Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Summer 2009
This page last updated:
2012-01-31 16:25:24
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: 5/23 -7/1 |
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| 100.001 - Latin American History on Film | Healey | |
| TuTh 1-5 106 Moffitt | CCN: 48980 | |
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This six-week summer course will offer students an intense introduction to modern Latin America history, to the history of Latin American films, and to the uses and limits of films as historical documents in general. We will watch, analyze and discuss ten films, as well as seeing excerpts from several more. Working from the background provided by the films and a survey history of modern Latin America, we will look closely at issues of production, representation and reception of films, and at the connections between film and politics. Our readings will include primary documents, manifestos, poems, essays and short articles. Student grades will be based on three short reaction papers, class participation, and a final exam. Films include: How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Brazil, 1971); Compadre Mendoza (Mexico, 1933); Bananas Is My Business (Canada/Brazil, 1994); The Battle of Chile (Canada/ Cuba, 1976); Memories of Underdevelopment (Cuba, 1968); Land In Anguish (Brazil, 1967); Nine Queens (Argentina, 2000); Crane World (Argentina, 1999); Central Station (Brazil, 1999); City of God (Brazil, 2003) |
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| 100.002 - Apostles, Bishops, and Emperors: The Early Church from Paul to Constantine | Koziol | |
| TWTh 2-4:30 155 Barrows | CCN: 48990 | |
| This course satisfies the pre-modern requirement for the History Major. | ||
| A complete description is forthcoming. Please check back. | ||
| This course satisfies the "Pre-modern" requirement for the History major. | ||
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The early history of Christianity is as contested as it is fascinating. This course will discuss many of the problems and disputes both among early Christians themselves and among historians. Most of the reading will be in primary sources, many of them short enough to make it possible to cover a large number of topics. The starting point will be the earliest direct evidence of Christians themselves – the letters of Paul. The endpoint will be the emperor Constantine, who both legalized and promoted Christianity (making him one of its most contested figures – then and now). Among topics to be discussed: Paul; the church of the apostles; Gnosticism and varieties of Christianity; the Gospels and the possibility of alternative gospels; the rise of bishops; the persecutions and their effect. A recurring theme throughout the course will be the different ideas of community and individuality that existed within early Christianities. Classes will insist on discussion of readings, not lecture. Assignments will likely be a number of journal-type essays on the different readings and themes in the course, with two longer essays due at the end of the class, both based on readings and discussions. |
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| 112B - Modern South Africa | Kanogo | |
| TWTh 12:30-3 229 Dwinelle | CCN: 49020 | |
| This course has been canceled. | ||
| 119A - Post-War Japan | Barshay | |
| TWTh 10-1230 2320 Tolman | CCN: 50615 | |
| 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? | ||
8 Week Summer Session: 6/20 - 8/12 |
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| N005 - Europe since the Renaissance | Laqueur | |
| Online | CCN: 48920 | |
| 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 | ||
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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. |
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| 103B.001 - The Reformation | Lange | |
| MW 1-4 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated April 14, 2009 | ||
| A complete description is forthcoming. Please check back. | ||
| This course will examine what the Reformation is/was and introduce the different ways in which historians have approached it. Among other matters, it will touch on the late medieval background to Reformation soteriology, the social and political context of the Reformation, and its relation to the development of the modern (or early modern) world. The goal is to learn how historians have broadened Luther's German Reformation into a global movement that transformed all varieties of Western Christianity. | ||
| 103D.001 - Tourism and Leisure in the United States | Esson | |
| TuTh 12-3 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated April 14, 2009 | ||
| What is the historical significance of riding a roller coaster or traveling to an unfamiliar place? Some historians have argued that cheap amusements were key to ensuring productivity in the workforce. Other scholars have illustrated how tourism fostered the creation of a national culture in the United States. Still others have shown how tourism was a devil’s bargain that ensured both the economic and cultural survival of small communities but at the same time exposed these places to irrevocable changes due to the pressure and influence of wealthy visitors. In this seminar students will survey the literature on leisure and tourism in the United States, including theoretical works such as Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist (1976). In addition to reading monographs about the creation of early amusement parks and tourist destinations such as Las Vegas, students will also produce a literature review on a topic of their choice that should serve as the foundation for the History Deparment’s senior research seminar. | ||
| 103D.002 - Americans Abroad | Armentrout | |
| TuTh 9-12 2303 Dwinelle | ||
| Updated April 14, 2009 | ||
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In this seminar, we will use academic texts, novels and films to address the following questions: In what capacities have groups or individual Americans experienced the world beyond U.S. borders (i.e. travel, tourism, military, diplomatic, academic, missionary work)? How have these experiences informed American understandings of other nations, peoples and cultures? How have American experiences abroad affected both personal and national perceptions of other peoples and places as well as perceptions of the United States? How have these ideas been brought back to the United States and articulated, diffused and negotiated? Do these ideas affect public and foreign policy? How do individual experiences abroad compete with or reinforce other sources of knowledge about the world? How are images of other places and peoples situated within particular social, political, cultural and economic contexts? |
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Second 6 Week Summer Session: 7/5 - 8/12 |
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| 005 - Europe since the Renaissance | Biocca | |
| MTWTh 12-2 156 Dwinelle | CCN: 48905 | |
| A complete description is forthcoming. Please check back. | ||
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In recent years many walls have fallen in Europe, which has now become a new and larger political community. However, there is still no coherent system of European values, lifestyles or even models of social, economic and political change. Europe remains a multiethnic and diversified society with striking differences within its borders. The course explores the many identities (religious, economic, cultural, etc.) which have shaped the modern history of Europe. Art, literature and science, in particular, have retained a unique capacity to reflect, articulate and represent the “European experience”. Readings and lectures will trace the roots of cultural diversity and discuss the motives behind the recent efforts to achieve European political unification. |
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| 007B - The United States Since the Civil War | Spiro | |
| MTWThF 2-3:30 101 Barker | CCN: 48945 | |
| Updated May 18, 2009 | ||
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
| A complete description is forthcoming. Please check back. | ||
| Meeting times for discussion sections will be determined at the first lecture. Every effort will be made to accommodate every enrolled student's schedule. Note new room! | ||
| History 7B provides a comprehensive overview of American history from Reconstruction to the present. The lectures cover the basic political, economic, and diplomatic developments of this fascinating period, while the discussion sections provide a venue for students to delve into and debate the important social and cultural issues of the past 150 years. At the end of the course, students will be familiar with the basic chronology of American history since the Civil War, will understand the more important and interesting controversies that erupted during those years, and will be grateful that by attending class every day in the summer they lessened their risk of contracting skin cancer. | ||
| 106B - The Roman Empire | ||
| TWTh 10-12:30 110 Barrows | CCN: 49015 | |
| Updated February 20, 2009 | ||
| This course has been CANCELLED. | ||
| This course has been canceled. | ||
| 124B - The United States Since WWII | Mujal | |
| TWTh 12-2:30 103 Moffitt | CCN: 49030 | |
| 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 9-11:30 103 Moffitt | CCN: 49040 | |
| 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 United States: Creating Modern American Society: From the End of the Civil War to the Global Age | Livie | |
| TuWTh 3-5:30 110 Wheeler | CCN: 49045 | |
| This course satisfies the American Cultures Requirement. | ||
| This course satisfies the American Cultures requirement and the American History part of the American History & Institutions requirement. | ||
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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. |
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| 158C - Europe 1914 to Present | Wetzel | |
| TWTh 3-5:30 150 GSPP | CCN: 49055 | |
| Note new room! | ||
| 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. | ||