COURSES
Spring 2020 Course Descriptions: 500-700 Graduate Courses
SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE! Always check the University online schedule for the latest changes.
HIS 502 -- African American History Selected Topics: "From Blaxploitation to the Birth of the B-Boy: Black Popular Culture in the 1970s"
10919 W 4:00-6:50
Watson Jennison
The 1970s witnessed an explosion of black popular culture unseen since the Harlem Renaissance of a half century before. A product of the economic, political, and social transformations that shaped black life in this critical decade, black art, both high and low, represented the voice of a people articulating their distinctive vision of American identity. This course will examine the history of black popular culture as well as the context and controversies connected to its creation. In addition to the rise of black artists in music, television, and film, this course will explore other topics such as Afrofuturism, black theater and literature, and the birth of hip hop.
Crosslisted with HIS 403.
HIS 514 - Topics in World History: "The Global Cold War"
10923 MW 2:00-3:15
David Wight
This course explores the global roots and consequences of the Cold War. While the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, were important leaders in this global struggle, myriad countries from across the world contributed to the start, prolongation, and resolution of the conflict. Furthermore, many of the consequences of the Cold War, particularly its "hot wars," were larger imposed upon societies within the Third World. This course will thus look at the superpowers, allied nations, and non-aligned countries to present a truly global understanding of the defining geopolitical struggle of the second half of the 20th century. Crosslisted with HIS 414.
HIS 522 - Early American History Selected Topics: "Race in Native America"
10924 TR 3:30-4:45
Warren Milteer
This course will explore the connection between race and the history of Native America. Students will investigate the ways that the concept of race impacted indigenous Americans and shaped their destinies. We will focus on the ways that Native communities rejected and embraced racial hierarchies and how these decisions supported and disrupted long-held ideas about family, kinship, nation, and social belonging. The class will also focus on the legacies of these decisions and their impacts on present-day Native peoples and their neighbors. Crosslisted with HIS 422.
HIS 546 - American Cultural History Selected Topics: "Thinking Visually about American History"
10928 MW 3:30-4:45
Lisa Tolbert
The historians you will encounter in this course all use some form of visual evidence in their work, from objects to art to photographs and more. How can objects open up new ways of studying and interpreting the past? What is the difference between studying the history of objects and reading objects as evidence to interpret the past? Doing history from things has the potential to change historical narratives in significant ways. The ultimate goal of the course is to apply the methods we study to write an object-based history on a topic of your choice. Crosslisted with HIS 446.
HIS 568 - African History and Cultures through Film
Taught in English and cross-listed with LLC 568, Cybelle McFadden
10930 T 4:00-6:50
Colleen Kriger
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. All films will be subtitled in English. Crosslisted with HIS 469 and LLC 568.
All 600-700 level History courses are for admitted 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 626 - The Practice of Public History
10933 M 3:30-6:20
Torren Gatson
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 2020. (Same as IAR 626.)
HIS 631 - Digital History
10187 T 6:30-9:20
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.
10935 702-01 R 3:30-6:20 Thomas Jackson
10936 702-02 W 6:30-9:20 David Wight
HIS 704 - Seminar in History
Individual Graduate Faculty
Research and writing on selected topics in history. M.A. students.
HIS 706 - Colloquium in Modern European History
10937 W 3:30-6:20
Jeff Jones
Interpretations of selected historical problems from the French Revolution to the present.
HIS 709-01 - Introductory Research Seminar: "The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Interrogating Sources"
10938 T 3:30-6:20
Linda Rupert
Historians of the transatlantic slave trade have access to an especially broad range of sources, encompassing over four hundred years and the entire Atlantic World. These include travel diaries, merchant accounts, ships' logs, abolitionist pamphlets, and autobiographies, as well as the online databases of the twenty-first century. Yet none tells a complete story; all are plagued by serious silences. We will examine the strengths and limitations of the different types of documentation available, and their relationship to the development of the historiography. Each student will write an original research paper focused on a relevant topic, based on a critical reading and analysis of a selection of appropriate primary sources, and grounded in the relevant scholarship. Our approach to this material, and the general questions we will discuss, apply more broadly to historical inquiry across time, place, and topic. Students of public history, material culture, and public memory are especially welcome.
HIS 709-02 - Introductory Research Seminar: "Women in the U.S. South"
10939 M 6:30-9:20
Mandy Cooper
What does southern history look like when women's experiences and actions are placed at the center? How does focusing on women's lives and privileging women's voices better account for, challenge, or change the ways we think about the events that have shaped the U.S. South from pre-colonial times to the present? In this introductory research seminar, we will examine how other historians have placed women’s lives at the center of southern history. In particular, we will explore questions of gender, race, class, sexuality, and region as students research and write an article-length paper that reflects original research on a topic of their choosing in relation to the history of women in the U.S. South.
HIS 716 - Graduate Colloquium in World History
10940 M 3:30-6:20
Jeff Jones, Richard Barton, Jodi Bilinkoff, 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
10941 R 3:30-6:20
Torren Gatson
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 723 - 19th Century U.S. Topics: "American Nationalisms"
10942 T 3:30-6:20
Mark Elliott
The motto adopted on the first national seal designed in 1776, "E Pluribus Unum," (Out of Many, One) was not an accomplished fact but a necessary goal. American nationalism is more obviously constructed than other nationalisms. Initially forged in the crucible of revolution, the project of uniting American citizens under a central government was precarious from the start and necessarily generated multiple, conflicting visions of national community. This class will study both secondary literature and primary sources to explore these conflicts, and the efforts to contain them within a unifying nationalism. Rather than attempt to define the "real" American character or identity, we will approach the topic from multiple perspectives, covering both dominant and dissenting ideas of nationalism, including Confederate nationalism, black nationalism, providential nationalism, and various forms of American exceptionalism in the 19th century. Race, class, and gender have been central to constructions of nationalism, and close attention will be paid to exclusions and inclusions in the definition of nationalism over the course of the 19th century. Special attention also will be given to how "nationalism" has been politicized at specific times for specific purposes by specific groups, and how conflicts over nationhood continue to morph and change in each era.
