SANABRIA | | TR 0930-1045 | | CRN 74901

HIST 512-001: History of Fascism

Fascism, or rather the misuse and misunderstanding of Fascism, has been bandied about recently as part of the discursive arsenal of the American Right toward the American Left and current Presidential administration. This course will take this unfortunate development as a point of departure for a deep semester-long exploration of the theory, origins, and tangible manifestations of European fascism and fascistic dictatorships in the twentieth century. We will certainly delve into the history of the two most famous fascist regimes (Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany), but also explore (possibly French?) origins of fascism, the social and cultural ramifications of living under a fascist regime, especially for women, and the long-lived fascistic dictatorships of General Francisco Franco in Spain and Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. It is hoped that students, once steeped in a strong understanding of the acute interwar crisis in Europe, will have a strong appreciation of and better definition of fascism than many of our contemporaneous pundits. Graduate students will also prepare additional readings and short book reviews, attend special sessions with the instructor, and complete a 15-page paper.

RYAN | | MWF 1400-1450 | | CRN 74902

HIST 518-001: Spain & Portugal to 1700

“Spain is different” was the slogan used by the caudillo Francisco Franco to encourage tourism to Spain in the 1970s, as the country had been effectively isolated by the international community due to Franco’s fascist rule. The slogan was designed to evoke the “exotic” qualities of Spain and its history. Of course, this elided the historical nuances of centuries’ worth of encounter and exchange among the many premodern peoples—particularly Christians, Jews, and Muslims—who all called the peninsula—land of the modern countries of Portugal, Spain, and Andorra—home. In this class, we’ll study the history of Spain and Portugal until roughly the end of the seventeenth century. Among some of the many themes investigated will be the waves of settlers and immigrants of the peninsula; the formation of Muslim al-Andalus and the development of the Christian Iberian kingdoms; social and cultural exchanges among Christians, Jews, and Muslims; conflict and coexistence; cultural and intellectual innovation; and the devastating consequences that are part of and follow the establishment of empires.  

BOKOVOY | | MW 1300-1415 | | CRN 37379

HIST 594-001: T: Teaching & Debating History

How should we teach History? In an age of declining History enrollments at colleges and universities, disinvestment in History education at the K-12 level, and a widespread disrespect for historical knowledge, this question matters more than ever. In this course, graduate and undergraduates will work together to study the most hotly contested debates, the best practices, and the most exciting innovations in history teaching.

SMITH | | MWF 1100-1150 | | CRN 70553

HIST 596-003: T: US in Era of WWII

HERRAN AVILA | | TR 0930-1045 | | CRN 74903

HIST 597-002: T: 20th Century Mexico

This course explores the political and social history of 20th century Mexico, from the turmoil of the 1910 revolution to the era of neoliberalism. We pay particular attention to roots of social discontent and the questions of equality and democracy. We look at the winding process of consolidation and decline of the post-revolutionary state, and the mobilization of workers, peasants, students, guerrilla organizations, intellectuals, women, indigenous peoples, and the urban middle class. By examining these histories of dissent, protest, and rebellion, the course provides a critical take on the creation, exertion, and contestation of power in Mexico and a historical perspective on the lasting legacies of its seemingly “unfinished” revolution. 

HERRAN AVILA | | TR 1400-1515 | | CRN 74904

HIST 597-001: T: Cold War Latin America

This course provides a critical perspective on how Latin Americans experienced the transformations and polarizations of the Cold War period. We assess the role of the United States in these histories but we give primacy to the agency of Latin American actors, and we situate the local and broader global contexts that shaped Cold War conflicts in the region. The course uses primary and secondary sources to get a grasp of different perspectives, and interrogates the extent to which the Cold War still informs much of the region’s present.

HUTCHISON | | TR 1100-1215 | | CRN 74905

HIST 597-003: T: Chile & Argentina post 1820

This course offers an intensive introduction to the countries of Southern South America in the national period, including Uruguay and Paraguay but with special emphasis on Chile and Argentina. We will begin by looking at the economic and administrative shifts of the late colonial period, independence movements and the protracted process of national consolidation, and the social changes stemming from export led growth and industrialization in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (including foreign immigration, the rise of organized labor, and changes in gender relations). Then we will analyze how the political experiences of the twentieth century—liberal reform, populism, revolution, military intervention and democratization—can be understood in terms of each country's political culture and institutional development. Why have generations of military and political leaders repeatedly failed to achieve sustainable development and political stability? How and why have authoritarian rulers come to power and enjoyed popular support? What do these national experiences tell us about the history of development, political sovereignty, democracy, and ethnic/class/gender relations in Latin America as a whole? Course materials include historical monographs, archival and published primary documents, testimonial literature, fiction and film. Class assignments and discussion will frequently revolve around two course readers of primary sources in translation – The Argentina Reader and The Chile Reader – allowing students to work closely with historical sources, as well as several historical monographs, testimonial literature, fiction and film. Students should plan to attend lectures, participate in class discussions, and read approximately 75 pages a week, as well as complete a midterm, final exam, and two 5-6 page papers based on the assigned readings. Graduate students will also prepare additional readings, attend special sessions, and complete a 15-page paper. 

GAUDERMAN | | MWF 1200-1250 | | CRN 75807

HIST 597-001: T: Latin American Gender & Sexuality

Scholars and activists frequently claim that the current status of women in Latin America stems from a colonial legacy of gender oppression and sexual repression. And yet, the status of women has changed substantially, not always for the better, since the colonial period. Similarly, sexuality in the colonial period contradicts modern notions of an evolution of sexual constraints constructed through public and private divisions of social space. We will examine the sources, methodologies, and theoretical approaches that shape the history of women and sexuality in early Latin America. The readings represent ethnic, racial, and class-based distinctions among individuals, and emphasize the importance of using diverse approaches in the reconstruction of gender and sexual norms, particularly for Indigenous persons and Afro-descendants. This course includes a focus on perceptions of same-sex attractions, Indigenous traditional religious practices, and witchcraft. The course ends with an analysis of how female figures from the colonial period, such as La Malinche and the Virgin of Guadalupe, have been incorporated into modern political agendas by intellectuals and political activists. Students will read, analyze, and discuss both primary and secondary sources to understand how history is conceived and written. 

RYAN | | MWF 0900-0950 | | CRN

HIST 604: Ancient & Medieval Mediterranean

From the ancient to medieval periods, the Mediterranean Sea was the point of intersection between the major civilizations of the age: the Egyptian, Roman, and Greek worlds that transformed into Latin Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic world. Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians, and Egyptians of the ancient world battled for control of the sea and its surrounding lands, while also sharing technology, culture, language, and trade goods. Medieval Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived in the Mediterranean along shifting frontiers, at times in both conflict and cooperation. In both of these eras, merchants, pilgrims, diplomats, and warriors traveled across the sea, often bringing with them cultural or economic products that contributed to a larger framework of commerce and communication. This course will examine the Mediterranean region, both as a geographical concept and as a stage for complex relationships, from the ancient through the late medieval periods. Topics running throughout the course will include: creation, maintenance, and crossing of boundaries; the balance between violence and cooperation in cross-cultural dialogue; relationships between religious minorities and their dominant society; and commercial and cultural exchanges between the major civilizations of the Mediterranean world.

BOKOVOY | | W 1600-1830 | | CRN 27712

HIST 664-001: Advanced Historiography

This course will introduce students to the intellectual conditions of the production of history.  While the core concern of the class will be to survey the key theoretical trends informing modern historiography, we will also consider the historical context in which those theories were developed, including the evolution of the profession.  We will stress the professional context in which each of the theorists and historians on our syllabus worked, and we will number ourselves among them by reflecting purposefully on our own identities and assumptions as historians.  In addition to mastering key trends in modern historiography, an important part of this course will be practicing forms of writing central to the historian’s craft as well as conventions of scholarly debate and discussion.

TRUETT | | M 1600-1830 | | CRN 72493

HIST 666-001: Sem:Empires & Others

In this graduate seminar, we will engage recent scholarly work on histories of empires and primarily Indigenous and nonstate others. With an eye in particular to early modern (15th-19th centuries) contexts and taking Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper’s ambitious Empires in World History as a point of departure, while also drawing on new scholarship in global Indigenous studies, histories of state-making and dynamics of state rule, and, in later parts of the class, of new dynamics of nationalism and nation-making as alternative pathways to incorporation. Over the course of the semester, we will ask how empires at different times and places (through their leaders, elites, subaltern subjects, and go-betweens) imposed their institutional authority over others; built and sustained political, military, and economic networks; managed internal ethnic and cultural differences; and imagined and improvised their place in the world at large. We will look, variously, at territorial and commercial, terrestrial and maritime, and sedentary and nomadic contexts—with somewhat greater attention to parts of the world in which the imperial historiographies are more richly developed (for instance, the history of the British Empire), or that connect to our departmental strengths in the histories of the Americas. We will also discuss points of overlap, entanglement, and resonance with global histories, frontier and borderlands histories, indigenous and subaltern histories, histories of trade and cross-cultural relations, and histories of capitalism and settler colonialism.

GRAHAM | | M 1600-1830 | | CRN 57609

HIST 668-001: Sem:Med Research & Biblio

This course will offer intensive training in the research and bibliographic skills necessary for the study of the Middle Ages while also introducing students to the history of medieval scholarship from the sixteenth century onwards. A key aspect of the course will be a detailed orientation to the major published resources available to medievalists, including the volumes of the Patrologia Latina, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and the Early English Text Society, as well as the important series Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile. Participants in the course will learn about the techniques used by scholarly editors when preparing a medieval text for use by a modern readership; they will also be introduced to the conventions of the modern apparatus criticus. Students will learn how to read and analyze charters and other types of medieval document and will receive instruction in the basics of such important ancillary disciplines as medieval chronology and sigillography. The section of the course devoted to the history of medieval scholarship will include a special focus on the origins and development of scholarship on pre-Conquest England from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. 

MASSOTH | | R 1600-1830 | | CRN 74906

HIST 685-001: Sem:Gendering Borderlands History

This seminar focuses on the recent and significant research methodologies and readings in which both borderlands and gender are categories of analysis. The seminar rethinks traditional historical narratives of borders and frontiers by considering how the inextricably linked social constructs of gender and race have evolved and have shaped social, cultural, political, and economic historical processes in contested spaces. This seminar will encourage graduate students to examine how gendered ideas placed on physical bodies complicated daily life and structured power – and the boundaries of nations. The goal of the class will include introducing graduate students to foundational gendered borderlands histories and the methodologies behind such scholarship (including de-colonial and gender theories, archival approaches, and publication goals). The focus will be on North American borderlands with options for individual topics, including Global South, Israel-Palestine, Philippines, medieval, Roman, and Mediterranean borderlands, etc. These comparisons will focus on encouraging students to understand the importance of interdisciplinary and transnational methodologies in shaping North American projects (and vice versa). Depending on where the graduate students are in their career, they will develop projects (historiographical, research proposals, syllabi, and/or primary research) that ask them to place an intersectional gendered analysis into their understanding of borderlands as a field. 

BIEBER | | R 1600-1830 | | CRN 74907

HIST 688-001: Sem:Brazil

This seminar will cover the dominant themes of Brazilian history - a complex intertwining of European, African and indigenous social, economic and cultural contributions. For the colonial period, main topics will include first contact, indigenous societies and sources, the development of planter and mining society, slavery, women and the family, and religion. Material on the modern period will highlight the themes of labor, politics, race, gender, and social history. Required readings are written in English or available in English translation. You do not need prior knowledge of Brazilian history to do well in this class. Students of US History and Spanish America will discover interesting points of comparison. Graduate students from outside programs such as Latin American Studies and Spanish & Portuguese also are welcome!

HUTCHISON | | T 1600-1830 | | CRN 62401

HIST 692-001: Sem:Researching Latin American Gender Revolution

From the soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution to la mujer metralleta, women’s participation in Latin America’s armed struggles have attracted popular and scholarly attention for decades, serving as one of the principle foci of women’s history in the region. But stories of women warriors is just a starting point for a much broader field of historical inquiry, which now includes: women’s participation in non-militarized revolutionary (and anti-revolutionary) politics; the construction of gender and sexuality in revolutionary cadres; revolutionary programs promoting women and/or gender equality; sexual violence in civil conflicts; revolutionary and reactionary masculinities; global feminist and internationalist projects; and many, many more topics. This course will begin by reviewing the historical literature on women, gender and revolution in twentieth Latin America, with a focus on representative works on Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Chile. Through common readings and seminar discussions, we will examine key historical debates – from the woman question to feminism and double militancy – that have roiled revolutionary movements, the socialist and authoritarian regimes they produced, and resulting historical scholarship. Finally, the seminar will also consider how recent attention to gender and sexuality has expanded the scope and significance of this field of historical inquiry. The work of this seminar will be organized around issues of research methodology and historical narrative, as students design and execute a semester-long research project on some aspect of the history of gender and revolution in Latin America. This 20 to 30 page research paper must be based on primary sources: although many of these will only be available in Spanish, students will lesser facility in that language may structure a topic around appropriate English-language sources. The research and writing process will be collaborative, in that students are required to present their work and critique each others’ efforts at various points throughout the semester.