Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Summer 2008
This page last updated: Friday, 30-May-2008 09:22:43 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 |
||
| 100.001 - Post-War Japan | Barshay | |
| TWTh 10-12:30 234 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? | ||
| 100.002 - American History through Film | Foletta | |
| TuTh 1-5 103 Moffitt | CCN: 50475 | |
| Updated January 25, 2008 | ||
|
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. |
||
| 112B - Modern South Africa | Kanogo | |
| TWTh 12:30-3 | 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%). | ||
8 Week Summer Session |
||
| N5 - European History from the Renaissance to the Present | Laqueur | |
| Online | CCN: 50605 | |
| This course has no in person lectures or meetings. It takes place entirely over the Internet. There will be five and one half hours of web-based lecture and one and one half hours of web-based discussion per week for eight weeks. | ||
|
This course is an introduction to European history from around 1500 to the present. The central questions that it addresses are how and why Europe--a small, relatively poor, and politically fragmented place--became the motor of globalization and a world civilization in its own right. Put differently how did "western" become an adjective that, for better and often for worse, stands in place of "modern." Our approach will be broadly cultural, and we will consider politics, economics, society, religion, and other aspects of life as interconnected arenas in which men and women give their world meaning. Chief topics of the course include: the Renaissance, the epochal expansion of Europe into the new world, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the formation of overseas empires and the coming of capitalism, the Scientific Revolution, the French Revolution, liberalism and the industrial revolution, socialism and the rise of labor, modern colonialism, the world wars, communism and capitalism, decolonization, and the Cold War and the European Union. There will be mini lectures on trains, witches, and campus architecture among other topics. The work in the discussion boards and online chats centers on the reading and discussion of original sources and on the improvement of writing skills. |
||
| 103B.001 - Vichy France: Collaboration, Resistance and Everyday Life | Denton | |
| MW 1-4 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 50495 | |
| Updated March 13, 2008 | ||
|
During the Second World War the experience of defeat and military occupation brought about a series of economic, demographic and social changes that transformed life on "home fronts" around the world. Military requisitions of food and goods resulted in shortages, rationing, black markets and profiteering. The internment of sons and fathers as POWs and the billeting of occupation soldiers affected marital and sexual relations. Deportations of perceived "undesirables" exacerbated political and ethnic divisions. This seminar will use everyday life in Vichy France as a case study for understanding ordinary people's experience of defeat, collaboration, resistance, and liberation. Readings will consider the fall of France, the exodus, state collaboration, armed and civilian resistance, the challenges of daily life, French and German deportation of Jews, and the postwar purges. Weekly assignments will include one historical monograph or novel, plus several short articles and book chapters, as well as a feature film or documentary. In our discussions, students will also be encouraged to think comparatively, either geographically (to other occupation regimes in Europe or East Asia), or chronologically (to the other world war). Individual students will act as discussion leaders and each will be expected to write weekly response papers and a 10-12 page final essay. |
||
| 103D.001 - Agriculture and the American Mind | Moore | |
| MW 9-12 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 50500 | |
| Updated March 11, 2008 | ||
| In this course we will explore the place of agriculture in American identity. Since the nation's inception, the idea of farms and farmers as the spiritual center of the American mission has motivated Americans politically, socially, spiritually, and economically. Agriculture has been the basis for some of the ugliest periods in American history just as it has inspired some of its most stirring rhetoric and social movements. We will explore agriculture from a conceptual perspective; the class will examine the nations' relationship with the growing of food from the colonial period through to the present. Students from all disciplines with an interest in the relationship between agriculture and society are welcome and encouraged. Sources will include secondary historical scholarship, primary documents, contemporary critical nonfiction, film, and possibly a field trip or two. | ||
| 103D.002 - The American Cold War in the Asia-Pacific | Hwang | |
| TuTh 2:30-5:30 2303 Dwinelle | CCN: 50505 | |
|
The Cold War was a composite process of communist containment and "free-world" integration for the United States. Toward these dual goals, the U. S. engaged in half a century of political-economic as well as ideological-cultural campaigns to gain international support, and fought two major "hot wars" in Korea and Vietnam. In the American Cold War, the "Asia-Pacific" loomed large both as a problematic site of direct military-ideological clashes and as a vast potential market for expanding U.S. capitalism. This course will examine the history of the American Cold War in the Asia-Pacific from 1945 to the early 1990s. The changing contours of the Cold War from "containment" to "detente" and then to the "second Cold War" will be traced through major events and developments in Asia, such as the American Occupation of Japan, the "loss" of China, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Nixon's "Asianization" of Asia. We will also consider the ways in which the U.S. Cold War policies transformed domestic social arrangements and cultural topographies, not only within the U.S., but also in Asia. And finally, this course will explore the shifting place of the "Asia-Pacific" in the U.S. Cold War historiography. Active participation in discussion, brief response papers to the weekly readings, and two analytical papers constitute the basic requirements for this course. |
||
Second 6 Week Summer Session |
||
| 5 - Europe since the Renaissance: History through Art | Elliott | |
| MTWTh 12-2 151 Barrows | CCN: 50405 | |
| Sign up for any available discussion section when registering for this course. Discussion section schedules for this course will be determined at the first class meeting. | ||
|
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. |
||
| 7B - The United States Since the Civil War | Sigmon | |
| MTWThF 2-3:30 20 Barrows | CCN: 50420 | |
| Updated March 11, 2008 | ||
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
| Sign up for any available discussion section when registering for this course. Discussion section schedules for this course will be determined at the first class meeting. | ||
| History 7B will present the history of the United States from the end of the Civil War up to the present. We will cover the era of Reconstruction, the legacy of slavery, the rise of industrialization, the U.S. becoming a world power, the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and, time permitting, the War in Iraq. While we will deal with political, economic and military history, the primary focus of the class will be on cultural history. | ||
| 8B - Latin America in the Independent Era | Segal | |
| MTWThF 11:30-1 175 Barrows | CCN: 50450 | |
| Sign up for any available discussion section when registering for this course. Discussion section schedules for this course will be determined at the first class meeting. | ||
| This introductory course will treat, in broad brush terms, Latin American history since the end of the colonial period. Because of the enormous geographical and cultural range of Latin America we will not be able to "cover" all of its history. Nonetheless, by the time we complete the course, the student will have been introduced to some of the central themes of this dramatic and turbulent period and how they play themselves out in a wide range of regions from Mexico to Chile, from the Andes to Brazil, from the Caribbean to the dissolving borders of the twenty-first century. Colonial legacies and the multiple meanings of independence, new nations and emerging nationalisms, ethnicity and class, the North Atlantic economy and arrested economic development, the twentieth-century cycle of revolutionary movements and repressive military governments, the powerful forces of globalization, and recent strategies [economic, political, and cultural] to address long term structural inequalities are some of the central themes of this modern period. Beyond lectures and readings dealing with these themes, the serious student will immerse himself or herself in some of the foundational texts of the modern era. Grades will be based on section, quizzes, a midterm, a final [both exams will include take-home essays that will derive from course material]. | ||
| 106B - The Roman Empire | Norena | |
| TWTh 10-12:30 3 LeConte | CCN: 50530 | |
| Updated May 15, 2008 | ||
| This course satisfies the "Pre-Modern" requirement for the History major. Please note room change. | ||
| This course offers an introduction to the history of the Roman empire, from the reign of the first emperor, Augustus (31 BC–AD 14), to the end of the 4th century AD. Major themes include the changing configurations of power in the Roman empire (institutional, personal, social, religious), the unity and diversity of Roman imperial culture, the relationship between state and society, the political economy of the Roman empire, and the geography of the Mediterranean world. Lectures will provide an essential historical narrative and interpretations of central problems in Roman imperial history, and readings will give students an opportunity to engage with key texts from or about the Roman empire, from Tacitus to Gibbon. Requirements: midterm, paper (6-8 pp.), final. | ||
| 124B - The United States Since WWII | Mujal | |
| TWTh 12:30-3:30 182 Dwinelle | CCN: 50520 | |
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
| This course examines the history of the United States from World War II to the Vietnam Era. After the economic downturn of the 1930s and the Great Depression, the United States entered World War II, recovered its economic footing, and was transformed into a modern military power. The national mobilization for World War II created immediate and long-term changes in the home front and re-directed our foreign policy. After the war’s end, the Civil Rights Movement was established in the 1950s as a grass roots movement for social equality in the South. Abroad, containment in the Cold War paved the way for liberation rhetoric and the rise of McCarthyism. By the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement had laid the groundwork for a series of other social movements throughout the nation, and the Cold War had brought the United States into its involvement in the Vietnam conflict. By the 1970s, Nixon Republicanism had been impacted by the Watergate crisis while negotiations occurred in the Paris Peace talks in search of an exit strategy from Vietnam. The course will end with a final assessment of the effects of the Great Society, the importance of social movements, suburban flight and urban renewal, and the effects of OPEC on the United Sates economy. A key component of this class will be student-directed research on many of the topics under discussion at our class meetings. Along with our readings and exams, each week a mini-research paper based on primary and secondary topics will be due. | ||
| 127AC - California | Mujal | |
| TWTh 9-12 182 Dwinelle | CCN: 50535 | |
| 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 - Social History of The US, Civil War to present | Livie | |
| TWTh 12:30-3 110 Wheeler | CCN: 50540 | |
| Updated March 31, 2008 | ||
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
|
This course will explore the social history of the United States from the end of the Civil War to the present, chronicling patterns of everyday life and charting the ever-changing contours of what it means to be American. The class will focus on how currents of society, identity, and community like labor, family life, gender roles, and racial and ethnic difference not only reflected larger political changes on the national stage, but also influenced American political economy and cultural production. To do this, the class will use lecture, texts, and discussion to reassess historical topics including the social tumult of reconstruction, life in the American West, labor and leisure in industrial America, the rise of the city and the urban-rural divide, the Harlem Renaissance, Depression-era conflicts over race and labor, changing norms about sexuality before and after World War II, domestic containment during the 1950s, the cultural revolution of the 1960s, and the conservative response of the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout the course, particular attention will be paid to the importance of mass culture and to how social movements, organized around gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or class reflected the passions of individual Americans and evolving group identity. This course will also build strategies of historical analysis/thinking by exploring controversial issues, interpreting primary and secondary source material (with particular attention paid to perspective, point of view, audience, impact, etc.), building an appreciation of the complementary roles of narrative and analytical history, developing and defending a thesis through independent research and analysis of evidence, and discussing ideas with peers and the instructor. We will also use this as an opportunity to focus specifically on the historian’s craft, notably how scholars approach historical topics, conduct research, and transform that research into historical narrative. Reading assignments place great emphasis on both classic texts as well as recent research in American social history, which will hopefully facilitate a discussion of current research topics and methods, as well as a variety of writing styles. |
||
| 158C - Europe 1914 to Present | Wetzel | |
| TWTh 3-5:30 | CCN: 50550 | |
| 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. | ||