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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
This course focuses on the history of America's relationship to the sea from the age of discovery through the heyday of merchant sail to the triumph of steam and the challenges of the twentieth century. Readings in primary sources and secondary works on the social, economic, and diplomatic implications of maritime activities culminate in a research paper. Topics such as shipbuilding, whaling, and fisheries are studied through museum exhibits and artifacts in the material culture component of the course.
Prerequisite:
Biology 101 or Geosciences/Maritime Studies 104, or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
This course will explore the political, social, and cultural history of British North America from its first colonization to the coming of the American Revolution. The course will mix case studies of the specific colonies with broader explorations of imperial rivalries for control of North America, the various forms of cross-cultural interaction between colonists and Native Americans, and the place of colonial America within the broader world (or what historians now call "the Atlantic World").
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3.00 Credits
The American Revolution produced a galaxy of brilliant politicians and statesmen of extraordinary courage, intellect, creativity, and character. They succeeded in drafting an unparalleled Constitution and establishing enduring democratic political institutions while nevertheless failing to grapple with the wrenching issue of slavery and the rights of women. In this course, we will explore the lives, ideas, and political leadership of these men, most of whom belonged to the social elite of their day: Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams,and Hamilton. We will study in depth their superb writings, such as the correspondence between Madison and Jefferson and between Adams and Jefferson, and Madison's and Hamilton's Federalist essays. We will also read recent interpretations of the founding generation by Gordon Wood, Joseph Ellis, Bernard Bailyn, and others.
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3.00 Credits
This course will trace the development of the presidency from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln. By focusing on the most consequential presidents of the period, the class will explore presidential successes and failures during times of peace and prosperity and during times of war and depression. As often as possible, the class will also examine the tactics of these presidents' political rivals to understand how competing politicians tried to navigate the social and political terrain of their day. Through the study of biography and primary sources, students will offer critical appraisals of presidents and leave the course with a historical understanding of the types of challenges that those who have held the office have often faced. The course will also provide an in-depth survey of United States political history during the tumultuous early years of the nation.
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3.00 Credits
During the course of the semester, we shall investigate two broad, interrelated topics: slavery in the antebellum South, and the impact of slavery on Southern civilization. Our approach will be primarily topical. In the first half of the course, we shall look at subjects like the foreign and domestic slave trade, patterns of work and treatment, the nature of the master-slave relationship, resistance and rebellion, and slave cultural, social, and family life. The second half of the course will concentrate on the influence of the institution of slavery on the mind, social structure, and economy of the Old South, and slavery's impact on Southern politics and the decision for secession in 1860-61.
Prerequisite:
Open to first-year students with instructor's permission
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3.00 Credits
A study of the history of the American South from 1877 to the present. Social, political and economic trends will be examined in some detail: the rule of the "Redeemers" following the end of Reconstruction; tenancy, sharecropping, and the rise of agrarian radicalism; Southern Progressivism; the coming of racial segregation and the destruction of the Jim Crow system during the years of the Civil Rights movement; Southern politics during the depression and post-World War II years.
Prerequisite:
Open to first-year students with instructor's permission
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3.00 Credits
This course will cover major themes in American medical history and historiography from the colonial period through the twentieth century. Every aspect of American "medicine" underwent tremendous transition during the period we will study. Medical education, the medical profession, and notions about cures and care changed fundamentally, as did ideas about the nature of illness itself. Our course of study, in addition to charting ways in which the practice of medicine in America has developed, will make an equal effort to understand how medicine has changed and affected American society. Topics that we will investigate include cholera, TB, and childbirth in American society, as well as other medical phenomena.
Prerequisite:
Open to first-year students with instructor's permission
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3.00 Credits
This course examines the underlying tension between the notion of American pluralism and the desire for homogeneity through the study of the history of immigration to the United States from Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Special attention will be paid to the condition in the sending countries and the historical ties of those countries to the United States, immigration and labor recruitment, anti-immigrant sentiments, and the development of American immigration policy. This is an EDI course because it examines how people from different countries and cultures interacted with each other and those already in the United States. Theirs is a story of immigration, exclusion, resistance, accommodation, labor and the creation of an American image of pluralism, coupled with the desire for assimilated immigrants.
Prerequisite:
Open to first-year students with instructor's permission
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3.00 Credits
The Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ended an era of black activism that used the courts to overturn exclusionary practices of American education, opening a new civil rights era that introduced new strategies and tactics of protest. This course introduces students to the themes and issues of the black freedom movement as it transpired after 1954 and continued into the 1980s in the United States. Focusing on African Americans' demands for the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and placing their perspectives at the center, the course follows a chronological format that covers the architecture of racial segregation and the culture of Jim Crow; examines the persistence of activism and resistance in the form of direct action, articulations of black power, and attempts at coalition building; explores the intersection of ideology and activism; assesses local, regional, and national perspectives; and uses the black freedom movement as a window onto other social movements, including nationalist and feminist movements. In considering the modern civil rights movement, this course necessarily examines the ways that racial power and privilege in the United States operated to disadvantage specific peoples. Asking how African Americans have differently defined rights, the course also examines diversity among black activists. This course meets the EDI designation in that it examines how "cultures, peoples, and societies have interacted and responded to one another in the past" specifically: by investigating differences and similarities--gender, class, region--among non-white and white Americans; and by using African American experiences to examine the links between access, opportunity, and inequality.
Prerequisite:
Open to first-year students with instructor's permission
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3.00 Credits
If race is socially and historically constructed, then the study of race relations in the U.S. extends to the topic of whiteness. And if we are never without the past, then "whiteness" must be a part of current discussions about politics, citizenship, and social issues. Focusing on how historians have written about whiteness in American history, this course uses the prism of race to explore social, political, and economic development in U.S. history. The class follows the development of "whiteness" through a chronology that begins in colonial Virginia, travels through immigration in the nineteenth century, examines racial politics and popular culture in the twentieth century, and ends with a look at the current election season. This course is framed by several questions: What is whiteness, and what has it meant in the history of the United States? Who is (and is not) white? What about other analytical categories, like gender and class (or region or ethnicity or sexuality): how have these experiences shaped and been shaped by the racial category of whiteness? Because historically whiteness has carried overtones of power, privilege, and wealth in the United States, the course necessarily critiques the roots of racial disparities. This class is not for the faint-hearted. Informed participation is necessary to its success. The course fulfills the requirements for the Exploring Diversity Initiative because it examines the differences and similarities between white Americans and other American cultures, and because it explores whiteness as a prism for understanding the operations of power and privilege in American society.
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