Tentative Schedule

This class introduces key ideas and concepts for the writing of historical materialist analysis. It begins by considering some of Karl Marx's seminal writings as a way to explore the nexus between Marxist theory and historical methodology. It also considers how scholars interpreted historical materialism over the twentieth century to provide a critical theory of Marx's ideas and concepts, which remain important for historians in the twenty-first century. This class provides a foundation for the debates in contemporary social theory and contemporary history. 

Part one of a two-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students during the second year of the program; not required for M.A. students. Includes primary research and writing a research paper, often related to a future dissertation topic.

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only.

This course introduces graduate students to some of the most foundational ideas and debates that have shaped historiographical practice over the past half-century. Surveying historiographical models or theoretical provocations that have commanded the attention of a broad range of historians working across the various subfields, this course explores questions at the heart of the historical discipline, including: what is time and how, exactly, do historians grapple with issues of change or continuity? How do historians establish temporal and spatial boundaries for their narratives, and how those choices reflect different theoretical and interdisciplinary interventions? And how do historians approach primary materials to understand experiences of difference and embodiment? Though not an exhaustive survey, the readings raise fundamental questions about how historians imagine the past as they try to write about it, how they constitute it as a domain of study, how they can claim to know it, and how (and why) they argue about it. The aim of the course is to explore these questions as clearly as possible and to encourage you to make your (provisional) answers to them as explicit as you can. 

Part one of a three-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students during their first year of the program. History in the Professions is a year-long colloquium for first year graduate students. Students, faculty members, and guests will gather for 90-minute sessions five times each quarter for a variety of presentations, hands-on workshops, and guided explorations. This colloquium centers conversations and topics that illuminate the hidden curriculum of graduate school, explore the political economy of labor in the university, and provide students a foundational introduction to the historical profession. 

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only. 

How does the affirmation of neglected actors, spaces and processes reshape our understanding of the French Revolution? What is a Revolution that includes people of color, the enslaved and colonial subjects; women, same-sex attracted and transgender people; Protestants, Jews, Muslims and neo-Pagans; vegetarians, utopians and proponents of free love? What happens when we think about borderlands, colonies, exclaves and entrepots, and consider precursor, parallel, conjunctural and counter-revolutions across the globe? The French Revolution was once treated as the founding event of modernity, whether as the realization of Enlightenment ideas, the paradigm of bourgeois revolution, or the birthplace of modern political culture. This was a Revolution conceived within narrow national confines, focusing mostly on white men, and telling a story of secular, Western modernity. Over the last fifty years, that conception has been progressively dismantled to reveal an event on a global scale that was not simply "French" with a radiant impact, nor even "Atlantic" but a far more plural experience both shaping and shaped by emerging global dynamics. If the outcome of that struggle was the birth of a nineteenth century imperial order, the tools of resistance to that order would include the radical ideas and symbols of the French Revolution and its "unthinkable" Haitian counterpart. This class will investigate the French Revolution on a global scale, across the French Empire and the world, from Europe to Latin America, and from Africa to China. Students will be welcome to consider any of these spaces in connection to the 18th century revolutionary crisis.

This class introduces graduate students to classic and current scholarship on slavery in the African Diaspora. The course is designed for students interested in a field examination in African America, Diaspora, or race and gender in early America(s). The course will be taught with a history focus and is open to scholars from other disciplines. Some of the questions explored include but are not limited to the following: What is Diaspora? What are the challenges for teaching and researching enslaved life? What were the precursors of contact between Africans and the rest of the modern world prior to chattel slavery? How did Africans survive the harrowing middle passage? How did Africans form community in the various parts of the Atlantic world? What were the gendered differences between enslaved men and women in the Diaspora? How did region and crop cultivation impact African life in the Diaspora? Where was resistance to slavery most prominent? And what can a presumed absence of armed rebellion also tell us about the Diaspora? How can slavery and Diaspora inform conceptions of colonialism and nation?

Assignments include at least one oral presentation and written summaries. Students will also prepare a research proposal that can (but does not have to) incorporate students' doctoral projects with course material. Potential topics include: enslaved agency, cultural and artistic expression, literacy, digital humanities, gender and the law, the Black Freedom struggle and Black radicalism from within the perspective of enslaved communities and the African Diaspora.

This course introduces students to many of the ways historical interpretations circulate, with particular attention to characteristics of scholarly and public spheres. The course will interrogate the role of academic journals by putting that form of communication in conversation with other forms of interpretation and consumption of historical information. In this comparative context, students will engage with the questions, best practices, and ethical considerations at the heart of scholarly editorial work. 

Students will develop foundational skills that are applicable to careers in publishing and professional communications. Class meetings are a mix of presentation, discussion, demonstration, and hands-on workshops. Assignments consist of summary and analysis of texts and video; weekly journal exercises to prepare for in-class discussion; practice exercises in proofreading, copy editing, style editing, citation checking, and fact checking; and a final reflection paper. 

After taking this course, you will have the opportunity to put your skills into practice through an internship at the Journal of World History.  

Introduction to historical methodologies and preparation for the first-year research paper. Required of all first-year doctoral students and M.A. students.

Repeatability: Unlimited as topics vary.

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only.

Part two of a two-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students. Taken during the second year of the Ph.D. program; not required for M.A. students. Includes primary research and writing a research paper, often related to a future dissertation topic.

Prerequisite: HISTORY 204A. HISTORY 204A with a grade of B- or better

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only.

Part two of a three-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students during their first year of the program. History in the Professions is a year-long colloquium for first year graduate students. Students, faculty members, and guests will gather for 90-minute sessions five times each quarter for a variety of presentations, hands-on workshops, and guided explorations. This colloquium centers conversations and topics that illuminate the hidden curriculum of graduate school, explore the political economy of labor in the university, and provide students a foundational introduction to the historical profession. 

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only. 

Europe, World

Over the course of the long twentieth century the world was transformed by a radical process of global integration. Driven by the accelerating pace of capitalist accumulation and the explosion of new technologies and modes of governance, globalization recast the world and profoundly shaped the experience of the modern era. 

This seminar will consider how patterns of capitalist integration structured new experiences of space and time, shaping the uneven geographies and temporalities that charactered the twentieth century and giving rise to new political discourses, analytical concepts, and social practices. Within this broad framework we will explore a number of specific themes, including: imperialism, nationalism, violence, territoriality, ideology, technology, the body, mass culture, and the state.

Combining works of global history with social theory, literature, and film, we will focus primarily on examples from Europe, North America, and Asia, and the interactions and entanglements between these regions.

This course looks at the ways in which the countries of Mesoamerica dealt with the place of Blackness in their national imaginary. (This course uses a geographical construction of Mesoamerica that is inclusive of Panama.) As these countries emerged from their colonial origins, they were faced with the reality that sovereignty was relegated to countries of the Global North that were identified with whiteness. Originally, these nations had to navigate their "mestizo-ness"  and tried to whitewash their indigenous past as well as the descendants of the enslaved Africans. However, they soon had to deal with the reality of increasing numbers of people of African descent within their borders and what this meant for their national identity. This influx of Black migrants was tied to a second phenomenon, the specter of US empire. Runaways from plantations, the construction of the Panama Canal, and US agribusiness aggrandized the number of Afro-descended people in the countries from Mexico to Panama. 

This course will explore the histories that brought people of African descent into the independent countries and how that was intertwined with the expansion of US hegemony. This course will keep gender, class, and sexuality at the forefront of the ways in which these countries promoted visions of the nation rooted in anti-Blackness, resisted suzerainty, and connected the two. Moreover, this course will explore the experiences of people of African descent in these countries and the ways they asserted their place in the nation.

Research and writing of a paper demonstrating command of historical methods explored in HISTORY 202A. Required of all first-year Ph.D. students and M.A. students.

Prerequisite: HISTORY 202A. HISTORY 202A with a grade of B- or better

Repeatability: May be taken for credit 1 times as topics vary.

Part three of a three-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students during their first year of the program. History in the Professions is a year-long colloquium for first year graduate students. Students, faculty members, and guests will gather for 90-minute sessions five times each quarter for a variety of presentations, hands-on workshops, and guided explorations. This colloquium centers conversations and topics that illuminate the hidden curriculum of graduate school, explore the political economy of labor in the university, and provide students a foundational introduction to the historical profession. 

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only. 

The human body might seem self-evident in its appearance and function. Historical texts, however, expose certain biases in our contemporary understandings of what a normative body looks like and how it is ideally supposed to operate. This course will examine divergent perceptions of the body from multiple historical and geographical perspectives -- from ancient times to the present day, from Asia to Africa to the Americas -- exploring the ways in which political, social, epistemic, and gendered contexts shape how bodies are perceived, experienced, and medicalized. Rather than approaching the body as an ahistorical and epistemologically transparent vessel, the readings in this course will highlight the contingent, and sometimes disputed, nature of human anatomy and physiology across time and space.

This course counts toward the Graduate Emphasis in Medical Humanities.