Fall 2011 History Course Offerings for First Year Students

If you would like to view the syllabus for a course listed below, click on the title or request it by emailing the professor or by contacting the Academic Coordinator at jjohnso2@bowdoin.edu.

First Year Seminars:

11. (TTH 1:00-2:25) Memoirs & Memory in American History. Connie Chiang.  Examines the ways in which Americans have remembered the past and documented their experiences in individual memoirs. Considers the tensions between memory and history, the value of memoirs as historical documents, and the extent to which memories deepen, complicate, and even convolute our understanding of twentieth-century United States history. The topical focus of the seminar will vary from year to year and may include immigration, labor, gender and race relations, and war. Writing-intensive, including several short papers and a family history research paper.

14. (MW 1:00-2:25) Science & Society. David Hecht. Focuses on twentieth-century science, technology, and medicine. Uses a number of seminal events and ideas—evolution, nuclear weapons, environmentalism, genetics, climate change and public health—to examine changing meanings of “science.” Science is neither as objective nor as detached from society as is commonly assumed; examines the nature of its interaction with broader themes and events in twentieth-century American politics and culture.

18. (MW 2:30-3:55) Consumer Revolution in the Atlantic World. Meghan Roberts.  Examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of consumerism in early modern Europe and the Atlantic world. During the eighteenth century, ordinary individuals engaged in a buying frenzy to decorate their homes and their persons in evermore ornate fashions. Considers how material culture provides a lens through which we can view the connections between empire and metropole in the early modern world; how it produced and reflected changing gender norms; how the growth of European consumerism was supported by slave labor; and how all of the above shaped and was shaped by the political revolutions of the late eighteenth century.

22. (TTH 2:30-3:55) “Bad” Women Make Great History. Page Herrlinger. Focuses on the lives and works of path-breaking women who defied the norms of modern European society in order to assume extraordinary and often controversial identities in a range of fields—as writers, scientists, performers, athletes, soldiers, and social and political activists. What does each woman’s “deviance” reveal about cultural constructions of identity and the self in Modern Europe? About contemporary views on issues such as women’s work, gender relations, education, marriage, sexuality, motherhood, health, and the struggle for civil and political rights? And when studied together, what do these women’s experiences tell us about patterns of change and continuity with respect to definitions of masculinity vs. femininity, the public vs. private sphere, and the relationship of the individual to the modern state? (Same as Gender and Women’s Studies 22.) 

Introductory-Level Lecture Courses (100s):

110c - ESD. (TTH 8:30-9:55) Medieval, Renaissance, & Reformation Europe. Dallas Denery. Introductory-level lecture. A wide-ranging introduction to pre-modern European history beginning with the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine (c. 272–337) and concluding with the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Particular attention is paid to the varying relations between church and state, the birth of urban culture and economy, institutional and popular religious movements, and the early formation of nation states. Not open to students who have credit for History 206 (Early Modern Europe) or 207 (Medieval Europe). Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors.

142. (TTH 2:30-3:55) The United States Since 1945. Daniel Levine. Consideration of social, intellectual, political, and international history. Topics include the Cold War; the survival of the New Deal; the changing role of organized labor; Keynesian, post-Keynesian, or anti-Keynesian economic policies; and the urban crisis. Readings common to the whole class and the opportunity for each student to read more deeply in a topic of his or her own choice.

 Lecture/Survey Courses (200s):

201c - ESD. (TTH 2:30-3:55) The History of Ancient Greece. Stephen O’Connor. Surveys the history of Greek-speaking peoples from the Bronze Age (c. 3000–1100 B.C.E.) to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. Traces the political, economic, social, religious, and cultural developments of the Greeks in the broader context of the Mediterranean world. Topics include the institution of the polis (city-state); hoplite warfare; Greek colonization; the origins of Greek “science,” philosophy, and rhetoric; and fifth-century Athenian democracy and imperialism. Necessarily focuses on Athens and Sparta, but attention is also given to the variety of social and political structures found in different Greek communities. Special attention is given to examining and attempting to understand the distinctively Greek outlook in regard to gender, the relationship between human and divine, freedom, and the divisions between Greeks and barbarians (non-Greeks). A variety of sources—literary, epigraphical, archaeological—are presented, and students learn how to use them as historical documents. (Same as Classics 211.) Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors.

218c - ESD, IP. (TTH 11:30-12:55) History of Russia 1725-1924. Page Herrlinger. Explores Russian society, culture, and politics during three dramatically different phases of the modern period: the Old Regime under the Tsars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the violent, revolutionary transformations of 1905 and 1917; and the founding years of socialist rule under Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Readings drawn from a diverse range of primary sources (including petitions, letters, memoirs, official proclamations, ethnographic accounts) as well as secondary works written by leading scholars. Also draws widely on contemporary visual culture (including, but not limited to, painting, photography, and film).

224c - ESD, IP. (TTH 1:00-2:25) The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Susan Tananbaum. A historical overview of the Middle East during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focuses on the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire; the role of Islam; British rule in the region; Palestine, Jewish, and Arab nationalism; the intifada; and ends with a brief review of contemporary issues.

232c - ESD. (TTH 10:00-11:25) History of the American West.  Connie Chiang. Survey of what came to be called the Western United States from the nineteenth century to the present. Topics include Euro-American relations with Native Americans; the expansion and growth of the federal government into the West; the exploitation of natural resources; the creation of borders and national identities; race, class, and gender relations; the influence of immigration and emigration; violence and criminality; cities and suburbs; and the enduring persistence of Western myths in American culture. Students write several papers and engage in weekly discussion based upon primary and secondary documents, art, literature, and film. (Same as Environmental Studies 232.)

243c - ESD. (MW 11:30-12:55) Old Regime & Revolutionary France. Meghan Roberts. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, many heralded King Louis XIV as the most powerful monarch to ever rule. By the end of the century, however, the French people overthrew this vaunted monarchy. Topics include: Why did France have a revolution? What conflicts—social, cultural, and intellectual—helped shape politics and society? What were the global implications of events in France, especially for the enslaved populations of French colonies? How did the Revolution impact everyday life, including social relationships and material culture? Why did the French Revolution become radical and—all too often—violent?

 255c - IP. (TTH 10:00-11:25) Modern Latin America. Allen Wells. Traces the principal economic, social, and political transformations from the wars of independence to the present. Topics include colonial legacies and the aftermath of independence; the consolidation of nation-states and their insertion in the world economy; the evolution of land and labor systems, and the politics of reform and revolution, and the emergence of social movements. (Same as Latin American Studies 255.)

 262c - ESD, IP. (TTH 1:00-2:25) Africa & The Atlantic World 1400-1880. David Gordon. A survey of historical developments before conquest by European powers, with a focus on west and central Africa. Explores the political, social, and cultural changes that accompanied the intensification of Atlantic Ocean trade and revolves around a controversy in the study of Africa and the Atlantic World: What influence did Africans have on the making of the Atlantic World, and in what ways did Africans participate in the slave trade? How were African identities shaped by the Atlantic World and by the slave plantations of the Americas? Ends by considering the contradictory effects of Abolition on Africa. (Same as Africana Studies 262.) Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors.

 273c - ESD. (MW 1:00-2:25) History of Latinos in the U.S. Lori Flores. A survey of the social, political, and cultural history of Latinos, the fastest-growing population in the United States, from 1848 to the present. Readings and films focus on the experiences of Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and Central American communities as separate groups and living among each other. Key course topics include legacies of conquest; past and present immigration; inclusion and exclusion; labor movements and activism; articulations of race, gender, and citizenship in urban and rural settings; transnationalism; the development of Latino politics; border violence; and Latino futurism. Aims to both show the particularities of the Latino experience in the United States and position Latinos as integral figures to more inclusive and revised narratives of the nation's past. (Same as Latin American Studies 273.)

274c - IP. (MWF 9:30-10:25) American Revolution. Strother Roberts. For those who lived through it, the American Revolution was a very personal experience. It pitted neighbors against neighbors, tore local communities apart, and destroyed families. It ruined livelihoods and ended lives. But the Revolution was also a global phenomenon. Its ideological origins lay in ancient Greece and Rome. Its economic causes stretched around the globe to the tea plantations of China. It spawned battles fought from the icy tundra of the subarctic to the tropical waters of the Caribbean. Its ideals and values have inspired generations from around the globe. Only by studying the complexity of the Revolution, by placing the local experiences of newly minted Americans within the global backdrop of their times, can this formative stage of United States history be fully understood.

282c - ESD, IP. (MW 11:30-12:55) India & the Indian Ocean World. Rachel Sturman. Explores the vibrant social world created by movements of people, commodities, and ideas across the contemporary regions of the Middle East, East Africa, South and Southeast Asia from the early spread of Islam through the eighteenth century, with a focus on early modern India. Key topics include pre-modern trade and material cultures, the meaning of religious, and the development of systems of knowledge in the era before the rise of European colonialism. (Same as Asian Studies 236.)