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 History
Professor Pankratz,
Chair
Professor Fahy
Associate Professor deSyon
Assistant Professors Kiddy
and Serlin
300 Level Courses
The following course descriptions represent
the Communications course offerings
| HIS
311 |
American Social History
This course will alternate between two themes. The American
Family, 1600-1900 addresses the gradual transition from the
patriarchal family model of the Colonial period to the more
mutual relations of Victorian America, and the relation of private
life to social change through an examination of such topics
as demography, gender, Revolutionary ideology, industrialization,
and childrearing practices. Class and Ethnicity in American
History examines significant differences and divisions within
American society; the sources of these divisions in immigration
patterns, economic development, and cultural expression; the
ways in which different eras have understood class and ethnicity;
and the attempts of institutions such as the church, the school,
the law, political parties, and the government to exacerbate
or ameliorate social divisions. |
| HIS
312 |
American Economic History: The United States as a Developing
Country
This course seeks to account for the remarkable economic
growth which has taken Americans from the starvation of Colonial
Jamestown through the commercial and industrial revolutions
to the undeniable, though ill-distributed, abundance of the
post-industrial present. The ecological, religious, and technological
preconditions of economic growth receive attention as do the
political, social, and individual consequences of that growth.
The drama is carried forward by a full cast of economic actors:
farmers, merchants, slaves, industrialists, inventors, workers,
and consumers – male and female, adult and child alike. |
| HIS
322 |
The City in American History
The development of American cities from the colonial time
to the present. Great emphasis will be placed on the relationship
of the growth of cities to the larger social, economic, and
political developments in American society. The newer quantitative
techniques used to describe historical developments in urbanization
also will be emphasized. |
| HIS
352 |
Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World: Explorations in
the History of the Black Diaspora from Sao Tome to Saint Domingue
A majority of the persons who migrated to the Americas before
1800 came from Africa. Very few of them came willingly, but
without their economic and cultural contributions the world
we know today would not have come into being. The goal of this
course is to begin to understand the experiences and achievements
of these Africans and their descendants in four regions of the
Atlantic world – Africa itself, Brazil, the West Indies,
and the Chesapeake – between the mid-15th century and the
revolutionary struggle for Haitian independence at the beginning
of the nineteenth. |
| HIS
361 |
Medieval History I
This course is a study of the fusion of classical and Christian
culture, the Barbarian invasions, the nature of Byzantine and
Islamic civilizations, the rise of early medieval kingdoms and
feudalism, Church state conflict, and the early Crusades. Careful
attention will be given to the blending of religion, politics,
and social history with the literature and art of the period. |
| HIS
362 |
Medieval History II
History 362 is an examination of the growth of the state
system and the crisis within the church: Papal power; the growth
of new religious orders; dissent; the Inquisition and the dissolution
of the medieval church; the flowering of chivalry; Romanesque,
Gothic, and Mudejar Art in the West; and a final synthesis of
medieval civilization. |
| HIS
370 |
Early Modern Europe
What ties together the first use of knives and forks, witchcraft,
coffeehouses, divine monarchs and the first electricity experiments?
Europe’s early modern period, extending from the end of
the Renaissance to the beginning of the French Revolution in
1789. This era reflects the slow decline of certain notions
of nobility and monarchy and the development of new ideas concerning
science, rationality, and freedom, all of which will influence
modern Europe to varying degrees. This course will examine several
facets of this time period, including the rise of absolutism,
early modern popular culture, mercantilism and the rise of slavery,
and the Enlightenment and its challenges to the established
order. |
| HIS
371 |
Nineteenth-Century Europe
This course will introduce you to the hallmarks of Europe’s
nineteenth-century history. Historical and analytical constructs
such as industrialization, social change, gender relations,
racism, liberalism, nationalism, imperialism, and socialism/communism
will provide the framework for examining specific topics including
the French Revolution, the Congress of Vienna, the separation
of gendered spheres, the revolutions of 1848, the unifications
of Germany and Italy, dueling, honor, and the “Scramble
for Africa”. |
| HIS
372 |
Twentieth-Century Europe
This course will introduce you to the concepts, trends,
and events fundamental to Europe’s development in the twentieth
century. Important themes – including socialism/communism,
fascism, nationalism, racism, gender identity, and post-war
reconciliation – offer a framework within which we will
examine specific topics such as the First World War, the Russian
Revolution, the rise of fascist regimes, the Second World War,
the Cold War in Europe, the uprisings of 1968, the revolutions
of 1989, and the war in the former Yugoslavia. |
| HIS
373 |
The Holocaust
This course is designed to investigate the Holocaust,
one of the most significant events in modern European history.
To do so, the course will first consider the conditions within
European society that led to the Final Solution. Among the
themes included are: the role and image of the Jew in European
society; the development of racial anti-Semitism in the 19th
century; and the assimilation of the Jews in Western European
societies.
Although this course focuses primarily on the destruction
of the European Jews, it cannot, however, be divorced from
the history of Nazi Germany, nor can it ignore the plight
and suffering of non-Jews who also experienced the concentration
and extermination camps. Therefore, several other themes will
be incorporated: Hitler’s rise to power in Germany; the
development and implementation of Nazi policy concerning the
“enemies” of Nazism; life within the ghettos and
concentration camps; issues of collaboration and resistance
both in and outside Germany; the uremberg trials; and the
legacy of Nazism in contemporary American and European society.
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