Undergraduate Course Descriptions
history 103 Seminars - Spring 2007
This page last updated: Sunday, 08-Jul-2007 17:26:00 PDT
Special enrollment procedures are required for these courses.
Ancient |
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| 103A.002 - Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War: The Greatest Convulsion Among the Greeks | Mackil | |
| Tues 10-12 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is a narrative remarkable as much for its careful reporting as for its profound analysis of power, empire, democracy, and civil strife. The war itself was fought, he tells us, for the supremacy of all Greece, which involved not only a monumental clash between Athens and Sparta but also drew in the very smallest communities around them. In this class we shall read Thucydides' History as well as several books of the Hellenika of Xenophon, who continued Thucydides' unfinished history of the war; several works by the comic genius and social critic Aristophanes; and documentary evidence, primarily from Athens. We shall thus study both the complex history and the rich historiography of the late fifth century BC, and along the way work with some of the major modern critical approaches to this material. Topics for discussion will include the development and nature of the Athenian empire; the complex web of events and pressures that caused the outbreak of war in 432; Thucydides' historical method; Perikles and the Athenian democracy; state funerals for the war dead; Sparta; the predicament of the small polis; civil strife; the changing nature of leadership and authority; war hunger and expansion; calls for peace and the exhaustion of the Greek world; and the nature and implications of Athens' defeat. Students will learn the basic tools for research in ancient history and write several short papers which may serve as preparation for a 101 thesis in the same field. No previous knowledge of Classical Greek history is assumed; readings in the first weeks of the course will provide background material and orientation. | ||
Asia |
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| 103F.002 - India in the Twentieth Century | Irschick | |
| Tues 12-2 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| Note corrected schedule! | ||
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In this class we will follow several themes. These will include the development of minority politics, Gender and Partition Sexuality and poverty, Post-colonialism, and the growth of the Hindu right. We will use Charu Gupta's Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, Diane Mines' and Sarah Lamb's Everyday Life in South Asia, Mrinalini Sinha, "Giving Masculinity a History," Gender and History, 11:3 (Nov. 1999), Raja J. Chelliah, and R. Sudarshan, Income-Poverty and Beyond: Human Development in India, S. Cromwell Crawford, Hindu Bioethics for the Twenty-first Century, William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, and LimbaleSharankumar, The Outcaste. Students will write 3 short papers and have an opportunity to give oral presentations on the subject of their choice. |
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| 103F.003 - Chinese Intellectuals and the Modern Transformation of Chinese Culture | Ye | |
| Wed 4-6 104 Dwinelle | ||
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What was the modern fate of the old Confucian culture? Could one be Chinese and modern at the same time? What was the interplay between culture and politics in modern Chinese history? With such questions in mind, this course will examine the cultural response of Chinese intellectuals to the modern age. One and a half century ago, under the impact of western civilization with its superior military, economic and intellectual power, China was in deep crisis in every aspect. Gradually, some Chinese intellectuals began to believe that there was something very wrong with Chinese culture. They fervently criticized traditional Chinese culture and eagerly adopted western values which they took to be universal and cosmopolitan. These cultural iconoclasts later split into two groups, one group believed in liberal democracy, the other was attracted by communist doctrines. There were another group of Chinese intellectuals, the cultural conservatives, who believed that the Chinese nation would not exist without preserving the essential values of Chinese traditional culture. These groups of intellectuals played different roles in modern Chinese history, they clashed and mingled with each other, and together they created a Chinese new culture full of inner tensions. We will read studies done by scholars such as Joseph Levenson, Benjamin Schwartz, Jerome Grieder, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Wen-hsin Yeh, and others. Requirements include short written responses to weekly readings and a final paper of 8-12 pages. For those who plan to write a thesis in the general area of this course, a brief (3 pages) thesis pre-prospectus is also required. Specific instructions will be given during the course regarding the writing of the thesis pre-prospectus, in which you present a possible topic of your thesis and describe the primary sources you would use. |
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Comparative |
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| 103U.002 - Biography from the Greeks to VH1 | Koziol | |
| Mon 2-4 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated January 23, 2007 | ||
| Note New Room! THIS SECTION IS FULL | ||
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Certain kinds of historians, or historians trying to do certain kinds of things, seem to have an affinity for biography, as if no other genre of history will do. It has been this way as far back as Plato's composing the character we call Socrates. One can almost say that biography is the genre for polemical public history. It is also the genre of history with the most problematic relationship to fiction. Not only do biographers purposely and proudly use storytelling techniques; they also (purposely but not so proudly) tell fictions. In this seminar we will study the distinctive characteristics of biography and ask why biography has these particular characteristics and why they have endured so long. We will also probe the grey area between history and fiction where biographies seem to be written. Most of all, we'll read a lot of biographies, among them: Plutarch's life of Alexander the Great; Athanasius' Life of Anthony; Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson; Stephen Greenblatt's recent biography of Shakespeare; excerpts from Edmund Morris' Dutch (a biography of Ronald Reagan as told by a fictional narrator who relies on fictional informants); Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies of Lyndon Johnson and Robert Oppenheimer; and top it all off with Jack Miles' God: A Biography. We'll also read a little theory and watch some VH1 or A&E. Note: For students planning to do a History 101, we will also try to use the course to learn how to generate and hone research topics. |
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| 103U.003 - Pilgrimage, Across Time and Traditions | Taylor | |
| Mon 10-12 | ||
| Also listed as 103E.002 | ||
| Description posted under the Latin America field listing. | ||
Europe |
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| 103B.002 - European Radicalism in the 19th Century | Frede | |
| Thurs 10-12 211 Dwinelle | ||
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Historians have applied the term, 'radicalism' to a broad array of phenomena, from the Reformation of the early-modern period to twentieth-century Nazism and neo-Nazism. This course will focus on the nineteenth century, with Britain, Russia and France as the center of analysis. Students will subject both the concept and the phenomena it refers to to systematic and comparative analysis. Do the specific movements historians label as radicalism have anything in common? What origins do historians ascribe to radicalism (social, cultural, political, or intellectual)? Were nineteenth-century radical movements local in nature, arising among specific communities for specific reasons, or could radicalism spread (for example, were there links between British and Russian radicalism)? We will attempt to answer these questions primarily by studying secondary literature, including works by Gareth Stedman Jones (Languages of Class), Tony Judt (Socialism in Provence) and Abbott Gleason (Young Russia), and the debates about them. A few primary sources, such as Dostoevsky's The Possessed will also be thrown in. Depending on the size of the class, students will be asked to make presentations, submit 2-page reading reviews, and one 10-page paper. Those students who think they may write their senior thesis on a topic within the general subject of this seminar will be asked to write a brief(non-binding) thesis pre-prospectus describing a potential thesis topic. They will be provided with the necessary information about basic research tools and sources. |
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| 103B.003 - Image, devotion and religious spaces in Early Modern Europe and the contemporary Americas | Christian | |
| Wed 10-12 204 Dwinelle | ||
| Note schedule change! | ||
| The various reformations in Europe opened great contrasts in the way people approached the divine, contrasts that we can still see in the churches down the street and around the world. They also opened such a gulf of incomprehension that fellow Europeans could be so different, that it took wars and generations until they arrived at a modus vivendi. We will explore these differences in the past by reading primary descriptions of iconoclasm, of reformation, and of the ways that people in Europe and the Americas experienced a life with and without images. And we will explore them in the present by visiting churches and talking with their members. The goal is fully to take in the differences, and get a sense of the historical roots, the aesthetics, and the internal emotional logic of each tradition. | ||
| 103B.004 - Was Ivan IV Really "Terrible"? | Kollmann | |
| Wed 10-12 104 Dwinelle | ||
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This course explores the rich historiographical tradition regarding Tsar Ivan IV "The Terrible" of Muscovite Russia (ruled 1533-1584). We will utilize the essential skills of the historian: critical reading of primary and secondary sources, and persuasive presentation of analysis in discussion and writing. Throughout the course we will turn our attention to the process of history writing itself, taking time to discuss what is history, why and how one writes history, whether it is subjective or objective, how it can be written well, how to evaluate the work of a historian. Ivan IV is a perfect topic for addressing these goals, since he has been all things to all historians, variously: shrewd autocrat, psychotic tyrant, vigorous ruler, incapacitated by illness and alcoholism, "terrible" in his ruthlessness, etc. Given the paucity of sources from his time and the sensationalist character of much written about him, can we really know the man and his times? Every major current of modern European intellectual thought and every school of history is represented in works on Ivan, from romanticism, to Hegelianism, to positivism, to Marxism, to psychohistory, and others less easy to characterize. At one level, we will be exploring Tsar Ivan and his times in the 16th century; at a deeper level, we will be examining the topic as a way of studying modern (19th and 20th century) European and Russian intellectual thought. We will cap our studies by analyzing the two-part film, "Ivan the Terrible," by Sergei Eisenstein (1944-1946; Part 2 was banned by Stalin, not released until 1958). Course requirements: Weekly reading and discussion assignments; attendance and participation in class; short (2-3 pages) weekly written submissions consisting of reading logs and proposed discussion questions; a paper (10-12 pages) analyzing one historian's work on Ivan. Please contact the instructor, Jack Kollmann, at jack.kollmann@stanford.edu if you have any questions about this course. |
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Latin America |
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| 103E.002 - Pilgrimage, Across Time and Traditions | Taylor | |
| Mon 10-12 104 Dwinelle | ||
| Also listed as 103U.003 | ||
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There has been a minor explosion of scholarship on religious pilgrimage in the last twenty years thanks, in part, to the unusual popularity of sacred journeying in our time. (Estimates run to more than 200 million pilgrims a year, most of them Christians.) Historians, anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, art historians, and religious studies scholars have been studying the subject across cultures and great stretches of time. The purpose of this readings seminar is to catch up with the debates in this recent literature, learn about sacred journeying in different religious traditions and places, and explore some comparative leads. The emphasis is on Christian pilgrimage, but not exclusively so, and with some special attention to Latin America. Course requirements include weekly readings during the first nine weeks of the semester, and several short papers about them; regular attendance and active participation in seminar discussions; and a ten-page final essay about a particular problem, place, tradition, or time in the history of pilgrimage based on bibliographical work, further reading and reflection that could lead to a workable 101 research project. |
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| 103E.003 - Interconnecting the Americas: Transnational Approaches to U.S., Latin American and Caribbean History | Muller | |
| Tues 4-6 104 Dwinelle | ||
| This course will explore the often overlooked ways in which the Americas are, and have been, interconnected and crisscrossed by immigrants, travelers, slaves, pirates, and people living at the intersection of various borders within the hemisphere. We will begin with an overview of recent scholarly perspectives on transnational and borderlands history. Then, the course will explore three regions in the Americas, the Caribbean/circum-Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, in order to draw out the historical connections that bind these areas. In the second part of the course, we will turn to an examination of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, and of the various transnational ideologies that have informed the ways Latin Americans have sought to challenge the United States: Hispanism, Latin Americanism and Bolivarianism. We will focus on these transnational ideas and their concrete manifestations. The course ends with an exploration of historical and literary perspectives on Latin American and Caribbean immigration to the U.S. This course will offer students the opportunity to engage methodological questions, work with primary sources and develop research skills. Those students who are planning to write a senior thesis in the general area of this seminar will be asked to write a brief (non-binding) pre-preprospectus in which they present a topic and a list of the primary sources they will consult. | ||
Science |
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| 103S.002 - Gas, Bombs, and Rockets: Science-Based Warfare in the 20th Century | Schuering | |
| Thurs 12-2 211 Dwinelle | ||
| Also listed as 103D.004 | ||
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This seminar will examine how modern science changed warfare in the period between 1914 and 1945. The approach is comparative, focusing on developments in Germany and the United States. Instead of simply concentrating on the scientists and administrators who conceived the weapons, we will also try to let the artifacts themselves guide us through the course, regarding them as central "actors" on a huge stage of industry and technology. While becoming complex technological systems these weapons tend to group a unique social formation around them, consisting of soldiers, scientists and politicians, sometimes of "hybrid" figures acting in more than one of these functions. Furthermore, we will put the development of these weapons in a broader context of military and economic history, foreign policy and labor relations in countries at war. Gas, bombs, and rockets have not only changed and expanded the battlefield, but also become powerful symbols of fear, altering the public perception of space, vulnerability, and security. We will thus also look at how popular culture dealt with these threats and how it influenced our view of science and technology. The course will contain a session with the Teaching Library, and students who plan to write their theses in the general area will be introduced to basic primary sources. They will be asked to write a non-binding "pre-prospectus" as part of their course work. |
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| 103S.003 - Revolution in Physics: Quantum, Relativity, and the Destruction of the Classical World | Oldham | |
| Wed 12-2 2231 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated November 6, 2006 | ||
| New Course Added 11/6. | ||
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This seminar covers the modern revolution in physics as well as the relationship between science and culture at the fin-de-siecle. Many of physics' fundamental principles, such as absolute concepts of space and time, mechanical explanation, determinism, and causality were under attack at the turn of the 20th century. Misgivings about the basic assumptions of science were widespread; they came from intellectuals in fields such as aesthetics, philosophy, and politics. Concerns about the limits of "classical" science and the meaning of modern developments, especially in physics, also came from scientists themselves. Relativity and quantum mechanics challenged the traditional scientific outlook and at the same time dovetailed with modern cultural movements. We will examine the history of physics in this tumultuous period, discussing for example, the conspicuous correspondences between Einstein's relativity and Picasso's cubism, between the development of Quantum Mechanics and the emergence of Fascism, and between the collapse of the mechanical world-view and the end of Europe's long century of peace. Physics' relation to broader cultural movements profoundly shaped the future of the discipline, as scientists' interaction with the non-scientific public evolved throughout the 20th century. Readings will include selections by Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Mach, and Ludwig Boltzmann as well as historical studies by Gerald Holton, Paul Forman, John Heilbron, and Peter Dear. Students will be expected to participate actively in weekly discussion and to complete regular short assignments in preparation for a 10-12 page term paper on a related topic. Students who plan to write their theses in the general area will be introduced to basic primary sources and that they will be asked to write a non-binding "pre-prospectus" as part of their course work. Please contact the instructor, Kalil Oldham, at koldham@berkeley.edu with any questions. |
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United States |
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| 103D.002 - Twentieth-Century U.S. Urban Culture | Agee | |
| Th 10-12 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated January 25, 2007 | ||
| Note Room Change! THIS SECTION IS FULL | ||
| This seminar will explore how Americans defined and experienced urban living during the twentieth century. For many twentieth-century Americans, cities represented fragmented and disorderly places. Our course will explore how urban residents sought to apply a sense of order to urban culture. Towards this end, we will examine daily cultural practices such as consumption and larger public policy movements including urban redevelopment. Our course will give particular focus to the ways in which urban residents expanded and constricted the boundaries of racial-, gender-, and class-associated behaviors. These discussions will reveal how conflicts over cultural order reflected and affected battles over political power. The course will utilize both secondary works, such as Christine Stansell's American Moderns and Eric Avila's Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, and primary sources, including King Vidor's The Crowd and D.J. Waldie's Holy Land. | ||
| 103D.003 - Becoming An "American": Immigration, Culture and Society in 20th Century America | Rosen | |
| Wed 2-4 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| THIS SECTION IS FULL | ||
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"Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history." Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted, 1951 American history is largely the story of immigration. Through novels, memoirs, autobiographies, diaries, letters, and documentary films, we will investigate how American culture and society changed the lives of different groups of immigrants and how they, in turn, have transformed this country's racial, economic, political and cultural life. Immigrant experiences varied considerably, depending on a person's gender, and his or her national, ethnic, racial and educational background. Equally important was when an individual or a family arrived during the 20th century. Students will explore the many obstacles and opportunities encountered by different groups of immigrants as they reinvented--by embracing or rejecting aspects of consumer culture, language acquisition, an individualistic ethos, and a racial identity --what it has meant to become an "American." In addition to learning about cycles of nativism and xenophobia, students will also study the changing laws and policies that affected immigrants, and grapple with the different ideals of a melting pot, pluralism, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. In addition, all seminar participants will attend a research workshop at which a librarian will help them identify available primary sources at U.C Berkeley and other collections. As part of the seminar, students will learn how to interpret and analyze primary sources, so that they can use them effectively in their final research papers. These are among some of the questions we will explore in this seminar: Why did a particular group emigrate to the U.S? What were their expectations? How were they treated by those who came before them? How did their culture of origin help or hinder them? Why were some groups accepted more easily than others as "Americans?" How did the migration of African Americans to the North affect both them and the society they entered? What role did religion, language acquisition and race play in each immigrant experience? How did different immigrants imagine America, in their literature, letters and diaries? Did immigrants encounter something they viewed as a "dominant culture" and if so, what did they think were its core values and major characteristics? Why did some groups embrace that dominant culture, while others rejected them? Was there a gendered immigrant experience? All students will write a final paper that involves both primary sources that evaluate the usefulness and accuracy of particular theoretical and historiographical approaches. Those students expecting to write their thesis in any related area of 20th century social and cultural American history, very broadly construed, will be asked to write a thesis "pre-prospectus" outlining a possible topic for their theses and some primary sources they would use in writing it. Ruth Rosen is a Professor Emerita of History at the U.C. Davis where she taught American history, women's history, immigration history and public policy for over two decades. The recipient of the University of California at Davis Distinguished Teaching Award and many other national research fellowships, she has taught and lectured all over the world. She is the editor of the The Maimie Papers, and the author of The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1982; and The World Split Open: How The Modern Women's Movement Changed America 2001. An award-winning journalist, she has also worked as an editorial writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. She is currently a visiting professor of history at U.C. Berkeley. |
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| 103D.004 - Gas, Bombs, and Rockets: Science-Based Warfare in the 20th Century | Schuering | |
| Thurs 12-2 | ||
| Also listed as 103S.002 | ||
| Description posted under the Science field listing. | ||