PERSPECTIVES IN HISTORY
50:509:299:01
M/W 12:30 pm – 1:50 pm
Professor Kapur
GEN ED: W (Writing Course)
What is the past, and how is it remembered (or forgotten)? How have conceptions of “history” evolved over time? In what ways (if any) does history differ from other disciplines or modes of analysis? How have various notions of the past been used (or abused) to support specific policies or course of action? Why should we study the past at all? In pondering these and other questions about the nature of history and the past, we will draw upon examples from American, European, and nonwestern history. Along the way, we will develop our skills in critically analyzing both primary and secondary materials, locating and properly citing historical sources, and developing a historical argument and supporting it with evidence. By producing a variety of short writing assignments, we will gradually work our way toward a 12-15 page historical research paper on a topic of each student’s own interest.
PUBLIC HISTORY PRACTICE
50:509:300:01
BY ARRANGEMENT
Professor Mires
GEN ED: XPL (Experimental Learning)
Get your hands on history: This is an individualized opportunity to gain knowledge of local and regional history while contributing to a public history project based at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden. The options include historic house research and curatorship for the Cooper Street Historic District and research and digital publishing for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. In addition to readings in local and regional history, students will be provided with training and ongoing supervision and feedback while working approximately six hours per week on-site on their selected projects (or remotely if the center is not open). This course is by arrangement, with permission of the instructor, and is open to juniors and seniors with a GPA of 3.0 and above.
UNDERGRADUATE INTERNSHIP
50:509:475:01
By Arrangement Professor Woloson
A supervised internship, usually unpaid, at a museum, historical society, archive, or library
WESTERN CIVILIZATION II
50:510:102:01
T/TH 2:00 pm – 3:20 pm
Professor Mokhberi
GEN ED: GCM (Global Communities)
This course traces Europe’s exciting transformation from the end of the Roman world to the political and scientific revolutions of the seventeenth century. Students will discover how Europe evolved from a feudal system to a dominant force through changes at home and contact with the rest of the world. It will examine major developments such as medieval learning and architecture, the Crusades, the Plague, explorations of the world, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the witch-hunt, rebellions against the state, and the Scientific Revolution. To pass this course, students must attend lectures, do all the readings, and will be required to write several short papers.
ATHENS IN THE GOLDEN AGE
50:510:303:01
T/TH 9:35 am – 10:55 am
Professor Jewell
GEN ED: HAC (Heritage and Civilizations)
Athens of the 5th century BCE is often held up as the birthplace of democracy. But was it? How did Athens gain this reputation, and how did Athenian democracy compare to other city-states in the Greek world from the same period and their forms of government, such as oligarchy, tyranny and monarchy? What was it like to be a citizen (a free male) in these city-states, or to be excluded from citizenship (women, enslaved people, foreign residents)? This course will tackle these questions and more, offering a survey of Greek history (Athens, Sparta, and other, less famous city-states) from the Persian Wars down to the fall of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens in 403 BCE and its aftermath. The core of the class involves a historical role-playing game, called Reacting to the Past: students will be assigned roles to play, and in these roles they will compose speeches, form alliances, make strategic decisions—and possibly change the course of history within the game. In addition to being assessed for their participation in, and preparation for, the game and their (written) speeches, students will complete: ancient source analyses, a historical analysis on an aspect of one city-state, and a creative assignment which considers the legacy of classical Greece in the history of the American Republic up to today.
EUROPE AND THE WORLD
50:510:333:01
T/TH 11:10 am – 12:30 pm
Professor Mokhberi
GEN ED: GCM (Global Communities)
This course examines European representations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas from the Middle Ages to the early eighteenth century. It traces European portrayals of foreigners in travel writings, descriptions of diplomatic visits, and various art forms. We will discuss European criticism of foreign customs and politics and investigate Europe’s fascination with the exotic, which often resulted in imitation and adoption of foreign habits and luxury goods. We will explore how Europeans imagined and reimagined distant countries and used them as models for comparison.
EUROPEAN HISTORY ON FILM
50:510:378:01
M/W 2:05 pm – 3:25 pm
Professor Marker
GEN ED: GCM (Global Communities)
This course examines history and film in Europe from the early twentieth century to today. We will consider how the political and social struggles that have shaped modern European history have been refracted and interpreted on the silver screen. Throughout the term, we will work through a set of guiding questions: How did Europeans experience the twentieth century? How have filmmakers reflected upon those experiences? How can film help illuminate our understanding of European history? How can history help illuminate our understanding of European film? Coursework will include lectures, class discussion, short readings, and remote weekly film viewings.
IMMIGRATION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
50:510:380:01
T/TH 3:45 pm – 4:55 pm
Professor Jewell
Ancient peoples were frequently on the move, or being moved—sometimes voluntarily, sometimes against their will. Yet even as “immigration” is a hot topic in today’s world and politics, we must use caution when applying the term to ancient peoples. This course therefore considers how and why people moved around the ancient Mediterranean, in dialogue with more modern examples and definitions, through the lens of displacement, enslavement and colonialism, refuge and asylum, diaspora, exile and hospitality, labor-based migration, borders, travel, and the ancient institution of citizenship, among others. We will travel from the world of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greece, Rome and the early post-Roman world, taking in the full geographical reach of the Mediterranean Sea and its adjacent land routes into the hinterland and beyond to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Assessments include article and source analyses, a digital mapping task, and two components of an online class exhibit on a historical theme of our collective choosing: a visual analysis (“object-as-history”); and a series of group dictionary entries on the theme.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES I
50:512:201:01
M/W 9:35 am – 10:55 am
Professor Martin
GEN ED: USW (United States in the World)
This course traces the path of American history from before European colonization through the colonial period, the Imperial Crisis, Revolution, Civil War, and Reconstruction. We will examine the most important political, economic, social, and cultural developments of the 17th – 19th centuries, and observe how different groups of people shaped and were affected by such developments. Learning about the past involves a careful effort to understand the ideas and beliefs that motivated people to act in certain specific ways, within particular historical circumstances. Development of U.S. I is an introductory course, intended to acquaint students with various ideas, events, and people from this particular segment of America’s past, and to introduce students to some of the questions and debates that animate the study of early American history.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES II
50:512:202:01
T/TH 11:10 am – 12:30 pm
Professor Demirjian
GEN ED: USW (United States in the World)
This course examines the political, economic, social, and military history of the United States from the 1860s through the 1970s. The course will also examine the roles played by ethnicity, race, gender, class, the development of a national market economy, and the emergence of a powerful national state in shaping ideas about American identity and its place in the world.
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY II
50:512:204:01
M/W 2:05 pm – 3:25 pm
Professor Boyd
This course covers the history of Black or African American people in the United States from the Civil War to the present. Emphasis is given to the philosophies of W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X, and to the black freedom struggle (civil rights movement). The course also examines the growing class divide between the college educated, suburbanized, white-collar black middle class and the one-fourth of black people who live in poverty and are trapped in inner city ghettos.
U.S. CONSUMER CULTURE
50:512:303:01
M/W 3:45 pm – 5:05 pm
Professor Woloson
What did Americans buy and why? How did purchasing habits change over time, and what can those changes tell us about changes in how Americans lived their lives and thought about themselves individually and collectively, from the first settlers to the present? This course covers a broad sweep of American consumer culture over four centuries, using consumption as a way to better understand broader aspects of American history and life, such as prevailing standards of living and economic conditions; politics; technological innovations; regional, national, and global commerce and emerging marketplaces; and individual and collective aesthetic sensibilities. The class will draw from both secondary readings and primary source documents, and we will consider everything from 18th-century backcountry dry goods stores to e-commerce. Subject areas of focus will include, among many other things, consumer activism (including boycotts and patriotic purchasing), the development of advertising and marketing, and the rise of department stores, malls, and other sites of shopping. In addition, we will explore the meanings of shopping itself over time and also the shifting roles of the goods we’ve bought, from being expressions of self-fashioning and status to repositories of intense emotion and desire. This is a writing-intensive course: several essays drawing on primary and secondary source material will be required, in addition to a final exam.
CIVIL WAR MEMORY
50:512:321:01
T/TH 9:35 am – 10:55 am
Professor Demirjian
This course examines the political, economic, social, and military history of the United States from the 1860s through the 1970s. The course will also examine the roles played by ethnicity, race, gender, class, the development of a national market economy, and the emergence of a powerful national state in shaping ideas about American identity and its place in the world.
CITY AND SUBURB IN AMERICAN HISTORY
50:512:364:01
T/TH 3:45 pm – 4:55 pm
Professor Mires
Controversies over historical monuments are raising awareness of the issues embedded in the processes of creating, communicating, and contesting public understanding of history. This seminar goes behind the scenes of public history settings such as museums, historic sites, and archives to delve into these dynamics. Through a series of case studies, we will discover how historical narratives are constructed and communicated within history-focused organizations, in public space, and in the digital realm. This course for undergraduates meets together with the graduate course Issues in Public History, with assignments adjusted as appropriate for each level. Undergraduates will get to know the field by contributing to the annual Public History Year in Review (https://phyearbook.wordpress.com/) and will gain a realistic understanding of the career opportunities in public history. Undergraduates also will have options to fulfill assignments by visiting and writing about historic sites of choice.
LATIN AMERICA II
50:516:212:01
T/TH 2:00 pm – 3:20 pm
Professor Thomas
GEN ED: GCM (Global Communities)
online asynchronous
The course offers an introduction examination of Latin America’s history, politics, culture, and processes of socioeconomic change through the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. We compare the evolution of events along these lines in the different sub-regions and countries, noting where generalizations of the Latin American region are possible and where some sub-regional cases are unique. We start with a discussion of how colonial patterns of domination shaped the socio-economic and political structures of Latin American states after independence, which most countries in the region achieved in the 1820s. Thereafter, two centuries of state formation and development are examined. Throughout this period, the course explores in comparative perspective issues such as class formation, race, gender, national identity, “boom and boost” economic cycles, foreign influences, revolution and counter-revolution, and general social and political change.
EAST ASIA I
50:516:231
M/W 3:45 pm – 5:05 pm
Professor Kapur
GEN ED: G (Global Studies)
This survey course examines the history of Japan from the collapse of the samurai government in the 1850s to the present time. We will examine the “opening” of Japan following centuries of self-imposed isolation, its rise to power and defeat in World War II, and its subsequent transformation into an economic and pop culture powerhouse, as well as more recent events such as the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.
IMPERIALISM
50:516:265:01
M/W 12:30 pm – 1:50 pm
Professor Marker
GEN ED: HAC (Heritage and Civilizations)
From iconic children’s tales like Tarzan and German-style beer made in China to English-speaking call centers outsourced to India, the residues of European imperialism are all around us. This course explores the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of European imperial expansion and colonial rule from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s. Using narrative histories, historical documents, fiction, and film, we will consider imperialism’s impact on Europeans and European society; African, Indian, and East Asian experiences and critiques of colonial and imperial power; the forces that ultimately led to the collapse of European empires; and the afterlives of imperialism in our globalized world.
UNDERGRADUATE INTERNSHIP
50:509:475:01
By arrangement
Professor Woloson
A supervised internship, usually unpaid, at a museum, historical society, archive, or library.
UNDERGRADUATE INDEPENDENT STUDY
50:510:499:01
By arrangement
Instructor: TBD
Independent reading under the supervision of a member of the department.
UNDERGRADUATE INDEPENDENT STUDY
50:510:499:02
By arrangement
Instructor: TBD
Independent reading under the supervision of a member of the department.