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Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Nov 23, 2009
HIST 3080 The Renaissance
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This course examines European life in the era of the Renaissance, with a special focus on Italy. Topics include definitions of humanism, the rejuvenation of Greek and Roman classicism, urban life, court society, civic religion, gender and technological and artistic innovations.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Nov 16, 2009
HIST 4040 Christianity in the Ancient World
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This class offers a thoroughly academic approach to exploring the cultural context, early
literature and subsequent institutionalization and history of Christianity in the ancient world.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Nov 13, 2009
HIST 3910 Intro to Modern Military History
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Course Description and Objectives: Welcome to the study of Modern Military History (MMH)!
The course is designed to make students familiar with the methods, aims and goals of MMH as it has evolved in the past 15 years. The discipline is no longer satisfied to explain why division A has taken hill 113 and under what circumstances and how it fought the enemy division X. MMH asks what kind of troops were involved and where they derived their motivation from, how they were recruited and how the officers were educated but also what kind of impact the invention of certain weapon system had and how that infected the battle experience of the normal soldiers. MMH has been termed "military history from below" because the discipline attempts also to view war through the eyes of the normal soldier. MMH wants to know why a nation developed a certain war culture and how that impacted the actual operations.
As an example on how to employ the methods of MMH we will use the history of the emergence, rise and fall of Prussia, a state that has been unlike any other synonymous with violence, war and militarism.
Spring Course 2010
Publication Date: Nov 2, 2009
HIST 3500 Pre-modern China
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The goal of lectures, readings, and class discussion is to help you become conversant in the broad outlines of the pre-history and history of pre-modern China and its institutions and culture. The first part of this course will consist of a brief survey of the archaeological evidence for early man and pre-historic cultures and an overview of the political history, important personalities, and major developments in the dynastic eras of pre-modern China. The second part of the course will be devoted to a topical survey of developments and changes in society, government, land and taxes, economy, legal history, military, alien rule, religion, philosophy, literature, and visual arts.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 21, 2009
HIST 4020 Roman Empire
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This course is part of a two-semester sequence on the development of Roman history down to the collapse of the western provinces of the Roman Empire. Each term may be taken independently. Specifically, this semester covers the internal and external developments from the death of Caesar down to the Fifth Century, A.D. Though the lectures will touch on all aspects of Greco-Roman civilization and include slide presentations, the course will concentrate on the political, constitutional, religious and social developments of the Empire.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 21, 2009
HIST 3520 Pre-Modern Japan
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A survey of Japanese state and society from its early origins to the mid-19th century.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 20, 2009
HIST 4490 Intro to Shi'i Islam
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Selected regional topics of contemporary political/economic interest. Examples: Palestine mandate, Arab/Israeli conflict, oil in the Middle East.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 20, 2009
HIST 4660 History of Utah
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In the words of Utah Historian Dean L. May, "The story of Utah is a
story of a land and its peoples. But the fixed and enduring part of the
mix has been the land." In this class we will attempt to understand and
explore the meaning behind May's statement as we investigate the
varieties of peoples who have inhabited and interacted with the land
that came to be called Utah, from pre-history to the present. We will
view Utah as a meeting and mixing ground of diverse peoples from a
variety of religious, cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. We will
seek to understand what brought these peoples together, what drove them
apart, and what methods of accommodation, compromise, and/or conquest
animated their exchanges. What has living in Utah meant for each group
and how has that meaning changed over time? We will observe economic,
cultural, political, and social change, persistence, accommodation, and
cross fertilization over time.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 20, 2009
HIST 4560 Asian American History
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A survey of Asian American history from the 19th century to the present.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 12, 2009
HIST 3220 Post-War Europe
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This course is concerned with European civilization between the end of the second World War in 1945 and the events in 1989‑91 that brought the postwar era to an end. It will consider the development and course of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union; the history of the Soviet Union from Stalin to Gorbachev and the consolidation and decline of Soviet control of Eastern Europe; the economic and political development of Western Europe, and the transformation of the role of Western European countries in the world through the process of decolonization.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 8, 2009
HIST 4610 Modern U.S. Women's History
1860 to 1990
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In this class we seek to address the diversity of women's experience in the United States, while at the same time preserving a historical narrative and analysis that makes connections between the drastically different conditions, identities and opportunities of American women. White middle class women, for example, occupy the privileged position that they do in this society precisely because of the positions that women of color and lower-class women hold. A white woman in the 1970's could leave her home and family and pursue a career because she could rely on the low paid wage work of another woman to perform the domestic tasks she left behind. We will explore these differences and the interrelations that make these differences possible. When we do so, we will discuss issues such as race and racism, social class, differing understandings of gender, sexuality and sexual identity, and violence. If you have problems dealing critically with these topics, this is not the class for you.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 8, 2009
Hist 4865 Gender, Race, and Empire in Asia
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This course will focus on the ways that ideas about race and gender
shaped and were shaped by colonialism, imperialism, and anti-colonial
nationalism in Asia. Examining both Asian and European imperialist
enterprises from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, we will read
works on the Chinese Qing Empire, British India, Dutch Indonesia, the
Japanese empire, and the US colony of the Philippines. It explores a
variety of topics including the control and construction of sex and
interracial intimate relations of all sort by colonial regimes; the
symbolic significance and manipulation of ideas of masculinity and
femininity in colonial settings; the implications of colonial regimes
for gender order and the lives and status of women and men; the role of
medical discourses in the development of ideas about gender and race in
colonial settings; and the uses of gender in nationalist discourse.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 8, 2009
HIST 4860 Environmental History of China
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This course will explore the evolution of environmental thought,
policy-making and practice in Chinese history. It begins with
consideration of the foundational ideas about the environment and human
interaction with it in early Chinese philosophical traditions
(Confucianism and Daoism). It then examines patterns of human impact on
the environment and the effects of environmental change on human life.
Specific topics include the effects of changes in agricultural methods,
demographic growth, economic development, health and disease, and state
policies on human practice and on the land from medieval times to the
early modern era to the twentieth century, including the period of the
Maoist revolution and the post-Mao reform era. It will also examine
responses to environmental problems and changing attitudes toward the
relationship between people and the environment and toward the growing
environmental crisis in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 7, 2009
HIST 4780 The Korean War
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The Korean War marked an important turning point in the Cold War and thereby assumed an international importance. The struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union had broken out in 1947 yet only after the beginning of hostilities of the Korean peninsula did the United States begin to rearmed a military establishment severely reduced after the end of World War II. The rearmament matched by the Soviet Union marked the beginning of an arms race that would affect the entire world and last until the end of the USSR.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 7, 2009
HIST 4750 United States Foreign Relations to 1898
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Explores the early history of the United States foreign relations, from the era of colonization to the Spanish-American War of 1898. Covers the rise of the United States as a world power, the impact of domestic developments on foreign relations, the significance of economic and financial developments, and evolving conceptions of sovereignty, nationality, and citizenship.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 6, 2009
HIST 3210 Age of Total War
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The purpose of this course will be to examine the far-reaching changes which have occurred in European society during the period of the World Wars. We will stress a balanced approach involving social, political, economic, cultural and military history. Special attention will be given to the Russian revolution and to the rise of Fascism and Nazism.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 6, 2009
HIST 3140 Modern British History
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This course investigates some of the major social and cultural developments in Britain between the Industrial Revolution and the end of the nineteenth century. Using the analytical categories of gender, race, and class, this course explores the themes of home and family, industrialization and urbanization, the rise of the Victorian state, the relationship between the nation and the empire, the tensions between science and religion, and the anxieties around sexuality and the body.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 6, 2009
HIST 3040 Medieval England
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The history of early medieval England is an intricate braid of the many peoples, cultures, and political alliances who at once embraced and defied the notion of political, religious and cultural unity. This course examines England's history from the fifth to the twelfth century. It examines the Anglo-Saxons, the Viking invasions, the Scandinavian dynastic claims, the Norman invasions and Anglo-Norman society. The course is heavily geared towards reading primary sources that focus on religious, political, social and legal history. Special attention will be given to the age of Bede, Alfred the Great, the Norman Conquest, and the reign of Henry II.
Spring Courses 2010
Publication Date: Oct 5, 2009
HIST 4700 African American History 1890-Present
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The history of African Americans has been a paradox of triumph in the face of tragedy. This course will present an examination of the black experience in America from 1890 to recent years to provide an understanding of the role African Americans have played in the history of the United States. This examination will include an assessment of why they were until the recent past excluded from the promise of American democracy. We will look at the various political, economic, social and cultural methods African Americans have employed to survive in an overwhelmingly hostile environment and assess the prospects for African Americans in the twenty-first century.
Strange Fruit
"Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop."
