First-Year Courses in History (Division 390)

Fall Term, 1999 (September 8 - December 22, 1999)

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Michael Wintroub (wintroub@umich.edu)

Credits: (4;3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wintroub/

The first half of the European history survey course covers a sweeping period of over a millennium. The course is designed to expose students to general outlines and chronology of European history and to encourage critical, skeptical analytical thinking. To anchor our flying coverage of this long and varied time, we will focus on developments in culture (art, architecture, literature), social organization (family, community, gender relations), and in political organization and theory. Readings will include a textbook, primary sources, challenging interpretive essays. Lecture time will be punctuated by small-group discussions, and active participation is strongly encouraged. Slides will frequently accompany lectures.

History 121/Asian Studies 121. Great Traditions of East Asia.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Holcombe

No Description Provided

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Section 001.

Instructor(s): Gary Beckman (sidd@umich.edu) , John Turner (persons@umich.edu)

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: https://cgi.www.umich.edu/~proflame/nes100/

See Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Turkish, and Islamic Studies 100.001.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Sumathi Ramaswamy (sumathi@umich.edu)

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is an introduction to the civilization of India, that is, the region of South Asia consisting of the modern nation-states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. We will begin with the first Indian "civilization", that of the Indus Valley, and then go on to consider the political history of the sub-continent in terms of the formation of empire systems from 6th c. B.C. through the "classical" period and the establishment of Muslim rule in the 13th c. C.E. Against this background, we will study the following themes: kingship and polity; social and religious identities; the development of urban cultures, and commercial relations with a wider world; cosmography, geography and maps; and gender and sexuality. We will close with a consideration of India's encounter with the European world, the establishment of colonial rule in the subcontinent, and the formation of the nation-states of today. Course requirements include a midterm and a final exam.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Victor Lieberman (eurasia@umich.edu)

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Southeast Asia is one of the world's most culturally diverse regions, home to Buddhist, Muslim, Confucian, and Christian civilizations. It boasts ancient monuments of surpassing grandeur and symbolic complexity. It was the scene of the bloodiest conflict since 1945, the Vietnam War. Until recently it had the world's fastest growing regional economy, and it remains an area of great importance to Japan as well as the United States. This course offers an introduction (and thus assumes no prior knowledge) to Southeast Asian history from the earliest civilizations, through the colonial conquest, the indigenous political reaction – of which Vietnamese Communism and the Vietnam Wars were one expression – and the contemporary economic scene. The course seeks to define Southeast Asia's uniqueness as well as its evolving ties to the rest of the world. Midterm, final, and optional paper. Two lectures, one discussion section per week.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Maris Vinovskis (vinovski@umich.edu)

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This lecture/discussion course will examine central issues and events in the history of the territories that became the United States, and the peoples who lived there, from the late 16th to the middle of the 19th centuries. Among the topics that will be considered are the territorial expansions of Europeans into the Americas; the creation of Anglo-American colonies; the social, political, and cultural orders of British North America; the creation of an independent American republic in the Revolution; and the destruction of that first republic in the War Between the States. The required readings will include both primary and secondary sources, and will be examined in weekly discussion sections. There will be both a midterm and a final examination, and active class participation will be expected in the sections.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Maria Montoya (mmontoya@umich.edu)

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mmontoya/hist161/

This course is an undergraduate survey of U.S. history from 1865 to the present. We will examine major social, cultural, political, and economic events that shaped the United States after the Civil War. We will focus particularly on: Reconstruction, Westward Movement, Industrialization, Progressivism, World War I, Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Sixties, and Reagan Republicanism. This survey introduces the students to urban, labor, ethnic, and women’s history of the time period through extensive use of primary sources. The students will be examined in weekly discussion sections over their readings of both primary and secondary sources. There will be a midterm and a final. Active class participation will be expected in the sections.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Fredrick Amrine (amrine@umich.edu) , Geoffrey Eley (ghe@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See German 171.001.

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

“The Writing of History” courses offer students the opportunity to learn writing through the study of historical texts, debates, and events. Each “Writing of History” section will study a different era, region, and topic in the past, for the common purpose of learning how history is written and how to write about it. Students will read the work of modern historians as well as documents and other source materials from the past, such as historical novels, letters, diaries, or memoirs. In each case the goal will be to learn how to construct effective arguments, and how to write college-level analytic papers. History 195 satisfies the first-year writing requirement. Each section will enroll a maximum of twenty students.

Section 001 – Christianity and Political, Social, and Economic Revolutions in Nineteenth-Century Europe.

Instructor(s): Edward Mathieu (eccm@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Christianity has been throughout its history a driving force in society, and while the nineteenth century was "the archetypal period of secularization," it was also "a great age of religious revival." In this course students will explore the place of Christianity in the political, social, and economic 'revolutions' of the nineteenth century in Europe. Specific issues we will address are: 1) the ideas of the French Revolution and religiously based opposition to the Revolution; 2) the importance of religion in the formation of European middle classes; 3) religion and middle-class social thought and action, including middle-class mission work aimed at the lower classes; 4) proletarian responses to religion, and religion as a basis for resistance; 5) religion and the rise of the modern welfare state; 6) the place of religion in the awakening or inventing of national consciousness. Reading assignments will pair writings of historians with historical documents. Students will write short critical reviews focusing on three main issues: 1) grasping a historian's primary argument; 2) assessing a monograph's use of sources; and 3) examining the biases and circumstances of production of an individual source. As a midterm assignment, students will amplify one of these reviews into a larger critique, taking account of class discussions. A term project will focus on the analysis of a primary text such as a pamphlet or speech, a law, a set of images (such as political cartoons or pictures of religious parades), a novel, or a memoir.

Section 002 – The History of Childhood and Adolescence in Europe and North America in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Instructor(s): Andrew Donson (donson@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

What was it like to be a young person in the 1950s, the 1920s, or the 1850s? What was it like to go to school then? Did teenagers date? Did they engage in politics? Is it possible that children and adolescents influenced history just like adults? These are some of the questions we will try to answer in this first year writing seminar. The course will introduce students to the burgeoning scholarship on the history of childhood and adolescence. It will also teach critical reading of childhood memoirs and other primary sources. Students will learn the art of historical argumentation and narrative as they design a final research project of their own choice.

Section 003 – Transatlantic Encounters: The European Discovery, Conquest, and Colonization of the Americas.

Instructor(s): Kathy Camp (ckcamp@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This class will examine the creation of the Spanish Americas as an act of imagination and as the result of actions by Spanish settlers and indigenous inhabitants. Before 1492, there existed no place named "America." During the sixteenth century, thousands of Spaniards immigrated there. How was America--both as an idea and a society--brought into existence? We will begin with an examination of European and Amerindian societies prior to 1492 in order to understand the beliefs as well as the social and economic pressures present in each when they met. We will examine the figure of Christopher Columbus and ask how historians have interpreted his role over the centuries. We will look at the conquest through the eyes of both Spanish and indigenous chroniclers and seek to understand how historians’ use of one or the other of these sources could lead them to different conclusions about Amerindian society and about why the conquest succeeded. And we will examine the creation of colonial Latin American society, asking how it blends institutions and practices from Spanish and Amerindian contexts. In pursuit of answers to these questions, we will read both texts written in the sixteenth century as well as more recent scholarship from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Course requirements will include roughly 150-200 pages of reading per week, several short reaction papers, and a longer term paper to be handed in at the end of the course.

Section 004 – German Nationalism, 1806-1945.

Instructor(s): Jeff Wilson

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The history of German nationalism is a compelling subject. It is at once a story of the triumphs and the tragedies of the modern world. This course will examine the development of various forms of German national identity and nationalism from their growing influence among intellectuals during Napoleonic Wars to their cataclysmic explosion under Nazism. Through the examination of several documents from the period (available in translation) and current historical scholarship, this seminar will introduce students to the critical analysis of texts and the use of evidence to construct arguments. These lessons will be reinforced by a number of writing assignments culminating in a research paper.

The aim of this course is to understand the history of German nationalism: who were nationalists, what were their beliefs, why were these ideas attractive to the German public, how did their appeal spread, and how did they change? In answering these questions, students will not only gain valuable insight into one of the central issues of German history, but will also develop an understanding of the workings of nationalism in general (an important project in light of recent events in the Balkans). In order to gain access to these themes, we will examine a variety of documents from the period, ranging from works of jurisprudence, folklore and history (itself an important element in the national project) to poetry, architecture and film. Alongside these primary texts, we will read the work of contemporary scholars to both contextualize our discussions and to examine how historians construct arguments. -

Section 005 – Women and the Surrealist Revolution.

Instructor(s): Don LaCoss (donlacos@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This class is designed to teach students the skills needed to write an argumentative essay about the effects of ideas and images on the human experience over time. Exercises center on the crafting of paper topics, historical research technique, and the effective organization of primary source material. The course is organized around the history of women's participation in the revolutionary surrealist movement; we will study the ways in which surrealist women disrupted the dominant conventions of "good," "normal," and "beautiful" in the service of political and social liberation.

History 195. The Writing of History.

Section 006.

No Description Provided

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Section 001 – History of Jewish Women from Talmud to Tekhines.

Instructor(s): Stefanie Siegmund (siegmund@umich.edu)

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

In this first-year history seminar you will be introduced to fundamental historical questions such as the relationship between law and social reality and the interplay of class and gender. You will do this while developing skills in reading primary (prescriptive and descriptive) sources, studying the history of Jewish women in pre-modern Christian and Muslim contexts (mainly North Africa, Spain, Italy and western Europe). Specific topics we may examine include: marriage, dowry, and inheritance; divorce, the 'agunah; widowhood; marital and extra-marital sexuality; concubinage, child marriage, slavery, and polygyny. We will also step outside of social history to examine the image of women in rabbinic texts written by men, the roles assigned to women in some aspects of rabbinic culture and the qabbalah, and the history of Jewish women's piety (including kashrut) and prayer in different Jewish sub-cultures. Grades will be based on active participation in the seminar and from a series of short papers and oral reports.

Section 002 – Criminal Responsibility in Anglo-American History. (Honors).

Instructor(s): Thomas Green (tagreen@umich.edu)

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This seminar deals with several fundamental issues in western civilization as they have manifested themselves in the Anglo-American past: the requisites for criminal guilt; the means of determining whether one possesses those requisites (typically, the criminal trial); and the most common justifications for imposition of punishment (retribution, deterrence, and reform). We shall study these matters in relation to two central ideas of freedom: political liberty and human free will. Special attention will be given to: the history of the jury as a “buffer” between the state and the individual or the community; the manner in which challenges to the presumption that humans possess the ability freely to control their behavior have shaped the institutions and ideas of Anglo-American criminal justice. Students will analyze and discuss primary sources and recent historical writings and will write several short papers.

Section 003 – Politics and Culture of Race in Post-1945 U.S. Meets with American Culture 102.001. Evening Meetings. on Sept. 13 & Nov. 11, 7-10 P.M. Required As Part of First-Year Intergroup Relations Seminars (FIGS).

Instructor(s): Matthew Countryman (mcountry@umich.edu)

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See American Culture 102.001.

Section 001 – The Rise of Environmentalism and Radical Science in Cold War America.

Instructor(s): Nicholas Steneck (nsteneck@umich.edu)

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Science, technology, and engineering were crucial components of American life in the decades following World War II. The Atomic Bomb, radar, electronic computers, space travel, penicillin, the Polio vaccine, open-heart surgery, pacemakers, and the discovery of the role of DNA in inheritance provided ample evidence of the power of science and the capacity of engineering to put science to work, presumably for the good of society.

This seminar will explore the disillusionment with science and technology that first emerged in the 1950s – at a time when support for science and technology were supposedly at their peak. Throughout the term, the class will read in common one book on the 1950s, either David Halberstam, The Fifties, or another shorter work, and view several videos about the '50s. Additionally, teams of two or three students will study in common books or collections of articles from the 1950s that in one way or another criticized science, technology, or the institutions that supported them, such as the early writings of Rachel Carson. The class will also work jointly as a research team to categorize major political, social, and cultural trends of the 1950s for use in reaching conclusions about the forces that slowly changed the way Americans thought about science and technology.

Grades will be based on class participation, three short papers, and one oral presentation.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Michele Mitchell (mmitch@umich.edu)

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is designed as a survey of African-American people, politics, and culture since emancipation. From Reconstruction to migration, from world wars to mass social protest, we will assess how large-scale demographic and political phenomena shaped the daily lives of Black women, men, and children. As much as we shall focus upon the ways in which a unified Afro-American experience has been forged through ongoing forms of oppression, we will also consider how various factors – including class, region, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and ideology – contributed to substantial diversity within Black communities by the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, a major goal of the course is to complicate “race”: at the same time we explore the rigid yet arbitrary practices of racial segregation (“Jim Crow”) we shall also endeavor to discuss racial dynamics in the United States beyond binary notions of Black and white.

Throughout the term we shall work with the artifacts and crafting of history as well. Not only will we read primary documents and analyze cultural expressions, then, we are also going to spend time thinking about how scholars have written African-American history. Whereas this course is not a theory seminar, it is nonetheless concerned with theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the past. Students who take this course should be somewhat familiar with the contours of African-American and/or U.S. history but prior work in either field is not a prerequisite. Furthermore, it is not necessary to have taken African-American History I in order to enroll in African-American History II.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): John Fine

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course traces Eastern Christianity from the 4th through the 18th century. A broad survey course aimed at undergraduates of all concentrations, there are no prerequisites; the course focuses on both Church history and theology. It begins with Constantine's conversion and traces the growth of the Church, the rise of monasticism, the creation of the creed (the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon), and the secession of the Eastern churches (Coptic and Syriac), the role of religious pictures and the iconoclast dispute and relations with the West (Rome) which were frequently strained before the official break in the 11th century. We cover the conversion of the Slavs and the eventual formation of independent Slavic national churches. We treat the fall of the Byzantine and Medieval Slavic states to the Turks and the position of the Orthodox under the Turks. Attention is also given to the Russian Church from the 9th century to the Old Believer schism and Church reforms of Peter the Great. Readings are varied. There is no textbook. A relevant paper of the student's choice, an hour exam, and a final are required.