HIST 302W.001
Schedule #769189
MWF 2:30P – 3:20P
Instructor: Professor Jessamyn Rei Abel
Japan in International History: This course will address the subfield of international history through the example of modern Japan. We will examine Japan’s foreign relations and changing position in the world, from its “opening” to the West in the mid-nineteenth century to its emergence as a pop culture superpower in the present day. The course will cover such topics as international organizations, imperialism and war, pan-nationalisms, trade friction, soft power, and cultural diplomacy.
HIST 302W.002 Charismatic Leadership and History
Schedule #769192
MWF 9:05A – 9:55A
Instructor: Professor Jonathan Brockopp
The idea that history is driven by "Great Men" was abandoned in the 19th century in favor of broader studies of culture and society. Yet the reading public remains fascinated by those men who seem to crystallize moments in history: Moses, Muhammad, Martin Luther, Malcolm X. For example, a recent art exhibit on the cultural remains of the Ilkhanid period would have been a failure without the title: "The Legacy of Ghengis Khan." Slowly, a few women have also been added to these ranks, but the notion of female charisma and leadership remains contested.
This course will cover psychological, sociological, religious and historical theories of charismatic leadership, guiding students through a critical assessment of biographical writing and helping them develop their own notions of how a historian best deals with charismatic figures from the past. Readings include:
- Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History
- Eisenstadt, Max Weber on Charisma and Institution-building
- Hook, The Hero in History
- Oakes, Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities
- Takim, The Heirs of the Prophet: Charisma and Religious Authority in Shiite Islam
HIST 302W.003 US Empire at the Turn of the Century
Schedule #769195
T R 4:15P – 5:30P
Instructor: Professor Solsire Del Moral
The course will survey the emergence of the US Empire in the Caribbean and Pacific in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a special focus on the turn of the century. First, we examine imperial transitions. The US emerges as an empire in the mid-nineteenth-century in the face of Spanish contraction and British expansion. Second, we analyze the practices of empire in the colonies from the perspectives of colonial peoples. We privilege the lens of Caribbean and Pacific peoples and highlight how they negotiated the intentions of US colonial practices. Colonial responses to US imperialism were varied, ranging from radical nationalism, colonial autonomism, and annexation. We frame the expansion of US empire within a broader conversation about racial ideologies and practices.
HIST 302W.004
Schedule #769198
MWF 2:30P – 3:20P
Instructor: Professor Grace Delgado
This undergraduate honors history seminar analyzes the causes and consequences of Asian and Latin American immigration into the United States from 1882 to 2001. Students will explore the relationship between U.S. economic and foreign policies and immigration, transnational ties between immigrants and their homelands, and the economic, political, and cultural influences of Asian and Latino immigrant communities on American society.
Historically, the United States has favored European immigration over Asian and Latino immigration with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and the National Origins Act of 1924. In 1952, however, Congress removed racial barriers to immigration and naturalization, abolished the national origin quota system in 1965, and provided amnesty for 3.7 million undocumented immigrants under the Immigration Act of 1986. Furthermore, U.S. intervention in Southeast Asian, Central America, and the Caribbean spurred the entry of refugees into the United States. Today, Asians and Latinos are the fasting growing populations in the United States, due mostly to immigration.
Students will investigate:
1) Domestic and international forces shaping immigration patterns both recent and historical
2) The history of U. S. immigration laws (e.g. Chinese exclusion, Gentleman’s Agreement, IRCA)
3) War-time hysteria and Japanese Internment
4) Varieties of immigrant experiences, contrasting arrival/survival experiences (border/non-border)
5) Immigration laws and current debates about U.S. immigration/refugee policy; Proposition 187 in California (1994), anti-immigrant Congressional laws of 1996
6) The post-industrial economy (economic restructuring, NAFTA) and immigrant labor
HIST 302W.005 Europe and the Middle East (1850-1950)
Schedule # 769201
T R 4:15P – 5:30P
Instructor: Professor Nina Safran
This course is oriented toward the writing of a research paper based on primary sources on a topic that explores interactions between Europe and the Middle East (1850-1950) from a particular perspective and develops an original insight. As a group we will read and examine different genres of sources (for example, missionary accounts, government documents, newspaper reports, memoirs, travel accounts, photographs) and situate them in the larger history of the increasing involvement of Europe in the Middle East and the transformation of the Middle East over the course of a century. The course is directed toward "doing" history and discussions will address that process. We will discuss what each source and type of source offers as evidence and consider lines of further inquiry and how to pursue them. We will also look at how a few recent scholars make use of some of the same types of sources
HIST 302W.006 Medieval Trave, Trade, and Exploration
Schedule #769204
T R 4:15P – 5:30P
Instructor: Professor Kathryn Salzer
This course will explore medieval travel, trade, and exploration both in Europe and beyond its “borders”. Topics to be studied include: maps from the Middle Ages, types of medieval travelers (including merchants, pilgrims, soldiers, and monk-missionaries), and the routes of medieval travel (such as those to the fairs of Champagne and to the pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela). The course will begin with the period of Late Antiquity, though it will focus heavily on the period between 700 and 1400.
Primary-sources—such as The Vinland Sagas, Marco Polo’s The Travels, and The Adventures of Ibn Battuta—will be read in order to examine different aspects of our subject. We will also use the work of modern scholars, who, for instance, are studying the extent to which Europeans interacted with other societies in North Africa or along the Silk Route.
HIST 302W.007 Wagner in German History 1813-2013
Schedule #777049
W 6:00P – 9:00P
Instructor: Professor Paul Rose
The composer Wagner (1813-1883) is a crucial figure in German history in the 19th and 20th centuries. He was engaged in the German nationalist and revolutionary movements prior to German unification in 1870, was an active critic and political publicist during Bismarck's Second Reich after 1870, and later was adopted by Hitler as "the only precursor of National Socialism". The Wagner Festival at Bayreuth was Hitler's central cultural interest and he intended to make it the official cultural and quasi-religious institution of the Third Reich. In all these phases of German history Wagner represents both a major agent of political change and an emblematic figure.
At the same time Wagner has always been and continues to be one of the most controversial personalities and themes in German history and culture. Was he the founder of modern German antisemitism, or was his hatred of the Jews merely an aberration? Was Hitler conceivable without the inspiration of Wagner? Would Wagner, had he lived, have approved the uses to which his writings and music were put in Nazi Germany? Is it possible to perform Wagner's operas without evoking the antisemitism they represent? On an aesthetic level, did Wagner embed antisemitism in the philosophy, plots, characters and even musical notes of his operas? How does his "left-wing revolutionism" relate to his "right-wing nationalism" and antisemitism?
The course will examine in detail in translation both the operas and the political and antisemitic writings of Wagner so as to arrive at answers to these questions. Other writings to be discussed will those of 19th century German antisemites, the writer Thomas Mann who understood Wagner to embody the dilemmas and problems of German history, and Hitler himself. The history of the Bayreuth Wagner Festival in art and politics to the present day will form an important theme.
