Winter 2024 Graduate Courses

(Tentative schedule; subject to change)

Course No. & Name	Professor/Lecturer	Day/Time	Course Description
HIST 200I: Mexico from Independence to NAFTA	F. Perez-Montesinos	W 2-4:50	This course offers a comprehensive examination of Mexico since independence. Using a sample of works by leading scholars, students will analyze key developments in modern Mexican history, including the war of independence, the US-Mexico War, the Mexican revolution, the Mexican miracle period, and the NAFTA era. We will discuss the guiding themes, questions, and debates informing old and new interpretations of these events.
HIST 200O: Historiography of Modern Science	T. Porter	M 1-3:50	The course is required for new graduate students in the history of science. Other History graduate students are also most welcome, and graduate students from other departments as well, though I encourage you to discuss with me in advance. We will be read and discuss each week either a book, or a selections of papers and chapters on a topic or current interest. I have chosen the readings partly on account of their quality and significance, and partly also as in some way representative of (or deviation from) recent scholarly directions in the history of science and medicine. I’ve especially emphasized work that treats history of science, technology, and medicine in a large sense, to give an indication both of the historical importance of our subject matter and of other bodies of scholarship with which it interacts. This year I am including more options for students with diverse interests and needs, and I may be persuaded to extend these options still further for students specializing in different parts of the world and for students from departments other than History.
HIST 200P: Advanced Historiography: History of Religions	N. Green	M 2-4:50	Seminar, three hours. May be repeated for credit.
HIST 201E	C. Ford	M 1-3:50	This course will explore the history of museums and collections during the long period of European colonial expansion beginning in the 19th century and ending in decolonization in the 20th century. Topics include the emergence and development of national museum cultures, world fairs and ethnographic museums, the European embrace of “primitivism”, “orientalist aesthetics” and their colonial transfer, debates regarding collecting, cultural patrimony, and repatriation, the politics of display, and the postcolonial museum.
HIST 201I	R. Derby	T 2-4:50	Caribbean history seminar with a focus on Cuba, Saint Domingue and the Dominican Republic thus the Spanish and French Caribbean, slavery, sugar and the Haitian Revolution in which students write essays which incorporate primary sources.
HIST 201J: Topics in History: Near East	J. Gelvin	W 2-4:50	Readings in modern Middle East history
HIST C201K: Religion, the State, and Dissent in Modern India	V. Lal	W 2-4:50	This new seminar will look at how the Indian state has sought to negotiate the demands of various religious constituencies in India since the creation of the Republic in 1950, the place of religion in the public sphere, and the various forms that dissent has taken especially in relation to the question of religion. The course offers the period from 1857‐58, marked by the Indian Rebellion (previously known as the Sepoy Mutiny), to the present‐‐dominated by the protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) and the Farmers Movement (2021). Subjects covered include the agrarian and tribal unrest in colonial India, the Wahhabi movement in the 19th century, the place of religion in the nationalist movement, and student revolts; however, we will also consider other manifestations of dissent and social upheaval, such as the debates over Muslim personal law, as exemplified in some of the discourse over Kashmir or the Shah Bano case.
HIST 201R: Topics in History: Jewish History	S. Stein	R 10-12:50	This seminar will offer graduate students a dive into the historical literature on modern Jewries across a global geography and with a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Topics include Jewish experiences of modernity, colonialism, empire, law, capitalism, race, space, gender and sexuality, migration, violence, anti‐/philo‐Semitism, and more. Students will write short critical, reflective essays throughout the quarter and will produce a syllabus pertaining to their own area of expertise (in dialogue with Jewish history) by quarter’s end.
HIST 246B: The Nineteenth-Century United States	B. Madley	M 2-4:50	This seminar continues the 246 History Department series aimed at preparing first year United States History Ph.D. students for comprehensive written examinations. It is also intended for any graduate student wishing to deepen their understanding of nineteenth century U.S. history. We will closely read and discuss ten monographs. You will write six discussion questions about each week’s assigned reading (three geared toward graduate students and three geared toward undergraduates), write a book review, make an oral presentation, and write one historiography essay.
HIST 266A: Seminar: Colonial Latin American History	K. Terraciano	R 1-3:50	Course 266A is requisite to 266B. In Progress grading (credit to be given only on completion of course 266B).
HIST 275B: Theory and Method in African History	A. Apter	W 2-4:50	African History Colloquium (275B) which addresses key theoretical and methodological issues that are central to African historical research but also resonate throughout multiple fields. Students taking both quarters will collect data and give class presentations during the first quarter, and will write a substantial research paper for the second quarter. The past is never “given” as an object of knowledge but must be apprehended through a range of mediating frames—social, cultural, political, ideological, philological, epistemological, even explicitly methodological—that structure primary sources to establish the baseline of historical understanding. Distinctive to African history is the relative paucity of written records and thus greater attention to oral historical research, particularly for the precolonial past. But the distinction between written and oral sources is not as straightforward as it initially appears. What happens to the primacy of archival records when approached as political and symbolic forms? How do we use non-official sources such as travel writings, diaries, scrap books, even rituals, to capture the “hidden histories” of both public spheres and private selves? What of non-verbal sources such as photographs and films? How is African history gendered? These are some of our guiding questions in exploring the “African archive.”
HIST 285B: Seminar: Japanese History	W. Marotti	T 3-5:50	Seminar, three hours. Requisite: course 285A. This is a two-term seminar focusing on the relation of writing, form, and content–namely, given a particular object of analysis, what mode or modes of exposition might be adequate to all of its complexities? We will read widely and intensively, from historiographical texts to unpublished drafts by instructor and students alike. Over the terms of the course, students will develop a substantial piece of writing, one which will benefit from group discussions, reviewed drafts, and comparative analysis. Letter grading.