United States

Projects are welcome from any period, and we will define our themes broadly.   Students are encouraged to consult with me as early as possible.   Participants should bring a one page prospectus to the first class.  The prospectus should include a brief summary of the proposed research and potential sources.

This research seminar is for students writing theses on any aspect of American history from the early colonial period through World War One. Topics involving some transnational/international component are very welcome, so long as the United States figures importantly. Early sessions will emphasize skills: defining topics, designing research programs, organizing and writing successful essays, consideration of exemplary work. The bulk of the semester will be devoted to the production, critique, and refinement of student theses.

This History 103 course will offer students the opportunity to explore recent and innovative scholarship on the era of the American Revolution from a variety of different perspectives.  We will examine the American crisis from the point of view of London, Jamaica, Virginia, and Massachusetts, allowing students the opportunity to develop an in-depth understanding of this important period, and to develop primary source research papers or make preparations for a 101 in this subject area.

Historians have made tremendous strides in recent years in charting the evolution of sexual attitudes, identities, and practices in the United States, producing an impressive body of scholarship that has delineated the broad contours of collective inquiry and illuminated many of its individual facets. This reading-intensive seminar will consider the disparate origins and prospective consolidation of the subfield dedicated to explicating the history of sexual violence, coercion, and control.

Both frontiers and borderlands are concepts historians use to describe how people relate to one another and to the nation, especially in the context of the American West. The frontier, placed at the center of American historical study by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893, has shaped the way scholars think and write about the history of the United States. Recently many historians have criticized the notion of a moving frontier—a democracy-creating line between civilization and savagery—as racist, sexist, or just plain wrong.