GRADUATE SEMINAR OFFERINGS DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY SPRING 2013
Updated April 11, 2012
HISTORY 300b Introduction to Historical Methods and Research, Tuesday, 9:10-12:00 noon, Benson 200 Professor Lauren Clay
HISTORY 302b Readings in American History after the Civil War, Wednesday, 3:10-6:00 pm, room TBA, Professor Thomas Schwartz.
Intensive reading seminar on the history and historiography of the United States since the Civil War. This course is not a comprehensive survey, but rather an introduction to the field and a starting point for exam preparations in modern U.S. history. Topics include Reconstruction; corporate consolidation; Progressive reform; immigration, ethnicity, nationality, and identity; the state, bureaucracy, and society; consumer cultures; the rise and fall of the New Deal order; labor and liberalism; civil rights; the politics of sex and the family; the exercise of U.S. power in the world; radicalism and conservatism in the 1960s and beyond; and “postmodern” America. Throughout, we will be attentive to existing frameworks of interpretation that organize this period of U.S. history, their strengths as well as their weaknesses.
HISTORY 307 Studies in the History of Medicine, Science, and Technology: History of Disease, Tuesday, 12:10 – 3:00 pm, room TBA, Professor Arleen Tuchman
This course introduces students to key works in the social and cultural history of disease. We will look at how diseases were defined and understood in the past; how historians have conceptualized disease and how that has changed over time; and how historians have used disease to explore questions of race, gender, class, sexuality, and religion. Texts will be chosen to reflect a wide variety of diseases, including acute, chronic, contagious, non-contagious, and epidemic diseases, as well as conditions that occupy the space between disease, deviance, and disability. The focus is on US history in the 19th and 20th centuries, but students may write on other geographical regions or time periods for their final research paper.
HISTORY 330 Studies in German History: Problems and Sources, Thursday, 9:00 – 12 noon, Benson 200, Professor David Blackbourn
This seminar examines some of the major issues in German history from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. We shall consider both historiographical debates and source materials.
HISTORY 361 Studies in Latin American History: Twentieth Century Political and Social Movements, Thursday, 12:10-3:00 pm, room TBA, Professor Frank Robinson
State formation in modern Latin America is marked by persistent tensions over contending ideas of national belonging. This seminar focuses on questions of democratic representation, the struggles by many sectors for political, social, and economic inclusion, and the ways in which these struggles have been repressed, accommodated, absorbed, or ignored.
HISTORY 371 Studies in Early American History to 1783: Imperial Borderlands and Native Homelands, Wednesday, 12:10-3:00 pm, Benson 200, Professor Daniel Usner.
This course will explore colonial American history from places and spaces deep within the continent of North America. With attention focused on initiatives and responses of indigenous nations during their early interactions with multiple European empires, the question of how American Indians defined and delineated their homelands will be central. Migrations and exchanges that occurred across the borderlands between colonial and native societies will also be closely examined.
HISTORY 381 Studies in American History: U.S. and the World, Monday, 12:10-3:00 pm, Benson 200, Professor Paul Kramer.
This graduate seminar will explore recent efforts to internationalize the historiography of the modern United States, as both a way to deepen the study of the United States' past and to identify alternative, non-national frames of historical analysis. Themes will include immigration and nativism, transnational social movements, cultural borrowings, colonialism, war, missionary projects and the international dimensions of civil rights politics.
HIST 398 01 Dissertation Seminar, T 4:10-6:00 p.m., Benson 200.
Professor Sarah Igo
OTHER COURSES offered by other departments and schools
DIV 2750 The History of Religion in America, MWF 9:10-10:00 am, Divinity School room TBA, Professor Dennis Dickerson, a 3-credit course.
The history of the religions in America beginning with colonial religious experiments in the New World. Examines American “church history” as well as the influence of non-Christian religions in American culture.
