AMH 5930 POWER AND POLICING IN CITIES Thursdays Periods 9-11 Dr. Lauren Pearlman
This seminar investigates one of the most powerful forces shaping urban environments. It will look at cities in different hemispheres (with a focus on North America) to explore how urban spaces are policed (a term that we will define broadly to include political, social, economic, and gendered policing efforts). It is designed for Americanists and non-Americanists alike and will include works by historians as well as other scholars who look at issues of urban policing and examine how they frame arguments about cities in different geographic regions. We will examine the ways that different structures and agents (city planners, policy makers, police, growth machines) attempt to police urban spaces and how residents find creative solutions to fight back against government policies, local police, and private organizations that encroach upon their rights. Over the course of the semester, we will cover issues such as conquest, riots and rebellions, violence and security, capital accumulation, migration, quality of life campaigns, and incarceration. Sample questions include: how do various groups define and control territory? How do they make and mark space? What is the role of the various militias, “para-militaries”, mercenaries, and guerrillas in the history of colonial/neo-colonial control of cities? How has neoliberalism changed the policing of cities? How do city dwellers resist policing efforts? We will pay special attention to the relationship between the control of space and the exercise of power and keep a sustained focus on those who find ways to rebel against the borders and boundaries imposed upon them by the state.
EUH 5934 APOSTASY AND SELF Mondays Periods 8-10 Dr. Nina Caputo
Through much of history, people changed religion because a ruler or head of a kinship group did so, whether as a result of military defeat or as a form or alliance. Late antiquity saw the emergence religious conversion as a means of expressing religious, political, intellectual, or social identities. When we talk about conversion today, we usually mean the self-determined conversion of an individual from one form of orthodoxy to another. As a rule, this kind of spiritual or intellectual transformation is radical and complete, a casting off the old and replacing it with a new self, often sealed with a change of name. And since late antiquity, conversion is also the stuff of stories, whether written or oral. This course will examine the conceptualization, representation, narration, and reception of converts and conversion in Europe from the middle ages through modernity.
LAH 5934 THE MODERN CARIBBEAN Wednesdays Periods 8-10 Dr. Lillian Guerra
This seminar focuses on the development of the nation-state, the racialization of class and political power as well as the cultural instruments through which Caribbean peoples struggled for greater collective freedom in a context defined by slavery, plantation economies colonialism and their legacies. Meant to prepare specialists and non-specialists alike, we will read some of the “master works” that launched or transformed the field as well as cutting-edge scholarship based on previously unknown or unused archives. Gender, environmental and US foreign policy histories will also figure among the works we read and discuss.
HIS 5939 SECOND YEAR SEMINAR Mondays Periods 5-7 Dr. Jack Davis
Think of this course as a workshop on the basic mechanics of the history profession: research, writing, and critical thought. The central idea behind the second-year seminar is to properly hone the skills necessary for successful completion of graduate school’s most demanding writing assignments. The PhD dissertation, as the MA thesis or non-thesis paper, is a mere embarkation point into the larger profession, which requires the practitioner to undertake long- and short-forms of writing. In this seminar, students will read books and articles about writing and researching, and write a number of papers leading to a final long assignment that will, ideally, contribute the capstone work of an individual’s graduate agenda.
AMH 6198 EARLY AMERICAN SOCIETY Tuesdays Periods 8-10 Dr. Jon Sensbach
This course will explore political, social and cultural developments n 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;” 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.