Spring 2020 Graduate Courses

*Course Offerings and Dates/ Times are tentative. Please check the schedule of class on January 27, 2020 for the finalized listings.

Course No. & Name Professor/Lecturer Day/Time Course Description
HIST 200I – Advanced Historiography: Latin America Robin Derby T 8-10:50 Seminar, three hours. May be repeated for credit.
HIST 201I – Environmental History of Latin America Fernando Perez-Montesinos R 3-5:50 How have nature and human actions mutually conditioned each other in Latin America over the course of the last two centuries? How have hurricanes transformed the social and economic makeup of the Caribbean? How did crop engineering contribute to foster monocultures and diseases in Central America? Is it possible to explain political transformations in Argentina by examining natural catastrophes? Can forests in Mexico and Chile be political? How did Peruvian birds fundamentally contribute to the rise of commercial agriculture around the world? This course welcomes anyone interested in global environmental issues, environmental history, and the history of modern Latin America.
HIST M200W – Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples Ben Madley M 2-4:50 (Same as American Indian Studies M200A.) Lecture, 90 minutes; seminar, 90 minutes. Introduction to culture-histories of North American Indians and review of Indian concepts of history. Stereotypical approach to content and methodologies related to Indian past that is interdisciplinary and multicultural in its scope. Letter grading.
HIST 201D – ‘Concepts of class in historical enquiry: from Marx to Bourdieu’ Peter Stacey T 3-5:50 This course is designed to introduce graduates to some seminal concepts of class, and to their place within the development of modern sociology, from the texts of the classical theorists – Marx, Weber and Durkheim – to those of Bourdieu. Our aim is twofold: to familiarize ourselves with the variety of ways of conceptualising class in social theory which are at the disposal of historians; and then to examine how the category has been deployed by historians in order to furnish differing types of explanations of past human behavior. The course presumes no prior knowledge of the major works of sociology; in fact, it is constructed in order to introduce students to the texts themselves and to the general architecture of the various social theories in which class features as a key concept.
HIST C201H – Topics in History: U.S. Valerie Matsumoto R 2-4:50 (Formerly numbered 201H.) Seminar, three hours. Designed for graduate students. Reading and discussion of selected topics. May be repeated for credit. May be concurrently scheduled with course C191D. S/U or letter grading.
HIST C201H – Topics in History: U.S. Eric Avila TBD (Formerly numbered 201H.) Seminar, three hours. Designed for graduate students. Reading and discussion of selected topics. May be repeated for credit. May be concurrently scheduled with course C191D. S/U or letter grading.
HIST 201N – Rethinking Biography: Big Women in African History Ghislaine Lydon M 2-4:50 Biography is one of the oldest forms of history and until relatively recently, it documented the lives and times of great men. Today, new approaches to writing biography not only include shifts in focus, from exemplary to ordinary lives, from great men to lowly women, but also changes in writing styles and media techniques, from master narratives to idiosyncratic minutiae. In this seminar we will gain expertise in the art of writing biography and associated theories and methodologies, and get a sense of how the field has evolved. We will also examine biographies of notable and remarkable women who changed the course of history in their respective African polities. These include extraordinary women who became queens and even one remarkable outcast who became “king,” to intellectuals, activists and politicians with great legacies. The seminar is designed as a reading seminar with a research component.
HIST 246C – Introduction to U.S. History: 20th Century Toby Higbie W 2-4:50 Seminar, three hours. Graduate survey of significant literature dealing with U.S. history from the Colonial period to the present. Each course may be taken independently for credit.
HIST 251A – Collaborative Research Seminar: American History Kelly Lytle Hernandez M 2-4:50 Seminar, three hours. Course 251A is requisite to 251B. Research seminar taught jointly by two faculty members. Common readings and development of individual research projects. In Progress grading (credit to be given only on completion of course 251B).
HIST 282B – Seminar: Chinese History Bin Wong M 1-3:50 Seminar, three hours. Course 282A is requisite to 282B. In Progress grading (credit to be given only on completion of course 282B).