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Graduate Programs

Graduate Seminars - Spring 2008

*NOTE This List is Subject to Change.

504/History and Historiography of Roman Religion/Paul Harvey/R6-9
505/The Bible and History: The History of Source Analysis/Baruch Halpern/TBA
515/Early Modern Europe/Ronnie Hsia/W6-9
516/Topics in US Women's/Gender History/Lori Ginzberg/T6-9
537/Violence and Community: English Experiences of Civil War and Revolution, 1642-1653/Dan Beaver/M6-9
587/South Asian Historiography/Mrinalini Sinha/R6-9
597A/Proseminar/Nan Woodruff/TBA
597B/Race and Nation in Modern Latin America and the Carribean/Solsiree del Moral/M6-9
597C/Research Seminar in the History of Nineteenth-Century America/Mark Neely/TBA
CAMS 597A/Hittite/Gonzalo Rubio/M4:15-7:15
CAMS 597B/The Hebrew Bible and its Interpreters/Gary Knoppers/W4:15-7:20

• History 504 - History and Historiography of Roman Religion

Thursday 6:00-9:00pm

Paul Harvey

pbh1@psu.edu

This research seminar studies how religion in ancient Italy has been studied from the Renaissance forward, with particular attention to German and French theoretical approaches, as well as current methodological approaches. We shall concentrate on ancient documentation and description of religious praxis, studying both literary texts and a range of epigraphic (inscriptional) documents attesting religious activities and practitioners.

A reading knowledge of Greek and/or Latin (preferably both) is necessary. Seminar requirements include preparation of a major research paper and oral presentation of research. A basic goal of this seminar is to assist seminar participants in preparing for scholarly presentation and publication of their research.

Sample readings:
John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion (2003)
Robert Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire (1996)
Simon Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (1999)
P.G. Walsh, CICERO: The Nature of the Gods (1998)
Beard, North, & Price, Religions of Rome 2 vols.(1998)
W.A. Falconer, CICERO: De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione Loeb Classical Library #154

Guest speaker(s):

Hannah Cotton (Classics, Tel Aviv)

• History 505 – The Bible and History: History of Source Analysis

Meeting Time TBA
Baruch Halpern
bxh13@psu.edu

Determining the nature, influence and use of a historian’s, or any writer’s, sources is a precondition for establishing the writer’s intended messages, the spin on the raw material. Source analysis has its origins in rabbinic and patristic reflection on the Bible, but takes on new forms in the Middle Ages, and explodes in the Enlightenment. By the 19th century, it was extended to Homer, and came to be a valuable tool in the historian’s kit, which it today remains, early in that century. Here, we will examine different forms of source analysis in Biblical Studies, Classics and History, and wonder about their social embedment as methods. Principally, we will reenact the thoughts of the methods’ practitioners, and see how they are applied.

Sample Readings:

Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time
Parts of Genesis-Exodus; Numbers, and commentary on them
Parts of Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, and commentary on them
1-2 Kings, and some commentary on them
Ernst Badian, “Waiting for Sulla”
Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, and commentary on them
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus
Works by W. M. L. de Wette, J. Wellhausen, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf and the like

• History 515 - Early Modern Europe

213 Armsby, Wednesday 6:00-9:00pm

Ronnie Hsia
rxh46@psu.edu

The theme for this semester is on society and religion in early modern Europe (16th-17th centuries), which is also an introduction to the history and scholarship of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Readings are selected to emphasize the social history of religion, with texts representing approaches by American, British, French, Italian, and German scholarship. Course requirements consist of oral presentations of readings and one research paper (15-20 pages).

Sample Readings:

Ulinka Rublack, Reformation Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
R. Po-chia Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal 1540-1770. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Merry Wiesner, Early Modern Europe 1450-1789. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Guest speaker(s):

David Lederer, Maynooth College, National University of Ireland/Davis Center, Princeton University

• History 516 - Topics in US Women's/Gender History

304 Willard, Tuesday 6:00-9:00pm

Lori Ginzberg
ldg1@psu.edu

This course will be an intensive reading seminar focusing on American women's/gender history from the Revolutionary era through the late nineteenth century. This is not a comprehensive survey course; not all topics will be covered. The goals are to familiarize you with some of the content of women's history and to acquaint you with the key historiographical and theoretical debates of the field. Particular attention will be paid to the tension between conceptualizing women as a group and studying the ways race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation have shaped women's--and men's--lives. Topics will include women and religion, the work of both enslaved and free women, politics and law, sexuality, labor organizing, and masculinity.

Sample readings:

Clare Lyons, Sex Among the Rabble (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2006)
George Chauncey, Gay New York (Basic Books, 1995)
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex (Vintage, 2003)
Martha Jones, All Bound up Together (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2007)
Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (U. Chicago, 1996)
Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (Oxford, 1990)

• History 537 - Violence and Community: English Experiences of Civil War and Revolution, 1642-1653

213 Armsby, Monday 6:00-9:00pm

Dan Beaver
dxb28@psu.edu

This research seminar focuses on social, political, and cultural aspects of the English civil wars and revolution during the 1640s. Although traditional political and military approaches to the conflict between crown and parliament are not ignored, the seminar will explore in greater detail the many different forms of violence characteristic of these wars--including local feuds, iconoclasm, and judicial murder--as evidence of efforts to rebuild communities in the midst of general crisis. Readings include both documents and recent secondary work; writing assignments include weekly papers and a research paper of 20 to 25 pages.

Sample readings:

Charles Carlton, Going to the Wars
Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth
Ann Hughes, Causes of the English Civil War
Mark Stoyle, Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War
David Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion
John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution

• History 587 - South Asian Historiography

122 Pond, Thursday 6:00-9:00pm

Mrinalini Sinha
mis12@psu.edu

In recent years, the impact of South Asian historiography -- from the “subaltern studies” school to the “postcolonial turn” and from gender history to transnational history -- has had a significant impact on the study of history in areas and fields well beyond South Asia. This contemporary example of developments within non-western historiography having a broader impact on the study of history is not in itself new: it looks back, for example, to a tradition that includes the contributions of such scholars as Eric Williams and the “Caribbean” school in the 1940s and 1950s and of the Latin American “dependendistas” in the 1960s and 1970s, among others, as precursors. The impact of “third world” historiographies on crossing and challenging boundaries, of many different kinds, provides the broader context for our exploration of modern South Asian historiography.
This course will introduce students to different theoretical and methodological perspectives on the South Asian past. We will evaluate the contributions of different approaches to the South Asian past, with special attention to the ways in which each deals with the themes of empire, nation, and global interconnections. The focus of the course will be on the early modern and modern period in South Asia, but we will also touch on the ways in which constructions of the pre-colonial past figure in debates within modern South Asian historiography.
Even though the course is an introduction to South Asian historiography, students studying U.S., European and Latin American history are welcome to explore (and, perhaps, write about) the ways in which the debates and themes in the course may resonate in their respective areas.

Readings: T.B.A

• History 597A - Proseminar

Meeting Time and Place TBA

Nan Woodruff
new7@psu.edu

This is the sequence to the Pro Seminar 592 offered in the Fall, 2007 semester under Professor Mittlestadt. This is a research seminar open only to the students who took the fall seminar. The purpose is to complete the paper that was proposed in the fall. For questions regarding the seminar, contact Professor Woodruff.

• History 597B - Race and Nation in Modern Latin America and the Carribean

Monday 6:00-9:00pm

Solsiree del Moral
sxd46@psu.edu

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Latin American and Caribbean elites and subalterns fully engaged the process of defining the limits and boundaries of citizenship and nation. In this seminar, we examine how the social constructions of race and racial identities (black, mestizo, mulatto, indigenous, white) by different historical actors informed nation-building processes. Through the case studies of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other Latin American and Caribbean countries, we will analyze, engage, and debate how historians have applied an analysis of race, gender, and class to the historical processes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course will emphasize the analysis of theory and method in modern Latin American historiography.

Sample readings:

Brennan, Denise. What's love got to do with it? Transnational desires and sex tourism in the Dominican Republic, Duke University Press, 2004.
Butler, Kim. Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and Salvador. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
Dávila, Jerry. Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Dawson, Alexander S. Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004.
Ferrer, Ada. Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Wade, Peter. Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Identity in Colombia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Guest speaker(s):
Professor Kim Butler, Chair and Professor of Africana Studies, Rutgers University.

• History 597C - Research Seminar in the History of Nineteenth-Century America

Meeting Time and Place TBA

Mark Neely
mxn10@psu.edu

Each student will produce for this course a paper of the length appropriate for submission to a scholarly journal (around 30 pages). The use of original sources for the paper is essential, and early classes will emphasize the diligent use and intelligent interpretation of such sources as manuscripts (especially presidential papers), the Congressional Globe, the government serial set, legal records, diplomatic correspondence, newspapers, the U.S. census, and popular prints and photographs. Students (and the instructor, of course) will read and criticize preliminary drafts of the papers.

Assigned readings for class discussions in the early weeks of the course will be entirely in original sources.

• CAMS 597A - Hittite

304 Willard, Monday 4:15-7:15pm

Gonzalo Rubio
gxr18@psu.edu

This course aims at familiarizing students with the basics of Hittite grammar and at initiating them in the Hittite use of the cuneiform writing system. While the emphasis will be placed on grammar and vocabulary, the study of the script will not be neglected. Moreover, occasional attention will be paid to some historical, cultural, literary, and linguistic issues. After a careful overview of the grammar, we will read passages from some famous Hittite texts.

Sample readings:

This is a language course. We will follow a manual: Harry Hoffner and Craig Melchert, A Grammar of the Hittite Language, I-II (edited by Gonzalo Rubio. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2007).
Besides the manual, we will read excerpts from a number of editions of Hittite texts: Inge Hoffmann, Der Erlass Telipinus (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1984); Heinrich Otten, Die Apologie Hattusilis III (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981); etc.

• CAMS 597B - The Hebrew Bible and its Interpreters

312 Boucke, Wednesday 4:15-7:20pm

Gary Knoppers
gxk7@psu.edu

The Hebrew Bible forms part of the scriptures of two of the world's great religions (Judaism and Christianity) and functions as an important influence on the scriptures of a third great religion (Islam). One of the most central and fascinating issues in the history of "western" religion is the manner in which the canon of the Hebrew scriptures (however that canon is defined) has been reinterpreted and reapplied in various historical contexts. Authoritative scriptures – deemed to be both immutable and foundational to "western" civilization – are nevertheless subject to profoundly divergent interpretations not only in different historical periods, but also within individual religious traditions. This course compares the different ways in which the – the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament – has been read and interpreted in various periods from late antiquity to modern times. Special attention will be paid to the divergent presuppositions and approaches of the early and modern (re)readers of the Bible. We will concentrate upon a group of central biblical figures – Eve, Deborah, David, Solomon, Elijah, Hezekiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther – whose stories will be examined in the context of ancient Israelite history and then compared with later elaborations, embellishments, and interpretations of these biblical tales by mostly Jewish, but also some other (Christian, Muslim, or unaffiliated) interpreters. Such comparisons have important consequences for coming to grips with larger historical, epistemological, and hermeneutical questions.