Graduate Course Descriptions
Fall 2009
This page last updated:
2009-11-24 09:27:35
Course Schedules and Locations are subject to change! Please check this site often for updated information.
Asia |
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| 275F.001 - Consciousness and Society in Japan since 1600 | Barshay | |
| Wed 10-12 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39672 | |
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This course offers a thematic and chronological survey of Japanese thought from the founding of the Tokugawa regime onward: four centuries during which Japan's cultural orientation or consciousness has shifted uneasily, dramatically, indeed at times violently, between an Asian-centered and Western-centered perspective, with "Japan" somehow at the center. The major focus of inquiry will be on social and political thought, although—as will become clear—aesthetic, religious, and philosophical concerns have never been far from the political, or vice versa. Broadly outlined, the course will treat questions such as: how have Japanese thinkers conceived of (their) society, state, and culture? How have they conceived of the world outside Japan? How have they shaped their own individual relationship as thinkers, and as members of religious, class-, or gender-based collectivities, to the national "whole" that was Japan, and to the world? What intellectual systems and instruments—Confucian, Buddhist, evolutionist, Christian, Marxist, and so on—have been significant in the ongoing process of "thinking in Japan"? FOR THE FIRST CLASS MEETING, students are asked to read Tetsuo Najita, Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese Politics (Univ. of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226568032). Students interested in enrolling should contact Andrew Barshay (abars@berkeley.edu) prior to the beginning of the semester. |
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| 280F.001 - History of Nationalism in Southeast Asia | Zinoman | |
| Wed 10-12 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39729 | |
| Note section change and new CCN. | ||
| This course opens by surveying a range of general theoretical approaches to the history of nationalism put forward by scholars such as Ernest Gellner, Antony Smith, Eric Hobsbawm, Partha Chatterjee and Benedict Anderson. It then examines research monographs on the history of a handful of Southeast Asia nationalisms including Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Malayan/Malaysian and Filipino. Some attention will be paid to the contrast between older studies of the topic (by scholars such as George Kahin, William Roff, and William Duiker) and newer "modernist" approaches (by scholars such as Thongchai Winichakul, Penny Edwards and Christopher Goscha). In addition to examining the origins and development of Southeast Asian nationalism , the course will look at the relationship between nationalism and other forms of politicized identity such as religion and communism. It will also pay some attention to connections between nationalism, newspapers and the novel and to the gender dynamics of nationalist movements. Requirements for the course include short weekly response papers and several in-class presentations. | ||
| 280F.002 - Language, History & the Nation in South Asia | Deshpande | |
| Tues 2-4 3104 Dwinelle | CCN: 39732 | |
| This course will examine the intersection of the categories of language, history and nation, and their shared and divergent careers in South Asian history and historiography. The subcontinent is both an attractive and challenging site for the exploration of language practices and their relationship to politics and culture. There are, to begin with, a lot of languages. There are also nearly as many ideas about their histories and futures, and about their importance in producing collective identities and spaces of exclusion. Although language as a site for shaping national and regional imaginations has long been a theme in South Asian historiography and beyond, recent work has creatively explored language as a wider site for exploring colonial and national knowledge practices, the emergence of modern publics and counter-publics, and intersections of historical and literary narrative. In this course, we will examine some of these themes relating to history & literature; language, hierarchy & power; literacy, education & literary expression; and language, region and nation. | ||
| 280F.003 - Borders and Ethnicity in Pre-Modern China | Tackett | |
| Thurs 12-2 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39735 | |
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This seminar will survey secondary studies dealing with borders and ethnicity in premodern China, while simultaneously assessing the applicability of important theoretical models developed for other eras or other world regions. The first part of the course will address borders and ethnicity in practice, exploring topics such as borderland elites, the ecology of the Chinese frontier, ethnogenesis and the state, and the ethnicization of native place. The second part of the course will examine the border in the Chinese imaginary, by first assessing cartographic, cosmologic, and ethnographic representations of the frontier, and then by tracing developments in notions of Chineseness. A broadly comparative approach will be used; knowledge of Chinese is not required. Prospective students are encouraged to request a tentative syllabus from the instructor. |
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| 280F.004 - Borders, Nationalities, and the Making of Modern China | Yeh | |
| Fri 10-12 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39738 | |
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With the fall of the Qing and the founding of the Republic in 1911, political arrangements in China underwent significant changes. Past historical scholarship has shed much light on how the Qing empire transformed into a Chinese nation-state. Mainstream historiography has examined the reforms, the revolutions, and the modernization projects and documented the end of the tribute system and the incorporation of the Chinese state into the Western-dominated international order. But the rise of a Chinese nation-state tells only part of the story about the aftermath of the Qing. All around the Chinese heartland, there are national minorities, frontiers and borderlands from Manchuria to Tibet, from the Central Asian desert to the South China Sea. Lives in these regions contest the centrifugal construction of a unifying and standardizing modern Chinese nation-state. A diverse range of languages, social lives, religious beliefs, ecological conditions and economic circumstances differentiate these border regions from the cradles of Chinese civilization. These regions, furthermore, enter into complex relationships with rival powers and states beyond the Chinese territorial boundaries, contesting Chinese sovereignty and unleashing centripetal forces. In this seminar we begin with a brief review of the world of late imperial China as presented in the works of the classics in the field. We then pay special attention to the nationality writings of Sun Yat-sen, the founding figure of the Nationalist and Republican Revolutions. After a review of important works on the theories of boundary-making, nation-building and internationalization, we examine China’s border regions one by one, beginning with Manchuria and going clockwise to coastal China, Southwestern China, Tibet, Xinjiang and (time permitting) Mongolia. If time allows, the seminar will include a consideration of late 20th-century Chinese writings on the construction of an all inclusive “Chinese race and people” (Zhonghua minzu). Students in this seminar are expected to take turns leading seminar discussions each week. The leader’s responsibility includes the preparation of an expanded bibliography on the subject under discussion in addition to the organization of the assigned materials for seminar discussions and reading both recommended and required texts. Students should plan to submit, every other week, a three-to-five page response paper based on seminar discussions and required readings. Final assignment for the course is a fifteen-page essay on a topic of the student’s own choice that elaborates on any dimension covered in the readings and discussions of the seminar over the course of the term. Chinese-language proficiency at third-year level is most desirable though not imperative. (We will find ways to work around the language problem with the help of English translations of Chinese texts.) A general familiarity (undergraduate upper-division level) with China’s modern history is imperative. (Those who need help are strongly encouraged to review standard narratives authored by John K. Fairbank and Jonathan Spence.) Grade assignment for the semester will be calculated according to the follow formula: attendance, bibliography, and seminar participations: 25%; response papers: 40%; final essay: 35%. |
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| 280F.005 - Approaches to the Modern History of the Middle East | Doumani | |
| W 4-6 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| New Course Listing! | ||
| This reading course introduces students to canonical and recent works that have shaped the field of modern Middle East history. We will discuss the intellectual and political agendas of these works, the sources and research methodologies they draw on, and how they have been influenced by theoretical paradigms generated in other disciplines, especially sociology, anthropology, political science, and literature. The main requirement of the course is an essay that demonstrates command of the literature on a topic of our choosing and puts forward an argument about the theoretical and political stakes involved in the production of knowledge about that topic. | ||
| 283.002 - Genre and Method in Traditional Chinese Texts | Nylan | |
| Wed 12:30-2 341 Starr Library | CCN: 39762 | |
| This course can also be taken for 2 units of credt as an independent study listing. Please see Mabel Lee for the CCN. | ||
| This course offers graduate students focusing on the literature and history of traditional China a systematic, hands-on introduction to the print and electronic resources necessary for conducting advanced research in these fields. After an initial presentation of the history of Chinese bibliography and “sinology,” students will not only learn to use the vast array of ever expanding resources, but also to consider what research questions these resources facilitate, and what sorts of questions remain relatively unexplored. Prerequisites: Graduate student standing (or consent of instructors); reading competence in Classical Chinese. | ||
Britain |
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| 275C.001 - Britain and the Making of the Modern World | Vernon | |
| Wed 2-4 3104 Dwinelle | CCN: 39657 | |
| Also listed as 280C.001 (ccn: 39708) | ||
| This course will examine why Britain's history was long seen as a model for how the modern world was made. It will, accordingly, focus on familiar historical processes: the creation of national state structures, the emergence of representative politics, the industrial revolution, imperial expansion, secularization, urbanization and the invention of modern cultural institutions. It will ask when, where and how Britain became modern. Drawing upon a selection of canonical and more recent works, we will consider how historians' answers to these questions have changed, and why British history still matters now that we have provincialized its peculiar path to modernity. The class is designed for all those considering Britain as a first or second field in their qualifying exams. It is also open to all those whose own field has been shaped, historically or historiographically, by the British model of modernity. | ||
| 280C.002 - Religion in England, c.1500-1700 | Shagan | |
| Thurs 10-12 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39710 | |
| This course explores religion in England from the later Middle Ages to the advent of legal religious pluralism after 1689. Major topics include: late medieval religion; the English Reformation; the rise and development of puritanism; “recusancy” and the English Catholic community; the religious origins of the English Revolution; sectarian radicalism; the development of a distinctive “Anglican” Church; the debate over religious toleration. Parts of this course analyze religious developments in “political” or institutional terms, seeking to understand how and why England at times had the most conservative Church in Protestant Europe while at other times England was the vanguard of international Calvinism and even briefly experimented with the most radical theocracy ever attempted in a major European state. But other parts of this course analyze religious developments in theological, cultural, and social contexts, seeking to understand what religion meant and how it was experienced by women and men who simultaneously desired worldly prosperity, civil order, and eternal salvation. | ||
Europe |
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| 275B.001 - The Long 19th Century, 1789-1914 | Anderson | |
| Wed 2-4 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39648 | |
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This seminar will provides an introduction to some of the major issues of Europe's "long 19th century": the impact of the French Revolution; the intellectual origins of socialism; religious developments and "modernist, secularist" responses; studies of imperialism as well as intellectual engagements with the non-European world; the crisis of the liberal state and of the international system. Woven through most of these topics, however, is the story of the changing ways Europeans were defining community–as class, as confession, as empire, and especially as nation, an identity whose dominance in the 19th century, however, we will by not take for granted. The purpose of the seminar is to prepare both Europeanists and others for their oral exams in late modern Europe and to familiarize them with influential approaches to central problems. Our normal mode will be to concentrate on a major work each week, sometimes with articles that put the week's topic in historiographical context. Works will be drawn largely, but not exclusively, from French, Russian, German, and English history. They will include classics, such as Ernst Renan's "What is a Nation?"(1882), George Dangerfield's, Strange Death of Liberal England (1935), Martin Malia's Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (1961), E.P. Thompson's Making of the English Working Class (1966), and Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen (1976), but also work hot off the presses –– David A. Bell's The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (2007), J.P. Daughton's An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (2006), Robert D. Crews's For Prophet and Tsar. Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (2006), as well as one that won't hit the bookstores until July: Suzanne Marchand's German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship–– and some in between. We will begin the semester with a breathtaking and imaginative new overview, John Darwin's After Tamerlane. The Global History of Empire Since 1415 (2008), a world history anchored in "Eurasia"¬––the land mass stretching from China to the Atlantic and the Near East¬¬¬––which offers a novel explanation for European expansion and the "rise of the West" that integrates the resilience of the states and cultures of the rest of Eurasia. In order to get as much as possible out of the seminar, participants should become familiar with the account of our actual period (ca. 1780-1914) in a good textbook. Possibilities include: R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World; Gordon Craig, Europe 1815-1914 (old but still good); Charles Breunig, The Age of Revolution 1789-1850 (Norton paperback); E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution; Norman Rich, The Age of Nationalism 1850-90 (Norton paperback). Members will be required to turn in an accurate 5-sentence summary of each book every week. They will be expected to participate vigorously in discussion. And they will write a short historiographical essay (10-12 pages) on a relevant theme of their own choosing, due at the end of the semester. A master copy of articles, as well as books that are too expensive or are out of print, will be available to xerox. |
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| 275B.002 - Early Modern Europe | deVries | |
| Tues 10-12 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39651 | |
| This course is an introduction to the history of early modern Europe from the Renaissance to the French Revolution. Its purposes are to examine the major historical themes that define the period as developed both by classics and more recent works, and to introduce a variety of methodological approaches to historical research of the period. Topics will include religious innovation and change, economic characteristics and developments, social organization, state institutions and their development, and scientific and philosophical trends. The course is designed to serve as a foundation for the preparation of oral examinations in the field. It is open to majors and minors in early modern Europe and to graduate students in other fields and other disciplines as space allows. Students will make oral presentations and prepare two papers based on the weekly themes of the seminar. | ||
| 280B.001 - Western Marxism | Jay | |
| Mon 2-4 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39684 | |
| Enrollment priority will be given to graduate students in History as well as those in the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. | ||
| This course will follow the fortunes of the 20th-century European critical tradition known as Western Marxism, reading original works by Lukács, Sartre, Bloch, Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas, Althusser, Gramsci, and others. | ||
| 280B.002 - Religion in England, c.1500-1700 | Shagan | |
| Thurs 10-12 | CCN: 39687 | |
| Course description and details listed under the Britain field posting. | ||
| 280B.003 - Theories and Practices of Early Modern Politics | Sheehan | |
| Wed 4-6 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39690 | |
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This course will consider the relationship between political theory and political practice in early modern Europe. It will primarily focus on the seventeenth century, and will include both continental and English materials. Particular concentrations will include: the problem of reason of state, neo-Stoicism, the rise of natural law theory, the pragmatics of diplomacy and peacemaking, and the relations of religious and political violence. We will read widely in primary sources. |
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| 285B.001 - Discourses of Photography | Jay | |
| Tues 2-4 2231 Dwinelle | ||
| This research seminar will allow students to focus on the theoretical, cultural, aesthetic and political discourses surrounding photography ever since its invention in l839. Rather than a history of images and the photographers who made them, the course will concentrate on the words they have generated and the controversies they have unleashed. We will read for three weeks several anthologies of relevant essays—Alan Trachtenberg, ed. Classic Essays on Photography, James Elkins, ed., Photography Theory and Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson, eds., The Meaning of Photography--before students embark on their own individual projects. | ||
Latin America |
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| 275E.001 - Historiography of Colonial Latin America | Chowning | |
| Mon 2-4 3104 Dwinelle | CCN: 39666 | |
| Please consult Professor Chowning at chowning@berkeley.edu before enrolling. | ||
| 280E.001 - Argentina in a Comparative Context | Healey | |
| Fri 9-11 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39723 | |
| Note revised schedule. | ||
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This course will be a comprehensive survey of the major trends in the historiography of Argentina, and to a lesser extent Chile, since Independence. We will read classics and recent scholarship, monographs and articles, in English and Spanish. Our readings will cover social, labor, political, and cultural history, with brief forays into economic, agrarian, and environmental history as well. Particular topics of interest will include state formation, law and crime, labor and citizenship, development strategies, indigenous communities, populism, military rule, and practices of memory. The class will be primarily focused on Argentina, but will include several weeks of comparative work on Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Assignments include close readings of assigned texts, engaged participation in seminar, and three short papers (3-5 pages) on the reading. |
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Medieval |
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| 275B.003 - The Middle Ages | Miller | |
| Mon 10-12 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39654 | |
| An introduction to the history and historiography of Europe and the Mediterranean c. 300 – c,1500, emphasizing broad patterns of change and key interpretive debates. Themes include the end of the ancient world and the character of early medieval societies; political transformations east and west over the central Middle Ages; economic expansion and urban development; changes in ecclesiastical institutions and religious cultures. Students should expect to read and analyze c. 500 pages of monographic writing per week, preparing cogent notes and argument summaries. Requirements also include active, mature, and courteous participation in discussion; several presentations across the term; and two short essays akin to those expected of medieval history students in their screening examination. | ||
Methodology |
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| 283.001 - Historical Method and Theory | Hollinger | |
| Wed 12-2 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39759 | |
| This section of History 283 explores the relationship between a) the contemporary practice of historians and b) major theoretical issues in the human sciences. Recent examples of historical scholarship will be read and discussed with their authors-- members of the Berkeley Department of Historyalongside treatises that articulate the theoretical issues to which the scholarship is somehow connected, not necessary as an "application" but sometimes in an adversarial relation. Each week, a different Berkeley historian will be guest co-instructor of the seminar in a session devoted to the discussion of the guest's work and of related readings. | ||
Science |
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| 275S.001 - Introduction to the History of Science | Barker | |
| Tuesday 12-2 125 Dwinelle | CCN: 39678 | |
| Updated August 24, 2009 | ||
| An introduction to issues and problems in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century science based on reading, discussion, and written analysis of selected secondary literature. General themes include the organization of science in different national settings, the nature of the scientific community, patterns of scientific change, science and gender, and the relations of science to technology, industry, medicine, government, and warfare. Requirements include several short papers. | ||
| 280S.001 - Drugs in World History | Osseo-Asare | |
| Thurs 10-12 225 Dwinelle | CCN: 39753 | |
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The field of drug history allows us to learn about societies through their shifting relationships to pharmacological substances. In this seminar, we will focus on the multiple histories of major drugs including: Opium, Cocaine, Oral Contraceptives, Khat, Kola, and Viagra. We will trace stories of each substance across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas using articles, historical texts, novels and films. Seminar participants will gain a comparative perspective on how societies regulate, discover, test, and market legal and illegal drugs over time, and how these multiple approaches overlap and inform one another. We will emphasize new research in history of medicine, anthropology, film studies, and public policy that suggests a theoretical framework for further investigations. |
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| 290.001 - Historical Colloquium: History of Science | Lesch | |
| M 4-6 279 Dwinelle | CCN: 39807 | |
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1 unit, graded S/U. Meets together with the UCB-UCSF Colloquium in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. For details see http://ohst.berkeley.edu/ohst_events.html. |
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United States |
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| 275D.001 - Early America | Henkin | |
| Tues 2-4 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39660 | |
| Updated July 3, 2009 | ||
| Note New Description. Also listed as 280D.001 | ||
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This course introduces graduate students to important and innovative scholarly texts in the study of early American history (until 1865), covering a range of methodologies, themes, and historical experiences but focusing especially on White-Indian relations, slavery, and the cultural histories of market relations and print communication. This course is intended for doctoral students in any department who intend to pursue primary, secondary, or outside fields of study in U.S. history, American cultural history, comparative cultural history, or American literature. Requirements include careful reading, active and thoughtful participation, and a series of short written assignments. |
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| 280D.001 - Early America | Henkin | |
| Tues 2-4 | CCN: 39711 | |
| Course description and details posted under 275D.001 listing. | ||
| 285D.001 - U.S. Politics and Policy | Einhorn | |
| Tues 12-2 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39780 | |
| Updated July 27, 2009 | ||
| This seminar is intended for students who want to do research in U.S. political history. Topics can focus on any period of U.S. history and at policies and/or debates at any level of government, though I will discourage biographical and purely electoral topics (for reasons we will explore in the first few weeks of the semester). Core readings will be minimal as the focus stays on getting students onto research topics and into primary source research as quickly as possible so that you will be able to finish an article-length and, hopefully, article- quality research project in the space of one semester. Students may contact me as soon as you are ready to discuss potential topics. | ||
Related Interest |
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| UCSF 201A - Disease and the Social Order from the Black Death to SARS | ||
| Wed 10-12 3333 California St., S.F. | ||
| Fall Term Courses at UCSF begin week of September 24 and end on December 7th, 2009, the last day of Exams. For information on these UCSF History courses, contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Elizabeth Watkins, at watkinse@dahsm.ucsf.edu Interested graduate students can receive credit for these UCSF courses by completing an Intercampus Exchange Program Application. Go to http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/programs/exchange.shtml for detailed instructions. | ||
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Instructor: Dorothy Porter The course explores the comparative impact of disease upon European and North American societies. It will concentrate on the historical junctures at which diseases occurred; unravel the various levels of meaning which surrounded them in terms of their social, moral, and political interpretations; and analyze the patterns of response to them and discuss their historical consequences. |
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| UCSF 200A - Introduction to History of Health Sciences I | ||
| Fri 10-12 3333 California St., S.F. | ||
| Fall Term Courses at UCSF begin week of September 24 and end on December 7th, 2009, the last day of Exams. For information on these UCSF History courses, contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Elizabeth Watkins, at watkinse@dahsm.ucsf.edu Interested graduate students can receive credit for these UCSF courses by completing an Intercampus Exchange Program Application. Go to http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/programs/exchange.shtml for detailed instructions. | ||
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Instructor: Dorothy Porter General survey chronologically arranged from ancient times to 1800, with the primary focus on the Western world. This course presents the broad conceptual developments that in each period influenced the evolution of medical knowledge, the promotion of professional activities, and the experiences of illness and health. Note: This course is part of a three-course sequence (fall-winter-spring). The fall course is a prerequisite for the winter course (Introduction to the History of Health Sciences II, 1800-2000), and both are prerequisites for the spring course (Methods in the History of Health Sciences). |
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| 200X - The Bancroft Library Press Room Course: "The Hand Printed Book in its Historical Context" | Ferris | |
| Mon 1-5 Fri 1-5 | ||
| There are two offerings of this course: one taught on Mon 1-5, and the other taught on Fri 1-5. | ||
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A one-semester, two-unit course open to both graduate and undergraduate students. There are no prerequisites but enrollment is by consent of the instructor and is limited to six students because of the small press room space. Interested students may email the instructor (Les Ferriss at lesferriss@earthlink.net) and should attend the first class meeting. Under the guidance of the instructor, students examine and discuss original printed books from the Bancroft collections ranging in date from the 15th century to the present. Approximately one half of the class time is devoted to a study of the design and production of books from the hand press period. The course also presents a historical perspective on the various technologies involved in the production of printed books: type founding, paper making, binding, illustrations, and the evolution of the printing press itself. |
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| 300.001 - Teaching History at the University | Johnson | |
| Fri 2-4 | CCN: 39930 | |
| This course, required of first time GSIs and open to all History GSIs, introduces graduate students to a variety of pedagogical theories and techniques used in teaching history at the university level. It will examine readings dealing with a range of classroom situations, opportunities, and challenges, with the goal of enabling future college teachers of history to understand the learning process of their students and to develop and improve their own teaching skills. The course will have two primary goals: (1) to train graduate students to work more effectively as graduate student instructors in history classes at Berkeley; and (2) to introduce students to techniques of designing and running their own classes that they will use when they become independent instructors and, ultimately, professors of history in their own right. | ||
Research and Teaching Credit |
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| 296 - Dissertation Research and Writing | ||
| CCN: 39819 | ||
| 298 - Employment Credits | ||
| CCN: 39822 | ||
| 601 - M.A. Preparation | ||
| CCN: 39933 | ||
| 602 - PhD Orals Prep | ||
| CCN: 39936 | ||