Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Lower Division courses - Fall 2005
This page last updated: Saturday, 19-Apr-2008 10:35:36 PDT
| 4A - Origins of Western Civilization: Ancient | Mackil | |
| MWF 3-4 159 Mulford | CCN: 38803 | |
| Updated August 4, 2005 | ||
| New Description | ||
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This introductory course offers a survey of the history of the ancient Mediterranean world and its extended hinterlands in antiquity. We will begin in the Bronze Age in the Near East circa 3000 BC, and end, roughly, with the emergence of the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century AD. The course has three main foci. The first is to survey the major events and developments in the social, economic, and political history of the ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The second focus is to consider, very much along the way, the origins and development in the ancient world of ideas, practices, and institutions that have had a major impact on subsequent, particularly Western, history. These will include the emergence of cities, kingship, organized religion, and written law in the Near East and Mesopotamia; dynastic rule and priestly power in Egypt; tyranny, democracy, citizenship, imperialism, colonization, slavery, freedom, religious persecution and martyrdom in the Greek and Roman worlds. The third focus will be the Mediterranean itself, for it was on and around its deep waters that all of these developments took place, and it left on each of them its distinctive mark. Primary source readings will include epic poetry, songs of labor and lamentation, political propaganda, narrative history, and legal documents; regular assignments in a textbook will provide another source of narrative to reinforce and complement material covered in lectures. Emphasis in sections will be on discussion of readings and issues raised in lectures. There will be two short papers, a midterm, and a final exam. |
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| 5 - European History | Anderson | |
| TuTh 2-3:30 145 Dwinelle | CCN: 38824 | |
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This introductory course provides essential background to an understanding of Europe today by surveying the elements of its past that went into its making. We begin, roughly, with the "Closing" of Europe to the Islamic world after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. We end with Europe's Re-opening, in the late 20th and early 21st century, symbolized, in part, the Balkan conflict in the 1990s. As we cover these five and a half centuries, we will look at major landmarks in Europe's social, political, and intellectual development: the Renaissance, the expansion of Europe into the Americas, the breakup of a single Western Christendom into competing religious communities, the construction of the modern state, the Enlightenment, the European revolutions, industrialization, socialism, nationalism, imperialism, Communism and Nazism, the two World Wars, decolonialization, the Cold War, cultural changes in the post-war period, and the breakup of Communism in Eastern Europe. We will close with the continent's current reconfiguration, as former patterns of migration have moved into reverse and the non-European world expands into Europe. Our readings will range from learned treatises in religion, classics in political theory, fiction, and other documents from the past, as well as a textbook. Work in sections centers on reading and discussion of original sources and lectures, and on the improvement of writing skills. Students should be warned that the course moves very fast: about forty years per week. Such a pace demands that you be willing to keep up with the reading assignments and bear with the frustrations of the pace of a survey course. |
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| 7A - United States | Einhorn | |
| TuTh 12:30-2 150 Wheeler (Wheeler Auditorium) | CCN: 38860 | |
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
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This course is an introduction to the history of the United States from the beginning of European colonization to the end of the Civil War. It is also an introduction to the study of history: the ways historians look at the past and think about evidence. It has two major themes. One is to understand the process through which democratic political institutions emerged in the U.S. in this period. This task requires an assessment of what "democracy" actually meant, not only as a concrete series of practices among its participants, but also in the larger context of an economy that depended on slave labor and violent land acquisition. The other is to understand the process by which what we now call the "cultures" of European-Americans, Native-Americans, and African-Americans were created. Far from timeless categories, these "identities" did not exist before the period covered by this course. They were created through interactions among peoples from Europe, Africa, and North America in the place that became the United States in this period. There will be two lectures per week and two 1-hour discussion sections, two brief essays, a midterm, and a final exam. |
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| 8B - Modern Latin America | Healey | |
| MWF 9-10 105 North Gate | CCN: 38958 | |
| New Room! | ||
| This introductory course surveys the history of modern Latin America from independence to the present, with a strong emphasis on the twentieth century. Our focus will be on broad transformations in place, politics, identity, and work. The course will be built around comparative case studies of seven countries, chosen to reflect the diverse social geographies of the region: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala and Mexico. Topics covered include dependency and development; agrarian struggles and state building; migration and citizenship; urban growth and industrialization; popular culture and mass politics; social revolution and military dictatorship; and the role of the United States. Readings will be drawn from primary sources, personal narratives, ethnographies and historical monographs, and will be supplemented by films and music. Requirements include participation in discussion sections, a research project using primary sources, an in-class mid-term and a final. | ||
| 12 - Introduction to the Middle East | Doumani | |
| MWF 2-3 145 Dwinelle | CCN: 38968 | |
| Updated August 20, 2005 | ||
| New description available. | ||
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Goals: This course has four major goals. The first goal is to provide students with basic literacy in the field of Middle East history. This can prepare you for more advanced courses in the Dept. of History (such as 109C) or courses in other departments that require some background in the history of the Middle East. Second, this course explores what it means to do history by explicitly referring to various approaches and methodologies used to construct narratives about change over time. Third, it is designed to help you contextualize current developments and to give you the tools to educate yourself on your own. Finally, this course includes training in writing, critical thinking, and thematic synthesis -skills that you will need regardless of career path-- through the assignment of brief weekly essays. Content: The diverse peoples of Southwest Asia/North Africa (a region recently labeled "The Middle East") have a rich and remarkable history. They established some of the earliest centers of agriculture-based civilizations and urban life, carried the messages of the world's three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and served as the economic and cultural middlemen of the world system during the medieval and early modern periods. The first part of this course provides a brief outline of these and other themes up to the Seventeenth Century. The second part focuses on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an era of intense social, economic and cultural transformation that led to the demise of the Ottoman and other empires and the emergence of a new state system, most of it under the colonial domination of Britain and France. The remainder of the course (Parts III, IV) is devoted to an exploration of the forces that have shaped the Middle East during the Twentieth Century such as the colonial encounter and rise of nationalist movements, the discovery of oil, regional conflicts and the Cold War, the rise of political Islam, and U.S. military intervention. Throughout, the major themes will be illustrated through case studies of specific countries as well as through the study of the causes and consequences of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Iranian Revolution, and the Gulf Wars. Requirements: Mid-term and final exams, brief writing assignment, attending lectures, and participation in discussion sections. |
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| 13A - Early and Middle Period China | Nylan | |
| TuTh 3:30-5 110 Barrows | CCN: 38989 | |
| Updated August 29, 2005 | ||
| New Room! | ||
| This course offers an introduction to Chinese history from the Bronze Age to the destruction of the Song Dynasty by the Mongols. It is designed for lower-division undergraduates who have no background in Chinese history. The lectures will not attempt to present a coherent account of political and military history--that will be left to the textbook--or indeed of any aspect of Chinese history during this period: there simply is too much ground to be covered. Instead, they will focus on subjects of importance to a broad understanding of Chinese civilization down to the great turning point of the 13th century, each in its appropriate chronological place. These include the Chinese language; the question of when "the Chinese" can be said to have come into existence; key works of early philosophy; the creation and evolution of the unified bureaucratic empire; law; lyric poetry; and the great Song dynasty masterpieces of Chinese landscape painting. At certain points, explicit comparisons will be made with European analogues of the Chinese materials under consideration. Special attention will also be paid to introducing students through practical exercises to the techniques used by historians to interpret documents and artifacts. The themes introduced in the lectures will be pursued more intensively in weekly two-hour section meetings. Special readings are assigned for discussion in sections. These are almost always documents from the period under study, ranging from philosophy to fiction, which enable students to engage more deeply with the subjects touched on in the lectures. | ||
| 24.001 - The Creation, Operation, and Dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa | Kanogo | |
| Tu 10-12 2227 Dwinelle | CCN: 39010 | |
| Updated September 6, 2005 | ||
| New Room! (1 Unit, P/NP). This seminar will meet the first eight weeks of the semester. | ||
| Apartheid, the social, political and economic policy of racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa, formally ended in 1994. This course will examine the origins, development, effects, and the dismantling of the Apartheid regime. Class discussions will be based on a variety of historical documents, films and documentaries including the powerful Soweto to Berkeley documentary, which captures UC Berkeley students' contribution to the anti-Apartheid movement in the mid-1980s. | ||
| 24.002 - The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements | Martin | |
| W 2-4 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39013 | |
| (1 unit). This seminar will meet the first ten weeks of the semester. | ||
| This course will examine the origins, development, and consequences of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Our discussions will build upon a selection of short readings, documentary films, musical texts, and visual artifacts. Our major intellectual preoccupation will be analyzing historical and cultural representations of this watershed moment. | ||
| 30A - The Origins of Modern Science | Hahn | |
| MWF 9-10 88 Dwinelle | CCN: 39028 | |
| This course will cover the period through the era of Newton. An introductory overview of the development of scientific concepts in the West to the end of the 17th century. Emphasis will be on the establishment of a worldview among the ancient Greeks, its incorporation into a Judeo-Christian framework, and the transformations ushered in by the Scientific Revolution. The course will consist of two lectures per week, supplemented by films, and two separate hours of discussion. There are no prerequisites beyond curiosity and a willingness to read extensively and participate actively in the learning process. | ||
| 39F - Classics in American History | Abrams | |
| Tu 2-5 210 Dwinelle | CCN: 39037 | |
| This seminar is designed especially to introduce college freshmen and sophomores to American history by acquainting them with some of the major works in the literature. Some are old classics, e.g., Ben Franklin's autobiography and Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which have become renowned almost as much as historical documents as for their historical content. Others, e.g., Kenneth Stampp's Peculiar Institution, Winthrop Jordan's White Over Black, and Matthew Josephson's Robber Barons, have taken on the character of classics in that almost from the moment they were published they became, and remained, indispensable reference points for every scholar who thereafter worked on their subjects. Finally, some of the books we will read (e.g., Kessner's Golden Door) may not deserve the title "classic" in either of the above senses, but rather serve exceptionally well to get into important modern subjects, or use special historiographical techniques, that as yet enjoy no classic treatment. All the books have been chosen because they make good reading as well as provoke thought about American history. Faithful attendance and active class participation are required. | ||
| 39J - Culture and Society in the First World War | Barrows | |
| W 10-12 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 39040 | |
| New Room! | ||
| The course will explore the Great War of 1914-1918 through the prisms of historical analysis, fiction, poetry, music, and film. We will read accounts of trench warfare, the mobilization of soldiers, the impact of the war on the “home front,” the nature of propaganda, the shifting relationships between men and women, and the diverse meanings of commemoration after the armistice. Readings will include such fictional works as All Quiet on the Western Front, Under Fire, and A Very Long Engagement, films, including “Gallipoli”, “J’accuse, and “Life and Nothing But,” as well as historical monographs and articles. Students will be asked to write two essays, to participate in each week’s discussion, and to attend all films. | ||
| 39K - Medicine in American Society Since 1880 | Lesch | |
| W 2-4 204 Dwinelle | CCN: 39043 | |
| The years since 1880 have witnessed tremendous changes in American society and in medicine. This course will examine some of these changes through readings, discussion, and writing on selected topics that illustrate the relationships between society and medical knowledge, organization, and practice. Topics include the germ theory of disease and its popular meanings and uses, medicine in literature, widespread belief in and use of vitamins, controversies surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, medicine and race, venereal diseases, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Course requirements include several papers. | ||
| 39L - Crops, food, and the history of the Americas | Gjerde | |
| Th 10-12 225 Dwinelle | CCN: 39046 | |
| The premise of this seminar is that the production of food crops have shaped our history and reflected our past in amazing, and often underappreciated, ways. Toward that end, this course will view how changing crops have influenced historical development and the lives of countless humans and how the creation of food from those crops reflects our culture. The course will consist of three parts. First, we will read a series of books that illustrate the role of crops in the historical development of the Americas and Europe. Next we will explore the history of specific crops ranging from sugar to the potato and view how they changed society. Finally, we will view how food has been reflected in our society ranging from ethnic cuisine and fast food. Students will be required to write two essays and will be asked to participate actively in seminar discussion. | ||
| 39M.001 - Do you feel what I feel? The cross-cultural and historical study of emotions | Koziol | |
| This course has been cancelled. | ||
| You may think emotions like anger, love, jealousy, and grief are universal, but most specialists in ethnology, psychology, and history don't agree. The current consensus is that different societies not only have different ways of processing emotions, they feel them differently as well. Can this be true? If it is true, what does it mean for the way we understand our own emotions and our ability to comprehend the experiences of other peoples? | ||
| 39M.002 - The Mongols and their Legacy | Peirce | |
| W 2-4 332 Giannini | CCN: 39051 | |
| Updated June 17, 2005 | ||
| NEW COURSE! | ||
| It is well known that the armies of Ghengis Khan swept across Asia into Europe and the Middle East, creating havoc, destruction, and death. What is less commonly known is that the Mongols then created a vast Eurasian empire that facilitated cultural, technological, and ideological exchange among the civilizations they ruled over, especially between China and Iran. In this course, we will explore the nature of the Mongol accomplishment and the persistence of the Mongol legacy long after the empire’s collapse. We will also be interested in the range of writings about the Mongols by their contemporaries (including Marco Polo and other European diplomats and merchants), which ran the gamut from demonization to admiration. Films and other visual materials will also play an important role in the class. | ||