Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Lower Division courses - Spring 2008
This page last updated: Friday, 11-Apr-2008 16:17:35 PDT
| 4B - Origins of Western Civilization | Koziol | |
| MW 4-5:30 160 Kroeber | ||
| Rather than present a superficial chronological survey of a 1000-year period, we will examine in considerable depth two quite different periods of middle ages. The first is the age of the Carolingians and Anglo-Saxons, which saw not only the conversion of Europe to Christianity but also the creation of a distinctive European ethic of political leadership. The second is the later middle ages (primarily the 13th and 14th centuries), when monarchies reached out to public opinion and when the collapse of papal authority was counterbalanced by the integration of Christian values into the ordinary lives of (more or less) ordinary men and women. All of the major readings are primary sources. Chosen for the variety of their genres and perspectives, they range from early epic, saints' lives, and chronicles (Beowulf, the Royal Franks Annals, the Life of St. Guthlac) to late accounts of popular uprisings, popular entertainment, and the mystical Eucharistic visions of holy women. | ||
| 5 - The Making of Modern Europe, from 1453 to the Present | Anderson | |
| TuTh 2-3:30 145 Dwinelle | ||
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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, by 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 of lectures, and on the improvement of writing skills. Students should be warned that the course moves 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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| 6B - Introduction to Chinese History from the Mongols to Mao | Henriot | |
| MWF 1-2 180 Tan | ||
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In this course we consider the conquest dynasties that have left their imprint on Chinese polity from the 13th century onward. We also examine the rise of an urban commercial economy and its connections with an emerging world fashioned by maritime trade. How did "modern China" take shape over the course of the 19th century? We will study issues of modernization, nation-building, social revolution and identity formation. We will also study the biographies of Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong. Students are required to attend lectures, take part in discussion sessions, and read up to 150 pages each week. Course requirements include a mid-term examination (30%), a final examination (30%), and two short papers (5 pages each, 40% combined) that engage major themes discussed in the course. This course assumes no prior knowledge of Chinese history. |
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| 7B - Introduction to the History of the United States: From the Civil War to the Present | Frydl | |
| MWF 2-3 150 Wheeler (Wheeler Aud) | ||
| Updated November 27, 2007 | ||
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
| Revised description available! | ||
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What does is it mean to be American? Whatever your answer is to this question, chances are it is deeply connected to the themes and events we will discuss in this class. Here we will track America’s rise to global power, the fate of freedom in a post-Emancipation political setting, and the changing boundaries of nation, citizenship, and community. We will use landmark events to sharpen our themes, but we will also take care to analyze the equally important (and shifting) patterns of where and how Americans lived, worked, and played. Historians work to uncover and examine primary sources and then make their findings relevant to an important analytical or critical question. In this class, we will separate this project in two and perform each individually. Students will analyze a primary source for content, voice, frame and audience. Students will also be asked to write a literature review on a historical topic of their choosing. The midterm and final will test for mastery of material and, more important, for skill in evaluating an historical argument. From all of these assignments, students will emerge well-prepared to pursue upper-division historical work and apply their critical and analytical skills to other academic pursuits and the world around them. |
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| 8B - Modern Latin America | Read | |
| MW 4-5:30 3 LeConte | ||
| 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 politics, place, identity, and work. The course is built around lecture material, comparative case studies, and primary historical documents, and each provide a unique vantage point to observe and understand key figures, trends, concepts and events of modern Latin America. Topics 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 cover a range of primary sources as well as historical monographs, supplemented by films and music. Requirements include participation in discussion sections, a group research project, individual response papers, an in-class mid-term and a final. | ||
| 10 - Africa Since 1500 | Osseo-Asare | |
| TuTh 3:30-5 200 Wheeler | ||
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This survey course is an introduction to the study of Africa's past. It begins with an overview of African societies around 1500--a time of increasing human migration and global trade. It considers the diversity of early African religion, agriculture, politics, and art through regional case studies. Special attention is afforded the social upheaval that came in the wake of the intercontinental slave trade. The second half of the course addresses Africa in the modern period, focusing on the advent of European colonialism in the 1800s and its aftermath. Major themes include: everyday life under imperial rule, healing and religion, African nationalism, and development theories. The course concludes with historical dilemmas in contemporary Africa including: immigration, the AIDS crisis, and transitions to democratic rule. |
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| 11 - History of India | Deshpande | |
| TuTh 9:30-11 156 Dwinelle | ||
| This course will introduce students to the history of the Indian subcontinent (the countries that today comprise India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) from roughly 4,500 years ago to the present. Given this rather dramatic timespan, the focus of the class will not be on simply detailing and memorizing political history. Within a framework of broad dynastic and political changes, we will examine the long history of South Asia through the lenses of social history and everyday life. We will ask questions about changing economic organization, cultural practices relating to religion, gender and social hierarchy, philosophical thought and innovations in state practices and community identities. Students will have an opportunity to read recent scholarly writings as well as primary sources from different historical periods. Assignments will include quizzes and essay type mid-term and final exams. | ||
| 14 - Introduction to the History of Japan | Berry | |
| TuTh 11-12:30 101 Moffitt | ||
| This survey of Japan's past from the classical period until yesterday will focus on six themes: nature, urban life, warfare, foreign connection, religion, and the interior self. Along the way, we shall read canonical and pop classics (from The Tale of Genji to Yoshimoto Banana), explore cinematic imagery (from Harakiri to The Last Samurai), compare built environments (from rock gardens to the Tokyo City Hall), and examine the startling variants of "internationalization" (from imperialism to consumerism). Our story is one of mutation rather than stability, variety rather than consistency. Our goal is "to take Japan seriously" as "a normal nation." Regular short essays, two exams. All welcome. | ||
| 30B - Science and Society | Lesch | |
| MWF 11-12 106 Moffitt | ||
| An introductory survey of the history of the sciences and the increasingly important place they have come to occupy in modern societies since 1700. We begin by looking at the legacy of the Scientific Revolution, the consolidation of classical physics and natural history in the Enlightenment, and popular science. We go on to consider Darwin and evolution, the organizational transformation of science in the nineteenth century, the emergence of chemistry as a science and source of new technologies, and the foundations of genetics around 1900. In the twentieth century we will emphasize the relations of science to technology, medicine, industry, government, and warfare. Course requirements include a discussion section, a midterm and a final examination, and one paper. | ||
| 39A - Sex, Gender and Tokyo in Modern Japan: 1868-1980 | Scheiner | |
| W 2-4 104 GPB | ||
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Tokyo is a wonderfully abrasive, culturally complex and exciting city. The Tokyo metropolitan population today is over twelve million, about ten percent of Japan's total population. (Eight million people now live within the city's 28 wards.) This year the population of the city increased by over a hundred thousand. In early modern Japan Tokyo (then called Edo) had a population of one million, one of the largest cities in the world. Enough, with statistics. Tokyo is the city where there first appeared the "modern girl" and where the image of the Japanese "New Women" was publicized. It was there that thousands of young women rushed to get jobs in the new office buildings and where the cafe waitress appeared as a social ideal for many of the young. Tokyo also was the city where in the late 19th century a new idea of the "household" appeared and an experiment was begun with the creation of a domestic architecture for an emerging middle class. Hence we will spend about five or six weeks reading about the transformation of Tokyo in the 19th and 20th century. We will read about its neighborhoods, look at its slums and read a series of short stories about Tokyo. Following the Meiji Restoration of l868 and the overthrow of the rule of lordly government Japan went through a political and social revolution. Commoners-- peasants, merchants and artisan who had been limited by status rules to subordinate roles in society in the prior Tokugawa regime-- became citizens of a modernizing state and society. Of course, it was a male centered world but, nonetheless, from early in the period, the government and many women themselves began to try to join the revolution socially, if not always politically. Following World War II women were politically emancipated, given the vote for the first time and, allegedly, now became fully enfranchised members of Japanese society. In this course we will look at the changing (and ever unchanging) characterization of women and their role in modern Japan. The Meiji government, for example, idealized women for their own political and social purposes, looking to an idealized past to create the cult of the "Good Wife, Wise Mother." Newly formed women's literary groups offered their own and, often, contrasting ideas about the modern women. We will contrast the "New Woman" of the twenties with yet another conception of the "new women" in post-war Japan. Geisha will not be discussed but we will read on all women theater and its sexual politics and discuss a book on gender and sexuality which will deal with the erotic and women in popular culture and society. Our readings will be a mix of fiction, history, and anthropology and sociology. We will read approximately one book per week. I ask all students to read a textbook on modern Japanese history in preparation for the course. I recommend that you pick up either in the library or in a second hand book store books by either Peter Duus, Andrew Gordon or Kenneth Pyle. Readings in those books will be the basis of our discussion in the second week of classes. Students who miss that class will be asked to write on one or another of these books. I will ask students to write two short book reviews of five pages and be prepared to offer two oral reports on assigned reading. A final paper of about ten pages will be required. |
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| 39B - Slavery in the Ancient Roman World | Norena | |
| Thurs 12-2 201 Wheeler | ||
| This seminar will investigate the institution of slavery in the ancient Roman world. Slavery was deeply embedded in the political, legal, social, economic, and cultural framework of ancient Rome. In order to examine the institution of slavery and its impact on state and society, we will consider a wide range of topics including the origins and maintenance of the slave system at Rome; slave labor (rural, urban, and domestic); family life; resistance and slave rebellions; manumission and freedom; and Roman ideas about slaves and slavery. Discussion of slavery in the classical Greek city-states and serfdom in early medieval Europe, as well as analysis of slave narratives from the antebellum South, will help us to place Roman slavery in a broad historical and comparative perspective. Requirements: regular attendance and participation in seminar discussions; two short papers (4-6 pp.); one final paper (8-10 pp.). | ||