COURSES
Spring 2018 Course Descriptions: 500-700 Level
500-level courses are for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Prerequisite for ALL 500-level courses: either the completion of six semester hours of 300-level History courses or the permission of the instructor. 600-level and 700-level are only for graduate students.
SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE! Always check the University online schedule for the latest changes.
HIS 511A - Seminar in Historical Research and Writing: "Runaway Slaves and Digital History"
10395 M 6:30-9:20
Lisa Tolbert
Writing and Speaking Intensive. Prerequisite of one 300-level Research Intensive (RI) history course or HIS 391.
Field: United States
This course will take advantage of special events in the spring. We are excited to have Pulitzer Prize winning author, Colson Whitehead, and the founding Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Lonnie Bunch, coming to campus. To coordinate with these events students in this 511 section will be researching the history of runaway slaves using resources in our Digital Library of North Carolina Runaway Slave Ads. Students will read Whitehead’s book, The Underground Railroad and work on a digital exhibit on the history of runaway slave experience in North Carolina. We will explore the impact of digitization on historical research and interpretation.
HIS 511C - Seminar in Historical Research and Writing: "The Transatlantic Slave Trade"
16117 T 3:30-6:20
Linda Rupert
The transatlantic slave trade lasted for over four hundred years and was one of the largest movements of people in human history. This course introduces students to the broad economic, political, social, and cultural impact of the slave trade in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. We will study the basic historical narrative; a range of primary documents and evidence; and the major historiographic debates. Each student will write an original research paper, based on a careful reading and analysis of a selection of appropriate primary sources, with reference to the relevant historiography. Writing and Speaking Intensive. Prerequisite of one 300-level Research Intensive (RI) history course or HIS 391.
Field: Wider World
HIS 514 - World History Selected Topics: "Cyprus and the Medieval Mediterranean: An Island and Its Monuments"
16118 MW 2:00-3:15
Asa Eger
This course introduces students to the religious and cultural history of Cyprus from Late Antiquity to the Ottoman periods through its topography and monuments. The course teaches students to integrate material evidence with primary and secondary source texts to understand the religious and cultural history of one of the world's cultural crossroads. Students will appreciate the stamp of religious life on the topography of the island and the island's role in the Mediterranean world. The course includes a field trip to Cyprus over Spring Break that is required of all students. Crosslisted with REL 503.
Field: Wider World. Markers: .ARC.SAB
HIS 524 - 20th Century U.S. History Selected Topics: "United States-Middle East Relations"
16119 T 3:30-6:20
David Wight
This course is centered on two key questions: how did relations between the United States and the Middle East, which were largely peripheral to each other's interests and concerns at the end of the 18th century, change to become so important and intertwined in the present, and what have been the consequences of this process of interaction and change? While the questions are simple, the answers are rich and complex, involving issues that include military and geopolitical power, economic interests, culture, religion, ideology, transnational communities, and historical memory.
Field: United States
HIS 542 - Middle Ages Selected Topics: "Love, Sorrow, and Hate: Emotions in the Middle Ages"
16120 TR 3:30-4:45
Richard Barton
Did medieval kings rant in anger like spoiled children? Did medieval ladies swoon around in a perpetual fog of love? Did medieval monks weep at the drop of a hat? For a long time, those who thought at all about emotions in the European Middle Ages (500-1500 C.E.) answered with a resounding 'yes'. This course attempts to paint a more complex picture of the way in which medieval people thought and wrote about emotions. We will consider what medieval people meant by 'emotions' in general and by specific emotions in particular; we will think about broader systems of value inherent in those definitions; and we will explore how authors employed these definitions and systems to construct and maintain a variety of social relations. Our method will be to combine a reading of modern scholarly analyses with close reading of primary sources produced during the Middle Ages, ranging from theological treatises on sin to law codes, from chronicles to miracle stories, from saints' lives to vernacular epics.
Field: Europe
HIS 568 - African History and Cultures Through Film
16121 R 4:00-6:50
Colleen Kriger and Cybelle McFadden, (LLC)
In this course we analyze the multiple mappings of 'race,' gender, class, and sexuality in recent Francophone Cinema. Along the way, we examine Africa's precolonial and colonial histories, struggles for independence, and the legacies of these histories in the current post-colonial period. Focusing on the ways in which Africa and Africans have been portrayed in a variety of film genres takes us directly into issues of content – that is, messages conveyed in film about Africa and Africans – and the ways in which those messages are conveyed in order to decode them. Thus we will be identifying stereotypes about Africa in film, and discussing where those stereotypes have come from, in what forms they persist over time, and how politically aware and engaged filmmakers have responded to them. What are the historical, social, economic, political, and cultural forces at play in the production of African films and in their content? What are the challenges of imagining Africa on its own terms and not in relation to the West, especially the former colonial power? How are interactions with the West negotiated? Finally, we will consider how some films and their circulation may change perceptions of Africa both from within and outside the continent. Cross-listed with LLC 568. All films will be subtitled in English.
Field: Wider World.
All 600-700 level History courses are for graduate students only. Prerequisite: Admission to a graduate program in history or interior architecture, or written permission of instructor if you are a graduate student in another department.
HIS 624 - History of the American Landscape and Architecture
13727 W 2:00-4:50
Jo Leimenstoll (in IAR Department)
Examination of the social and cultural forces affecting the design and use of landscapes and buildings in North America from the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century. (Same as IAR 624.)
HIS 626 - The Practice of Public History
10400 M 6:30-9:20
Anne Parsons
This course introduces students to the various ways people work and thrive within public history institutions. The course revolves around the theories and practices involved in building relationships with colleagues, audiences, and community partners. Students learn how to write a mission statement, draft a budget, and apply for grants. At the same time, the class engages with the broader issues that underpin these decisions, such as institutional purpose, infrastructural dynamics and sources of financial support. The course culminates in a collaborative class project to conceive of and plan for a public history project to go up in Fall 2018. (Same as IAR 626.)
HIS 631 - Digital History
15551 T 3:30-6:20
Anne Parsons
This seminar explores the theory and issues emerging from digital public history, while offering hands-on training in its tools and practices. Students will explore the possibilities and challenges of using technology in museum environments, applying what they learn to their own self-designed digital public history projects.
See the M.A. FAQ for more information about the following:
HIS 690 - Internship
HIS 692 - Advanced Topics
HIS 697 - Independent Study
HIS 699 - Thesis
Written permission is required to register for these courses.
HIS 702 - Colloquium in American History
Issues of historical interpretation from Reconstruction to the present.
10403 702-01 M 6:30-9:20 Thomas Jackson
13934 702-02 R 3:30-6:20 David Wight
HIS 704 - Seminar in History
Individual Graduate Faculty
Research and writing on selected topics in history.
HIS 709-01 - Introductory Research Seminar: "Public Culture in the 'American Century,' 1890-2000"
10404 T 3:30-6:20
Thomas Jackson
In this course you will be expected to research and write an article-length paper on a problem of your choosing. The first third of the course will be devoted to posing important questions in the history of 20th century US "public culture." Half of the game lies in hitting the sweet spots in the middle of overlapping question circles titled "Significant," "Focused," and "Researchable." Accordingly, we'll survey social, cultural, and political "milestones" that marked our national path, reading a recent scholarly synthesis by Glenda Gilmore and Thomas Sugrue, as well as selected scholarly and historiographical articles that help us identify questions and methods at the forefront of research. In each of the first four classes each of you will pose a "burning" question from the period, identify an interpretation offered by one of our historians, and suggest a potential line of inquiry. My own favorite "burning" questions that will be reflected in assigned readings include: How did powerful elites and ordinary Americans debate and define the boundaries of American citizenship, in the arenas of immigration and civil rights? At various levels and branches of government, how did the state respond to popular movements and in turn mobilize citizens to achieve national purposes in times of war, reform, economic, or environmental crisis? In arenas of public debate, how did Americans defend and redefine their liberties in the face of these challenges and decisions? The class will have by week five an impressive shared inventory of researchable issues and burning questions. Individuals may then select ANY of these or any from a list of about 40 focused, researchable, and significant questions that I have identified in my twenty years of teaching. In affinity groups and then as individuals the class will then proceed through compiling a bibliography; formulating working hypotheses; drawing up an early draft; peer-reviewing; and revising the final draft.
HIS 709-02 - Introductory Research Seminar: "Interrogating Sources about the Transatlantic Slave Trade"
14771 R 6:30-9:20
Linda Rupert
From fifteenth-century travel accounts to merchant logbooks, abolitionist pamphlets, autobiographies, and the online databases of the twenty-first century, historians of the transatlantic slave trade have access to a broad range of sources. Yet none tells a complete story; all are plagued by serious silences. We will analyze the strengths and limitations of the different types of material available, and their relationship to the development of the historiography. Our approach to this topic, and the general questions we will raise, apply more broadly to historical inquiry across time, place, and topic.
HIS 712 - Slavery in the Americas
16128 W 3:30-6:20
Watson Jennison
Comparative analysis of slavery and race relations in South and Central America, the Caribbean, British North America, and the United States, 1501-1888.
HIS 716 - Graduate Colloquium in World History
12721 M 3:30-6:20
Jodi Bilinkoff, James Anderson, Asa Eger, Linda Rupert
Introduction to World history, the historiography of World studies, and comparative, cross-cultural approaches to historical research.
HIS 721 - Public History Capstone II
13396 M 3:30-6:20
Anne Parsons
This course is part of a two-semester sequence in which students design and execute original, research-driven, independent-study history projects for public audiences, usually with a community or institutional partner. In this semester, students complete detailed development and produce and publicly present their projects. Restricted to graduate students who have completed HIS 720.
HIS 740 - Selected Topics European History: "Readings in Soviet History"
16122 T 6:30-9:20
Jeff Jones
This course is a graduate reading seminar on the historiography of the Soviet period from the Revolutionary/Civil War period, through the 1920s, the Stalin period (1928-1953), and the era of Khrushchev’s reforms (1956-1964) to the stagnation of the Brezhnev years (late 1970s), the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989), and the collapse of the USSR in late 1991.
