Undergraduate Course Descriptions
history 101 Seminars - Spring 2008
This page last updated: Friday, 01-Feb-2008 16:27:40 PST
Special enrollment procedures are required for these courses.
Priority enrollments for these courses will take place on October 15-18, 2007. Most students who participate in the priority enrollment process are assigned to their first choice.
Although most course information will be posted by Oct. 12, updates will continue to be posted as information becomes available.
Sign-Up Procedure: All submissions (online section preference forms) must be received by Thursday, October 18 in order to be considered for the first round of 101 and 103 seminar assignments. Final results and course control numbers for all 103 courses will be posted outside 3327 Dwinelle on Monday, October 22. We will post the results of the 101 assignments by the end of the first week of TeleBears. AFTER YOU ARE ACCEPTED INTO A SECTION, YOU MUST ENROLL IN THE COURSE THROUGH TELEBEARS.
Note that ONLY ONE PREFERENCE FORM will be accepted per person. If you submit multiple entries, only the first submission will be considered. Section assignments are NOT first-come, first-served, so there is no need to submit your preferences during the first days the form is available if you are still waiting for information to be posted to the website.
Although all are encouraged to submit preference forms, priority is given to History majors. Although initial sign ups for these courses take place before the start of TeleBears, spaces are available in many of the sections after the first round of seminar assignments. Just peruse the courses still indicated as open for enrollment on our website and notify Leah Flanagan in 3327 Dwinelle if you want to fill one of the available seats.
Africa |
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| 101.003 - Rethinking the Missionary Enterprise in Africa | Kanogo | |
| TuTh 12:30-2 3104 Dwinelle | ||
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As part of the colonial encounter, missionaries represented a broad and complex phenomenon that was imagined and experienced in diverse and at times contradictory ways. At the end of their sojourn in Africa, there emerged a "bricolage of religious practices" and highly contested interpretations of the missionary project. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, this research seminar explores core narratives on 19th and 20th century missionary activities and indigenous African initiatives in the debates and practices that emerged around supernatural and mundane quotidian concerns unleashed by the encounter. The study will obviously be conducted in the context of an extensive secondary literature. Central to the seminar is the endeavor to question and complicate conventional metanarratives of the missionary venture. During the first four weeks we will examine some of the major themes which include: missionaries and cultural imperialism; the civilizing mission; gender and sexuality; domesticity and social control; power, authority and coercion; missions and medicine; evangelization and conversion; African Independent/Indigenous Churches; inculturation; missions, education, the proto-elite and political protest. This seminar offers you the opportunity to write your essay on any one of a broad range of themes that seek to investigate conventional representations/understandings of the missionary and African encounter during the period under study. For their research projects, students will use a variety of primary sources including diaries, memoirs, life-histories, letters, photographs, fiction, print media, and official documents. The research essay will be 30-50 double-spaced pages (inclusive of the bibliography). Please familiarize yourself with 101 manual before the beginning of class. |
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Asia |
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| 101.019 - The Uses of History in East Asia | Perelman | |
| TuTh 11-12:30 104 Dwinelle | ||
| Elisheva Perelman is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Taisho Japan particularly with respect to the tuberculosis pandemic then and to the work of evangelical organizations in combating it. | ||
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"Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it." Oscar Wilde Students in this course will research the historian in modern society--who undertakes this study, at whose behest, and to what end. Scholarship will begin with modern historiography and will later investigate the use of "history" in modern China, Japan, and Korea. Although students' work will reflect this, their studies need not be limited to East Asia, and students are welcome to research comparatively. Because this seminar is intended to produce senior history theses, much of the course will deal with research and composition techniques. Students are encouraged to utilize all available resources, including the instructor and their peers. Students enrolled should have possible thesis topics by the second week of class and should be able to write a proposal soon thereafter. In addition, students considering enrollment are requested to e-mail Elisheva at eaperelm@berkeley.edu with a brief self-introduction before winter break. |
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Britain |
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| 101.007 - Revolting Peasants? Protest, Riot, and Rebellion in Europe c.1350-1800 | Shagan | |
| Ethan Shagan is a brand new professor at Berkeley, specializing in early modern British and European history, arriving this semester after eight years as a professor at Northwestern University. At Northwestern, he was awarded the university's highest teaching prize in 2005, and he hopes to enjoy the same success in the more egalitarian atmosphere of a public university. | ||
| Description and course details posted under Europe listing. | ||
| 101.020 - Geographical histories of Modern Britain | Fitz-Gibbon | |
| TuTh 5-6:30 332 Giannini | ||
| Desmond Fitz-Gibbon is a third year graduate student in the history department. His research interests include 19th and 20th century British history, urban history and the history of vernacular garden landscapes. Before coming to Berkeley, he completed a bachelor of arts degree in social history from the University of Winnipeg and a masters degree in cultural geography from the University of London, England. | ||
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This course will examine the history of modern Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the perspective of its various geographies. These geographies will be interpreted broadly to include both the history of locations -- houses, nations, bodies, streets, cities, department stores, neighbourhoods, gardens, regions, etc. -- and the history of spatial relationships, such as between the city and the country, public and private, north and south, colony and metropole. How have people in different periods perceived space? How have places and the experience of living in them changed over time? In what ways do these perceptions and experiences relate to questions of historical causality, continuity and change? How do historians construct histories attuned to the nuances of geography? Students will explore these questions and others through an initial set of primary and secondary source readings and through the creation of an original research paper (30-50 pp) based on primary sources. Students will meet both individually with the instructor and as a group to discuss and plan the stages involved in original research (topic, sources, research, drafting, revision). Students are encouraged to contact the instructor prior to the start of term to discuss possible topics and sources. |
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| 101.021 - "Self-Evident Truths": Human Rights and Humanitarianism, 1750 to the Present | Shaw | |
| MW 9:30-11 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| Caroline Shaw is a PhD Candidate in British and European History at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on British involvement in refugee crises in the 19th century and the concept of refuge in the humanitarian repertoire of a modern, liberal state and its empire. | ||
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Walk through Sproul Plaza and you will be greeted with petitions to sign and causes to rally for, or to rally against. These demands on our sympathy hardly seem out of place. We are expected to feel and, hopefully, to agitate for the political rights of peoples remote from ourselves, to campaign to eradicate hunger or to assist the victims of natural disasters. This was not always the case, however. As historian Lynn Hunt has recently argued, the "self-evident truths" that individuals are entitled to life, liberty, and happiness were anything but "self-evident" two hundred years ago (Hunt: Inventing Human Rights, 19ff). It was not until the 18th century that what historians have called a revolution in sentiment made broad-based agitation to eradicate the suffering of others possible. This seminar will challenge students to consider the historical evolution of humanitarian sentiment on a broad scale in class and in detail through independent research on a topic of the student's choice. As a class we will consider questions such as the following: What creates sympathy? How do you go from local rights and sympathies to abstract or universal rights? When do these humanitarian impulses translate into action? Given the uncompromising character of these moral claims, how did they fare when confronted with the limits of an imperfect world? The first few weeks of the seminar will introduce these questions and focus on the ways in which other historians have provided answers. We will also use this time to discuss how to approach primary documents, as well as general research strategies. Initial readings for this seminar will focus on debates in the British and Western European fields. The import of these readings, however, is global. Students with other geographic interests are welcome to join the class. All students are encouraged to brainstorm specific research topic ideas prior to the beginning of the semester. Within the first month, students will be expected to have defined a narrow topic through which they will reflect on the course's broader themes and produce an original research paper of 30-50 pages. Topics should be constrained to a particular location, time frame and aspect of humanitarian activity or human rights agitation. Students may choose to look at a single issue over a period of time, or a range of issues through a single event. |
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Comparative |
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| 101.004 - The Writer | Klein | |
| TuTh 12:30-2 186 Barrows | ||
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This section is designed for seniors with well-conceived thesis projects that do not fit within the rubrics of other 101 seminars. Members of the group will observe a common schedule in developing, drafting, and critiquing material but will not share a common subject area. Admission requires a written statement and the consent of the instructor. The statement should include: (1) a two-hundred word description of the proposed thesis topic; (2) a preliminary annotated bibliography (with full citations) of suitable primary sources; (3) a short bibliography of secondary sources; (4) a list of previous coursework in the proposed field of research; and (5) the name of a departmental instructor in that field who is willing to help mentor the student by providing bibliographical guidance, occasional consultation, and a critique of the first draft of the thesis. Students should submit their statements directly to Leah Flanagan's mailbox in 3229 Dwinelle by 4pm on Monday, October 22. Although most applicants will not have had time to develop rigorous statements by the application deadline, they must demonstrate the viability of their projects and their commitment to serious preparation in advance of the course. This section is limited to students whose work clearly falls outside the scope of other 101 sections. |
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Europe |
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| 101.005 - The Middle Ages | Koziol | |
| Description and course details posted under Medieval listing. | ||
| 101.007 - Revolting Peasants? Protest, Riot, and Rebellion in Europe c.1350-1800 | Shagan | |
| MWF 2-3 210 Dwinelle | ||
| Ethan Shagan is a brand new professor at Berkeley, specializing in early modern British and European history, arriving this semester after eight years as a professor at Northwestern University. At Northwestern, he was awarded the university's highest teaching prize in 2005, and he hopes to enjoy the same success in the more egalitarian atmosphere of a public university. | ||
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It is an old joke among historians that the peasants are "revolting," but in fact ordinary people throughout history engaged in complex political negotiations with their rulers, often protesting against unfair policies and occasionally taking up arms in open rebellion. Because historical sources are so often written by privileged and powerful men, these attempts at self-expression have often been portrayed as mere "madness" or "disorder," but one of the great achievements of historians in the last fifty years has been to show that there was more than a little method in the madness of popular revolt. This research seminar examines the history of popular protest and rebellion in European history: from the revolts following the social crisis of the Black Death, through the revolts following the religious crisis of the Protestant Reformation, and up to the revolts following the political crisis of the French Revolution. Students will write original research papers on some aspect of this history. Rather than simply choosing a particular rebellion to write about, like the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381 or the German Peasants' War of 1525, students will be encouraged to ask more creative questions about their subject. Students might choose to write about the role of religion in a rebellion; how protestors structured their demands; how particular sources like interrogations or newspapers represented a rebellion; how women participated in popular politics; how a protest was suppressed by the government; and many other possibilities. Students will be required to base their papers on significant research in primary source documents, so they are advised to undertake projects in which they have appropriate language skills. There are only a tiny number of topics with sufficient documents in English translation to support a research paper, so students who have only English language skills will be strongly encouraged to work on subjects in British history. |
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| 101.009 - The "I" and the others from Descartes to Nietzsche | Elm-V | |
| MWF 12-1 104 Dwinelle | ||
| Veit Elm is interested in the role of religion in modern European culture. His principal area of research is the Enlightenment, which he has studied from the perspective of its heroes and of their enemies in the Christian Churches. He received his doctorate from the Free University Berlin and has held teaching positions at the Free University and Princeton University. | ||
| The "I" as addressee of divine revelation, seat of reason and detainee of rights was one of the most influential social constructions of modern Europe. In the aftermath of Descartes, the autonomous subject which had been strengthened in the course of the Renaissance and the Reformation, became the ultimate authority of modernity. As source of law, producer of wealth, object of philosophy and topic of literature, the "I" became the prime mover of cultural and social change in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution. The fact that not only Romanticism and liberalism but also socialism, which fought its fight against individualism in the name of the individual, appealed to the subject as ultimate authority testifies to the unbroken vigor of the Cartesian ego and its offspring in 19th century culture. The aim of the seminar is to discuss recent approaches to the history of subjectivity and encourage participants to test out how far analyzing 18th and 19th century European politics and culture through the prism of the history of subjectivity can take us today. | ||
| 101.012 - The Pen is Mightier than the Sword: Histories of Communication, Culture, and Society in and out of Europe | Johnson-B | |
| TuTh 3:30-5 111 Kroeber | ||
| Blake Johnson is a PhD candidate in History. His research interests include comparative print culture, the social history of religion, and 17th and 18th century intellectual history. His dissertation, in progress, is titled: "A Greater Awakening: Evangelical Print in an Age of Revival, 1675-1750." | ||
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A sword can kill someone. A pen can do more: it can make someone immortal. Conversely, a pen can also make someone or something disappear altogether. This is because "pens" write history. This seminar therefore begins with the cliche that "the pen is mightier than the sword" and seeks to make the most of it. To do that, we will be looking at the close relationship in European history between communication, culture, and society. We will study how these interrelationships make history. The point of this effort is to open our understanding and study of history beyond "great people" and "greater events," and instead look at people, topics, and themes that are often ignored or forgotten either because they are deemed unimportant or too difficult to study or perhaps because they are just simply otherwise unmemorable. We will use the act and processes of communication, or even noncommunication, as a tool to uncover these pasts. The goal is to move beyond the claim that, to borrow a Churchillian cliche, "history is written by the victors" and instead do our best to make our own histories free of cliches and Winston Churchill. The seminar then is open to a wide range of topics that can span throughout European history and reach from Europe to across the globe. Anything having to do with European communication, culture, and/or society is fair game. Appropriate subjects range from the spoken and written word to popular entertainment and mass media. The first few weeks of the seminar will involve introductions to and overviews of various relevant themes such as print culture, the history of communication, and media theory. The rest of the seminar will be devoted to developing research topics and learning and honing research and writing skills with the end product being a research paper between 30 and 50 pages based on primary documents. No cliches. Those with questions or concerns can contact the instructor at blakej@berkeley.edu. |
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| 101.013 - Immigrants and Immigration in Modern Europe, 1750-Present | Nelson | |
| TuTh 9:30-11 104 Dwinelle | ||
| Robert Nelson is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the University of California. He is currently undertaking research on his dissertation "British Paris" about British migrants in Paris and its environs. He is interested in the history of immigrant communities and the role they play in the construction of national and multi-cultural identities. | ||
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This course explores the social, political, and cultural history of migration and immigrant communities in Modern Europe, defined as 1750 to the present. While the recent "explosion" of immigration to Europe since the 1960s has dramatically altered the face of Europe, long-term migrants have been a constant feature of the European landscape for hundreds of years. How have immigrant communities affected or altered the history of national or transnational Europe? Over the first four weeks, students"" will be introduced to a range of historiographical, methodological, archival and logistical issues that confront the historian of migration. Students will develop their own research interests around certain themes in the history of European migration, including but not limited to patterns of migration and demography; immigrant communities; citizenship; integration, assimilation and xenophobia; race; religion or gender. In addition to producing an article-length paper (25-35 pages), the student will submit weekly "research journals" and be responsible for one presentation on library resources. Attendance and participation in scheduled sessions is mandatory. Attendance 10%, Journals 20%, Final Project, 70%. |
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| 101.014 - Popular Culture and War in the 20th Century | Denton | |
| MW 4-5:30 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| Chad Denton is a PhD candidate in European History at UC Berkeley. His current research is on German requisitions and everyday life in occupied France during World War II. | ||
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This research seminar examines the relationship between war and society through the lens of popular culture, as expressed through sources such as cartoons, comic books, feature films, radio plays, songs, and advertisements. How did these sources represent the challenges of everyday life or the tension between the war front and the home front? How did this "unofficial media" either reinforce or counteract official government propaganda, such as posters, newsreels, and radio editorials? How can changes in popular culture help us better understand the economic, demographic and social changes that often accompanied wars in the 20th century? At the beginning of the course each student will choose a country and war to concentrate on. The first month of the semester our class meetings will be organized thematically by media and will include discussions of cartoons, film, radio, songs, and advertisements. For each meeting, students will be asked to bring in primary sources relevant to their topics in that medium as well as read selected articles by historians who have used similar primary sources. Students will be encouraged to use the collections of the Bancroft Library and the Hoover Institution archives at Stanford. In our discussions comparative approaches--either geographically or chronologically--will be encouraged. These initial meetings will help students develop research strategies and locate primary sources for the completion of a research paper of 30-50 pages. |
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| 101.016 - American and European Tourism in the 19th and 20th Centuries | Esson | |
| Dylan Esson is a Ph.D. candidate in American history at UC Berkeley. He is writing a dissertation about the emergence and development of winter alpine tourism in Europe and America from 1865-1941. | ||
| Description and course details are posted under the US listing. | ||
| 101.021 - "Self-Evident Truths": Human Rights and Humanitarianism, 1750 to the Present | Shaw | |
| Caroline Shaw is a PhD Candidate in British and European History at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on British involvement in refugee crises in the 19th century and the concept of refuge in the humanitarian repertoire of a modern, liberal state and its empire. | ||
| Description and course detials posted under the Britain listing. | ||
Latin America |
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| 101.008 - Mexico | Taylor | |
| TuTh 9:30-11 3104 Dwinelle | ||
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UC-Berkeley is home to one of the world's great research libraries for Mexican history. In addition to deep and varied collections of manuscripts and pictorial materials dating from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, The Bancroft Library librarians have built an extensive collection of rare books and supporting materials: microfilm of original materials from archives and libraries around the world; and an up-to-date collection of published primary sources, bibliographical materials, and secondary works. This 101 section offers an opportunity for students with a basic reading knowledge of Spanish and an interest in Latin American history to build a modest, well-contextualized research project in Mexican history from some of these materials. There are many possibilities for good research projects. The Bancroft collections are particularly rich for the colonial period (16th-18th centuries), but the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are amply represented, too, and there are several interesting manuscript sources for Central America and Peru, as well. Students who plan to enroll in this 101 section must consult the instructor with a proposal for research before the end of the fall semester. The challenge is to connect your broad interests and abilities with primary sources that you can master, situate, and interpret in a semester of sustained research and writing. Proposals for research in other areas of Latin American history and religious studies will be considered. |
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| 101.011 - Latin America | Read | |
| MWF 1-2 104 Dwinelle | ||
| This course takes a transnational and cross-cultural approach to Latin American history. Rather than focus exclusively on the centers of power and jurisdiction, students will examine the numerous edges and all that traversed official boundaries. This included people (i.e., immigrant groups, slaves, diplomats), things (i.e., primary products, manufactured goods), ideas (i.e., religions, social movements), and power (i.e., imperialism, warfare). Latin America's long and important colonial relationship with Europe will not overshadow the region's numerous links with Africa, Asia and its increasingly powerful neighbors to the north. Class material consists of primary and secondary texts, historiography, literature, iconography and film. Each student will help shape the course, pursue individual interests, teach and learn from peers, and create the ideal conditions to write a substantial history thesis paper. | ||
Medieval |
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| 101.005 - The Middle Ages | Koziol | |
| MW 2-3:30 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| Given the scope and variety of medieval history, this 101 will not focus on any single theme. Students who already have some sense of their interests will be able to pursue them under the instructor's guidance. Students who are less certain will be helped to formulate research projects that are feasible, interesting to the student, and, so far as possible, synergistic with respect to other students' topics. In both cases, the instructor will work with students to hone topics to make their research productive -- above all, by refining questions, locating secondary sources, and identifying foolproof primary sources (i.e., open-ended sources that that allow you to say something interesting, even if it's not the issue you'd hoped to address). Students should remember that although a surprising number of medieval sources have been translated into English, some of the most productive genres of sources have not been translated at all; translations for some periods and problems are too spotty to allow convincing research; and save for medieval English history, much essential historiography is in German, French, Italian, or Spanish. This makes it all the more necessary for students to work so closely with the instructor in formulating their research projects. It also means that if at all possible, students contact the instructor before the semester begins, if only to begin thinking about what kinds of topics will and will not work in a 101. Attendance the first week of classes is also extremely important, because this is when topics will be discussed and finalized. | ||
Science |
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| 101.018 - The Animal in History | Varno | |
| TuTh 2-3:30 321 Haviland | ||
| Theodore Varno is a graduate student affiliated with the Office for History of Science and Technology. He's interested in the history of biology in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly genetics and evolution; the history of agriculture, particularly plant and animal breeding; and the history of animals, particularly the domesticated kind. He's currently working on a dissertation that traces biological research on inbreeding from Darwin through the Evolutionary Synthesis. He can be reached at varno@berkeley.edu and would be happy to answer questions about the seminar. | ||
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Is it possible to write a history of non-human beings? What does it mean to say that an organism has a past? How might incorporating non-human actors into our narratives present us with new modes for thinking about human history? In this seminar, we will build the supportive atmosphere needed in order to think in original ways about these and related questions. At the core of the seminar will be independent research into primary materials, research that will culminate for each participant in an essay of between 30 and 50 pages. Our meetings will facilitate these research projects by focusing on three general goals: 1) how to use secondary literatures to formulate worthwhile historical questions, 2) how to locate and utilize primary materials, and 3) how to transform abstract ideas and concrete sources into effective historical writing. While the seminar is devoted to the history of animals (both real and symbolic), participants are encouraged to pursue topics related to this general theme in any region of the world, any time period, or any historical methodology. Those interested in this seminar might wish to consult the webpage for History 103: The Animal in History, taught in Fall 2007, in order to get a better sense of the kinds of topics this seminar will address. |
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United States |
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| 101.002 - War and American Society: From World War I to the War in Vietnam | Fass | |
| TuTh 2-3:30 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| We want to ask how war affects social and cultural experiences, including the wartime and post war lives of soldiers, families and children, business and technology, gender and sexual patterns, as well as changes in sensibility, in civic consciousness, and attitudes towards violence. Students will be expected to write a first and second draft, and to share their research and writing activities with both small tutorial groups and with the class as a whole. | ||
| 101.006 - Law, Morality, and the Market: US Legal History, 1776 -present | McLennan | |
| TuTh 11-12:30 210 Dwinelle | ||
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This research seminar explores cultural and social approaches to the history of American law, from 1609 to the present, and guides students through the process of writing a senior research paper in the field of American legal history. In the first few weeks of the semester, we will orient ourselves in the historiography, chiefly by reading and discussing some of its most innovative scholarship. Key themes may include: the British Empire's confrontation with colonial legal culture in the eighteenth century; competing conceptions, in the Revolutionary Era, of the "rule of law"; law's role in the decline of agrarian society and the making of a modern market economy; shifts in the conceptual relationship between sin and crime; the making of modern American legal consciousness; and law's vexed relation to vigilantism and "extra-legal" violence in the New South and the Western states. As well as furthering students' understanding of the field, the assigned texts will introduce them to the wide range of sources and interpretive methods available to the historian of American law. The remainder of the semester (approximately ten weeks) will be devoted to the tasks of framing, researching, and writing a research paper of approximately 40 pages in length. Students may choose to work in one of the areas discussed in the orientation, or develop their own topic in consultation with the instructor. Class will break intermittently in order to allow time for research and writing. When we convene, class will be run as a workshop: students will present their work, and "workshop" (i.e., read, and constructively discuss) the work of fellow students. Students will also be required to attend one-on-one meetings with the instructor. Requirements Writing requirements for the seminar include: Four short reviews (1-2 pages ea). Project prospectus (3-5 pages). Rough draft (20 or more pages). Long draft (30-40 pages). Final thesis (30-40 pages). Other requirements include: attendance at all class meetings, including the library session; workshopping fellow students' papers; and one-on-one meetings with the instructor (to be scheduled). |
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| 101.010 - American Immigration History from the Colonial Period to the Present | Kang | |
| MW 4-5:30 61 Evans | ||
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This class will allow students to pursue research projects in the field of American immigration history. Student research will culminate in the completion of a thirty to fifty page thesis. Given the breadth of the field, students are encouraged to approach the subject of American immigration history from a variety of perspectives. Students may choose to write on the migratory process itself, immigrant settlement patterns and communities within the United States, the formation of ethnic and racial identities, ethnic and race relations, the history of American immigration law and policy, the intersections between race, ethnicity, and the law, or the transnational dimensions of migration, among others. Through this class, students will not only attain the substantive expertise, but also the methodological tools necessary for the completion of the thesis. The first class sessions will introduce students to the disparate approaches, that is, political, legal, social, and cultural, to the writing of American immigration history. Subsequent meetings will focus on the development of student research and writing skills. These classes will also offer students a problem-solving forum in which the class, as a group, will address complications encountered in the research and writing process. In order to facilitate the timely completion of the thesis, students are asked to prepare a two to three page research proposal for the first class meeting. This proposal should begin with a research question rather than a thesis or a statement of fact. After introducing the research problem or question, the proposal should provide a brief background section based on secondary source reading completed in a 103 or other courses at Cal. The proposal should then include an overview of the key issues that the student would like to explore. The last section of the proposal should offer a tentative research agenda which may include a research timeline but, at a minimum, must include a proposed list of primary and secondary sources available at U.C. Berkeley and other research institutions within easy access in the Bay Area. |
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| 101.015 - North America Before 1825 | Dubcovsky | |
| MW 11-12:30 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| Alejandra Dubcovsky is a graduate student in the history Department. She studies networks of information in the colonial southeast and the role of Native Americans, Africa slaves, and Euro-American settlers in the production and spread of knowledge. | ||
| This course is designed for students who wish to write their 101 paper on any topic in North American history before 1825. I anticipate that research topics will range across social, intellectual, political, military, and cultural history. Subjects dealing with Native Americans, African slavery, resistance, and topics discussing the American South will be particularly encouraged. The completion of an analytical paper of substantial length is required. To facilitate this process the seminar includes readings, purposeful writing assignments (including drafts), a workshop-like forum in which students critique each others' work, and regular consultation with the instructor. Students will also be expected to participate in collaborative peer review throughout the writing and revision process. | ||
| 101.016 - American and European Tourism in the 19th and 20th Centuries | Esson | |
| MW 12:30-2 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| Dylan Esson is a Ph.D. candidate in American history at UC Berkeley. He is writing a dissertation about the emergence and development of winter alpine tourism in Europe and America from 1865-1941. | ||
| What is tourism? Who is a tourist? What is the historical significance of traveling somewhere to experience something unfamiliar? According to some, tourism has been essential in crafting national culture in both the U.S. and Europe. Others have argued that tourism has made the world nothing more than a supermarket of safe sights and experiences. These questions and more will guide this research seminar, which invites students to develop and answer an original research question about an aspect of European or American tourism during the past two centuries. Developing an understanding of tourism is one objective of this course, but an even more important goal is learning how to effectively research and write an argumentative paper in history. Nearly every week of this course, then, will focus on a different aspect of the research and writing process, including defining a topic, proposing a question, locating sources, taking notes, organizing research, and producing coherent, effective prose. Although the goal of this course is a 30-50 page research paper, students should expect to produce around 10-15 additional pages in the process of determining their research question and workshopping sample chunks of their papers. In the interest of formulating insightful research questions, students are asked to contact the instructor (dylan_esson@berkeley.edu) as early as possible to begin defining a topic. Students interested in tourism outside the American and European context are also welcome to contact the instructor about taking this course. | ||
| 101.017 - Hollywood | Urwand | |
| TuTh 5-6:30 180 Barrows | ||
| Updated January 24, 2008 | ||
| NOTE ROOM CHANGE! Last day to meet in 214 Haviland is Jan. 24. Ben Urwand is a PhD candidate in American History at UC Berkeley. He is interested in the history of popular culture (especially film and music) and his current research is on Hollywood in the 1930s. | ||
| In this class, students will work primarily with Hollywood feature films to address some aspect of twentieth-century American history. Because most students will be unfamiliar with film study, we will spend slightly longer than usual at the beginning of the semester on method. We will discuss the technique of formal analysis and some classic works in film theory to determine whether these are useful to historians. We will then read a few recent studies to appreciate the variety of ways in which historians have used movies as their primary source. In order to acquaint students with the research facility available on campus, we will spend some time working at the Media Resources Center. After this introductory stage, students will devise a topic on some aspect of Hollywood cinema, work out an appropriate list of films to discuss, and write a 30-50 page research paper. | ||
| 101.022 - Social Protest in the United States | Postel | |
| TuTh 12:30-2 204 Dwinelle | ||
| Charles Postel received his Ph.D. from U.C.-Berkeley in 2002. Since that time, he has taught as an assistant professor at CSU-Sacramento and pursued his research on reform movements in the United States. His first book, The Populist Vision, provides a much needed reinterpretation of the Populist movement of the 1880s and 1890s, and was released by Oxford University Press in May 2007. | ||
| This seminar is designed for students who are interested in research projects on social protest movements - their internal dynamics, and their impact on American thought, politics, and society. Acceptable topics include a wide range of political, social, and cultural movements across the 19th and 20th centuries. Students will be expected to write a first and second draft, and to share their research and writing activities with both small tutorial groups and with the class as a whole. Come to the first class meeting prepared to discuss possible topics. | ||