Undergraduate Course Descriptions
History 103 Seminars - Spring 2009
This page last updated: Monday, 11-Apr-2011 12:28:04 PDT
Special enrollment procedures are required for these courses.
Priority enrollments for these courses will take place between October 13-15, 2008. Most students who participate in the priority enrollment process are assigned to their first or second choice.
A complete 101 and 103 course listing will NOT BE AVAILABLE until October 13.
Sign-Up Procedure:
All submissions (online section preference forms) must be received by Wednesday, October 15 in order to be considered for the first round of 101 and 103 seminar assignments. Final results and course control numbers will be posted outside 3327 Dwinelle on Monday, October 20. 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. However, If you do not receive an email confirmation, send a message to history@berkeley.edu. Your request is only considered complete once you receive an email confirming all the data you have submitted.
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. All are encouraged to submit preference forms, but priority is given to History majors.
Sign-Up Procedure for After Priority Enrollments Have Taken Place:
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 class lists outside 3327 Dwinelle and add your name to any numbered space which identifies an open seat. These courses are limited to 15 students per section.
Online Section Preference Form
Asia |
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| 103F.002 - Technology and Philosophy in China and the West: Explorations in Comparative Cultural History | Johnson | |
| Thurs 12-2 | ||
| Description and course details posted under the Comparative listing. | ||
| 103F.003 - Manchuria in History and Imagination, 1600 to the Present | Staff | |
| Tues 10-12 115 Barrows | ||
| Miriam Kingsberg is a sixth-year doctoral candidate in history specializing in the study of modern Japan and China. She is currently completing her dissertation, entitled "The Poppy and the Acacia: Opium and Imperialism in Japanese Dairen and the Kwantung Leased Territory, 1905-1945." She has previously served as a GSI for History 14: An Introduction to the History of Japan. | ||
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What defines a place? A fixed border, a common history and relationship to other places, or a sense of cultural, linguistic and racial coherence among its inhabitants? None of these characteristics apply to "Manchuria," which is nonetheless a firmly fixed construct in our collective imagination. In the Western mindset, Manchuria often evokes romantic images of sprawling, snowy steppes and pre-modern peoples. For the Russian and Soviet empires, it represented the culmination of two long-cherished dreams: a warm-water port and international influence. To Japan, Manchuria has served as the focus of imperialist ambitions, the setting of "great experiment" in statecraft and modernity, a site of unexpected victory and painful defeat, and, lately, the object of colonial nostalgia. And from the perspective of the Qing, warlord, Republican and communist governments of China, Manchuria has been a cherished homeland, a challenging frontier and an uncertainly "Chinese" portion of sovereign territory. In this course, we will analyze these and other images of the geographic and imaginative space to which "Manchuria" refers, striving to achieve a new understanding of what makes a "place," and the impact of this particular place on the history of East Asia and the world during the past four centuries. |
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| 103F.004 - Medicine, Science, and Technology in Korean Society in Comparative Perspective | Kim | |
| Wed 10-12 3104 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated December 8, 2008 | ||
| NEW COURSE! Also listed as 103S ----------------Sonja Kim received her Ph.D. from UCLA in East Asian Languages and Cultures. Her dissertation examines new medical interventions and their implications for early twentieth century Korea through the site of reproduction. She hopes to pursue future research projects on public health and welfare programs, disease and sickness, and contemporary constructions of race in Korea. | ||
| The 19th and 20th centuries brought rapid transformations to Korea as it became increasingly incorporated into global circulations of politics, knowledge, markets, and imperialism. Major consequences include changes in the ways the body was understood, health practiced, cities planned, and technology pursued. This course serves as an introduction to the histories of science, technology, and medicine as they reflect and constitute meaning for lives in Korea. We will address narratives of science, technology, and medicine in Korea; theoretical foundations of healing practices in both premodern and modern periods; application of medical and scientific knowledge to the construction of urban space, gender, nation, and empire; sports, clothing, and body image; reproductive technology; and place of "traditional" medicine and science in the "modern." These issues will be explored in comparative perspective with what was going on in other parts of Asia as well as the West. | ||
Britain |
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| 103B.005 - Savagery, Strangeness and Society: The Question of Cultural Difference in the History of Modern European Thought | Foreman | |
| Wed 12-2 | ||
| Grahame Foreman is a PhD candidate in modern European and British history. His dissertation traces the development of ideas about modernity and society in Cold War Britain, through an intellectual history of the Manchester School of anthropologists. | ||
| Description and course details posted under the Europe listing. | ||
Comparative |
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| 103U.002 - Technology and Philosophy in China and the West: Explorations in Comparative Cultural History | Johnson | |
| Thurs 12-2 2070 VLSB | ||
| Why did technological development follow such very different paths in China and the West? There were many reasons, but I believe that the most fundamental one has to do with the radically different ways that educated Chinese and Europeans thought about man and the world. The goal of this course is to partially survey those different paths and to learn more about what those different world-views actually were. Toward this end we will compare specific examples of Chinese and Western achievements in three areas: naval architecture and navigation, which relate directly to the ability of European nations to impose their will on distant places, including China, in the age of imperialism; power technology, whose supreme expression before the twentieth century was the steam engine; and precision measurement, symbolized above all by the clock. It will be seen that Chinese attitudes about both power and precision were very different from those of Europeans. We will consider several recent attempts to account for the differences in the history of science and technology in China and Europe and then turn to Greek and early Chinese philosophy in an attempt to understand the deepest roots of those differences. Throughout we will weigh, implicitly or explicitly, the human costs and benefits of pre-modern China's ritual-centered civilization and of our own science-centered one. | ||
Europe |
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| 103B.002 - The Caucasus in the Modern Era | Astourian | |
| Wed 12-2 2231 Dwinelle | ||
| Description NOW AVAILABLE. | ||
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This course is a historical survey of the Caucasus from the end of the eighteenth century to the present. A number of features characterize this region, three of which deserve some attention. First, the ethnoreligious diversity of its population is remarkable, for many small ethnies have been able to survive there for centuries in often adverse conditions. Second, the region is also best understood as a corridor through which numerous invasions have passed, often leaving behind them masses of settlers. Third, the Caucasus has been, and still is, a zone of contact among various imperial or regional powers and their civilizations. Structured as a seminar, this course will focus on the experience of the three main nationalities (the Armenians, the Azerbaijanis, and the Georgians), without neglecting that of smaller ethnic groups. This seminar will cover the post-Soviet period quite thoroughly. The themes that will be developed include the following: the Russian conquest and administration of the Caucasus; the diverse responses of the local population to the opportunities and constraints presented by tsarist rule; the diverse cultural and political currents emerging from the 1860s on and the resulting rise of national consciousness among the three main nationalities; the socioeconomic and ethnonational stratification of the Caucasus at the end of the nineteenth century and its impact on the subsequent process of "nation-making;" the First World War and the formation of three independent republics; the sovietization of those republics and the contradictions involved in the creation of socialist (national) republics; the transformation of the Caucasus under Soviet rule; the causes for the dissolution of the Soviet Union; the formation of post-Soviet republics; the origins and development of a number of ethnoterritorial conflicts (Mountainous Karabagh, Chechnya, and Abkhazia), the struggle of the regional and great powers for influence in the region; and the geopolitics of oil production and exportation. We will conclude the seminar with an analysis of the recent Russian-Georgian conflict over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. _Requirements_: As this course is a seminar, 10 percent of the final grade will be based on meaningful participation. Two typewritten, double-spaced papers of about ten pages each will be due in mid-October and mid-November. They will be based solely on the reading assignments. A third paper of about twenty to twenty-five pages will be due during the examinations week. It will rely on the readings, but will necessitate some further research. For the third paper, you will choose a topic of interest to you and submit it in writing to the instructor by the end of September. The instructor must ratify it and may suggest modifications in its wording to make it manageable. You will have two weeks to explore the sources for your research and suggest modifications of your own. Whereas the first and second papers will each represent 25 percent of the final grade, the third paper will amount to 40 percent of it. |
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| 103B.003 - Capitalism From Beginning to End | deVries | |
| This course has been CANCELLED. | ||
| This course will explore the history of capitalism as a concept, via the writings of (among others) Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, the more recent interpretations of such figures as Fernand Braudel, Karl Polanyi, and Joseph Schumpter, and finally the speculations of contemporary commentators. The course will try to bring together the history of economic thought, historical sociology, and political theory with the aim of coming to an understanding of the value and the limits of this ubiquitous word. | ||
| 103B.004 - Queen Elizabeth I | Shagan | |
| Mon 2-4 233 Dwinelle | ||
| For more than four centuries, Queen Elizabeth I of England has been among the most popular historical subjects in the English-speaking world. She has been the subject of epic poetry and Hollywood movies; she gave her name to an Age and represents one of the pinnacles of achievement for women in European history. She is perhaps the most recognizable figure in the world. This course, however, is not intended to add to the hullabaloo over Queen Elizabeth, but rather to study it. We will simultaneously investigate two interrelated but distinct phenomena: the historical record of Queen Elizabeth's life and rule, and the cultural uses to which that life and rule have been put by historians, poets, novelists, filmmakers, television producers, and web designers. In our analysis of the historical record, we will ask complicated questions about evidence and interpretation: how much can we really know about a person in the past? How do we judge success and failure? How do we assign responsibility and agency? What do we mean by motivation? We will find that even in her lifetime interpretations of Queen Elizabeth were bitterly contested, and historians today disagree with one another about virtually every aspect of her reign. So given this disagreement, why should we consider one historical interpretation more "reliable" than another? In our analysis of culture, we will see that the "lessons" of Queen Elizabeth’s life have altered radically over time. We will see that people have always used Queen Elizabeth as a focus for discussions of gender, but as cultural assumptions about gender have changed, so have interpretations of Elizabeth. We will study the "Queen Elizabeth Industry" as a lucrative business turning the past into profit, and we will talk about the relationship between this for-profit history and the study of history in academic settings like our own. In short, we will not only study an historical figure in depth, we will also ask: what is the relationship between fact and fiction, between history and myth? | ||
| 103B.005 - Savagery, Strangeness and Society: The Question of Cultural Difference in the History of Modern European Thought | Foreman | |
| Wed 12-2 2505 Tolman | ||
| Grahame Foreman is a PhD candidate in modern European and British history. His dissertation traces the development of ideas about modernity and society in Cold War Britain, through an intellectual history of the Manchester School of anthropologists. | ||
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Europe has a long and rich tradition of thought about society and culture. This course will explore one strand of this tradition: the complex and various ways in which European thinkers have been challenged—and inspired—by the diversity of societies and cultures in the world. Our readings will be shaped by three big questions. First, how have Europeans related their knowledge of other societies and cultures to thought about their own societies, and indeed to "society" as an abstract entity? Second, in what ways can we relate their theories to political, social and economic forces and projects (for example, colonialism and capitalist expansion)? Finally, the question of method: how can we approach theoretical works historically? We will begin with the original European encounter with America, and will then focus on three later epochs: the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the nineteenth-century heyday of European imperialism, and the Twentieth Century from World War One to the end of the Cold War. Topics and themes will include: ideas about "savages" (noble and otherwise); theories of progress, history, and modernity; debates about Orientalism; race, class, caste, tribe and gender as related categories; the development of the social sciences (in particular anthropology); Social Darwinism and social evolutionism; the idea of "The West" and Western Civilization; universalism vs. cultural relativism; decolonization and Cold War ideologies; postcolonialism and multiculturalism. Each week we will read both work by intellectual historians, and period-specific primary sources. We will supplement the intellectual history with other contemporary source material, including visual sources. I will also assign some readings in European and world history appropriate to the weekly topics. For our purposes, "European" thought will be defined broadly (and critically), and will include much British material, work from European colonies, and even a little from the U.S. There are no formal pre-requisites for this course. However, previous exposure to intellectual history, relevant cultural history, or reading historical texts in other humanities and social sciences will be useful. A background in European, imperial or world history will also help. Prospective students lacking in these areas should email me for advice. This course is primarily designed to help prepare students to write a 101 thesis in intellectual history (in any field—we will be paying close attention to method), or on a related topic in European or British history (for example, the culture of colonialism). Other students are also welcome. I am happy to discuss any queries: email me at grahame@berkeley.edu. |
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| 103B.006 - Science, Technology, and Industry in Germany 1914 - 1945 | Schuering | |
| Mon 12-2 2303 Dwinelle | ||
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In an era historians consider as Germany's "Second Thirty Year War", science, technology and industry were thoroughly entangled twice in attempts to mobilize every part of society for military purposes. As the outcome of two World Wars depended on maximization of Germany's technical and social resources, technology and society became integrally embedded in each other in new ways. This course will explore the tangled relationships between society and technology by focusing on the spheres of research, innovation, and industrial production. We will e.g. look at the contribution of chemical research and industry to gas warfare, at material science and armament research, and aerodynamics in the context of new weapon technology. Can we trace back even until World War I what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex"? How did total mobilization change the practice and perception of science and technology? Pending support from the German Academic Exchange Service, this course will include an excursion to Germany between March 19 and 29 of 2009. The itinerary includes visits to production sites, the archives of industrial and research institutes, and museums of technology. We will visit Frankfurt (as a major center for chemical industry), Munich (with the "Deutsche Museum"), and Berlin (with several Museums, Archives and Research Institutes). The maximum number of participants is ten. Students will be required to submit a short statement (2 pages) of interest by the beginning of the semester, based on which the instructor will grant admittance to the trip. The trip is designed to be an incentive for work in the 101 course and will introduce participants to the practice of archival research. It will also grant insights into various modes of public representation within the field of history of science and technology. Those participating will write a prospectus as a preparation for their thesis. However the class is also open with full credit to students who do not plan to participate in the excursion and who’ll write a regular paper about topics generated by the secondary literature they'll be reading all semester. I will answer further questions in my office hours on November 18 and 25 (4 - 6pm). |
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| 103B.007 - Everyday Underworlds: Subcultures in European History, 1789-1989 | Johnson-B | |
| Wed 10-12 204 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated December 8, 2008 | ||
| NEW COURSE! --------------------------Blake Johnson is a PhD candidate in History. His work focuses on intersections between social, cultural, and intellectual history from odd perspectives. | ||
| Historians are increasingly interested in the histories of individuals and communities whose everyday lives were once forgotten or considered marginal or even aberrant to the course of "mainstream" history and culture. This seminar seeks to explore the histories of these "underworlds" or “subcultures” in Europe over the last two centuries and their influences on and interactions with the overarching courses of Modern European societies and cultures. Working through Modern European history, we will examine the historical development of different subcultures throughout Europe to understand both their contemporary and subsequent impacts. Topics of study will range widely and include: radicals, the working class, prostitutes, criminals, and the mentally ill as well as avant-garde and subversive artists and intellectuals and a variety of cultural, social, and political dissidents. Historical fields such as social history, cultural history, and intellectual history will be prominent in our studies. In particular the seminar seeks to better understand historical themes such as deviance and nonconformity, resistance and revolution, appropriation and assimilation, and subversion and violence. A key component of the seminar will be the exploration of the historiographies and methodologies of cultural, intellectual, and social histories in different contexts and the use of primary materials and different disciplines in historical study. We will examine both the potential of, and the problems with, developing new and interesting histories as we attempt to construct usable histories of European subcultures to add to and enrich more standard historical narratives. Students will be encouraged to develop their own research interests and perspectives as the course proceeds and a particular emphasis will be made to prepare students for their 101 theses. Feel free to direct questions/concerns/comments to me at blakej@berkeley.edu. | ||
Latin America |
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| 103E.002 - Religion and Society in Latin America | Leavitt-Alcantara | |
| Fri 12-2 2227 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated January 29, 2009 | ||
| Note New Room. | ||
| Brianna Leavitt-Alcantara is a graduate student in the History department here at UC Berkeley. Her research is on gender and religion in colonial and nineteenth-century Central America. | ||
| Religion has been a defining factor in Latin American history, from the micro-level of individual daily experience to the macro-level processes of conquest, colonialism, and nation-formation. This seminar approaches this rich and complex topic by focusing on three issues: religion, culture contact, and conquest; popular religiosity; and religion’s impact on social and political processes. Historians continue to wrestle with these themes in the study of religion and we will consider some of these big questions. What did religious conversion amount to? Domination and acculturation? Isolation and resistance? Syncretism and mutual appropriation? Did religion represent a battlefield dividing Spanish and indigenous worldviews or did it help create a “contact-zone” for encounters, however unequal? What is popular religion? Is there a natural dichotomy between lay Catholics and the official church, between rural and urban, popular and elite religiosity? How do such dichotomies limit our view of popular religious sensibilities, practices, and experiences? Finally, what role did religion play in the formation of colonial societies? And how has religion shaped Latin America’s social and political development and responses to the dilemmas of the modern era? We will read some primary sources as well as explore different historiographical debates and methods of studying religion in Latin America, paying attention to the different definitions and approaches to religion offered by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, theologians, and novelists. | ||
Science |
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| 103S.002 - Technology and Philosophy in China and the West: Explorations in Comparative Cultural History | Johnson | |
| Thurs 12-2 | ||
| Description and course details posted under the Comparative listing. | ||
| 103S.003 - Science, Technology, and Industry in Germany 1914 - 1945 | Schuering | |
| Mon 12-2 | ||
| Description and course details posted under the Europe listing. | ||
| 103S.004 - Medicine, Science, and Technology in Korean Society in Comparative Perspective | Kim | |
| Wed 10-12 | ||
| Updated December 7, 2008 | ||
| NEW COURSE! Also listed as 103F.004 --------- Sonja Kim received her Ph.D. from UCLA in East Asian Languages and Cultures. Her dissertation examines new medical interventions and their implications for early twentieth century Korea through the site of reproduction. She hopes to pursue future research projects on public health and welfare programs, disease and sickness, and contemporary constructions of race in Korea. | ||
| The 19th and 20th centuries brought rapid transformations to Korea as it became increasingly incorporated into global circulations of politics, knowledge, markets, and imperialism. Major consequences include changes in the ways the body was understood, health practiced, cities planned, and technology pursued. This course serves as an introduction to the histories of science, technology, and medicine as they reflect and constitute meaning for lives in Korea. We will address narratives of science, technology, and medicine in Korea; theoretical foundations of healing practices in both premodern and modern periods; application of medical and scientific knowledge to the construction of urban space, gender, nation, and empire; sports, clothing, and body image; reproductive technology; and place of “traditional” medicine and science in the "modern." These issues will be explored in comparative perspective with what was going on in other parts of Asia as well as the West. | ||
United States |
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| 103D.002 - Taxes and Politics | Einhorn | |
| Wed 2-4 210 Dwinelle | ||
| Why are taxes so complicated? Are they as complicated as they seem? Who really pays them? Who doesn't? And, perhaps most important, who decides? What is the history of income taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, inheritance taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, and the rest? And, most generally, what does the tax structure of a society t tell us about it? This seminar will look at literature about the history of taxation, mainly though not only in the United States, and think about taxation in relation to political, economic, and even cultural history. Readings will include works by economists, sociologists, and political scientists, not least because tax history has always been a thoroughly interdisciplinary conversation. Requirements include active participation at all sessions, a couple of short essays and presentations, and one final paper. | ||
| 103D.003 - Food and Eating Practices in the U.S. and Europe Since the Nineteenth-Century | Branch | |
| Mon 12-2 2227 Dwinelle | ||
| Michelle N. Branch is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. history. Her dissertation considers the role of nineteenth-century urban food cultures in shaping diverse consumer identities. | ||
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The topic of alimentary practices (those related to food and eating) has risen to prominence in the popular media. In any given week, The New York Times Bestseller list features a significant number of texts on what to eat, how to eat, where to source food and what is real food, among others. The celebrity chef phenomenon and organic food movements have gained broad followings as well. By considering food in its historical context in the U.S. and Europe (primarily Britain and France), this seminar helps you make sense of the food entertainment, journalism and politics surrounding us. While foodways have typically been studied by anthropologists and folklorists, we will consider the specific methods a historian might employ in analyzing a people’s everyday relationship to its food. We will approach culinary customs from the vantage point of ordinary people in their everyday interactions. Shopping, cooking, serving and catering, eating at home or in public, writing recipes and consuming gastronomic literature are all topics for our collective contemplation. In doing so, we will broaden our alimentary knowledge through reading alternative and unexpected source materials, considering diverse perspectives, and expanding our concept of food culture. While certainly using secondary historical materials to ground us, we will work with disparate genres of primary source material including newspapers, guidebooks, memoirs, cookbooks, household manuals and etiquette pamphlets. Taking into account a variety of sources permits us to explore dissimilar perspectives and to hear a pluralistic range of voices, unveiling trends and fashions that may not have been dominant, but rather predominant and still important. By the end of this course, you should have a greater understanding of how to approach the topic of food from an historical angle. Assignments include weekly readings, discussions and written responses as well as a longer paper designed to help you develop and refine your own research interests. |
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