READINGS IN EARLY AMERICA TO 1763
56:512:504:01
T 6:00 PM – 8:50 PM
Professor Shankman
This course is an introduction to the primary themes and issues of the English-Speaking Atlantic world and North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM IN THE UNITED STATES, 1945 to present
56:512:512:01
M 6:00 PM – 8:50 PM
Professor Kapur
This graduate course is an intensive collaborative research seminar designed to help students produce an original research paper on the United States and the world since 1945.
RACE AND ETHNICITY IN THE AMERICAS
56:512:524:01
W 6:00 PM – 8:50 PM
Professor Thomas
This course takes a comparative approach to examining the complex history of racial and ethnic difference in the Americas, from the sixteenth through the twenty-first century. Focusing on academic interpretations of race and ethnicity as well as some primary-source texts – so that we experience the language, imagery, and animating questions surrounding race and difference across different eras and regions – we will explore the following themes and problems:
- How “race” and “ethnicity” have operated as social categories throughout the history of the Americas
- How hierarchies of race and ethnicity have shaped historical and political outcomes across the Americas
- How constructions and descriptions of physiological and cultural difference around the Americas have changed over time
- How the experiences of difference defined by physical and cultural markers of descent (“color” and “race,” i.e.) have varied across time, place, and group in the history of the Americas
HISTORY PRACTICUM
56:512:587:01
TH 6:00 PM – 8:50 PM
Professor Mires
This is a seminar in historic interpretation—the art of connecting the public with the meanings of historic places, artifacts, and documents through a variety of techniques and media. Through in-depth reading and group and individual research/interpretation projects, our particular focus will be on interpreting buildings and landscapes within the context of the historical development of American towns, cities, and suburbs. This course fulfills requirements for public history electives, but all students are welcome. A book list will be posted before the semester begins on the professor’s faculty website: https://charlenemires.camden.rutgers.edu/.
ADVANCED TOPICS IN PUBLIC HISTORY: Museums in the Digital Age
56:512:679:01
T 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm
Professor Woloson
Given that we increasingly experience the material world virtually – mediated through the screens of smartphones, tablets, and computers – do museums still matter? If they do, then what roles should they play for individuals and communities? How will museums continue to be relevant in the future?
To help explore these issues, and others, this course places museums in a larger historical context, tracing their roots from personal cabinets of curiosities to larger institutions of edification and entertainment. We will explore the dime and anatomical museums of the 19th century, the development of the “modern” museum in the early 20th century, and the creation of new, virtual museums at the dawn of the 21st century. Among other things, we will discuss the museum as a political and cultural institution, the challenges and opportunities faced by curators, and, of course, the collections themselves, whether on display or hidden in remote storage facilities.
Case studies and site visits will supplement primary and secondary sources. In order to fully appreciate the many issues facing contemporary museums and the challenges of interpretation and curation today, students will also collaborate to create a virtual exhibition of their own.
INTERNSHIP IN PUBLIC HISTORY (By Arrangement)
56:512:699:01
Professor Woloson
Supervised work experience in a public history office or private institutional setting, involving project work for one semester or a summer.