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HIST 280 Topics

SPRING 2024

 

Cynthia Bouton                                                                    

HIST 280-599: Global Food, Culture, Politics, and Society in History

We will explore what local, regional, colonial, migrating, national, and global cultures ate, how that changed overtime, and why.  We will consider how cultures understood food, who produced, traded in it, and consumed it. We will consider episodes of famine and abundance, the class, race, and gender dynamics of food, and why food is such a political issue. Students will develop an original research paper in this is writing-intensive (W) course.

 

April Hatfield

HIST 280-901: Christianity and Capitalism in the Atlantic World, 1600-1800

In the early modern Atlantic world, people used Christianity both to endorse and to criticize the development of market economies.  In this course we will examine their debates as the basis for introducing the main ideas of historical writing and research. Students will develop an original research paper in this is writing-intensive (W) course.

 

Robin Roe

HIST 280-902: Newspaper Journalism, Environmental Disaster, and the Collective Memory

From the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 through the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, people have been riveted by print journalism that sensationalizes human suffering. This same sensationalized journalism has often demonized ethnic, racial, and immigrant groups, trying to reduce readers’ sympathies for victims by deflecting blame onto them or by printing unsubstantiated reports of looting or violence by ethnic, racial, or immigrant groups. Many sensationalized newspaper stories have remained dominant in the collective memory long after proven inaccurate. Seminar participants will learn about the historian’s craft through a public history project. They will examine sensationalism, collective memory, bias, and resistance to bias in print newspaper reports on environmental (including natural) disasters through the 1950s. Those enrolled will learn to evaluate primary and secondary sources, conduct effective primary source research in public digital newspaper archives, write a proposal, and methods of communicating research to the public. The final project will be a written analysis supported by primary and secondary sources. Students will develop an original research paper in this is writing-intensive (W) course.

 

Trent MacNamara

HIST 280-903: Popular Morality in America

For centuries, questions of right and wrong have brought Americans together, pushed them apart, guided their everyday behavior, and shaped their formal politics. This course begins with a short introduction to major moral debates in U.S. history, focusing on the ideas that most engaged ordinary Americans. Following that introduction, we examine the “craft of history”: how to choose significant and promising research questions, locate primary sources that speak to a question, analyze those sources in light of other historians’ work, and write in clear, elegant prose. The course concludes with students’ production of a work of original scholarship: a 10-13-page essay that contributes to historical knowledge on popular morality in America. Students will develop an original research paper in this is writing-intensive (W) course.

 

Olga Dror

HIST 280-905: WWII IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

This is a writing-intensive course that introduces students majoring in history to the craft of the profession through a variety of strategies and techniques, such as lectures, discussions, work with primary and secondary sources, and writing laboratories. All of these will help students in their successful completion of a research project related to the subject of the course – Asia and WWII.

The course will cover different aspects of World War II in East and Southeast Asia, such as the origins and development of hostilities, wartime societies, culture, collaboration, resistance, colonialism, nationalism, and the outcomes of the war.  The course will also address certain effects of the war in the United States upon Asian Americans and upon American attitudes toward Asians. Students will develop an original research paper in this is writing-intensive (W) course.