (or otherwise) demonstrated? How should cultural sources be interpreted? How can interdisciplinary methodologies benefit historians? A related aim of the course will be for students to become knowledgeable about foundational works and recent trends in the field so that they can incorporate these ideas and methods in their own work, and know how to identify them in others. Emphasis will be placed on working with primary sources; in addition to numerous secondary readings, sources will include selections from Henry Adams, Josiah Strong, William Alexander Percy, D.W. Griffith, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and others. Writing requirements will include a primary source-based essay on a topic developed by the student.
AMH 6290 – Modern America
Dr. Joseph Spillane
Description:
This is a readings seminar, designed to introduce you to the major themes and significant works in twentieth-century United States history. The objectives are pretty basic, but pretty important as well:
• To help prepare students to teach courses in modern U.S. history, especially the survey course, by encouraging critical thinking about organizing and making sense of the existing historical literature.
• To help prepare students for their qualifying exam in modern U.S. history, by presenting students with an appropriate survey of themes and works in this field.
• To nurture your skills (and mine) in the areas of critical reading and writing, by focusing on thoughtful analysis of assigned texts. We will pay attention to argument, sources, and organization.
Readings for this seminar include a mix of more recent works of historical scholarship with more established classics in the field, all of which have had (or appear that they will have) significant impact on their field. Remember that there has been much work of value published before 1994—the publication date of the “oldest” work we will read for the seminar—and remember that the notes in most monographs provide a ready way to work backwards through the essential literature in the field. You can create a very good roadmap by paying attention to the author’s footnotes. Please note as well that while we have it easy in some ways—one country, one century—there is still no way to fully do justice to every field or subject. Some of you may find Populism, the First World War, Vietnam, or labor history slighted, and you are probably right. Some of you may find too much politics and policy, and you may be right as well! Make sure that you develop final papers that allow you to pursue that which is most interesting to you, regardless of what we have done in the course.
HIS 6061 – Historiography
Dr. Heather Vrana
What is history? How do historians “do” history? This seminar introduces first-year graduate students to some of the key issues and challenges involved in reading, researching, and writing history at the professional level. We will read roughly one monograph or its equivalent each week, striking a balance between foundational and more recent texts. The books for this course will focus primarily on cultural and intellectual history, but we will cover a range of methodologies and themes within these two broad subfields. By the end of the semester, students will have a basic grasp of the field beyond their geographical and chronological focus.
You will:
• learn and assess new directions and foundational works in the field;
• discuss several major schools of history writing and the theoretical debates that inform them;
• begin preparations for your qualifying exams.
Each week, we will read the assigned book/article and then discuss it. The format of the class will be largely discussion-based, with regular student presentations and occasional lectures. Each week, one member of the seminar will be responsible for leading the discussion. These presentations will review the previous class material and present the current week’s material.
LAH 6934 – Seminar in Colonial Spanish America
Dr. Max Deardorff
Description:
This seminar will serve as an introduction to the field of colonial Latin America, acknowledging recent trends within the field and situating them in context within deeper historiographical traditions. Major themes treated in the course include: ethnography of pre-Hispanic polities, conquest, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, law, medicine/science, ethnogenesis, slavery, labor, trade, late colonial rebellion, and the evolution of the Atlantic as a cultural basin. The “Further Reading” sections of the syllabus are there for follow-up, for building an exam list, and to give you a starter-list from which to build a historiographical bibliography for research papers.
WOH 5932 – Topics in World History
Dr. Michelle Campos
Description:
This seminar introduces graduate students to the growing and exciting bod(ies) of scholarship known as world/global history. As we shift our attention from the nation-state to other geographic units (transnational or comparative, empires, oceanic shores, planet Earth), we will emphasize movement, contact, exchange, and systemic transformation. Our readings explore the flow of peoples, ideas, institutions, commodities, and diseases across the globe, from the early modern to the modern world. This course fulfills the core requirement in the graduate WOH minor.