Undergraduate Course Descriptions
history - 2007
This page last updated: Saturday, 07-Jul-2007 11:58:21 PDT
Berkeley History majors may now enroll in summer 103s using Summer Telebears. Students who are interested in History 103 but are non-majors or non-Berkeley students should contact Leah Flanagan at (510) 642-0356 or leahf@berkeley.edu
First 6 Week Summer Session |
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| 100.002 - The Goddess and the Knights: Gnostics, Templars, Wiccans, and Other Standbys of Popular Medieval History | Koziol | |
| Tu W Th 2-4:30 141 Giannini | CCN: 50475 | |
| Updated May 25, 2007 | ||
| This course satisfies the Premodern requirement for the history major. EVEN NEWER ROOM! | ||
| Does Da Vinci's Last Supper really show Mary Magdalene on Jesus' right hand? Did Mary and Jesus really have a child who was the ancestor of the Merovingians? Was there an ancient religion of the Goddess? A Priory of Sion? Does the Louvre pyramid really have 666 panes of glass? Is anything true in The Da Vinci Code, or Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The Chalice and the Blade? Does it matter? Should we care? | ||
| 112B - Modern South Africa | Kanogo | |
| TWTh 10-12:30 | CCN: 50510 | |
| This course will examine three centuries of South African history that account for the origin and development of the recently dismantled apartheid regime. Our aim is to understand the major historical forces that progressively shaped what became a turbulent socio-cultural, economic, political, and racial frontier. We will look at the nature of indigenous African societies in South Africa on the eve of European arrival; initial European settlements and the origins of competition for resources; expansionist trends among Dutch settlers and the responses of African societies; mfecane/difacane and the aftermath; the role of the frontier in shaping race relations; emergence of Afrikanerdom and the creation of Afrikaner republics; competing African/Boer/British nationalisms; corporate mining and its impact on labour migrancy; the Anglo-Boer war and the creation of the Union. The 20th century witnessed the formulation, articulation, and racialization of trade unions, the emergence of increased political mobilization among African, Afrikaner, and Indian populations. The course will examine the complex relationship between key protagonists, and the creation and dismantling of the apartheid apparatus. Course requirements will include a midterm exam (40%), one review paper (20%), and a final exam (40%). | ||
| 139A - History of American Labor | ||
| 160 Dwinelle | ||
| This course has been cancelled. | ||
8 Week Summer Session |
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| 103B.001 - Europe, Fin de Siecle/Belle Epoque | ||
| MW 1-4 2227 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated June 21, 2007 | ||
| Sarah Horowitz Note New Room! | ||
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This course covers the history of Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. We will explore the tensions between an age alternately described as the end of an era and an age of beauty -- an age of decadence and moral righteousness, of new opportunities and new anxieties. Readings will consider democratization and its discontents, the birth of the avant-garde, changing roles for women, urbanization, mass consumption, national integration, colonization and imperial expansion. Students will be asked to complete a 12-15 page paper, as well as short papers and presentations. |
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| 103D.001 - On the Road: Images and Experiences of Travel and the American West 1800 to the Present | ||
| TuTh 9-12 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated May 11, 2007 | ||
| McKenzie Moore | ||
| This class will explore the images, experiences, and cultural significance of travel in the 19th 20th & 21st century American West. The course meetings will be a mixture of discussion, student presentations, and visual source analysis. Sources will include secondary historical works on travel and movement in and about the West, fiction, film, and primary documents that record the experience of travel. Written work will include response and primary source papers. | ||
| 103D.002 - Color Me American: The Making of Race in 20th Century America | ||
| TuTh 2:30-5:30 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated May 21, 2007 | ||
| Sang Chi | ||
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Despite our seemingly enlightened 21st century attitudes, race has continued to be a troubling problem for American society. Yet, race in and of itself is not the problem so much as the values we attach to racial designations. Racial designations and the values we impart to them have continually shifted making it all the more difficult to understand race. In this course, we will explore a sampling of racial identities from the 20th century. This course is not an exhaustive examination on the topic. The breadth of racial identities in 20th century America makes that a near impossibility. Instead, we will use the texts as springboards to understanding how racial identities were formed in specific historical contexts. Yet, race has proved to be much more than just identity formation; it has touched and continues to touch almost every facet of our society. In fact, it has challenged our most dearly held beliefs concerning national identity, democracy, and freedom. Thus, our journey will span seemingly unconnected terrains including migration, law, miscegenation, sports and recreation, intellectual history, cultural representations, and racism. |
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Second 6 Week Summer Session |
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| 005 - Europe since the Renaissance: History through Art | Elliott | |
| MTWTh 10-12 | CCN: 50405 | |
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This introductory course presents an overview of European history from the Renaissance to the end of the Cold War. Providing an eyewitness background for major developments and key events, this course uses artwork of the great masters to help tell the historical story. Unlike traditional history classes that tend to rely exclusively on written texts, here many of our primary sources will be visual in nature: paintings, sculpture and architecture. Great artists have always been sensitive commentators on their times; we will consider ways in which their creative works reflected important shifts in outlook that have occurred in European civilization. Along with lectures, textbook readings and visual materials, study of selected written sources will assist in getting under the surface of the successive historical stages marking the transformation from Medieval Europe to the Modern West, including the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, French Revolution, Industrial Revolution and the World Wars. Coursework will include brief responses to artistic and written sources, three short papers and active participation in twice-weekly discussion sections. |
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| 007B - US since Civil War | ||
| MTWThF 2-3:30 101 Moffitt | CCN: 50420 | |
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
| Samantha Francois | ||
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This course surveys the history of the United States from the Reconstruction era to the present. The course examines the experiences of ordinary Americans and how events like immigration, urbanization, rise of a consumer culture, foreign relations, and social reform movements affected their lives. Students will consider how Americans’ race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality shaped individual identities and the country as a whole. This lecture course will require attendance to a discussion section where readings and assignments will be discussed. There will be a midterm, final, and other written assignments. Your discussion section participation will be part of your grade. |
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| 008B - Latin America in the Independent Era | ||
| This course has been cancelled. | ||
| 100.001 - American History through Film | Foletta | |
| TuTh 1-5 103 Moffitt | CCN: 50465 | |
| Note New Room! | ||
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Over the past two centuries, America has formed a distinctive culture within which certain themes and issues have found repeated expression. The significance of the frontier, the role of violence, the nature of racial difference, the meaning of citizenship and character of politics, the value of athletics, and the attainability of individual and social perfection are all themes that have evolved but yet persisted within American ideology, political discourse, and art. Within this course we will explore the emergence and elaboration of these themes. Through reading, lecture, and discussion we will explore their appearance within American culture in the nineteenth century. Through the viewing and analysis of films we will explore their representation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For example, the varied ideas about race taking shape in the nineteenth century, as represented by Thomas Jefferson, George Fitzhugh, and Abraham Lincoln, will be explored alongside Spike Lee's 1989 film, Do the Right Thing. Nineteenth-century attitudes about manhood within America's increasingly urban and "femininized" culture will be explored alongside David Fincher's 1999 film, Fight Club. |
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| 100.003 - Post-War Japan | Barshay | |
| TWTh 10-1230 105 Dwinelle | CCN: 50485 | |
| This course considers the history of Japan since the end of World War II, beginning with an exploration of the war itself and its complex legacy to the postwar era. Using the best recent scholarship and a selection of translated novels, essays, and poetry along with film and art, we look at the six postwar decades and the transformations of Japanese life that those years have brought. We try, finally, to answer the question: has "postwar" itself come to an end? | ||
| 124B - The United States Since WWII | ||
| This course has been cancelled. | ||
| 127AC - California | Mujal | |
| MTW 11:30-2 | CCN: 50530 | |
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
| For centuries, California has been imagined and experienced in a variety of ways. For Native Americans, the land we call California was part of their fabric of life. For the imperial builders of the Spanish empire, it was both a link to expansive trade and "el ultimo rincon del mundo." For Mexican ranchers, it was a pastoral land filled with natural abundance and accented with deprivation. Mindful of the effects which the discovery of gold had in the post-1848 era, Carey McWilliams called California "the great exception." However, to the immigrants who emigrated and continued to arrive in California in the twentieth century, it was a place as real as it was un-real, exceptional as well as unexceptional. In the process, successive waves of people from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim have been attracted and recruited to assist in making California more that it was. This course traces the development of globalization as a cultural flow and phenomenon, the internationalization of economies, and the transnational character of human migrations. Through an historical and comparative approach, the course explores the migration of specific groups as a means of understanding the economic and cultural interactions between California and the world, including their effects here and abroad. | ||
| N131B - US Social History Since the Civil War | Leikin | |
| TWTh 12:30-3 310 Hearst Mining | CCN: 50533 | |
| Updated May 16, 2007 | ||
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
| NEW ROOM! | ||
| This course covers US social history from the Civil War to the present. Among major topics include: immigration, urbanization, the rise of mass culture and consumer culture, new educational and social institutions, changes in the family and life course, shifting sexual norms and gender roles, race and class relations, and social protest movements. Through lectures, readings, and short research assignments, students will explore the changes and continuities in the American social experience, and the diverse experiences of Americans of different genders, classes, races, regions, and generations. | ||
| 158C - Europe 1914 to Present | Wetzel | |
| TWTh 3-5:30 | CCN: 50545 | |
| The twentieth century was the most devastating in the history of Europe. This course surveys the major developments that led to the wars and revolutions for which the century is famous. It stresses the supreme importance of the commanding actors on the political stage as the century unfolded--Lenin and Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler, Churchill and de Gaulle, Walesa and Thatcher and Gorbachev, and focuses on the differing approaches to European relations taken by American presidents from Wilson to George W. Bush. The course will seek to squeeze every ounce of drama out of the century's most famous -- and infamous -- events: Europe's last summer -- the incredible days of July 1914; the slaughter of World War I; the rise of Communism, Fascism, and Nazism ; Munich; the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939; the decimation of World War II; the bombing of London and Dresden; the destruction of the European Jewry; the German invasion of Russia; D-Day, the suicide of Hitler, the origins and development of the Cold War; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the revolutions of 1989; the disintegration of the Soviet Union; the collapse of Yugoslavia; and the first and second Gulf wars. All this and more we will explore through books, documents and, not least, films and documentaries. | ||