Graduate Course Descriptions
Spring 2009
This page last updated: Monday, 11-Apr-2011 12:27:35 PDT
Course Schedules and Locations are subject to change! Please check this site often for updated information.
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| Graduate course listings for Spring 2009 will be posted online during the week of October 20, prior to the start of Spring TeleBears appointment dates for grad students. Course descriptions and schedules will be added periodically, so please check back for updated information. | ||
Ancient |
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| 280A.001 - Mapping Urbanization in the Roman Empire | Norena | |
| Wed 2-5 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39633 | |
| Also listed as 285A.001 | ||
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This seminar will serve as the basis for a collaborative research project. The goal is to produce a single-volume reference work that will contain a set of maps depicting city distribution and variable urban densities throughout the Roman empire, at different periods, and supported by appropriate written documentation. Each student in the seminar will be assigned a zone from the Mediterranean basin, and will be responsible for collecting the available evidence for cities in the assigned zone and for writing a short introduction (c. 5000 words), with bibliography, to the nature of urbanization there. To facilitate this research, each student will be provided with a personal copy of the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. The maps will then be produced in conjunction with the cartographic service of Berkeley’s Geography department, and the volume as a whole, including the regional introductions written by the students, and a general introduction to the dynamics of urbanization in the Roman empire written by the instructor, will be submitted for consideration as a supplementary volume of the Journal of Roman Archaeology. The first few weeks of the seminar will be devoted to exploring the problem of urbanization in the Roman empire, in a broad, comparative framework, with special attention to the geographic, demographic, economic, and political conditions that shaped it. The focus will not be on individual cities, architecture, public space, municipal life, etc., but rather on the spread, development, and functioning of urban systems and networks at the regional and empire-wide levels. The seminar will then break up for several weeks as students conduct preliminary research on their assigned zones. We will then come back together for the last several weeks of the term for presentations on this research and to discuss, as a group, the details of our volume (cartographic conventions for the maps, the arrangement of the regional introductions, etc.). Students should know that, because this is a publication project, it is a virtual certainty that some of the work for this seminar will continue for several weeks, or months, after the end of the spring term. |
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| 280A.002 - Greek Economies: The Documentary Evidence | Mackil | |
| Thurs 2-5 308C Doe Library | CCN: 39635 | |
| Also listed as AHMA 210.001 and History 285A.002. Course is co-taught with Nikolaos Papazarkadas. | ||
| In recent years, the ancient economy has emerged as a particularly vibrant field of study, its dynamism and energy deriving both from methodological advances and discoveries of new empirical evidence. Much of this new evidence has come to us in the form of inscriptions. This course will accordingly introduce participants to the economic activities of the ancient Greek world through a focused study of the epigraphic evidence. We shall begin with a discussion of major historiographical approaches to the subject and current methodologies, and shall then turn to reading a sequence of epigraphic texts, from the Archaic to the early Hellenistic period, organized thematically. The epigraphic evidence will be supplemented by a reading of several ancient literary sources of particular importance to our knowledge of the Greek economy. Topics will include public finance, banking and credit, trade, household economies, temples and sanctuaries as repositories and managers of wealth, pastoralism and agriculture. All students will be required to give one in-class presentation and to write a research paper, which will be due at the end of the semester. Knowledge of ancient Greek is required; secondary source readings will be above all in English and French, with some material in German and Italian. | ||
Asia |
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| 275F.001 - Chinese Popular Culture | Johnson | |
| Tues 2-5 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39621 | |
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This seminar will provide an introduction to important scholarship in western languages on the symbolic world of premodern Chinese villagers and its social, economic, and political contexts. The main emphasis will fall on local religion broadly defined, including ritual, scripture, temple festivals, and the social organizations (including multi-village alliances) that supported them, but we will also look at topics such as local opera, architecture and material culture, folk technology and so on, depending on the interests of the students. We will read important work on analogous topics in European history when appropriate, as well as influential earlier European works on Chinese non-elite culture. Brief introductions to important Chinese sources and recent scholarship on the topics of the seminar will be provided from time to time. |
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| 280F.001 - Buddhism and Modernity in Japan | Barshay | |
| Wed 10-12 202 Wheeler | CCN: 39690 | |
| Co-taught with Duncan Williams in EALC. This course will also list as History 280G, and may also list in BUDDSTD and JAPAN (course numbers TBA). | ||
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Japanese Buddhism, it has been said, was only discovered or invented as a "religion" in the modern era, as part of the process by which religion itself came to be conceived as a component of the modern order. This seminar is intended to test this claim. We propose to explore the multiple relationships of Buddhism to modernity, focusing on the Restoration era through 1945. Readings will consider the transformations, adaptations, and metamorphoses of Buddhist thought, practice, and institutional life involved in the process of its emergence as a "religion" in Japan—not just alongside (and in response to) Christianity and Shinto, but also in relation to broader "secular" trends in politics and culture. Our concerns will encompass new Buddhist-inflected notions of the self and forms of literary experimentation, clerical and lay social life and activity, the propagation of Buddhism to the West, colonial missionizing, and Buddhist involvement in Japan's war effort. Although English-language texts will be used, it is envisioned that students with sufficient reading ability will engage primarily with key texts in Japanese. Readings will include: James Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan, Judith Snodgrass, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West, Heisig and Maraldo, eds., Rude Awakenings, Brian Victoria, Zen at War; plus writings by or about Miyazawa Kenji, Watsuji Tetsurô, Kurata Hyakuzô, and Natsume Sôseki; and other materials drawn from the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies and The Eastern Buddhist. Students interested in enrolling should contact Professors Barshay and Williams prior to the beginning of the semester. |
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| 280F.002 - Law, Governance and Economy : Legal Transformation in the 19th Ottoman empire with comparative insights into the 19th century German, English and French cases | Islamoglu | |
| Thurs 2-4 115 Barrows | CCN: 39693 | |
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The 19th century emphasis on the 'rule of law', on law's separateness and autonomy as well as universality (the assumption that everyone is subject to the same law), has largely is often accompanied by a neglect of the significance, then and later, of law as governance or as regulatory practice. 'The rule of law' formulation has been consistent with the 19th century liberal understanding of separation of state and society and assigned law the task of safeguarding society or domain commodity exchange from state intervention. This understanding of law, state and society prevailed in the liberal economies and societies of the 19th century, while the actual social ordering or institutional makings of capitalist society often through bureaucratic administrative practice came to be viewed as apart from law –at best to be subjected to judicial review. The perception of conflict between law and administration or law and state has been most pronounced in the case of non-European societies which are characterized as lacking 'law' and therefore to introduced to 'law' through 'colonization,' 'Europeanization.' The Ottoman empire bordering a Europe which was undergoing of a liberal remaking, has been a primary target of such characterization. The course will review the historical circumstances of the crystallization of 'the rule of law' and Rechtstaat understandings in 18th century Europe (focusing on England, France and Germany). It will discuss the formulation of the institutions of private ownership as well as of contracts in law (court rulings e.g. England) and through administrative rulings or governance, raising the issue of the legal pluralism of law courts and of administration- with administrative justice (of the new bureaucratic governments) posed as an alternative to the justice of law(courts) with their claims to autonomy and their role of upholding the order of property conveying mixed signals in the 19th century historical settings of property revolts. The course will attempt to relate the discussion of administrative law to M. Foucault's characterization of govermentalization of law and society? Could Foucault's notion of 'governmentalization' make room for legal pluralism, a plurality of 'justice' or for politics which such pluralities imply? The main body of the course will trace this trajectory of development in the Ottoman context where the makings of a market society in the 19th century with its institutions of private property, were far from being affected through European legal transplants but took place in relation to indigenous legal vocabularies of fiqh(Islamic jurisprudence) and of governance that drew from earlier vocabularies of statecraft. Fiqh was meant to be basis of an Islamic 'rule of law' in Mecelle or the uncompleted Ottoman civil with administrative law responsible for the formulations of the primary institutions of the market. The course will include discussions of the Mecelle and of regulatory laws and the new bureaucratic governing institutions responsible for their formulation and implementation. In doing this, it will point to legal pluralism of the courts of law and new institutions of regulatory law and most importantly in tracing the tensions and overlappings between the two in the Ottoman political economy of the 19th century. |
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| 280F.003 - Interpretations of Nationalism: Korea in the 19th and 20th Centuries | Wells | |
| Tues 12-2 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39696 | |
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Until recently, the history of modern Korea has been regarded as the history of modern nationalism in Korea. This approach has inspired numerous accounts of the nature, origins and spread of a variety of Korean nationalist movements and their relation to imperialism, modernization, social change, ideology, economy, literature, and religion. Most of these works were informed, and some still are, by a set of evaluative categories: Japan's guilt and Korea's innocence; "collaborators" versus "pure" nationalists; and the toadyism of the Korean ruling elite (later the capitalist classes) versus the inassimilable cultural essence of Korean tradition. From the early 1990s, scholarly research began to challenge the nationalist paradigm governing the study of modern Korea, and this turn not only opened the way for studies of topics other than nationalism but also led to quite new interpretations of the nature of Korean nationalism itself. This course is organized around readings of the major works on modern Korean nationalism that are available in English, and has two main objectives. In the first place, we will examine the changes in focus, understanding, and interpretation of nationalism both as a phenomenon in itself and as a shaper of the modern Korean historical experience. This examination will trace two developments: the changing frameworks applied to nationalist movements according to their time in history (e.g., pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial); and the transition in approaches to Korean nationalism according to the time in which the works were written. Secondly, we will evaluate nationalist historiography, paying particular attention to the moves to de-center the "nation" in research on the modern Korean experience. In this regard, the central questions will be whether studying Korean nationalist movements through nationalist evaluative categories amounts to a historiographical tautology, and whether recent works on the topic might be characterized as a move to rescue modern Korean history from the nation. |
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| 280F.004 - Gender, Law and State in India | Nair | |
| Mon 4-6 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39699 | |
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This seminar will examine the intersections between religion, the state and law with specific reference to India. The focus will be on the ways in which the gendered legal subject was constituted in modern India, beginning with the colonial period and carrying on to the present. How has feminist legal research questioned and altered the terms of discussion of the relation between gender hierarchies, rights discourse, community identities and the state in South Asia? How furthermore, have the critical events of the last 60 years critically changed the trajectory of campaigns and strategies, with important consequences for the use of law as a strategy in achieving social change? Broadly, the following themes will be discussed. 1. What are some of the enduring legacies of the colonial period for the contemporary legal systems that prevail in India? A brief background to the Anglo-Indian legal system. 2. Dilemmas generated by the UCC debates in the 1940 and 1950s: how has codification transformed these dilemmas? What has the feminist response been to the relationship between state and non-state law. 3. Law and the women's movement in India: campaigns, courtroom gains and setbacks. An examination of the constitution, laws and cases over the last 60 years. 4. What are the ways in which the Indian experience recasts the meaning of familiar universals regarding rights? What are the differences between the critiques of western and Indian feminists of law as an instrument of social change? Throughout, we will also pay attention to some landmark judgments alongside readings that have commented on the judgments. Students will be required, on a rotating basis, to introduce the readings assigned for the day, and write a substantial term paper (25-30 pages) based on one of the themes of the course. |
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| 280F.005 - Cultural Contacts Between China and Europe in the Seventeenth Century, Seen Through the Eyes of the Participants | Standaert | |
| Thurs 10-12 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39702 | |
| Updated November 4, 2008 | ||
| NOTE SCHEDULE CHANGE! | ||
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Purpose: Through the study of different facets of the cultural contacts in the seventeenth century: on the one hand to get a better insight in the diversity of these contacts; and on the other hand to get acquainted with the different historiographical methods for studying intercultural contacts in general. Content: The cultural contacts between China and Europe in the late Ming and early Qing period will be studied from four different frameworks: transmission, reception, construction and interaction, with a special focus on the latter. Different specific exchanges will be selected (cartography, the idea of heaven and hell, funeral rituals, historiography) and they will be studied on the basis of primary and secondary sources. Special attention will be paid to intercultural argumentation. Knowledge of classical Chinese is required. - Nicolas Standaert, The Interweaving of Rituals: Funerals in the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. - selected articles and primary sources |
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| 280G.002 - Modern China: Archives and Historiography | Wang | |
| Mon 12-2 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39707 | |
| Dr. Di Wang specializes in Chinese social and cultural history. His books include The Teahouse: Small Business, Everyday Culture, and Public Politics in Chengdu, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2008) and Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870-1930 (Stanford, 2003, winner of the Best Book [Non-North American] Award for 2005 from the Urban History Association). He has been awarded research fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Institute for International Research at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, the American Council of Learned Society, and National Endowment for the Humanities. | ||
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This course will focus on doing research in Chinese archives. Archival documents are one of the most important sources for studying modern Chinese history, which provide rich information about China's politics, economy, society, and culture. There are many difficulties in using Chinese archival materials because of a variety of forms of archival documents and unfamiliar terms used in official documents as well as complex holdings and categorizations by different institutions at different levels of administration in China, which resulted in complicated systems of Chinese archives. This course offers a basic training of searching and reading archival documents for graduate students who study Chinese history with an emphasis of legal and political institutions in Republican and People's Republican periods. It will teach students how to conduct research at archives in China and what rules and regulations used there and how they affected holdings and administration of archives. Students will also be taught vocabularies most often used in official documents that reflect internal systems and procedures of the government handling routine affairs and irregular events. Most of the class time, however, will be spent on guiding students to understand and translate archival documents. Students will read some works that basically rely on archival materials as examples of employing such sources. Students are required to translate and to interpret Chinese primary archival material on a regular basis and to write some short reports based on the material they translate. |
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| 285F.001 - Research Seminar in Modern Chinese History | Yeh | |
| Fri 10-12 2231 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated December 26, 2008 | ||
| The purpose of this seminar is to facilitate the writing of a research paper on a topic of your choice. It is also to encourage professional interactions among fellow scholars. Grades for this course will be assigned by the following criteria: timely and efficient conduct of research, contribution to seminar discussions through peer interaction, and excellence and significance of final paper. Please see the instructor before the first week of class to discuss your paper ideas. | ||
Comparative |
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| 280U.001 - Pirates, Slaves, and Revolutionaries in Paradise: The History of the Caribbean | Stovall | |
| Wed 12-2 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39723 | |
| This course is a graduate seminar on the history of the Caribbean from the European conquest to the present day. Often thought of as a region of Latin America, the Caribbean is equally one of the most global parts of the modern world, a region shaped by European rule, African slavery, and Asian settlement, one located between the two great American continents and shaped by the histories of both. Major themes we will consider will include the history of piracy beyond Hollywood imagery, slavery and plantation society and the various forms of resistance to it, the struggles to create post-emancipation society, decolonization and independence, the Cuban revolution, and Caribbean diasporas in America and Europe. Requirements will include completing weekly reading assignments, a brief historiographical essay and a substantial research paper. | ||
| 285U.001 - Religion and Sexuality | Shaw | |
| Wed 4-6 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39810 | |
| Also listed as Gender and Women's Studeis 210.005. ---------------------------------------------------Jane Shaw is a visiting professor from Oxford, where she is Dean of Divinity at New College, and teaches in the history and theology departments in the University. Her research and teaching interests include: modern British history; gender history; history of Christianity in the modern world; history of sexuality and religion; and collective biography and life-writing. Her most recent publication is Miracles in Enlightenment England (Yale UP 2006). | ||
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Homosexuality has become, to many people's surprise, the crisis issue for Christianity in late modernity. Despite all the external pressures that threatened Christianity in earlier phases of modernity, whether science, a rapid decline in churchgoing or the totalitarian state, the volatile, touchstone issue of our day, across the churches and in other major religions, that threatens to tear religious institutions apart from the inside out, is (homo)sexuality. This seminar will ask: why sex? While my own expertise and interests lie primarily in the area of modern Christianity, our preliminary common readings will cover different periods and different religions, and we will have four seminar sessions with visitors who work in the areas of Islam, Judaism, Fundamentalism, and the Law and religion. Graduate students who take this seminar may write research papers on any area of this broad theme, and will give presentations on their research in the second half of the semester. This seminar is the first stage in an ongoing Mellon-funded research project on religion and sexuality in the modern world, run by Tom Laqueur and myself. |
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Europe |
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| 275B.001 - The Long Nineteenth Century | Barrows | |
| Thurs 2-4 204 Dwinelle | CCN: 39600 | |
| This course is designed to introduce students to some of the main themes of European history from the French Revolution through the First World War. Students will be asked to use Eric Hobsbawm's trilogy (The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, the Age of Empire) as the texts of reference; successive weeks will address the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, the emergence of class conflict and consciousness, socialism, nationalism, imperialism, the fin de siecle, popular religion, prostitution, the changing nature of political cultures, violence, and the First World War. Readings will include both important secondary sources such as E.P.Thompson's Making of the English Working Class and Schorske?s Fin de Siecle Vienna, and selected primary sources such as Hobson's Imperialism and Karl Marx on 1848. Written assignments will include 1 five page paper and a longer review essay on a pertinent subject of the student's choosing. | ||
| 280B.001 - Imperial Russia | Frede | |
| Thurs 4-6 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39636 | |
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This course is designed to introduce students to standard works in Imperial Russian history in the long nineteenth century, from the end of the eighteenth century to the 1917 Revolutions. The course will be divided into four broad areas of emphasis. One is political history: the state's efforts at political centralization and techniques for maintaining legitimacy and authority. A second is empire: state control and its limits in the Russian borderlands. A third is social history: the problem of serfdom in the nineteenth century and the rise of a working class. Finally, we will read some recent and classic works in intellectual and cultural history. Authors we will be reading include Wortman, Raeff, Khodarkovsky, Werth, Freeze, Wirtschafter, Zelnik and Malia. Students will write short (two-page) weekly assignments and a short (ten-page) historiographical paper. |
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| 280B.002 - Reason and History in Modern European Intellectual History | Jay | |
| Mon 2-4 3104 Dwinelle | CCN: 39639 | |
| This course will address two interrelated questions: in the intellectual history of modern Europe: 1) what are the ways in which history has been understood to be rational? 2) in what ways has the concept of reason been understood to have had a history? We will read texts by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, :Habermas, Sloterdijk, and others, who have tried to answer these questions. | ||
| 280B.003 - The Problem of Enlightenment: Intellectual and Cultural Histories | Hesse & Sheehan | |
| Wed 2-4 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39642 | |
| This course will also list as a History 285B. | ||
| Arguably, in the past 25 years, the Enlightenment has effectively collapsed as a set of philosophical, political, and social prescriptions. It has, at the same time, become far more various, plural, and local in its historical character. This course proposes to take up the problem of Enlightenment as a topic of historical research in this post-national moment, and aims both to survey recent historiography and to identify directions for promising future work. The course is planned as a set of conversations, both methodological and topical. It will be organized around five significant themes: 1) cosmopolitanism and transnationalism; 2) ideas and goods; 3) theories and practices of political community; 4) orthodoxy and heterodoxy; and 5) bodies, phenomenal and ideal. In all cases, we will focus both on the intellectual and philosophical tradition that has long characterized the Enlightenment and the socio-cultural institutions and practices that have traditionally put this period at the threshold of our modernity. The course will be chronologically broad, ranging from the late seventeenth century to the revolutionary era. It will also be geographically inclusive: while centered in continental Europe, students can expect to range from the British Atlantic to points in the far east, the southern hemisphere and beyond. Students from a variety of historical fields are welcome and a 285 option is available upon approval by the professors. | ||
| 280B.004 - Gateways between Worlds: Medieval Monasteries (c. 300-c. 1100) | Koziol | |
| Tues 5:30-7:30 214 Haviland | CCN: 39645 | |
| Updated January 29, 2009 | ||
| Note New Room. | ||
| NOTE NEW SCHEDULE! Also listed as 285B -- Description now available. | ||
| Early medieval monasteries took much of their imaginative power from being located at junctures between different binaries: heaven and earth, living and dead, clergy and laity, male and female, all condensed in a dominant polarity between pure and impure. Monks were seen as intercessors (in some ways their primary role) because in the fashion typical of early medieval society they embodied essential characteristics of both polarities (for example, having both male and female characteristics, aspects of the clergy and of the laity). This course will examine monastic spirituality from these perspectives while also providing exposure to some of the most important recent themes developed by recent scholarship on monasteries. Exact coverage will depend on the interests of students enrolled. Specifically, if enough students wish to examine reformed monasteries such as Cistercians we will do so, though without such express interest my plan is begin with Benedict and work through Cluny and Gorze, partly because this is where the best new work has been done and where major research questions have been identified (including the problem of the invisibility of continental monasticism between Benedict and Columbanus). Ability to read elementary Latin would be very helpful, but not absolutely essential; one also needs to be able to read either French or German (preferably German), though again there can be leeway if a student wishes to focus on the kinds of problems addressed primarily by English-language scholarship (notably Anglo-Saxon monasticism). | ||
| 280B.005 - Intro to Byzantine History | Mavroudi | |
| Tues 9-11 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39648 | |
| Also listed as 285B. | ||
| This seminar will offer both a general introduction to and an investigation of special topics within Byzantine studies. The weekly seminar discussions will be organized as follows: weeks 1-9 covered the period from the 7th until the 15th centuries in chronological sequence. Students will be expected to become familiar with the sequence of events in Byzantine history through reading G. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State; at the same time, through reading additional secondary bibliography, they will be expected to think about particular problems that modern historians face in their attempt to study and interpret these events. Weeks 10-15 will be dedicated to particular aspects of Byzantine studies: the survival of Byzantine culture after the political end of the empire in 1453; Byzantium and the Slavs; Byzantine economy; Byzantine learned and vernacular literature; Byzantine epic poetry and the expression of collective identity, in the Middle Ages and now; the study of Byzantine art; Byzantine studies as a modern discipline. Students taking this seminar as 285 will be required to identify a research topic early in the semester, on which they will present a research report and produce a final paper. | ||
| 280B.006 - Modern Jewish Historiography | Efron | |
| Tu 2-4 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39651 | |
| This seminar will offer an in-depth introduction to some of the central trends and personalities in modern Jewish historiography. We begin by reading (and reading about) the founders of modern Jewish historiography. The enterprise of critical Jewish historical scholarship has often been criticized for its atomizing effect on traditional Jewish memory. And yet, despite the absorption of modern historicist currents, Jewish historians have often attempted to construct overarching and holistic accounts of the Jewish past. As such, we will examine the various and competing historiographical visions of major Jewish historians. We will then examine a number of important themes as they pertain to the modern Jewish experience. Among them are: modes of history writing, emancipation, gender, new historiography, Holocaust and Zionism. | ||
| 280C.001 - The State of Things: Power, Material Life and the State in Britain and the West Since 1800 | Joyce | |
| Thurs 3-6 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39663 | |
| This classes will be taught over 10 weeks (up to Spring break) in three hour sessions. Professor Joyce is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Manchester in the UK. He is a Visiting Professor in History at UC Berkeley and in Sociology at the London School of Economics. He is author, most recently, of The Rule of Freedom. Liberalism and the Modern City (Verso, 2003) and Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1994). | ||
| The course poses a number of questions. First, what is the state? Conventional accounts of the state will be critically considered in terms of the second question of the course, namely what is power? The work on power by Foucault is considered, and then the course moves on to consider how power is contained and reproduced in material objects and processes. These questions are explored over the long historical span, concentrating on the example of Britain, its empire, but also extending to other Western examples as well as China. Subjects that are explored include the following: the information of the state, the state and communication systems, technologies of government, emphasising the civil service, and the state and the city. | ||
| 285B.002 - | Frick | |
| Thurs 2-5 6115 Dwinelle | CCN: 39747 | |
| Schedule has changed from Tuesday to Thursday. | ||
Latin America |
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| 280E.001 - Transnational Approaches to Understanding Latin America’s Relationship with the West | Chowning | |
| Mon 2-4 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39684 | |
| This course begins with a survey of older approaches to Latin America's historical relationship with the U.S. and Europe, including traditional diplomatic history but focusing particularly on dependency theory. This will occupy the first 3-4 weeks of the class. The rest of the class is devoted to reading in the newer "transnational" literature on Latin America. The expectation is that we will explore the strengths and weaknesses of this approach for understanding Latin American history. Examples of books we will read in common are Brian DeLay War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (2008); Jana Lipman, Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution (2008); Max Friedman, Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign Against the Germans of Latin America in World War II (2005); Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream : Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule (2005); John Soluri, Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States (2006). | ||
| 285E.001 - Research Seminar - Latin America | Healey | |
| Fri 2-5 3104 Dwinelle | CCN: 39783 | |
| This is a research seminar on Latin American history, a workshop for researching and writing an article-length work of scholarship from primary sources. Open to doctoral students working on Latin American topics and others by request. | ||
Methodology |
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| 283.001 - Historical Method and Theory | Klein | |
| Tues 2-4 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39735 | |
| A complete description is forthcoming. Please check back. | ||
Science |
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| 275S.001 - Introduction to the History of Science (II) | Lesch | |
| Wed 4-6 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39627 | |
| 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 - Scientific Objectivity | Mazzotti | |
| Thurs 12-2 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39714 | |
| Updated December 4, 2008 | ||
| Description now available! | ||
| Scientific objectivity is a crucial notion in modern western societies, and one that has been associated with fairness, impartiality, disinterested decision-making, and democracy. In everyday parlance, science is objective when it describes things as they really are. Historical research, however, suggests that the very notion of scientific objectivity has gone through significant changes in the modern age, and it is best understood as the product of a historical process. In other words, judgments of objectivity depend upon local contexts of use. In this course, we shall read and discuss key texts from the history of science in order to explore the historical dimension of scientific objectivity and of other related epistemological notions such as truth and adequacy. | ||
United States |
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| 275D.001 - Introduction to the Literature in Modern American History | Fass | |
| Wed 12-2 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39612 | |
| NOTE NEW SCHEDULE! | ||
| In this class, we will read a wide variety of books that represent diverse methods and perspectives in the social, cultural, intellectual, political and economic history of the United States from the mid nineteenth century through the recent past. These texts will be drawn from current literature as well as from an older historiography. | ||
| 280D.001 - Readings on the Recent Past | Frydl | |
| Tues 4-6 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39669 | |
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When can we declare the past historically "safe" ground? Today, historians are remarkably timid in claiming analytical leverage on any point after 1968, yet, when Richard Hofstatder cut his teeth on Roosevelt's New Deal, it was only 1955. This class is designed to encourage, educate, and perhaps also caution those of us who are eager to pose historical questions regarding the recent past. Our reading will be drawn from an international (though mostly US) body of work; it will be assigned on a roughly "book a week" basis; it will cover well-worked topics like the collapse of consensus social movements and the war in Vietnam; and, in addition, we will make a special effort to include historical treatments of the (as yet) lightly treated topics of post 1968 immigration, the oil crisis, Reaganomics and movement conservatives, and multiculturism and its detractors. Finally, we will also read material on "memory and history" and the art and practice of oral history, relating our insights on these to other assigned reading and, perhaps, our own research interests. Enrolled students can expect to produce a short essay (1-2 pages) on each reading at the start of discussion; completion of those assignments and class attendance/participation are the two requirements of the course. |
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| 285D.001 - Mid-20th Century US Intellectual History | Hollinger | |
| Tues 12-2 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39771 | |
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This graduate research seminar is devoted to the study of the United States during the quarter-century running from the end of the 1930s through the beginning of the 1960s. Although the instructor will try to accommodate students whose interests run more in the direction of political than intellectual history, the seminar's intended concentration will be on intellectual activity, especially as taking place in one or more of the following closely related matrices: 1) the engagement with societies and cultures outside the North Atlantic West prompted by World War II, by the geo-political rivalry with Soviet power, and by the decline of the European colonial empires; 2) liberal Protestantism as a half-way house between Christian orthodoxy and secular world-views; 3) the tension between the cognitive authority of science and the political authority of governmental institutions; 4) the transformation of Jewish intellectuals from an institutionally excluded identity group to one demographically overrepresented in American academia; 5) the initiatives and counter-initiatives surrounding Catholicism in relation to fascism, democracy, pluralism, and anti-communism; and 6) the military experience of World War II, producing one of the only two generations of American intellectuals -- the other being that of the Civil War veterans -- with significant military experience. Students may select topics outside these matrices if they choose, but will be encouraged to work within the seminar's chronological frame (roughly 1938 to 1963). |
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Related Interest |
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| 200X - The Bancroft Library Press Room Course: "The Hand Printed Book in its Historical Context" | Ferriss & Koch | |
| Mon 12-4 Fri 1-5 Off Campus | ||
| There are two offerings of this course: one taught by Peter Koch on Mon 12-4, and the other taught by Les Ferriss 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 instructors (Peter Koch at pkoch@library.berkeley.edu and 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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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: 39918 | ||
| 602 - PhD Orals Prep | ||
| CCN: 39921 | ||