HIS 102 G HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, II (Since 1877)
MW 2:30pm-3:20pm
THIS COURSE REQUIRES A DISCUSSION SECTION
This course is designed to give students a greater understanding of U.S. history since 1877. We will focus on large-scale transformations in social, economic, political, and cultural processes in America, including the growth of industry, changing patterns of immigration, rapid urbanization, the fight for civil rights, the rise of consumer culture, and America’s increasing dominance in global affairs. We also will discuss how Americans have defined and contested the meaning of Americanism, and shaped categories of ethnicity, class, race, gender, and sexuality. The main theme of the course is the paradoxical relationship between unity and diversity in American culture. We will examine the tensions in the motto, "Out of many, one."
HIS 102 1G HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, II
DISCUSSION SECTION FOR HIS 1012 G
F 2:30PM-3:20PM
HIS 102 1C HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, II
DISCUSSION SECTION FOR HIS 102 G
F 10:10am-11:00am
HIS 132 F THE BIRTH OF MODERNITY
MW 1:25pm-2:15pm
THIS COURSE REQUIRES A DISCUSSION SECTION
This course covers the political, social, and cultural history of Europe from today until the end of the Thirty Years War (1648). The emphasis of this course will be on how migration changed conceptions of state, people, culture, and economy in Europe and/or among Europeans. Special emphasis will be placed on questions of ethnicity, gender, race, violence, and attempts to forestall violence. Unlike traditional introductory survey courses, we will approach subjects in reverse chronological order. So, instead of beginning the course in the seventeenth century and ending in the twenty-first, we will be beginning in the twenty-first century and ending in the seventeenth. No prior history background necessary.
HIS 132 1F THE BIRTH OF MODERNITY
DISCUSSION SECTION FOR HIS 132 F
F 1:25pm-2:15pm
HIS 131 1G THE BIRTH OF MODERNITY
DISCUSSION SECTION FOR HIS 132 F
F 2:30pm-3:20pm
HIS 161 E LATIN AMERICA I, (to 1824)
MWF 12:20PM-1:10PM
A survey of Spanish and Portuguese America from the pre-Columbian era through the end of the colonial period. The course offers consideration of the importance and impact of peoples from Iberia, Africa, and the Americas (indigenous peoples). Emphasis is on the cultural, political, religious, and social history of peoples in both pre-Hispanic as well as colonial Latin America. The course examines indigenous cultures of the Americas (Tainos, Aztecs, Incas, Tupí, e.g.) and the ways those cultures influenced Latin American societies, as well as the ways Spanish and Portuguese colonialism and African slavery spawned a new society.
HIS 227 K NATIONALISM
MW 6:35pm-7:50pm
This lower-division lecture course will offer an introductory thematic overview to the ideas and politics of nationalism throughout the globe. Lectures will focus on questions such as: What is a nation? What is a nation’s relationship to a state? Who is part and not part of a nation? How do nations interact? What makes and/or breaks nations? And what is nationalism’s relationship to violence? Lectures will focus on case studies from different eras and different continents with the goal of showing the historical context of nationhood. No prior history background necessary.
HIS 254 Q HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR IN THE AMERICAS
Revolution, Nation, and Empire: The Cold War in the Americas
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
. Although the Cold War is commonly thought of as a bloodless standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, it was a period of violently “hot” conflict throughout much of the world. In the Americas, the Cold War brought great social upheaval and political turmoil. Focusing on the period from the late 1940s to the 1990s, this course will examine the origins, evolution, and enduring consequences of the Cold War in the region. The lectures and readings explore key issues such as the emergence of new nationalist currents, the impact of U.S. intervention, competing visions of revolution and counter-revolution, and shifting definitions of democracy. In exploring U.S. and Latin American relations, we will focus attention several case studies: among them, Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador. The emphasis throughout will be on balancing an appreciation for the domestic dynamics and international forces behind Cold War conflicts. Through weekly assignments, students will hone their talents for historical interpretation, including their thinking and writing skills. The course provides tools for understanding present-day controversies in the Americas – including those concerning human rights, development, inequality, and migration – from a broader historical perspective
HIS 266 H THE FOUNDERS: FACT AND FICTION
MW 3:35PM-4:50PM
Few historical actors have attracted as much attention in the United States as the founders, the group of men—and the occasional woman—who are credited with leading the charge for revolution and establishing a new nation. In this course we will consider the founders in their eighteenth-century context, examining the experiences, issues, and events that shaped their lives, ideas, and actions. Each lecture takes as its starting point a person, or in some cases, a set of people, who opens an interpretative window onto a key moment or theme. Our readings will consist almost entirely of the founders’ own writings, providing important portals to their world as well as giving us opportunities to reappraise what we thought we knew about the founders. Finally, we will explore how the founders continue to resonate today, in politics, public history, and in the popular imagination.
HIS 267 O MAKING HISTORY
ORAL HISTORY
TR 9:30am-10:45am
This course will introduce students to oral history methodology and provide a foundational training in this practice. How do historians express and craft historical narratives? How are sources made, selected, and reframed in these narrations? What questions do we confront about the nexus of memory, power, and history when we study oral history? As we investigate these questions we will work our way through stories “from the field” and through the vast body of meta-commentary about oral historical narratives and practices.
HIS 302 R HISTORY ON TRIAL
TR 2:00pm-3:15pm
This course asks students to think about the relationship between social history, the law, and politics in American society. This course on American Legal History asks students to confront the "intents of the framers" of U.S. laws and constitutional provisions. It requires them to make arguments about how history should inform the outcomes of major legal cases. This is a problem-based, interdisciplinary course that bridges history, political science, legal studies, and sociology to understand the historical context that informs major lawsuits that shaped american jurisprudence.
HIS 311 F GANDHI
MWF 1:25PM-2:15PM
This course will study the rise and significance of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, leader of the non-violent nationalist movement against the British Empire in India at the turn of the twentieth century. Through a detailed study of his numerous writings and speeches we will explore Gandhi’s theories and praxis of civil disobedience, satyagraha, non-violent protest, moral discipline, critique of modernity as well as his alternative vision of civil society and polity. We will discuss the extent to which his ideas and thoughts were adopted as well as rejected in the making of the modern Indian nation state. We will critically examine the widely held perception that “Gandhi brought politics to the masses,” and see the ways in which Gandhian thought was adapted, received, and critiqued by different actors in the nationalist struggle against the British as well as in independent India. We will explore issues of political mobilization, strategies of “passive” resistance, relations between Hindus and Muslims, Hindu caste society’s ills, the question of “untouchables”, modern science, technology, and economic growth, the place of women in society, self-reliance, individual and collective responsibilities.
Endearingly often called “Bapu”, or with veneration also known as the “Mahatma”, Gandhi and Gandhian philosophy and praxis have a complex and conflicted relationship with modernity in India in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. In this course the students drawing from Gandhi’s writings, as well as extensive multi-disciplinary scholarship on him and his times, films, and other multi-media, will get a rounded picture of the man, the historical context of his times, primary influences on his thoughts as well as his legacy and relevance in contemporary India and the world in general.
This is a writing credit course.
HIS 312 B GENDER & SEX IN INDIA
MWF 9:05AM-9:55AM
This course will be a thematic rather than chronological study of issues relating to gender and sex and the ways in which they have shaped the history of women and men’s lived experiences in India. We will focus on relations between women and men, constructions of the feminine and the masculine, sexual politics in the divergent narratives and contested histories of Indian womanhood as imagined and lived – the “Devi”(Goddess) or the “Dasi” (slave), the changing and dynamic nature of the roles and statuses of women and men in the spheres of politics, law, society, economy, and culture. We will weave a narrative of women and men’s lives by looking at both formal structures (inscribed in religious and legal texts) as well the customary lived experiences that often did not conform closely to formal dictates. To understand both formal social structure as well as experience and lived customs we will read a variety of multidisciplinary texts – primary historical documents written by both women and men, religious texts (Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist), selections from legal treatises, folktales, fiction, plays, autobiographies, memoirs, visuals, and films. Themes will be selected from ancient, medieval, and modern periods of Indian history, with primary focus on modern and contemporary developments. This is a writing credit course.
HIS 315 P IMPERIAL CHINA
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
Would you like to learn how China founded dynasties that endured for centuries and at times governed a quarter of the world’s population? How the Mongols established the first truly global empire in history in a matter of decades? What Confucians, Buddhists, and Daoist believe and how these systems of thought shaped Chinese society? This lecture course examines the origins and development of Chinese civilization from the early Bronze Age (c. 1200 BCE) through the late imperial period (1800 CE). In the first section of the course, we will explore the politics and society of early China, focusing on the emergence of philosophical schools such as Confucianism and on the evolution of a unified imperial state under the Qin and Han dynasties (221 BCE-220 CE). We will then discuss the spread of Buddhism from 300 to 600CE and China's military and cultural efflorescence under the leadership of the cosmopolitan Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). In the final part of the class, we will describe the growth of a sophisticated commercial culture, the development of a new bureaucratic elite after the eleventh century CE, and China's conquest by Inner Asian dynasties like the Mongols (1271-1368 CE) and the Qing (1644-1911 CE).
HIS 332 G ENGLAND, 1485-1688
MWF 2:30PM-3:20PM
Thanks especially to shows like Showtime's “The Tudors” and musicals like “Six,” most Americans know something about Henry VIII and his six wives, about his daughters “Bloody” Mary and Elizabeth the “Virgin Queen," about William Shakespeare and his plays, about the puritans and the Pilgrims, and about Isaac Newton and the so-called Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth-century. This course will examine all of these figures, but it will also pay attention to the millions of men and women who are not household names, but who lived through this extraordinarily tumultuous period in English history. The people of early modern England lived in an age of revolutions: a religious Reformation in the 16th century that brought change to almost every aspect of life, a Civil War in the mid-17th century that unleashed chaos and brought a temporary end to the monarchy, and a purportedly “Glorious” Revolution in 1688 that ushered in the modern era of English and British history. Alongside these events, these centuries saw unprecedented population growth, severe economic changes, and the beginning of Britain’s overseas empire. Why did these dramatic events happen, how did people respond to them, and what were the consequences of their choices? In HIS 332 we will discover answers to these questions and also reflect on what early modern England might teach us about our own tumultuous moment in history.
HIS 334 C BRITIAN & COMMONWEALTH
MWF 10:10AM-11:00AM
Britain’s 20th century was a century of massive political, social, and cultural changes. We’ll explore those changes as they relate to several prominent themes: The impact of two World Wars on soldiers and civilians alike, each of hitherto unimaginable scale and scope; the rise and decline(?) of the welfare state; the dismantling of the British empire and the (closely related) rise of a truly multi-racial and multi-ethnic Britain; the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s; the political and economic tumult of the 1970s; the rise and consolidation of Thatcherite neoliberalism; the long but certain decline of Britain’s great-power status; the complicated relationship between Britain and the European Union – before, during, and after Britain’s membership in it; and the complex and often contested relationship among the four nations within the United Kingdom – Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England.
HIS 340 S GERMANY SINCE 1815
TR 3:30PM-4:45PM
This is a lecture course on modern German history from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to the end of the Third Reich in 1945. The course begins with an overview of German history from the Napoleonic occupation, as background to German unification in 1871, and then concentrates on the domestic and foreign policies of the German Empire, with an emphasis on Bismarck's system of alliances and the origins of the First World War. We then turn to political and military developments in Germany during World War I and, following that, to the Weimar Republic, from its difficult beginnings after Germany's defeat in 1918 and stabilization in the mid-1920s to the renewed instability, violence, and turmoil during the Great Depression. Weimar’s great cultural achievements formed a strange contrast to the Republic's political disasters, culminating in Hitler's rise to power in January 1933. The political and social history of Nazi Germany and Germany's role in the Second World War constitute another focal point of the course, which concludes with a brief examination of the period after 1945.
HIS 347 Q SOVIET UNION POST RUSSIA
TR 12:30PM-1:45PM
This course is an introductory survey of the Soviet Union. Starting with the revolutionary years of the late Russian Empire, we will cover the political, social, economic, and cultural spheres of the utopian Soviet experiment in the 20th century, as well as the first 25 years of post-Soviet Russia. Lectures will address some of the following topics: World War One and the revolutions of 1917; civil war and war communism; Marxism-Leninism; the role of terror, nationalism, and ethnic relations in Soviet politics and society; Stalinism; World War Two; the Cold War; state reform and political dissent; and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has been called an “Affirmative Action Empire” and an “Empire of Nations.” Embracing this approach, we will use primary source documents, novels, poems, songs, films, and images to explore the diverse range of daily experiences that comprised this vast multinational state.
HIS 362 D AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1763-1783)
MWF 11:15AM-12:05PM
Beginning with an examination of British North America in the 1760s, this course considers the causes of the American Revolution and its significance for diverse segments of the population: various Indigenous nations, people of African descent, and Euro-Americans of different ethnic backgrounds, religious proclivities, and political leanings. Our scrutiny of this era will incorporate multiple historical vantage points. We will think of the American Revolution not only as a war and political event, but also as a social and cultural experience. Our goal is to come closer to understanding what the revolution meant for the people who lived through it.
HIS 370 P 19TH-CENTURY U.S. HISTORY AND LITERATURE
TR 11:00AM-12:15PM
This course explores 19th-Century American intellectual and cultural history through the lens of its literature. Analyzing key works of fiction, poetry, oratory, and philosophy as historical sources, we will seek to discover how the changing themes and forms of nineteenth-century literature shaped and/or reflected larger intellectual, political, and social currents.
HIS 391 H HISTORY EVERYDAY LIFE
MW 3:35PM-4:50PM
This course examines people’s everyday lives in early modern Europe, ca. 1400-1700. We will begin with the settings of everyday life: how did early modern Europeans perceive and interact with the natural world and supernatural entities? What were their cities and villages like and what sorts of homes did they live in? Next, we’ll consider the experience of time in early modern Europe: how did people perceive time, what was the night like before electricity, and how did the calendar change during this period? Then we’ll examine people’s sense of self and personal identity, studying gender, clothing and fashion, manners, and emotions in the early modern period. Next we’ll study the life-cycle: what was childhood, marriage, illness, and death like in pre-modern Europe? Finally, we’ll conclude with food and fun: what did early modern Europeans eat, what did they drink, what drugs did they use, and how did they entertain themselves and each other? On all of these subjects, we will aim to understand the contours of everyday life for different people at different points in time, but also to understand how and why everyday life changed during the early modern period. By the end of the course, you will have a deep understanding of the social and cultural history of early modern Europe, and you will hopefully have come to see your own everyday life in a new light.
HIS 396 E SPECIAL TOPICS
WITNESSING WWII
12:20PM-1:10PM
This course will focus on diaries and recollections of the Second World War, the seminal episode of the murderous 20th century. A truly global conflict that left at least 55 million people dead in its wake, World War II left an indelible imprint on the memories of everyone who was old enough to be aware of it at the time – my parents, your grandparents and/or great-grandparents, and everyone else besides. World War II is of course also a focal point for highly controversial collective memories – memories of the Holocaust, of the routine targeting of civilians by all the major belligerents, of ruthless combat violence, and much else besides. Memories of World War II are very often memories of survival, and the ethical dilemmas posed by the imperative to survive in extreme situations. Course readings and films will focus on memories of survival and its ethical complexities. The stories told in the course will serve as a rich introduction to the concepts of time, memory, and narrative in the context of wartime trauma. In exploring these themes, we’ll make extensive use of primary sources in a discussion- and writing-intensive setting.
HIS 397 01 INTERNSHIP
HIS 400 & HIS 500 DIRECTED READINGS
All 400and 500 level directed readings require permission of instructor before signing up for course.
HIS 511/611 46 STUDIES IN ASIAN HISTORY
COLONIALISM, IDENTITY, AND DEVELOPMENT
T 2:00PM-4:45PM
This research seminar uses works of history and literature to explore the origins, development, and collapse of European empires from 1500 to the present. We will focus primarily on South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean but also draw comparisons with Latin America, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The course will develop a grand narrative that links overseas expansion in the early modern period (c. 1500-1800) to global capitalism but rejects economics as central to the establishment of formal political empires after 1800. Instead, we will argue that the primary significance of “modern” or territorial imperialism lay in the realm of culture, discourse, and identity formation for both Europeans and their colonial subjects. The first section of the course will evaluate the growth of plantations and trading posts from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries and examine the important changes in consumption, production, and finance that they inspired in European societies. We will then trace the emergence of territorial colonies in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and appraise the creation of colonial subjects on one hand and a European “civilizational” identity on the other. During the final part of the course, we will assess the process of decolonization in the 1950s and 60s and conclude with the challenges of economic development and the post-colonial condition since independence.
HIS 536/636 43 STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY
VIKINGS
W 2:30pm-5:15PM
The Vikings were the scourge of Europe, notoriously successful raiders and conquerors. They were also traders and settlers with a sophisticated oral and artistic culture. The first half of this course studies the Vikings during their centuries of marauding, conquest, and settlement. The second half investigates a society founded by the Vikings, medieval Iceland, which developed a literary tradition of sagas, a genre noteworthy for its realistic portrayal of life in the period. We will be reading a modern overview of Viking history and a modern reconstruction of medieval Icelandic society, but we will also be reading a large number of primary sources composed by the Vikings, their descendants, and their enemies. The reading will include several sagas. The grade will be based on discussion, short papers, and a research paper that will be based on the class readings but include outside research is well. This class will be a lot of fun, but you should prepare for a fair amount of work too.
HIS 561/662 40 STUDIES IN US HISTORY
SLAVERY IN FACT AND FICTION
R 5:00PM-7:45PM
How can we come to terms with slavery? Scholars, artists, and activists have all produced work that tries to make sense of slavery in the United States. Yet the answers remain elusive, in part because of the difficulties of placing enslaved people at the center of those works. In this class we will explore how historians and novelists have portrayed slavery. and explore how we might better know the history of enslaved people.
HIS 561/662 41 STUDIES IN US HISTORY
OLD SOUTH
R 200pm-4:45pm
This seminar will examine the new history of the “Old South” (pre-Civil War) by focusing on scholarship published in the last 15 years. We will discuss various aspects of antebellum southern economic, social, and cultural development including the growth of slave communities, slave culture, and resistance, the white southern defense of slavery, the rapidly intensifying political controversies with the North, and the development of southern identity/southern nationalism. We will look at the experiences of many different groups of southerners – male and female, Black and white, slave and free, slaveholder and nonslaveholder. From these various perspectives, we will attempt to discover what made this massive and diverse region into “The South,” and how the new arguments and questions of today’s historians have changed our understanding of this much-studied subject. By the end of seminar, students will add their own new interpretations through the production of original research papers.
HIS 569/669 45 AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
T 6:00PM-8:45PM
African-American history is a cutting-edge field in research, scholarship, and overall importance to the history profession. No area of academic inquiry is pregnant with more heated debates, intellectual challenges, and societal insights. Throughout the history of Black folk in America there has been a wide range of thought about what should be the right course of action or agenda for the race. The thinking has ranged the gamut from the advocacy of freedom “By Any Means Necessary” to accommodation and integration, to the building of a separate Black nation within America, to the Back-to-Africa Movements. This seminar will probe the thinking and formulations of those Black leaders. While our concentration will be on African-American leadership, we will have a strong comparative component as we also explore the ideas of some of the key leaders of African descent in other parts of the Diaspora during the all-important foundation years of the late 19th and 20th Centuries.
The learning outcome goals of this course are to advance the students’ understanding of race relations and the African-American struggle and contribution to the United States of America, enhance cognitive, analytical, and critical thinking ability, and improve overall written and verbal communication skills.
The student’s grade for the seminar shall be based on contribution to discussion (20%), two oral presentations (15% each; 30%), and a fifteen-page primary source research paper (50%) that explores a topic of the student’s choice within the theme of the course.
*Service-learning option (off campus): A community-based project, such as volunteer work with the Black Archives, Miami Workers Center, Alonzo Mourning Charities, Overtown Youth Center, South Miami Afterschool Center, Habitat for Humanity, Nature Links, Miami Rescue Mission, or some other community service organization, may be done in lieu of the research paper.
HIS 602 42 STUDIES IN AFRICAN HISTORY:
IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM – EUROPEAN EXPANSION IN AFRICA, 1880-1950
R 9:30AM-12:15PM
This course deals with the European conquest, partition, and consolidation of spheres of influence in Africa from about 1880-1950. It examines the rationale for the European conquest of Africa, African responses to colonialism, the overthrow of colonialism, independence, and the post-independence period. We will investigate specific issues such as the scramble and partition of Africa, the establishment of Indirect Rule (British), Assimilation and Association (French), and other administrative systems of the colonial period. In addition, we will take an in-depth look at the political economy of colonialism, the rise of nationalism, the formation of nationalist movements, and the struggle for independence. Why is the post-independence period characterized by civil wars, genocide, political and economic instability and why have many professionals left Africa for Europe and North America? These questions will be answered in the last segment of the course.
HIS 701 48 RESEARCH SEMINAR 1
M 3:30PM-6:15PM
HIS 717 44 MODERN CARIBBEAN FIELD PREP
F 2:15PM-5:00PM
This seminar is designed for Ph.D. students interested in working on major topics, questions, and debates in Caribbean history from the late nineteenth century to the present. Students will have the chance to read and discuss a wide range of scholarship in Caribbean studies, with an emphasis on influential recent directions in the field. Seminar readings will spotlight comparative and transnational approaches, and methodological problems will be foregrounded throughout
HIS 718 47 FIELD PREP: MODERN LATIN AMERICA
T 9:00AM-11:45AM
This seminar surveys major trends in the historiography of modern Latin America (that is, the nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first centuries). The course explores a variety of genres, methodological approaches, scholarly controversies, and interpretive problems. Seminar members will think carefully about how to study the region’s past and present, and in the process, will consider the current parameters of modern Latin America as an academic field. In Spring 2023, the readings will highlight recent approaches to the study of topics that include: 1) postcolonialism, citizenship, and state formation; 2) the politics of race and nation; 3) capitalism and the social dimensions of economic life; and 4) the human experience of environmental, spatial, and urban transformations. The course helps prepare graduate students for their qualifying examinations, but individuals working in fields other than modern Latin American history and based outside the History Department are more than welcome to join the seminar.
HIS 810 01 MASTER’S THESIS
The student working on his/her master’s thesis enrolls for credit, in most departments not to exceed six, as determined by his/her advisor. Credit is not awarded until the thesis has been accepted.
HIS 825 01 MASTER’S STUDY
To establish residence for non-thesis master’s students who are preparing for major examinations. Credit not granted. Regarded as full time residence.
HIS 830 01 DOCTORAL DISSERTATION
Required of all candidates for the Ph.D. The student will enroll for credit as determined by his/her advisor, but for not less than a total of 12 hours. Up to 12 hours may be taken in a regular semester, but not more than six in a summer session.
HIS 840 01 POST CAND DOC DISS
HIS 850 01 RESEARCH IN RESIDENCE
Use to establish research in residence for the Ph.D. after the student has been enrolled for the permissible cumulative total in appropriate doctoral research. Credit not granted. May be regarded as full-time residence as determined by the Dean of the Graduate School.