An exploration of major issues and problems of the American past: the colonial experience to the Civil War. Fulfills social sciences requirement.
This honors section, to be taken in conjunction with HI 122, examines how the film industry and films reflected, and perhaps influenced, the events and themes of U.S. history in the 20th century, from 1915 to the present. Films will be selected according to their symbolic and historical significance to the time period. Films are likely to include: D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915); The Jazz Singer (1929); We're in the Money, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Airforce (1943); Dr. Strangelove (1964); Green Berets (1968); Joe (1970); Taxi Driver (1976); and Red Dawn (1984). Students will keep a journal and write an essay (7-10 p.) analyzing two or more films, focusing specifically on what they illuminate or hide.
An introductory survey of the major political, social developments in China, from the foundation of the last imperial dynasty in 1644 to the present. Emphasis is on the major stages of the revolution, from the Opium War to the present. The course add-on will involve discussion of primary sources and research methods related to modern China.
This course investigates the contradictions of American freedom and American slavery by investigating exactly what freedom, equality and liberty meant to white and black Americans from 1619 to the 1850s. We will trace how the break from Britain, war, the development of a slave economy in the South, and a manufacturing economy in the north cast, re-cast and redefined those ideas, eventually leading to a clash which tested the principles of democratic self-rule on which the United States had had been founded. Honors Forum students will read and discuss one short primary document per week. Students will also read and discuss one novel over the course of the semester.
The impending war against Iraq raises once again the question of the United States' role in the world and the dilemma of American power. What is motivating the United States' current actions? Power? Responsibility? Is America best seen as a defender of freedom or an imperialist power? This course addresses those questions and provides historical context for the current arguments about the United States' response to both Islamic terrorism and Iraq. It is organized around the different ways we explain and understand America's interactions with the rest of the world. What has defined America's international interests? Can we discern a continuity to American foreign policy over time, or is it defined by contingency and reaction? How have Americans defined themselves through their foreign policy? How has American foreign policy betrayed American ideals? How has it fulfilled those ideals? The latter part of the course will focus specifically on events in the Middle East, the Islamic world, and current U.S. war actions.
The course add-on will be devoted to following domestic debates about the current military action against terrorism and war against Iraq. Students will be required to read major editorials about the Bush administration's policies, and follow the debate on both the left and the right. We will be reading 2-3 articles per week from The Nation, The Progressive, The New Republic, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, National Review, The Weekly Standard, and Commentary, to get the full range of opinion about American policies. Your grade will be based on weekly participation, a class journal, in which you record your own views on our weekly discussions, America's current policies, and their supporters and detractors, and a final paper (8-10 p.). Throughout the semester in discussion and your journals, we will address the continuities and discontinuities of this debate with earlier debates about America's overseas actions.
This course examines the most important interactions to take place within and among society, politics, and culture that characterized the intellectual and philosophical transformation known as the Enlightenment. Influenced by revolutionary advancements in science and medicine, inflamed by seditious political treatises, and distrustful of Catholic reforms, enlightened thinkers of the eighteenth century sparked the emergence of a new political and literary culture. Ultimately, the intellectual advancements that excited d'Alembert and his fellow philosophers helped to shape the ideological foundations of the American and French Revolutions.
An introductory survey of the major cultural, political, and ideological developments in China from earliest times to the fall of the last Chinese dynasty, with a focus on several important eras and their contributions to Asian civilizations. The Course add-on consists of advanced directed readings in primary sources and discussion of art, artifacts, and the written sources of early and imperial Chinese history. Designated a non-Western culture course; fulfills social sciences requirement.
An introductory survey of Japanese history and culture from its beginnings through World War II. Focus is on ways in which Japanese women and men have transformed borrowings from other cultures to create their unique forms of government, society, and the arts. Sources include a diary, short stories, legal documents, and films. The Course add-on will involve of primary sources and research methods related to Japanese culture and history.
A history of black people in America from slavery through emancipation to the present. The course examines such topics as slave culture, black resistance, the Harlem Renaissance, the development of jazz, blues, and soul music, the civil rights movement and its aftermath, and the crisis of the inner cities in understanding how African Americans have defined their place in American life. The on credit add-on seminar to African American History will read and discuss over the course of the semester the mammoth, rarely read classic by Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake, Black Metropolis. Published in 1945, this ethnography of black life in Chicago in the 1930s contains a wealth of detail about black politics, social and class relations, the great migration, religion, job competition, and the politics of skin color. The class will be in the form of a weekly reading group. The requirements are: to complete the assigned reading on time, be prepared to talk about them, and a six to eight page final paper about the book and its significance. It is an opportunity for students to delve deeper into the details of one geographic area of black life, circa 1930-45. Fulfills social sciences requirement; designated as a Cultural Diversity course.
