AFH 5934/WOH 5932: Colonial Intermediaries
Dr. Philip Janzen
In the last two decades or so, historians of empires have turned increasingly to the study of intermediaries such as interpreters, clerks, soldiers, nurses, evangelizers, and teachers. As channels of communication, these “middle figures” mediated the power dynamics of colonial contexts, contributed to the establishment of colonial states, brokered commercial relations, and used their power for personal gain. At the core of this scholarship is translation, not just of languages, but also of culture and colonization itself. This course will introduce students to this field of research and to its methodological innovations. The course will move across a range of geographies: from the Mediterranean to South Asia, from West Africa to Europe, and from Central Africa to Latin America. Most course readings will draw from history, but we will also consider disciplines and genres such as anthropology, autobiography, and fiction.
AMH 5930: American Environmental History
Dr. Jack E. Davis
Presented within the context of the larger and more familiar historical experience, this course is an overview of the relationship between humans and their natural physical surroundings. If we as students of history ignore that relationship and reduce nature to an inert backdrop to the drama of human actions, Ted Steinberg argues, we limit the results of our historical inquiry. Taking this point a step further, we should avoid the trap of conceptualizing environmental history as nothing more than the study of the human impact on nature or as the historical antecedents of the nation’s contemporary environmental issues. We should instead begin with the premise that the
natural environment was not a passive object—which humans simply contemplated, exploited, or protected; it was instead an active variable that shaped the course of American history. Throughout human history, physical surroundings to a large extent determined the ways in which humans organized their lives. If we incorporate these ideas into our study of history, we gain greater insight into the identity, beliefs, and values of human groups and how each defined its relationship with others. As William Cronon writes in his seminal Changes in the Land, “the great strength of ecological analysis in writing history is its ability to uncover processes and long-term changes which might otherwise remain invisible” (vii).
This course covers the full sweep of U.S. history, from pre-Columbian cultures to the present; yet it is not intended to provide a comprehensive survey of U.S. environmental history. The course instead has been designed to introduce students to major works representing a fairly broad sampling of approaches to and topics in environmental history. As in any field within our discipline, no single mode of inquiry or interpretive category defines environmental history. Scholars with interests in social, political, intellectual, labor, gender, urban, and regional history, and history of science can all be found working in environmental history.
AMH 6198: Early American History
Dr. Jon Sensbach
This course will explore political, social and cultural developments in early America from the period of colonial contact through the American Revolution. We will examine the complex cultural interchange and contest for power among European, African and Indian peoples while paying close attention to historiographic developments in the field over the last twenty years. Among the topics the course will explore are the impact of European colonization on indigenous people; the creation of an “Atlantic world” and its relationship to global and continental approaches to early America; the rise of free and slave labor systems and the evolution of both racial ideology and African-American cultures; the role of religion in colonial life; gender and women’s history; the imperial struggle among competing European nations; and contested meanings of freedom during the era of Revolution.
LAH 6934: Seminar in Colonial Spanish America
Dr. Max Deardorff
This seminar will serve as a historiographical introduction to colonial Latin America, acknowledging recent trends within the field and situating them in context within deeper traditions. Major themes treated in the course include: ethnography of pre-Hispanic polities, conquest, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, ethnogenesis, labor, and medicine. We will also examine the underpinnings of the colonial economy, the policies and institutions that made it viable, and the evolution of the Atlantic as a cultural basin. A “Further Reading” appendix, available on the course Canvas site, will be available for thematic follow-up, for building an exam list, and to give you a starter-list from which to build a historiographical bibliography.
HIS 6061: Introduction to Historiography
Dr. Anton Matytsin
This course introduces beginning graduate students to some of the most essential issues and challenges involved in reading, researching, and writing history at the professional level. We will explore the various ways in which historians have approached the study of the past, examining different historiographical schools, theories, and philosophies of history. The readings will include both classic texts of historical scholarship and more recent work, exposing students to a broad range of approaches and methodologies.