Fall 2009 History Course Offerings for First Year Students

Please click on the course title to access a .pdf of the syllabus. If a syllabus is unavailable in .pdf format, you may request it by emailing the professor or by contacting the Academic Coordinator at jjohnso2@bowdoin.edu.

FIRST YEAR SEMINARS:

History 10c. (MW 1:00-2:25) Monsters, Marvels and Messiahs: Europe During the Age of Discovery. DALLAS DENERY. Examines how Europeans have sought to understand themselves and the world around them through travel and travel literature. Particular attention paid to the fascinating ways in which Europeans have used travel narratives to define and distinguish themselves from their “others.” Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors.

History 15c. (MW 2:30-3:55) Frontier Crossings: The Western Experience in American History. MATTHEW KLINGLE. What accounts for the persistence of the “frontier myth” in American history, and why do Americans continue to find the idea so attractive? Explores the creation of and disputes over what became of the western United States from 1763 to the present. Topics include Euro-American relations with Native Americans; the creation of borders and national identities; the effect of nature and ideology; the role of labor and gender in the backcountry; and the enduring influence of frontier imagery in popular culture. (Same as Environmental Studies 15.)

History 23c. (TTh 10:00-11:25) Writing the Racial Mountain in the Age of Jim Crow. KEONA ERVIN. What did it mean to be black in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? What sources did prominent African American leaders in this period draw upon to understand meanings of the racialized self? Explores arguments about and controversies over "the strange meaning of being black" from the post-Reconstruction period to the Great Depression. Focuses on intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class. (Same as Africana Studies 23 and Gender and Women’s Studies 25.)

History 28c. (TTh 2:30-3:55) History of Tea in East Asia. LAWRENCE ZHANG. Tea is one of the world’s most consumed beverages, as well as a significant internationally traded commodity throughout history. Familiarizes the student with the history of tea in East Asia since 800 C.E. to the present. Topics include its modes of consumption and production, trade, aesthetic, as well as notions of tradition and the beverage’s changing role in the twenty-first century. Primary and secondary sources include translated Chinese and Japanese texts on tea. Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors. (Same as Asian Studies 28.)

INTRODUCTORY-LEVEL LECTURE COURSES (100s):

139c. (TTh 11:30-12:55) The Civil War Era. PATRICK RAEL. Examines the coming of the Civil War and the war itself in all its aspects. Considers the impact of changes in American society, the sectional crisis and breakdown of the party system, the practice of Civil War warfare, and social ramifications of the conflict. Includes readings of novels and viewing of films. Students are expected to enter with a basic knowledge of American history, and a commitment to participating in large class discussions. (Same as Africana Studies 139.)

LECTURE/SURVEY COURSES (200s)

201c - ESD. (MW 2:30-3:55) History of Ancient Greece. ROBERT SOBAK. 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.)

206c - ESD. (MW 8:00-9:25) Early Modern Europe. DALLAS DENERY. A survey of European culture and society from the later Middle Ages to the origins of the Enlightenment. Topics include the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors.

221c. IP (TTh 11:30-12:55) History of England 1485-1688. SUSAN TANANBAUM. A survey of the political, cultural, religious, social, and economic history of early modern England, from the reign of Henry VII, the first Tudor ruler, to the outbreak of the Glorious Revolution. Topics include the Tudor and Stuart Monarchs, the Elizabethan Settlement, the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell, and the Restoration. Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors.

248c. ESD. (MW 11:30-12:55) Family and Community in America. SARAH MCMAHON. Examines the social, economic, and cultural history of American families from 1600 to 1900, and the changing relationship between families and their kinship networks, communities, and the larger society. Topics include gender relationships; racial, ethnic, cultural, and class variations in family and community ideals, structures, and functions; the purpose and expectations of marriage; philosophies of child-rearing; organization of work and leisure time; and the effects of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and social and geographic mobility on patterns of family life and community organization. (Same as Gender and Women’s Studies 248.)

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.

262c - ESD, IP. (MW 2:30-3:55) Africa and the Atlantic World. 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. Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors. (Same as Africana Studies 262.)

275c– ESD,IP. (TTh 10:00-11:25) The Making of Modern China. KAREN TEOH. An introduction to the transformation of China’s political and social life from the advent of its last dynasty in 1644 to the present. Covers the rise and fall of the Qing dynasty, economic and cultural encounters with the West, Republican government, war with Japan, the Communist revolution, and the People’s Republic under Mao Zedong. Also discusses social and economic reforms in post-Mao China, and the global Chinese overseas community. Major themes include political and intellectual trends, the ongoing tension between the center and local society, problems of ethnicity and gender, challenges of modernization, and the (re-)emergence of the world’s oldest and largest bureaucratic state as a major power in the twenty-first century (Same as Asian Studies 275.)

276c - IP. (TTh 11:30-12:55) The Origins of Imperial China. LAWRENCE ZHANG. Traces the origins and evolution of cultural, economic, and social elements of Chinese imperial statehood. Considers how each successive regime created its own philosophical and political basis for legitimacy and authority. Topics covered include the flowering of philosophy in the fifth century B.C.E., the unification and subsequent disintegration of the Qin and Han empires, the introduction of Buddhism, and the rise and fall of the cosmopolitan Tang dynasty. Various types of evidence, including archaeological finds and material culture, will be examined. Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors. (Same as Asian Studies 276.)

277c. (MW 1:00-2:25) The Trials of the Twentieth Century. DAVID HECHT. Uses controversial legal cases to explore changing notions of justice, rights, and equality in twentieth-century America—and the role of media in providing a forum for cultural debate on these and other subjects. Focuses on issues of race, class, science, Cold War politics, activism, and social change. Trials discussed include Sacco & Vanzetti, the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Rosenberg spy case, Roe v. Wade, Watergate, and O. J. Simpson. Uses a variety of primary and secondary sources, such as trial transcripts, news coverage, memoirs, film, and literature.

282c- ESD, IP. (MW 11:30-12:55) India and 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. Key topics include the formation of communities, pre-modern material cultures, the meanings of conversion and religious change, and the production and transformation of systems of knowledge and modes of social relations in the era before the rise of European colonialism. Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors. (Same as Asian Studies 236.)

283c - ESD, IP. (TTH 10:00-11:30) The Origins of Japanese Culture and Civilization. THOMAS CONLAN. How do a culture, a state, and a society develop? Designed to introduce the culture and history of Japan by exploring how “Japan” came into existence, and to chart how patterns of Japanese civilization shifted through time. Attempts to reconstruct the tenor of life through translations of primary sources, and to lead to a greater appreciation of the unique and lasting cultural and political monuments of Japanese civilization. (Same as Asian Studies 283.)