Graduate Course Descriptions
Spring 2010
This page last updated:
2009-11-16 09:28:19
Course Schedules and Locations are subject to change! Please check this site often for updated information.
Africa |
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| 280H.001 - | Kanogo | |
| Thurs 10-12 | CCN: 39759 | |
Ancient |
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| 280A.001 - The Roman Emperor: Ruler and Symbol | Norena | |
| Thurs 2-5 | CCN: 39678 | |
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This seminar will examine the figure of the Roman emperor, from Augustus through Theodosius, from two interrelated perspectives: (i) as a key social actor in a complex web of power relationships, and (ii) as a particularly resonant symbol. In studying the emperor as a social actor, we will consider several topics, including the formal, legal powers of the emperor; the emperor’s principal functions (as ultimate “decision-maker,” as judge, as military commander, as benefactor, etc.); imperial wealth and patronage; the emperor’s relationships with several important collectivities (esp. senate, army, and urban plebs); the dynamics of the imperial “court;” and the formation of ruling dynasties. Central themes in the study of the emperor as symbol will include visual representations of the emperor in different media; public monuments and imperial rituals in the city of Rome; literary constructions of the emperor in different genres (esp. history, biography, and panegyric); discourses about imperial authority and legitimacy; the nature of the “imperial cult;” and the place of the Roman emperor in the ancient Mediterranean imaginaire. Discussion of the emperors’ forerunners (Hellenistic kings and Republic “dynasts”), as well as comparative study of other monarchies, will help to elucidate what is typical and what is distinctive about rulership in the Roman world. The seminar is intended primarily for graduate students in ancient Greek and Roman history (and related disciplines), who will be expected to do some of the reading in Greek, Latin, and at least one modern foreign language (German, French, Italian), but is also open to all graduate students interested in comparative monarchy, who will be able to read almost all the primary source materials in English translation. |
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Asia |
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| 275F.001 - Ying Shao | Nylan | |
| Wed 3-6 102 Barrows | CCN: 39666 | |
| This course aimed at graduate students will begin with Ying Shao's compendium of knowledge, focusing on the categories of knowledge utilized in its ten chapters, before examining the post-Han history of the Wei-Jin Nanbeichao period. Sessions will be devoted to the political reforms of the period, especially those under Liang Wudi; to the study of the early texts of Buddhism and Daoism; to the writings of Guo Pu, Ge Hong, and Gan Bao, including their commentaries; and also to the foundational texts defining the new genres in literature. The basic reference tool for the course will be (in modern Chinese) Lü Simian's Liang Jin Nanbei chao shi (2 volumes), which students may try to purchase before the class. (One copy will go on reserve in EAL.) Beginning graduate students will be expected to work in English and modern Chinese. Advanced graduate students will be asked to work in French, Japanese, and classical Chinese as well. | ||
| 280F.001 - | Berry | |
| Thurs 2-4 | CCN: 39738 | |
| Also listed as 285F | ||
| 280F.002 - The Symbolic Life of Chinese Villagers | Johnson | |
| Wed 12-2 | CCN: 39741 | |
| Also listed as 280G.001 | ||
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Villages were the foundation of Chinese culture, and ritual was the core of village symbolic life. Almost every village had its own ritual repertoire because neither the state nor the great religions had any authority over local festival life, which was the matrix of village ritual. In recent years very many new primary sources have been published which are completely changing how we think about village ritual and religious life. This material and related scholarship provide any num-ber of excellent topics for dissertations and articles. This seminar will introduce students to the latest scholarship, give an overview of the new sources that are available, and provide training in how to read them. Sources include scripts of human and puppet operas presented in a ritual setting; popular scriptures and didactic texts; liturgies of village rituals; and descriptions of temple festivals and New Year festivities. Ambitious students with adequate language preparation should be able to pro-duce a draft of a publishable paper by the end of the semester; all students should be able to write a solid dissertation prospectus after taking the course. Students without advanced language preparation should not be unduly con-cerned, because the relevant texts are written in fairly simple language. It is the context that is difficult to master, but it is the context that makes the subject so interesting. |
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| 280F.003 - Research Methods in Modern Korean Historical Studies | Wells | |
| Tues 12-2 | CCN: 39744 | |
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This course is designed for students at MA and early PhD coursework levels to develop the reading skills in Korean, Sino-Korean and Japanese language primary materials necessary to undertake graduate research in Korean historical studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course provides a systematic approach to acquiring a well-rounded set of graduate-level research skills, and is centered on a selection of readings tailored to students’ interests and needs. These materials will include primary documents written in Sino-Korean, such as government gazettes and personal diaries; writings in mixed script, such as the journals of the early 19th-century learned societies; early publications in pure han’gŭl, such as late 19th-century and early 20th-century newspapers; and documents in pre-World War II Japanese classical and epistolary styles, such as documents of the Government-General of Chosen and Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and the missives of public figures like Ito Hirobumi. Grammatical and translation exercises in these texts will be interspersed with specific library exercises designed to impart skills in tracking down sources and identifying names of persons and organizations, and familiarity with the relevant reference collections. Students will not be expected to engage in studies of materials in all the languages listed above, but will be required to develop or hone skills in at least two of the scripts in which bodies of research materials relevant to modern Korean history are recorded. Students interested in 19th-century Korea should acquire research competence in the Sino-Korean style of the nineteenth century, which is basically the late Ch’ing documentary style, as well as the mixed script that follows a Korean grammatical form. Students interested in late 19th to mid-20th-century Korea should gain competence in mixed script and pure vernacular Korean as well as the Japanese styles mentioned above. In addition to modern Korean, therefore, all students need to have a reasonable grasp either of classical or modern Chinese, or of modern Japanese, in order to benefit from this course. |
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| 285F.002 - | Yeh | |
| Fri 10-12 2231 Dwinelle | CCN: 39843 | |
Comparative |
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| 280U.001 - The Rule of Law in International Historical Perspective | Islamoglu & McLennan | |
| Wed 12-2 | CCN: 39774 | |
| Far from constituting an unchanging and unified jurisprudential order or set of substantive doctrines and procedures, “the rule of law” has historically described quite distinctive, unstable, and frequently conflicting legal cultures. This seminar, which is open to students of legal history across all fields, explores the emergence and transformation of some key rule of law regimes in a global frame. We begin in the Atlantic World of the long 19th century, with a comparative exploration of contending formations of law, legalism, and legal subjectivity in an expanding United States and within the Ottoman Empire. In the second unit, we will track efforts to internationalize one among many conceptions of the rule of law (via westernizing reform initiatives of the 19th century and, later, through the League of Nations), and countervailing efforts such as the Third Reich’s assault upon international and liberal legalism. Our third unit addresses the comparative history of transitional legal regimes in post-revolutionary and other post-war settings, including the American South during Reconstruction and post-colonial South Asia. The course will conclude with a unit on globalization and the rule of law, 1972 – present. Readings may include works by Christopher Tomlins, Barbara Welke, E. P. Thompson, E. Stokes, Ariela Gross, Morton Horwitz, Franz Neumann, Gunther Teubner, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jeffrey Sachs. The class will also feature guest visits from legal historians and other colleagues who work extensively with legal sources. | ||
Europe |
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| 275B.001 - | Connelly | |
| Wed 4-6 | ||
| 280B.001 - | Astourian | |
| Tues 12-2 | CCN: 39684 | |
| 280B.002 - Imperial Russia | Frede | |
| Mon 2-4 | CCN: 39687 | |
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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. 1) Political history: the state's efforts at political centralization and techniques for maintaining legitimacy and authority. 2) Social history: the problems of serfdom, urbanization, and the rise of a working class. 3) Intellectual history: conservatism, nationalism, and radicalism. 4) (Last but not least) Empire: state control and its limits in the Russian borderlands. Students will write short (two-page) weekly assignments. |
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| 280B.003 - Topics in Early Modern French History | Sahlins | |
| Tues 2-5 | CCN: 39690 | |
| Early Modern French history (1500-1700 at its narrowest) has been one of the most methodologically innovative fields of research in history, and not only because of the Annales. In recent years, scholars have added new questions about the creation of national identity, women and gender, the environmental history of the state, and the violence of everyday life to older concerns about the construction of the absolutist monarchy, social hierarchies (orders vs. classes), and the agrarian cycles of the early modern period. This course surveys two generations of scholarship (principally from the “Anglo-Saxon” tradition), paying careful attention to the research questions, approaches, methods, and sources used by historians (and occasionally others) working in the political, cultural, and social histories of the period. Specific topics include rural life and economy; the “Renaissance Monarchy”; violence and the religious wars; the relations of popular and learned culture; statecraft in the seventeenth century; cartography and national identity; women and learning; absolutism and the “theater state” of Louis XIV; France and the New World. Reading knowledge of French is not required; those who read French will explore the native historiographical traditions more deeply. Please contact the instructor before the end of the fall semester (sahlins@berkeley.edu). | ||
| 280B.004 - The Institutional Basis of nineteenth Century Cultural History | Laqueur | |
| Wed 2-4 | CCN: 39693 | |
| Also listed as 285B.001 (ccn: 39795) | ||
| 285B.002 - | Anderson & Connelly | |
| Wed 12-2 | CCN: 39798 | |
Latin America |
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| 285E.001 - | Chowning | |
| Thurs 12-2 | CCN: 39834 | |
Methodology |
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| 283.001 - Thinking Through History | Koziol | |
| Wed 4-6 | CCN: 39786 | |
| In the west, history has always been part of very large debates about the nature of society, the powers and limits of government, the capacity of individuals, and the role of religion. It is less a matter of writing history than of thinking with history – thinking about the present through the past. The questions are why we do history this way and whether we should continue doing it. Because this habitus is distinctively (and originally) European, the readings are entirely European. They are, however, quite broad: from Thucydides and Machiavelli to Marx, the British Marxists, the Annales, Foucault, and Hayden White. Also, given the influence of European historiography, this reading is important background for non-Europeanists. In fact, one of our recurring questions will be the extent to which these European-derived questions have been or should be applicable to non-European historiographies. And the final paper topic is quite ecumenical, simply asking students to interrogate the historiographies of their own fields with that discussed in the class. NB: Only the first weeks’ readings, required translations, or books of limited availability will be made available for purchase at the bookstores (or as PDFs, or at a copy center). For most readings, students should make their own direct purchases. Email the instructor to learn which books to order oneself and which to purchase at the bookstore. | ||
Paleography |
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| 281.001 - Paleography | Mavroudi | |
| Tues 10-12 104 Dwinelle | CCN: 39783 | |
| This course is designed as a general introduction to the use of primary documents pertinent to Mediterranean history and culture during the ancient and medieval periods. It will address issues of paleography, codicology, textual tradition, and the critical edition of sources. The main focus will be on Greek and Arabic documents, but the issues covered will be of interest to anyone interested in the manuscript culture of the medieval Mediterranean even beyond these two languages. We will mainly study books, but will also refer to administrative documents. Though the bulk our material will be medieval, the course is of potential interest to clacissists, since the works of ancient authors survive mostly in medieval manuscripts. The unifying theme for covering such a great chronological, geographical, cultural, and linguistic gamut will be the common developments regarding the technology of book production and the logic of authoring, editing, and reproducing texts before the advent of printing, though differences will also be discussed. Students will be encouraged to work independently in order to learn more about the written documents of the civilization and time period that most interests them beyond what will be covered in class, and will be graded based on class participation and a final paper covering an area of their special interest. In addition to the two-hour seminar discussion, those who know Greek and/or Arabic will also read out of medieval Greek and/or Arabic medieval documents. | ||
Science |
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| 275S.001 - | Mazzotti | |
| Wed 12-2 | CCN: 39672 | |
| 285S.001 - Science in the 20th and 21st Century | Lesch | |
| Wed 4-6 | CCN: 39858 | |
| Research on the history of the sciences and their relations with technology and medicine since about 1880, with the goal of producing an article-length paper based largely on primary sources. Students will have wide latitude in choice of topic provided they have the requisite language or technical skills. The class will begin with discussion of examples of research in the field that represent a variety of problems and approaches and that exemplify the presentation of research findings as articles or chapters. Thereafter all effort will be directed to research and writing, with class meetings devoted to discussion of prospectuses, drafts, and the final version of the paper. If possible those wishing to take the course should consult with the instructor before the beginning of the spring semester. | ||
| 290.001 - Historical Colloquium: History of Science | Mazzotti | |
| M 4-6 | CCN: 39864 | |
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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 - Historiography of the United States Since the Civil War | Brilliant | |
| Wed 10-12 | CCN: 39657 | |
| This graduate seminar examines important and innovative United States historiography from Reconstruction through the 1970s. The readings will correspond to major periods, topics, and themes in United States history and reflect a wide range of genres, but with an emphasis on politics, policy, law, race, and region. Cutting edge scholarship will be approached on its own terms (empirically, methodologically, and analytically), as well as within the broader historiographic tradition (its questions, claims, and evolution) with which it is in conversation. | ||
| 285U.002 - Parents, Children, and Generations in History | Fass | |
| Tues 2-4 | CCN: 39861 | |
| Students in the class will be expected to research in one of several different subjects that compose this topic, including (among others) family relations and their consequences for religion, politics, economics, ethnicity, and gender; the problem of generational history and how the concept of generation can be used to understand significant periods of social and cultural change; the history of childhood, children, and youth; the formation of historical policies regarding parenting, childhood, and generational relationships. | ||
Related Interest |
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| 200X - The Bancroft Library Press Room Course: "The Hand Printed Book in its Historical Context" | Ferris & Koch | |
| Wed 1-5 Fri 1-5 Off Campus | ||
| There are two offerings of this course: one taught by Peter Koch on Fri 1-5, and the other taught by Les Ferriss on Wed 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: 39870 | ||
| 298 - Employment Credits | ||
| CCN: 39873 | ||
| 601 - M.A. Preparation | ||
| CCN: 39969 | ||
| 602 - PhD Orals Prep | ||
| CCN: 39972 | ||