Course Descriptions Autumn Semester, 2012
The Department of History
The Ohio State University
Undergraduate History Office
110 Dulles Hall
614.292.6793
The Department of History has compiled information in this booklet to assist students in selecting courses for Autumn Semester, 2012. The descriptions are accurate as of April 13, 2012. Please be aware that changes may be made.
A printed version of the coursebook is also available in the History office, 106 Dulles Hall.
African History | American History | Ancient History | Asian & Islamic History | European History | Jewish History | Military History | Thematic | Women's History | World History
AFRICAN HISTORY
HISTORY 2303 HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICA, 1960-PRESENT
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will examine Africans' engagements with European colonial rule and how these engagements culminated in ending European rule in the 1960s. Our discussions begins in the 1800s when the abolishing of the slave trade and industrialization in Europe provided a new impetus for the expansion of European commerce and subsequently the colonization of Africa toward the end of the 19th century. We will proceed to examine the factors that facilitated European conquests of Africa and the various ways Africans responded to the lost of their sovereignty. The themes of the course include but not limited to: wars of colonial conquests; African resistances to colonial conquests; Christian missionary activities; the rise of Muslim reformers in colonial contexts; the nature of colonial rule; Africans' perceptions of colonial rule; Africans in the two world wars; the development of African nationalism; pan-Africanism and the end of colonial rule; and establishment of modern African states. Although no prerequisite is required for enrolling in the course, students are expected to have some background in pre-colonial African history. Conversely, students who lack this background will be expected to make the efforts to read more extensively during the first three weeks of lectures in order to acquire some basic knowledge essential for understanding the broader themes of the course.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:30-12:25 TR Kobo, O.
10:20; 11:30 Friday (recitation)
11:30 Weds (recitation)
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Africa, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 7300 INTRODUCTION TO GRADUATE LEVEL AFRICAN HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course introduces the students to the rich literature on African history, by exploring various themes and debates in the field. However, this time the course will focus on the process of social change in colonial and post-colonial Africa by exploring such topics as the transformation of African societies in the late nineteenth and the late twentieth centuries, cash crop production and its impact, the development of wage labor, urbanization, leisure and popular culture, and the development of protest movements. A major part of the course will be devoted to the experiences of ordinary Africans such as workers, non-wage workers, women, slaves, and other marginal groups.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 TR Sikainga, A.
The readings will consist of at least three required text books as well as other materials that will be placed on reserve.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Graduate standing.
AMERICAN HISTORY
HISTORY 1511 AMERICAN CIVILIZATIONS, 1607-1877
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course surveys the political, constitutional, social, and economic development of the U.S. from the Colonial Period through the Era of Reconstruction. This course, in conjunction with HIS 152, furnishes one of the sequence requirements for the LAR and GEC. Not open to students with credit for History 150.01.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
On-line
9:10-10:05 TR
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Not open to students with credit for 1150, 2002 or 151.
HISTORY 1152 AMERICAN CIVILIZATIONS SINCE 1877
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course surveys the political, constitutional, social, and economic development of the U.S. from the Era of Reconstruction to the present. This course, in conjunction with HIS 151, furnishes one of the sequence requirements for the LAR and GEC. Not open to students with credit for History 150.02 or History 150.03.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
On-line
9:10-10:05 MW
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Not open to students with credit for 1150, 2002 or 152.
HISTORY 2001 LAUNCHING AMERICA
3 Cr. Hrs.
An intermediate-level approach to American history in its wider Atlantic context from the late Middle Ages to the era of Civil War and Reconstruction.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
8:00-8:55 MWF
9:10-10:05 MWF
3:55-5:15 MWF
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Not open to students with credit for History 151.
HISTORY 2002 MAKING AMERICA MODERN
3 Cr. Hrs.
A rigorous, intermediate-level history of modern U.S in the world from the age of industrialization to the age of globalization.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:30-12:25 WF Conn
10:20; 11:30; Tuesday (recitations)
12:40 Tuesday (recitation)
9:10; 11:30 Thursday (recitations)
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Not open to students with credit for History 152.
HISTORY 2080 AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1877
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course is a survey of the black American experience from 1619 to the end of Reconstruction. The course will begin with a broad discussion of the African slave trade that introduced Africans to English North America and move quickly to the settlement, growth, dispersal, and development of the black population from the colonial period through the Revolutionary and early national periods, the antebellum and Civil War eras, and Reconstruction. Throughout the course we will be examining slavery as a social, political, and economic institution. Consequently, we will be paying almost as much attention to what was happening in the "nation" as what happened within slave communities. We will examine the expansion of slavery and its increasing concentration in the South and its spread to the West, the development of African American cultures, opposition to slavery, northern and southern free black people, emancipation, and the transition from slavery to freedom. A major goal of the course will be to learn how these people lived their lives in the big and the small ways.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-3:40 TR Shaw
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group N. America, pre or post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2081 AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY FROM EMANCIPATION – PRESENT
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course examines the African American experience from 1865 to the present. It aims to provide students with a working knowledge of the major themes and issues in contemporary African American history. The specific topics explored include: Reconstruction, the Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro, Black radicalism during the Depression Era, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, Black politics during the conservative ascendency of the 1980s, and the state of Black America at the start of the 21st century.
Upon completing this course, students should have a clear understanding of the general history of African Americans in the second half of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century and the start of the 21st century, including African American life during the Jim Crow era; African Americans' transition from field workers to factory laborers; and African American protest before, during, and after the Civil Rights and Black Power eras of the 1950s and 1960s. Students should also have gained keen insight into the diverse array of questions, sources, and methods that historians have used to uncover African American history, and developed the skills necessary for critically analyzing primary source material.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
3:55-5:15 TR Jeffries
Assigned Readings include:
- Hine, Hine, and Harrold, The African American Odyssey, Volume 2, Fourth or Fifth Edition (New Jersey: Pearson, 2010).
- Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt (New York: NYU Press, 2009).
Assignments:
*Midterm and Final Exam.
*Ten (4 question) quizzes will be given over the course of the quarter; 8 will count toward your quiz grade. Makeup quizzes will not be given. The quizzes will be administered on randomly selected days at the start of class. The questions will be based solely on the reading assigned for that day.
*A five to seven page, typed, double-spaced, clearly and correctly written, critical analysis of primary source material
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2750 HONORS NATIVES & NEWCOMERS: IMMIGRATION AND US
3 Cr. Hrs. MIGRATION
Immigration and migration have been permanent features of American history. From the first indigenous peoples who migrated throughout the continent, to British explorers in search of wealth, Irish farmers fleeing famine, African Americans heading North during the Great Migration, or Mexican farmers recruited during World War II, people have for centuries been in motion throughout what is today the United States. This course will critically examine the dynamics of immigration and domestic migration throughout our history and explore the perspective of both "natives" and newcomers. We will also consider the gendered nature of mobility by asking how women and men experienced im/migration differently and were positioned differentially in relation to both the "host" and the "home" culture.
Note: This course is cross-listed with Women's Studies 322H and will connect via video-conferencing with History 322 at the OSU Newark campus.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-2:05 TR Fernandez
Assigned Readings(tentative):
Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America
Thomas Dublin, Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773-1986
Additional readings in course packet
Assignments (tentative): Two papers, final term paper. This is a seminar-style course that requires active student participation in class discussions.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
(Open to Honors Students). Fulfills the following GEC requirements: Historical Study & Social Diversity in the United States. History majors, fulfills Group N. America, post-1750.
HISTORY 3003 AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course follows American presidential elections as they help us understand changing political practices and expectations for government. We will cover and analyze some of the standard ways historians and political scientists have given structure to elections. We will then move to examine a series of elections in detail, from 1800 through 2008. We will consider such questions as the place of factions and parties (and the ideas about both), the role of the media, the impact of interest groups, and the importance of new technologies.
While we will encounter some political science concepts (such as realignment) and criticism of those concepts, this is a history course. Our concern is with change over time and the complexities of explaining change. This course is not a substitute for political science courses on elections, parties, voting behavior, or the presidency, which have different analytical agendas and cover elections with different literatures and contexts at the forefront.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-2:05 TR Baker
Assigned Reading (tentative):
A. James Reichley, The Life of the Parties
John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800
Lynn Parsons, The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828
Michael F. Holt, By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876
Jeff Shesol, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court
Andrew E. Busch, Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 &the Rise of the Right
Plus articles and documents available on Carmen.
Assignments:
Students will write four papers, one of the tied to a presentation to the class.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
History majors, fulfills Group N. America, post-1750.
HISTORY 3006 THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION & AMERICAN SOCIETY
3 Cr. Hrs. SINCE 1877
Examination of the major developments in American constitutional history since the Civil War. Emphasis on the new constitutional system created by the Fourteenth Amendment; the rise and decline of laissez-faire constitutionalism; the more moderate constitutionalism of the New Deal era; and the resurgence of judicial activism in the 1960's, '70's and '80's. The course will deal in detail with the most influential Supreme Court rulings since 1877, including those in the areas of federal regulation of the economy, limits on freedom of speech and press during wartime, racial segregation, the rights of criminal suspects and defendants, affirmative action, and abortion.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 TR Stebenne
Assigned Readings:
Kermit L. Hall, Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Vol. II; and a packet of supplementary readings.
Assignments:
Active participation in class discussions, and take-home midterm and final examinations.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3011 American Revolution and New Nation, 1760-1787
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course examines the passage of American society through the era of the revolution and the early republic. Most broadly, we will be concerned with the causes of the Revolution, the ideological and social turmoil of the Revolutionary years, and finally the consequences of the extent and limits of this process, as the new republic -- the first modern nation-state -- began to forge stable political structures, a new cultural identity, and a position in the world order. The issues of colonialism, independence, social revolution, and nation-building will be explored in their specific American context with an eye toward their comparative, world-historical dimensions.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
10:20-11:15 MWF Brooke
Assigned Readings:
Edward Countryman, The American Revolution
Robert Gross, The Minutemen and their World
Jack Rakove, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic
In addition to these short books you will be reading two books of your own choice for short written assignments, and articles and documents posted through Carmen.
Assignments [tentative]:
class attendance and participation in discussions (20%)
Part I in-class exam [IDs, short essay] (20%)
First outside reading assignment essay (10%)
Part II take-home essay (5-7 pages w/notes) (20%)
Second reading assignment essay (10%)
Part III in cumulative perspective final (20%)
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group N. America post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3012 ANTEBELLUM AMERICA
3 Cr. Hrs.
In this course we will be discussing the social, economic, cultural, and political history of antebellum America. We will explore the experiences of ordinary people, such as farmers, shopkeepers, factory workers, as well as famous names, such as Andrew Jackson and Harriet Tubman. We will also explore large-scale social processes such as the expansion of slavery, the growth of reform movements, and sectionalism in national politics.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
8:00-9:20 TR Cashin
Assignments:
Students will read several monographs; they will write a paper and take one exam. Students are expected to attend class and meet the course requirements.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3014 GILDED AGE TO PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1877-1920
3 Cr. Hrs.
The course explores the origins of modern America. We will examine the aftermath of Reconstruction and its reverberations in all of the nation's regions. Focusing on politics and social change, we will examine Industrial expansion, immigration, the movement of people to cities and to the West, and technological change. The development of a more powerful and active national state was one of the major developments of the period; we will trace that in conjunction with the period's social movements for temperance, women's rights, civil rights, and labor
Time Meeting Days Instructor
5:30-6:50pm TR Baker
Assigned Readings: We will read 3 short books written during the period, along with 2 history texts.
Assignments: There will be a number of web-based assignments, midterm and a final.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3017 THE SIXTIES
3 Cr. Hrs.
Almost half a century after it began, the 1960s maintains its grip on the American imagination. This course explores the profound political and social convulsions of the decade and traces how they shape our own times. In particular, the course will focus on three dynamics: the struggle for civil rights and its effect on American politics; the Vietnam War and the fracturing of the Cold War system; the era's sweeping challenges to traditional culture.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-2:05 TR Boyle
Assigned Readings:
The following is a tentative list of required readings.
Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
Paul Hendrickson, The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem
Marian Faux, Roe v. Wade: The Untold Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Decision that
Made Abortion Legal
Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism
Assignments:
The course will rely heavily on reading, writing, and personal participation. Students will be required to write at least three papers and to participate in classroom discussion. Regular attendance is expected.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3075 MEXICAN/CHICANO HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This is the second half of a two-course survey of Chicana/o History. The course aims to familiarize students with the broad themes, periods, and questions raised in the field of twentieth century Mexican American (Chicana/o) History. Themes and topics include immigration, labor activism and unionization, education and segregation, politics, popular culture, and social movements. The course emphasizes a comparative approach to Chicana/o history in the Southwest and Midwest of the United States. We will utilize social categories of race, class, gender, nation, and sexuality as we interrogate primary and secondary sources.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
3:55-5:15 TR Fernandez
Assigned Readings: (tentative)
Jose Alamillo, Making Lemonade out of Lemons: Mexican American Labor and Leisure in a California Town, 1880-1960
Ernesto Galarza, Barrio Boy
Lorena Oropeza, Raza Si! Guerra No!: Chicano Protest and Patriotism During the Viet Nam War Era
Zaragosa Vargas, Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth Century America
Assignments:
--Several writing assignments, including précis and a term paper
--Final Exam
--Students are expected to attend class regularly and participate in class discussions.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3085 AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH CONTEMPORARY FILM
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course explores Black politics and resistance through the lens of Black film. We seek to understand how and why various historical topics have been depicted in movies, and to what extent the film version of particular events reflected the reality of the actual experience. The purpose of the class will be to use film to explore themes like Black resistance, racial violence and Black political thought, and place these subjects and topics in historical context. We will view a series of films on the Black experience, ranging from slavery through the contemporary era.
This course grapples with a central question: Given the fact that the majority of people in American society rely upon media and film for their understanding of the past, to what extent do contemporary films do an adequate job of relaying the "truth" and accuracy of various historical subjects in the African American experience? As a result, this class examines a variety of topics including, slavery, culture, racial violence, segregation, and social movements to explore how these issues are depicted in film, in comparison with the historical research and documents focusing on those subjects. We will also question specific issues about films on the Black experience, such as why do so many of these movies deal with autobiography, and/or stories about Blacks in the military?
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:15-5:00 M Jeffries
Assigned Readings are TBA, but will consist of books and articles related to the historical themes presented in each film. We will watch one movie each week, including films such as Rosewood, Malcolm X, and Bamboozled. In addition, there will a series of short primary source documents that the students will be asked to compare with the depiction in the film.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3700 AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
American Environmental History will focus on the history of American ecosystems from last Ice Age to the present. We will study scientific and historical debates over the causes of environmental change. We will spend some time on the history of the environmental movement and environmental philosophy, but our main purpose is to consider the historic impacts of humans and non-human nature on each other.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 WF Roth
Assigned Readings:
William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago & the Great West (W. W. Norton ISBN-10: 9780393308730, ISBN-13: 978-0393308730)
Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge University Press ISBN-10: 9780521837323, ISBN-13: 978-0521837323)
Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1980 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995) / ISBN-10: 0807845183 / ISBN-13: 978-0807845189
Donald Worster, The Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (Oxford University Press ISBN-10: 0195174887, ISBN-13: 978-0195174885)
Selected scientific and historical essays on Carmen
Assignments:
Quizzes: There will be five quizzes on the readings in the course. The quizzes will ask you to report fully and accurately on the content of readings in the course.
Midterm and final examinations: There will be a midterm examination and a final examination. The midterm will ask you to write one comprehensive one-hour essay, the final two.
Essay: You will be asked to write an essay (5 to 6 pages in length). Each should reflect on a major problem in environmental history. You should devote these essays to an analysis of a particular historical and/or scientific debate, or to an analysis of the environmental history of your family.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 7004 GRADUATE READINGS IN CIVIL WAR & RECONSTRUCTION
3 Cr. Hrs.
For more information about this seminar contact Professor Grimsley, grimsley.1@osu.edu.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-3:40 W Grimsley
HISTORY 7011 HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MODERN U.S. I
3 Cr. Hrs.
"Readings in Modern U.S. History"
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:15-5:00 M Conn
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Graduate standing. For more information regarding this readings seminar please contact Steve Conn, conn.23@osu.edu.
HISTORY 7500 STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course is designed to teach graduate students the literature on U.S. foreign relations and the major schools of thought and interpretive approaches in the field.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:10-2:45 M Hahn
Assigned Readings:
Each student will be assigned to read and report on approximately ten books and an additional number of articles, drawn from a common reading list.
Assignments:
Six to eight 5-page papers, in addition to active participation in class discussions.
P Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Graduate students only.
ANCIENT HISTORY
HISTORY 2201 ANCIENT GREECE & ROME
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will be offered ONLY in this online version and it will not be offered in a classroom setting this year. There will be no class meetings and all assignments will be done on the Internet, using the University's class-delivery system, "Carmen." Students who enroll will need to be online every week—probably for about 6-10 hours per week--and it is absolutely crucial that they do the reading and the online work in a regular fashion and that they don't fall behind. This course is neither harder nor easier than a regular in-class offering: it is simply different, and it requires significant self-discipline and a willingness to learn using online course material. The educational outcomes and expectations for the class, however, are precisely the same as one would find in a classroom-based course, and the grading system will be the same.
Description:
This class is an introduction to the history of the Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations of Greece and Rome. It provides a background of the chronological development of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations and then focuses on the broad issues of state-formation, politics, gender, warfare, tyranny, monotheism, and the environment over a period of some two thousand years, allowing students the opportunity to deal with these issues in several historical contexts over the whole of the course. The course concludes with a consideration of the importance of Greek and Roman history in the modern world and the ways in which it is perceived and used today.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
Online online Gregory
Assigned Readings:
The textbook for this class is D. Brendan Nagle, The Ancient World. A Social and Cultural History, 7th edition. Prentice Hall 2010. Additional readings in the primary (ancient) sources will be available either online or in printed form (details of this are not available yet).
Assignments:
Students will be expected to do assigned weekly readings, and present 5 graded assignments of their choice (from a total of 8) that can include discussion, quizzes, exams, and short papers.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Europe, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3215 SEX & GENDER IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course explores the history of sex and gender in ancient Greece and Rome, from
ca. 500 BCE to 600 CE. It introduces students to the roles of men and women in ancient
Mediterranean society, to the household as a social unit, an economic center and a
physical space, to ancient ideals of femininity and masculinity, and to ancient views on a variety
of sexual practices that were commonplace in ancient Greece and Rome, from conjugal relations
to same-sex relations, adultery, rape, and prostitution. The class also aims to teach students how to distinguish rhetorical constructs of gender and sexuality in elite literature from concrete
practices and more representative experiences of sex and gender. The course is divided
chronologically into three parts. The first part focuses on sex, gender and private life in the
classical and Hellenistic Greek world (ca. 500-200 BCE), the second on Roman society, gender,
and politics (ca. 200 BCE-200 CE), and the third on the later Roman empire (ca. 200-600 CE),
with particular attention given to the relationship between gender and religion (especially
Christianity) in this period.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 TR Sessa
Assigned Readings:
Students should expect approximately 100-125 pages of reading assigned per week, much of it from ancient primary sources (all read in English translation).
Assignments:
Students will also be asked to participate actively in class discussions, take two midterms,
write a 6-8 page critical paper, and take a final essay exam.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Global, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3221 ROME FROM THE GRACCHI TO NERO
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course focuses on Rome's transform republic to empire. Topics include the political strife of the late Republic; the rise of Julius Caesar; problem of the Republic's "fall"; civil war; the Augustan "revolution"; and the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The course also examines foreign policy and imperial administration, economic and social developments in both Italy and the provinces, family life, women's status, the impact of slavery, literature, art, and religion.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-2:05 WF Rosenstein
Assigned Readings:
Appian, The Civil Wars
Boatwright, Gargola, and Talbert, The Romans, From Village to Empire
Catullus, The Poems of Catullus
Cicero, Selected Political Speeches
Horace, The Complete Odes and Epodes
Petronius & Seneca, Satyricon & Apocolocyntosis
Plutarch, The Fall of the Roman Republic
Sallust, The Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Catiline
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars
Tacitus, Complete Works
Virgil, The Aeneid
Assignments:
Term paper; midterm; final exam.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Europe, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3225 EARLY BYZANTINE HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will trace the history of eastern Roman (or Byzantine) empire form the fall of the western empire in the fifth century to the advent of the Crusades in the eleventh century. Emphasis will be placed on the strategies devised by this Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian empire to survive many waves of enemies (including Arabs, Bulgars, and Scandinavians); its political culture, which combined imperial monarchy with Roman republican populism; the culture of the court and church; and the nature of literacy sources from which modern scholars reconstruct its history.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
10:20-11:15 MWF Kaldellis
Assigned Readings:
The readings will include (but will not be limited to)
Michael Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers (Penguin Classics)
Tim Gregory, A History of Byzantium (Wiley-Blackwell, 2nd ed.)
A. Kaldellis, Prokopios: The Secret History with Related Texts (Hackett)
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Europe, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 8210 SEMINAR IN ANCIENT HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This research seminar will examine aspects of the history of southern Greece in the period of the Frangokratia (primarily 13th-14th centuries A.D.), with a special focus on interaction between Latins and Byzantines in this period. Participants will be required to develop, investigate, and elucidate a significant research problem and present their results to the seminar in oral and final written form. The written presentation should be of a quality expected for publication in a leading scholarly journal. The unifying theme of the seminar is identity, East vs. West, but this is interpreted broadly to include issues as diverse as religion, economy, "feudalism," historiography, art and architecture, settlement systems, and warfare; and methods will range from textual analysis, archaeology, epigraphy, and hagiography, to cyber-enhanced analysis of various kinds of data. A feature of the seminar will be participation of visiting scholars, who will present aspects of their research in written and oral discourse. Graduate students in any area of ancient, medieval or early modern studies are welcome to enroll in the class, although they should have preparation in Antiquity, the Medieval West, or Byzantium, and research-level ability in at least one of the relevant languages. We hope that the seminar itself will act as a point of contact between East and West, just the medieval Morea was itself, and that students working in the medieval West will interact profitably with those working in the East toward our common understanding of different community relations in the later Middle Ages.
Students considering enrollment in this class are welcome to contact Professor Gregory at any point for further details, discussion of possible research topics, and a preview of assigned readings. The course will naturally have a significant online component in order to facilitate communication and ease of access to assigned material, but the primary focus will be the weekly class meetings and discussion.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
1:50-5:05 W Gregory
Assigned Readings:
A variety of readings in primary and secondary sources will be assigned in the first half of the seminar. These will include the Memoirs of Geoffrey de Villehardouin, the Chronicle of the Morea, the Assizes of Romania, inscriptions, and works of art and architecture, as well as important secondary studies of this period. All of these readings will be available either online or on reserve in the Thompson Library.
Assignments:
Regular participation in the seminar, including discussion, one oral presentation of research, and completion of a finished research paper on a topic developed in the seminar. Participants are encouraged to consult the instructor for advice on appropriate research topics.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Graduate standing with experience in pre-modern periods.
HISTORY 8210 SEMINAR IN ANCIENT HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This is an advanced research seminar in Roman history. Topics vary from year to year. In the fall of 2012, the focus will be on political, diplomatic, and military developments in the fourth and early third centuries BC, the period of the Samnite Wars and the War with Pyrrhus.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
1:50-5:05 Thursday Rosenstein
Assigned Readings:
Extensive readings in primary and secondary sources.
Assignments:
Regular class participation; oral reports; a lengthy research paper
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Graduate Status; intermediate ability in Greek and Latin; a general knowledge of Roman history.
ASIAN & ISLAMIC HISTORY
HISTORY 2352 THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
3 Cr. Hrs.
The Ottoman Empire was the longest-lasting Islamic empire and the only one to figure as a major power in the history of Europe as well as of the Islamic world. This course examines the origins of the empire in an obscure band of frontier warriors, its florescence as a major world power of the sixteenth century, and its further development down to the time when European expansionism began to undermine its autonomy, opening a new era of rapid change. This course considers not only the Ottomans' political power, but also economic, social, and cultural factors that helped explain that power and gave the empire such a distinctive place in Islamic and world history.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 TR Findley
Assigned Readings:
The reading list will include works such as the following:
Esposito, John, Islam, the Straight Path, Oxford, 1991
Evliya, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588-1662) as Portrayed in Evliya Çelebi's Book of Travels, trans. Robert Dankoff, Albany, 1991
Imber, Colin, The Ottoman State: The Structure of Power 2002
Hathaway, Jane, The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, Pearson Longman, 2008
Murphey, Rhoads, Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700, Rutgers Press pb, 1999
Peirce, Leslie, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Oxford pb,1993
Tucker, Judith, In the House of the Law: Gender & Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria & Palestine, University of California Press 1998
Assignments:
There will be one midterm, a paper assignment, and a comprehensive final examination. The paper assignment will probably be based on the Dankoff translation of Evliya, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman. Graduate students may be asked to prepare a term paper on a suggested topic and may also be asked to do extra reading.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course (formerly History 540.03) is a sequel to courses pertaining to earlier periods of Islamic history (such as History 340, 540.01, 540.02, and 542.01, as these courses were number under the quarter system). Although no other course on Islamic history is listed as a prerequisite for History 2352, it is not designed to serve as an introduction to the basics of Islam or Islamic civilization. Students lacking background on those subjects will need to do additional background reading before the beginning of the semester or during the first week. Such students are urged to contact the instructor for recommendations: findley.1@osu.edu. This course fulfills Group Near Eastern, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2393 CONTEMPORARY INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course examines the political, social, economic, and cultural history of the South Asian subcontinent from independence in 1947 to the present. We will focus on India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, touching upon other South Asian countries (Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan) when appropriate. Many observers have noted the seeming paradoxes of modern India: the world's largest democracy has also developed an increasingly authoritarian state; the country's grinding poverty continues amidst the gleaming office parks of the new global economy; powerful movements for social justice contend with the rise of repressive religious nationalisms. Despite some differences in politics and economy, we may find similar themes and historical forces at work in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well. Situating South Asian history in its local, regional, and global contexts, this course examines these paradoxes in a survey of the tumultuous events of the last half-century.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 TR Sreenivas
Assigned Readings: TBD
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Near Eastern, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2401 HISTORY OF EAST ASIA IN THE PRE-MODERN ERA
3 Cr. Hrs.
History 2401 is an introduction to the societies and cultures of pre‑modern China, Korea, and Japan, the countries that make up the geographical and cultural unit of East Asia. Of the great civilizations of the world, East Asia grew up in perhaps the greatest isolation from the West; and one goal of this course is to point up what is distinctive about "East Asian civilization." A second goal is the study of the relationship between the evolution of China, and Japan, and to a lesser extent, Korea, as distinct cultures themselves. The course is designed, rather, to provide a broad chronological overview of East Asian history, with special attention to the interrelationships of intellectual, cultural, political, social, artistic, technological, and economic change. Discussions focus on the analysis of primary sources—philosophical and religious texts, government documents, poetry, drama, and fiction—from China, Korea, and Japan.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:10-10:05 TR Brown
8; 9:10; 10:20 Wednesday (recitation)
8; 9:10; 10:20 Friday (recitation)
Assigned Readings:
Ebrey, Palais and Walthall, East Asia: A Cultural, Social and Political History -Pre-Modern East Asia (First Edition, 2006).
Photo-copied readings for History 141 (on class's Carmen course site or available at Cop-EZ).
Assignments:
Map quizzes (3), one short paper, one primary source analysis, A midterm, and final examination,
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group, East Asia, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2402 HISTORY OF EAST ASIA IN THE MODERN ERA, 1600-PRESENT
3 Cr. Hrs.
History 2402 will continue with the introduction to the histories of the societies of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan) that was initiated in History 2401. To a higher degree than History 2401, History 2402 is organized on a 3-way comparative model ("how to China, Japan, or Korea compare to each other?") We will survey key historical phenomena (including political, military, social, and intellectual themes) that have distinguished each country in the modern period. For most of the semester, the course will be organized chronologically and thematically. It will also seek a balance between examination of particular periods and exploration of patterns of continuity and change across historical periods and different societies. In addition to providing a basic narrative of East Asian civilization since 1600, the course will introduce students to important written sources and to historical writing.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
1:50-2:45 WF Reed
10:20; 11:30 Monday (recitation)
1:50 Monday (recitation)
Assigned Readings:
A textbook, a monograph, primary sources short films.
Assignments:
TBA, similar to other courses at this level.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
History 2401 is not a prerequisite for History 2402. This course fulfills Group, East Asia, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3375 MONGOL WORLD EMPIRE
3 Cr. Hrs.
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a small and relatively obscure nomadic people emerged from their isolated homeland in the steppe north of China to forge what would quickly become the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world. While the Mongol Empire is long gone, it had a profound and undeniable impact on the trajectory of world history. The destruction of the Mongol conquests was overwhelming, but that relatively short period of trauma was followed by a lengthy recovery under the Pax-Mongolica: the Mongol Peace. For several decades, Eurasia witnessed an unprecedented rise in the movement of people and a corresponding rise in the transcontinental exchange of commodities, scientific knowledge, religious and cultural traditions, and even disease pathogens. This course will introduce students to the social, cultural and political history of medieval Central Eurasia, paying special attention to the quite regular, occasionally turbulent, but never dull interactions of pastoral-nomadic and sedentary peoples.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 TR Levi
Assigned Readings: Four books.
Assignments: Course work includes a map quiz, midterm, paper assignment and a final exam.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group NE, (specifically Central Asia) pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3404 CHINA 1800 TO 1949
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course provides a general but analytic survey of the social, political, and intellectual history of China from 1750 to 1949. After a brief introduction to China's geography, languages, and cultural background, we will discuss key historical phenomena that have distinguished Chinese society in the modern period. For most of the semester, the course is organized chronologically and thematically and seeks a balance between detailed examination of particular periods and exploration of patterns of continuity and change across historical periods. When appropriate, comparative historical perspectives will be suggested.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-3:40 TR Reed
Assigned Readings: 4 books, documentary films.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course assumes that students are familiar with the range of topics covered in History 2401 and 2402, "Survey of East Asia, I & II. This course fulfills Group East Asia, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3426 HISTORY OF MODERN JAPAN
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course treats all major aspects of Japanese history since about 1800 including politics, economic trends, socio-cultural and intellectual change, and foreign relations. However, certain themes will receive particular emphasis. One is the conflict between local institutions and ideas of foreign origin like Christianity and Marxism. Another is the socio-economic origins of World War II from the Japanese side. A third is the development of Japanese science and technology. And a fourth is the rise of Japan to economic great power status and heightened political prominence after World War II.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-3:40 TR Bartholomew
Assigned Readings:
Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to
the Present
Gwen Terasaki, Bridge to the Sun
John Nathan, Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose
Albert Axell & Hideaki Kase, Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods
(plus one more book on the Yasukuni Shrine controversy)
Assignments:
midterm
2 short papers (not research papers) based on assigned readings
final examination
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group East Asia, post-1750 for History majors.
HISTORY 3436 MODERN KOREAN HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
In this class, we will study the formation and rise of modern Korea, covering the period from the late 1800s to the present. We will examine how Korea's long-lived and stable Choson dynasty collapsed and how colonization and war ultimately divided the Korean peninsula into the two separate nation-states we see today. In addition, students will gain a basic understanding of the philosophical principles behind Confucianism, Buddhism and Communism as well as other systems of thought that have shaped life on the Korean peninsula.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-2:05 TR Solomon
Assigned Readings:
A textbook and supplementary readings will be assigned.
Assignments:
A midterm exam, two short papers based on class readings and a final exam.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group East Asia, post-1750 for history majors.
EUROPEAN HISTORY
HISTORY 1211 WESTERN CIVILIZATIONS FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE 17TH CENTURY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course surveys the Ancient Civilizations (Near East, Greece, Rome), the Barbarian Invasions, Medieval Civilizations (Byzantium, Islam, Europe), the Renaissance, and the Reformation. A central text focuses on the course and each instructor supplements the text with several other readings. This course, in conjunction with HIS 112, furnishes one of the sequence requirements for the GEC. It is not open to students w/ credit for 100.01.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
On-line
8:00-8:55 MWF
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Not open to students with credit for History 1210, 2201, 2201H, 2202, 2203, 2205 or 111.
HISTORY 1212 WESTERN CIVILIZATION FROM THE 17TH CENTURY TO MODERN
3 Cr. Hrs. TIMES
This course surveys the political, scientific, and industrial revolutions; the rise of nationalism and the decline of empires; the two world wars and the cold war. A central text focuses the course and each instructor supplements the text with other readings. This course, in conjunction with HIS 111, furnishes one of the sequence requirements for the LAR and GEC. It is not open to students with credit for 100.02 or 100.03.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
On-line
9:10-10:05 MWF
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Not open to students with credit for History 1210, 2203, 2204, or 112.
HISTORY 2204 MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
In this course, we will study fundamental events and processes in European politics, war, economics, intellectual thought, culture, and society from the French and Industrial Revolutions to the present. We will attempt to explain the origins of the contemporary world; how Europeans and the European world have arrived at where they are today. We will strive to understand how Europeans lived and gave meaning to their lives in the "modern" era. The course is both topically and chronologically organized and emphasizes the common characteristics of European civilization as a whole rather than specific national histories. It traces threads of continuity while also examining the vast changes experienced by European society in these 250 years. In a course that spans several centuries and covers a large geographical area, the majority of peoples and events cannot be studied in detail. We will focus on particular cases that illustrate important patterns of change and conflict that have shaped the European world as we know it now. The format of the course will be a combination of lectures, class discussions, and other forms of direct student participation.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:30-12:25 TR Breyfogle
10:20; 11:30 Weds or Friday (recitations)
12:40;
Assigned Readings: (This list is tentative and the specific books may change)
Brian Levack, Edward Muir, Michael Maas, Meredith Veldman, The West: Encounters and Transformations, Vol II, Since 1550. CONCISE EDITION. ISBN: 0-321-27631-0.
Emile Guillaumin, The Life of a Simple Man.
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front.
Art Spiegelman, MAUS, vols. I and II.
Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (5th edition)
Other shorter readings available on Carmen
Assignments:
This course requires one mid-term exam, one paper, a final exam, various other quizzes and brief writing assignments, and in-class discussion and activities.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Coreq or Prereq: English 1110.xx. This course fulfills Group Europe, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2205 THEMES IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION,
3 Cr. Hrs. PREHISTORY TO 1600
This course combines lectures and discussion to examine the development of society, culture, and 'civilization' in the western world from its ancient origins to the birth of the modern era. Themes for analysis include ethnicity and migration, religion and ideas, writing and communication, science and technology, war and conflict, and varieties of politics and law. The course requires a text-book and a source-book. Assignments include analysis of sources, a research essay, a mid-term, and a final exam.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 TR Cressy
Prerequisites and Special Comments: Coreq or Prereq: English 1110.xx. This course fulfills Group Global, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2220 INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY
3 Cr. Hrs.
Ranging from Jesus to Joel Osteen, this course will study how in 2,000 years the messianic beliefs of a small group of Jews transformed into a worldwide religion of amazing diversity. Our approach will be historical and contextual: how have Christian beliefs, practices, and institutions changed over time and adapted to different cultures? We will consider major developments in theology (from the Council of Nicea, to medieval scholasticism, to liberation theology), spirituality (from monasticism, to mysticism, to tent meetings), modes of authority (from apostles, to bishops, to televangelists), and social structures (from house assemblies, to an imperial church, to base communities). We will learn that "Christianity" has never been a single monolithic entity, but rather an astonishing collection of individuals and groups creating new and diverse ways of living as followers of Christ. Lectures on key themes will be supplemented by recitation sections focused on primary sources.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
1:50-2:45 WF Brakke
8; 9:10 Mon (recitation)
11:30 Mon (recitation) *Students must choose one of the recitations on Monday
Assigned Readings (tentative):
Bradley Nystrom and David Nystrom, The History of Christianity: An Introduction
John W. Coakley and Andrea Sterk, Readings in World Christian History, Vol. 1: Earliest Christianity to 1453
William C. Placher, Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Vol. 2: From the Reformation to the Present
Assignments
Two unit tests, two short papers (critical analyses of primary source material), and final exam.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Global, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2240 ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course combines lectures and discussion to explore the social, cultural, and religious history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), one of the most celebrated, most formative, and most controversial periods in European history. Alongside the golden age of Shakespeare, the Virgin Queen, and voyages to America, it also considers the darker threats of poverty, witchcraft, and rebellion. Students will use handouts, two text-books, and such databases as Early English Books Online, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and State Papers Online, to produce a research proposal and an original essay. There will be a mid-term, a final exam, and opportunities for in-class presentations.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-3:40 TR Cressy
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Europe, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2251 EMPIRES & NATIONS IN EASTERN EUROPE, 1500 - PRESENT
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course provides a survey of the history of Eastern Europe from the fifteenth century until the present. We will cover both the Balkans and East-Central Europe, analyzing the larger historical trends in the territories of today's Greece, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. The course is structured around three topics: the imperial expansion of and encounter between the Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian Empires as well as Poland-Lithuania in the arly modern period; the creation and evolution of the modern nation-states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the multiple transitions of Eastern Europe from nation-states to the Soviet bloc to the European Union in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The purpose is to provide an overview of the area and its peoples and to engage the concepts of empire-, state-, and nation-building in comparative perspective.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 WF Dragosinova
Assigned Readings (tentative):
Dennis P. Hupchick and Harold E. Cox, The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Eastern Europe, New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Lonnie Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Andrew Wachtel, The Balkans in World History, Oxford University Press, 2008.
The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople, 1554-1562, trans. Edward Forster, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2005.
Ivo Andric, The Bridge On the Drina, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Emily Gunzburger Makas and Tanja Damljanovic Conley, eds. Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empire: Planning in Central and Southeastern Europe (use online at library).
Assignments:
Midterm and final exams
Two 4-page papers on the assigned readings
Final research project using digital media
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This class will incorporate digital media (Vuvox, Imovie, or blogs, to be determined later), and there will be special instruction sessions in class how to use those technologies.
This class fulfills Group Europe and pre/post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2260 EUROPEAN INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT & CULTURE 19TH CENTURY
3 Cr. Hrs.
A survey of major cultural developments during a dynamic period of war and revolution and the emergence of the modern nation state. During this time artists and intellectuals engaged the ideas that held the world together, ideas about religion and science, freedom and democracy, capitalism and class warfare, health and suffering, love and death and the meaning of life. The course begins with background on Judaism and Christianity, Descartes and Newton, and the philosophy of the enlightenment; then concentrates on romanticism (Mary Shelley), realism (Flaubert and Dostoevsky), Darwinism, Marxism, utilitarianism and naturalism and concludes with Friedrich Nietzsche's provocative critiques of Christianity, egalitarianism, democracy, socialism, and utilitarianism as well as his positive philosophy of the superman and his celebration of art in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I also devote two days to a writing workshop that prepares students to write the papers.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 TR Kern
Assigned Readings:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Penguin ISBN 0141439475
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Bedford/St. Martin's ISBN 0312157118
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, Dover, ISBN 048627053 x
Gustave Flaubert, "A Simple Heart" in Three Tales, Oxford ISBN 0192836315
F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Books 1-3 Penguin, ISBN 0140047484
Diana Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual, Bedford/St. Martin's ISBN 0312406843
Assignments: Class discussions will involve close readings of the texts, and for that reason students should buy the same assigned edition so they will be able to follow these discussions (see above for ISBN numbers). Students will write three papers (5-6 pages) on assigned topics based on the readings and class discussions.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group Europe, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2275 CHILDREN & CHILDHOOD IN THE WESTERN WORLD
3 Cr. Hrs.
While the process of developing from infancy through childhood into adult life is a biological phenomenon, the specific ways in which children have been treated and understood vary enormously across time and place. In this class we will explore the history of children in the Western World from Antiquity to the present. How has the role of children in Western culture changed across the centuries? Have relationships between parents and children changed? How has the understanding and treatment of children changed? Ultimately, we will seek to define both changes and continuities in the lives of children in the Western world.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
3:55-5:15 TR Soland
Assigned Readings:
Readings will consist of a mixture of primary and secondary sources. All readings will be available on Carmen.
Assignments:
2 short papers (3-5 pages) plus final paper (15 Pages)
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Europe, pre or post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3229 EARLY CHRISTIANITY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course surveys the history and literature of ancient Christianity from its origins as a Jewish sect in Palestine to its establishment as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fifth century. Topics include persecution and martyrdom, scripture, Gnosticism, theological controversies over the Trinity and the nature of Christ, Constantine and the establishment of catholic orthodoxy, the rise of monasticism, and important figures such as Origen and Augustine. The course will emphasize the variety of early Christian groups and will provide a good foundation for the study of Christianity in any later period. No previous study of ancient history or of Christianity is assumed. The format is primarily lecture.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
3:55-5:15 TR Brakke
Assigned Readings
Henry Chadwick, The Early Church
Bart Ehrman, ed., After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity
Bart Ehrman and Andrew Jacobs, eds., Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300 – 450 C.E.: A Reader
Assignments: Midterm and final exams, two short papers (critical analyses of primary source materials).
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group Global, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3235 MEDIEVAL EUROPE I, 300-1100
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course surveys Europe during a time of great transition. We begin with an overview of the three great empires of late antiquity: Rome, Byzantium, and Islam. Next, we turn to three great themes of the seventh and eighth centuries: monasticism, manuscripts, and mass conversion. The course concludes with segments on the Vikings and on the tenth century. First, using a broad historical brush, we will look at how the growth and collapse of empires, the spread of religions, and the movements of peoples between 300 and 1100 formed what we call "Europe." Second, through primary source readings, we will work to gain a closer appreciation of the formation of early medieval culture, a dynamic mixture of Roman, Christian, and Germanic peoples, social structures, and ideas.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 MW Beach, A.
Assigned Readings:
Rosenwein, Barbara H., A Short History of the Middle Ages
Rosenthal, Joel T .ed., Understanding Medieval Primary Sources
Assignments (tentative):
Participation (includes paragraph assignments, 10%)
Essay (20%)
Manuscript Project (10%)
Map Quiz (5%)
Midterm (25%)
Final (30%)
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group Europe, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3249 EARLY MODERN EUROPE, 1600-1775
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course is a topical or problem-oriented survey of Old-Regime Europe from the end of the sixteenth-century wars of religion to the first political and ideological harbingers of the French Revolution. Using both a lecture and discussion formats, this course addresses three main topics: first, the so-called "general crisis of the seventeenth century"; second, the secularization of European thought represented by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment; and third, the renewal of the symptoms of political and social crisis in the form of "patriot" movements in many parts of Europe on the eve of the French Revolution. The first part presents and evaluates the evidence for the thesis that a "general crisis" characterized the mid-seventeenth century. The course will pay attention and evaluate evidence including climate change, economic dislocation, population decline, the destructive Thirty Years' War, the costly revolution in military technique, and the mid-century social and political upheavals such England's "Great Rebellion" and the Fronde in France. But this analysis will also insist on the continuing importance of religious conflicts "left over" from the reformations of the sixteenth century.
The second part of the course introduces another longer-term fall-out from the crisis, the "crisis of the European conscience" that issued into the secularization of European thought known as the Enlightenment. Concerned with intellectual history, this second part will therefore carry the course into the eighteenth century and to such familiar figures as Voltaire and David Hume. After linking the Enlightenment to the "general crisis," the course will try to characterize "enlightened" thought and trace its various implications for conceptions of God, the "natural" universe, human nature, ethics, the state, and society. The chief questions raised are whether "enlightened" thought is best characterized as a singular "Enlightenment" or as a spectrum of related but different "lights," and if, however characterized, it is a repudiation or secularized prolongation of the Europe's Christian heritage.
The third and final part of the course returns to institutional, political, and social history, in this case of the European eighteenth century, throughout asking the question if, and if so, how "enlightened" thought may have enlarged or changed the stakes in the sorts of political and social conflicts—many of them superficially the same—that figured so prominently in the "general crisis" of the seventeenth century. This analysis will also raise the question of whether religious issues ceased entirely ceased to play any role in these conflicts, or if they continued to subtend them and orient them in one direction or another. The course will therefore conclude with a survey of some late-eighteenth-century "patriot" movements analogous to anti-Stamp Act movement in the American colonies, and that in France later issued into the French Revolution.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
1:50-2:45 MWF Van Kley
Assigned Readings: Although books have not yet been chosen for the course, the main texts are likely to be John Merriman's Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Age of Napoleon, Isaac Kramnick's The Portable Enlightenment Reader, James E. Bradley and Dale K. Van Kley's Religion and Politics in Early-Modern Europe, and a course reader with essays by Geoffrey Parker and Dale K. Van Kley.
Assignments:
Aside from assiduous class attendance & participation in discussions, the main requirements will consist of one 10-15-page paper & one 8-page take home examination. The mid-term may take the form of either the paper on some aspect of the "general crisis" or the take-home essay exam about the "general crisis," while the final may similarly take the form of either the paper about some aspect of the Enlightenment and its relation to religion or politics or, the take-home essay on the Enlightenment, religion, & the political and social order. Supplementing these two requirements will be much shorter writing assignments or short-answer quizzes.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group Europe, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3263 FRANCE IN THE 20th CENTURY
3 Cr. Hrs.
In the fall of 2005, people all over the world were shocked to see images broadcast on television of young men and boys in France—many of them born to parents of immigrant origin from former French colonies —burning cars and schools and battling with police on the outskirts of French cities. This course will concentrate on analyzing the history of modern France, from the founding of the Third Republic in 1870 until the present, to try to make sense of these current events. The twentieth century was particularly traumatic for a nation that has always prided itself on its traditions of tolerance and respect for human rights, but which also created an overseas empire by force and collaborated with the German Occupiers from 1940 to 1945. Topics to be explored include US-French relations, the rise of socialism and nationalism, feminism and modernism, the two World Wars, imperialism and decolonization, and the particular place of France and French culture in the modern world. Readings include autobiographies, novels and works of history written by people who lived in metropolitan France, as well as authors from former French colonies in Senegal and Algeria.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 TR Conklin
Assigned Readings:
Alice Conklin, Sarah Fishman, Robert Zaretsky, France and Its Empire since 1870
Guy de Maupassant, Bel Ami
Michael Burns, France and the Dreyfus Affair
Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator
Vercors, The Silence of the Sea
Ousmane Sembene, God's Bits of Wood.
Mouloud Feraoun, Journal, 1955-1962: Reflections on the French-Algerian War.
Andrew Feenberg & Jim Freedman, When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968.
Films (Screenings outside of class TBA)
Grand Illusion, dir. Jean Renoir
The Battle of Algiers, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo
Hate, dir. Matheiu Kassovitz.
Assignments: Regular attendance and participation in class (25%)
A mid-term (25%), a final (25%), and a 5-7 page book review (25%).
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group Europe, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3264 GERMANY IN THE 19TH CENTURY
3 Cr. Hrs.
The purpose of this course is to introduce upper-division students to the major events and issues of German history from the Napoleonic era to the outbreak of World War I. We will trace the intertwined themes of economic industrialization and political unification, with considerable emphasis on the social and cultural context and consequences of both.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
10:20-11:15 AM MWF Trotter
Assigned Readings (books are available ONLY at SBX):
- Michael Stürmer, The German Empire: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles) (Modern Library; ISBN: 978-0812966206)
- Heinrich Von Kleist, Prince Friedrich of Homburg: A New Translation for the American Stage (New Directions; ISBN: 978-0811206945)
- Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space (University of California Press; ISBN: 978-0520059290)
- Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (Dover; ISBN: 978-0486447766)
- Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race Across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press; ISBN: 978-0521720250)
Grade: Based on a midterm exam (30%), class participation (attendance, discussion, quizzes, etc. 20%) and a comprehensive final exam (50%).
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course fulfills Group Europe, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3281 IMPERIAL RUSSIA, 1700-1917
3 Cr. Hrs.
In this course, we will study fundamental events and changes in Russian politics, economics, intellectual thought, artistic life, culture, and society from the reign of Peter the Great to the February and October Revolutions of 1917. We will strive to understand how Russians lived and gave meaning to their lives during these years. Russia was an eclectic place in these two and a half centuries: creative and destructive Tsars who ruled with absolute power; peasants in bark sandals who waded every spring through knee-deep mud and struggled every fall to bring in the harvest; bomb-throwing anarchists; a multi-ethnic empire which grew during these years to stretch from the German lands in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east (and even into North America), an empire that included peoples from a vast collection of different cultures, religious beliefs and ways of life (and an empire that only came apart with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991); millions of Russian peasants who left their homes to move into Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities forming Russia's working class; revolutions and rebellions; and, at the turn of the century, arguably Europe's most brilliant intellectual and artistic life, ranging from Stanislavsky's theatre and Nijinsky's dancing to the Avant Garde art of Liubov Popova, Natalia Goncharova, and Kazimir Malevich.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 TR Breyfogle
Assigned Readings: (This list is tentative and the specific books may change)
Walter Moss, A History of Russia, vol. 1 [Textbook]
The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova: Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great.
Dmitrii Rostislavov (Alexander Martin, ed.), Provincial Russia in the Age of Enlightenment: The Memoir of a Priest's Son.
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons.
Leo Tolstoy, "Hadji Murat"
Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia.
Anton Chekhov,"The Cherry Orchard"
Kurban Said, Ali and Nino.
Sergi Anksakov, The Family Chronicle
Assignments:
This course requires a considerable amount of reading and writing. Two take-home midterm exams, take-home final exam, various quizzes, and in-class discussion and activities.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: Some background in European (or Russian) history is helpful but not required. This course fulfills Group Europe, post-1750.
HISTORY 7280 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN, SOVIET, & EURASIAN HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course is a graduate colloquium on selected topics in Soviet history. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the most influential works and approaches in the field. Each week we will discuss a major book on Soviet history with attention both to the historical events discussed and the historiographical approach utilized by the author. Topics covered will include the Russian Revolution, Marxist ideology, Soviet culture, sex and gender roles in Soviet society, Stalinist industrialization, the postwar era, nationalities in the Soviet system, and the legacy of the past for Russia today.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-5:15 F Hoffmann
Assigned Readings: Roughly ten books will be assigned.
Assignments:
Students will be expected to complete all readings and participate in weekly discussions. Class participation will account for 50% of the final grade. The only written assignment for the course will be a take-home essay at the end of the quarter. At the last class meeting, the instructor will give students several topics, and students should choose one as the basis of the essay. Students will then have two weeks to write a 12-page (typed and double-spaced) essay based on the readings for the course. No additional reading or research will be required. This format is designed to encourage students to give maximum attention and thought to the assigned readings during the quarter. Such attention will provide the best preparation for the final essay.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course is open to all graduate students. Advanced undergraduates may also be admitted with the permission of the instructor.
HISTORY 7680 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF CHILDREN, CHILDHOOD & YOUTH
3 Cr. Hrs.
This intensive reading course is designed to provide graduate students from a range of academic disciplines with a broad introduction to the history of children, childhood and youth from the early 17th century to the late 20th century. Our readings will be clustered around a number of topics including cultural understandings of children and childhood; social constructions of the life course; children, families and households; child labor; gender and learning; children and the state; childhood and sexuality; children, youth and consumption; children's and youth cultures; and children's rights.
We will generally read recently published scholarship in the field, but we will also study a couple of older "classics." Reflecting much of the existing scholarship, emphasis will be on history of Europe and the United States but studies of other regions, including the Global South, will be included, and international and cross-cultural comparisons will be encouraged.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
7:30-10:15 pm Thursday Soland
Assigned Readings: To be announced.
Assignments: One substantial paper (approx. 25 pages) due at the end of the quarter.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Interested graduate students from all academic disciplines are most welcome! However, if you are *not* a graduate student in History, please make sure to contact me before the beginning of the semester (soland.1@osu.edu).
HISTORY 7755 THE HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF RACE IN EUROPE
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will introduce students to themes in the history of race and the application of these ideas in Western Europe and European empires in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Themes to be investigated include race and the abolition of slavery; the development of scientific racism; notions of race degeneration and the birth of eugenics; anti-semitism before 1914; race, science and imperial power; Orientalism, Otherness and empire; racial science in Europe from World War I to 1945; and anti-racism in the postwar era.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-2:05 W Conklin
Assigned Readings (still tentative):
Robert Bernasconi and Tommy Lott (eds.), The Idea of Race
Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Arthur de Gobineau, The Inequality of the Human Races
Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
Neil McMaster, Racism in Europe
George Mosse, Towards the Final Solution
Edward Said, Orientalism
Assignments:
Regular attendance and participation in class; two papers (10-12 pages each).
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Graduate Standing.
HISTORY 8230 RESEARCH SEMINAR IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
Graduate research seminar in Medieval history; topics may vary. For more information please e-mail Professor Allison Beach, beach.174@osu.edu.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
4:10-6:15 Wednesday Beach
JEWISH HISTORY
HISTORY 3455 JEWISH LIFE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE EARLY
3 Cr. Hrs. ENLIGHTENMENT
This course offers a close look at some of the issues concerning Jews and their relationships with Christians and Muslims from the late fifteenth century to the early eighteenth century – the period of transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern. Unlike general European history, where a fairly clear line of influence extends from developments in the Renaissance and Reformation to the early Enlightenment, Jewish historiography presents no such line. This is therefore an area which offers excellent opportunities for the study of primary sources that have not already been heavily analyzed by historians, and also for investigations of historiography. Major topics might include: messianic movements; expulsions and readmissions of Jews in Western Europe; cultural developments in Italian and Ottoman Jewry; the fate of German and Polish Jewry in the wake of the Chmelnicki massacres; Christian Hebraism; Jewish scientific pursuits; the role of conversos in the early European Enlightenment; magic and science in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Jewish life; social trends toward secularization; and developments in Jewish scholarship. The readings will include primary and secondary texts on Jewish life in Western Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean and Ashkenaz.
Students will learn skills in critical reading, especially in primary sources, and in the structure and methods of historical writing.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-3:40 TR Goldish
Assigned Readings:
Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos & Community in Early Modern Amsterdam
Mark R. Cohen (ed.), The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon
Modena's Life of Judah.
Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism.
The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln
Reader with primary and a few secondary sources.
Assignments:
Reading responses or quizzes 50%
Paper 25%
Final 25%
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Europe, pre-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3465 AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course explores topics in American Jewish history from the colonial era to the present, paying special attention to the importance certain mythologies had on the construction of modern American Jewish identities. We will explore the interaction between America's ever-growing Jewish population and the political, social, and cultural environment in which Jews found themselves. Throughout the course we will question the following: How did the relatively open American setting affect Jewish religious observance, occupational pursuits, political allegiances and family and gender roles? And how did Jews influence their new setting? One of the objectives of this course, then, will be to understand the historical contexts that shaped the construction of American Jewish identities. Because we will rely on historical texts, primary sources, films, and works of fiction to shape our conclusions, another objective of the course is to determine the place of cultural artifacts in the study of history and to improve students' reading skills.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 WF Judd
Assigned Reading (tentative)
Rachel Calof, Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains
Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers: A Novel
Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654-2000
Joshua Zeitz, White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Post-War
Politics
Assignments
Book review, midterm exam, research paper concerning Ohio Jewish History.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group N. America, post-1750 for history majors.
MILITARY HISTORY
HISTORY 3270 WORLD WAR I
3 Cr. Hrs.
The first World War in 1914 – 1918 meant death and destruction for millions of people and
changed the character of military conflict forever. It paved the way for economic chaos,
totalitarian dictatorships and eventually a second world war. European civilization
experienced a moral crisis from which it has not yet fully recovered, almost a century later.
At the same time, the First World War in many countries also contributed to democratic and
social reform. Moreover, as a consequence of war, Europe's dominating position in the world
began to crumble. In the European colonies the first calls for independence were heard and
a decentralization of the world economy began, where the United States would come to play a
leading role for the rest of the twentieth century. This course studies the First World War,
focusing on such aspects as the transformation of warfare on land, sea and in the air, how
the conflict affected the global balance of power and the European political system and how
civilian society responded to the hardships of war.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:30-12:25 MWF Aselius, Gunnar
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Global, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 3552 WAR IN WORLD HISTORY, 1900-PRESENT
3 Cr. Hrs.
Study of the causes, conduct and consequences of warfare around the world, 1900-present.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-2:05 TR Grimsley
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Not open to students with credit for History 580.02; this course fulfills Group Global, post-1750for history majors.
HISTORY 3580 THE VIETNAM WAR
3 Cr. Hrs.
Beginning with an overview of the Southeast Asian cultural and political background, History 3580 addresses the history of the Vietnam War focusing on the French and American phases of the conflict, beginning with the March 1945 Japanese counter-coup against the French colonial regime and ending with the April 1975 fall of the Republic of (South) Vietnam to forces of the People's Army of Vietnam. While the course addresses political reaction to the war in America, the emphasis is on events on the ground in Southeast Asia, encompassing developments in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand as well as Vietnam proper. The course has two basic objectives: to give the student a basic understanding of the causes, conduct, and consequences of the war; and to convey a critical appreciation of selected works dealing with the war.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-2:05 TR Guilmartin
Assigned Readings (tentative):
Stuart Herrington, Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix, A Personal Account (2004) [required]; first published as Silence Was a Weapon (1982) either ed. is acceptable
Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992)
Duong Thu Huong, Paradise of the Blind (1988)
Duong Thu Huong, Novel Without a Name, (1996)
Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War (1995)
Philip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1945-1975 (1988)
Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy (1964)
Otto J. Lehrack, No Shining Armor: The Marines at War in Vietnam (1992)
Marshall L. Michael, III, The Eleven Days of Christmas: America's Last Vietnam Battle (2002)
Assignments: Course requirements include a seminar presentation on a selected work and author and a research paper. Texts are available at the Student Book Exchange.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Global, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 7550 READINGS SEMINAR IN MILITARY HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
The Role of Armed Coercion in the Rise of Western Dominance
The seminar examines a number of military and naval encounters between the West and
the Rest, starting with Classical Greece and ending with 9/11. We will consider each
encounter from a counterfactual as well as from a factual point of view: that is, what
might have happened, as well as what did happen. In particular, we will consider whether
the Rise of the West was inevitable, whether it could have been stopped (and, if so,
when), and whether its rise could have taken more benign (or malign) forms.
Since counterfactual exercises require the same analytical rigor as factual reconstructions
of the past, the seminar will also examine the protocols that must be followed when
writing "Alternative Histories".
Time Meeting Days Instructor
5:30-8:25 T Parker
Assigned Readings:
1. Unmaking the West: "What-If?" Scenarios That Rewrite World History, ed.
Philip Tetlock, R. Ned Lebow, Geoffrey Parker (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006)
2. Victor D. Hanson, Carnage & Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
(New York: Anchor, 2002)
3. A course pack containing common readings for each "encounter"
Assignments
Each member of the seminar will
a) prepare the weekly readings for each session;
b) participate in class and online discussions, and chair or co-chair one session;
c) write a 25-page paper that examines an encounter between "the West and the Rest"
not covered in the coursework from both a factual and a counterfactual standpoint. The topic
will be chosen in consultation with the instructor.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Graduate standing.
THEMATIC COURSE OFFERINGS
HISTORY 2800 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
Required of all History majors, this course introduces students to the methods and discipline of historical inquiry. It explores the ways in which historians investigate and interpret the past—that is, what it means to "think historically" and do historical research. Through readings, discussions, workbook exercises, films, archival material, writing assignments and group projects, we will work to develop both the analytical and technical skills required for historical study and presentation. Since History 398 is fundamentally a workshop, your active and informed participation is an essential ingredient of success.
This class is designed to prepare students to succeed in the history major at OSU. Unlike many history courses, this course does not treat a specific period or geographical area, but rather focuses on historical philosophy and methodology.
The objectives of this course are for you to be able to:
1. master the basic factual knowledge of the major historical methods and perpectives presented in this course
2. think critically about historical issues and their interpretations
3. analyze historical data and reach informed conclusions about those data
4. express yourself with both oral and written clarity and precision.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 TR Beyerchen
Assigned Readings:
Conal Furay and Michael J. Salevouris, The Methods and Skills of History
Gerda Lerner, Why History Matters
Judith Doneson, The Holocaust in American Film
Choice of Required Final Text (one of these three, as determined in class):
Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Jeremy Schaap, Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
Recommended Text: Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History.
Assignments:
Attendance and participation are required for success in this course. Grades are computed on the basis of the proportions listed here. Detailed instructions for the written and group assignments will be distributed at least two weeks in advance of the due dates.
Attendance and Participation: 20%
Furay and Salevouris exercises: 5%
Review of Lerner, 3 pages: 10% (*** Due 28 October ***)
Review of Doneson, 3 pages: 10% (*** Due 18 November ***)
Final Examination in class, one hour: 20%
Final Paper, 9-10 pages: 35%
Group Presentation, extra credit: 2% (*** On 2 December ***)
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course is required for all students declaring a Major in history, students must earn a C or higher to have it count on the Major.
HISTORY 2800 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will introduce students to the historical method, that is, how historians write history. We will focus on a specific issue, Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. The class will discuss the debate among scholars on this topic. Students will also explore primary sources created by historical figures who lived through the Civil War, such as journalists, soldiers, slaves, and politicians. We will examine newspapers, military records, narratives from ex-slaves, memoirs by ex-soldiers, and political cartoons. We will discuss the different perspectives these historical figures had on Lincoln and Emancipation.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 TR Cashin
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course is required for all students declaring a Major in history, students must earn a C or higher to have it count on the Major.
HISTORY 2800 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will introduce students to historiography and historical methodology – that is, to different interpretations of history and to different methods of studying it. Among the themes
to be covered in the course are gender and history, historical commemorations, and cultural representations of historical events. Topics will include student unrest in the 1960s, including the feminist movement, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement.
Class attendance will be required. As a seminar, all students will be expected to participate regularly in class discussions. Participation in discussions will count for 30 percent of the final grade.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 WF Hoffmann
Assigned Readings:
Students will be required to read several articles or a book every week – the equivalent of ten books during the semester.
Assignments:
Students will be required to write a paragraph for every class period as well as several longer papers. They will also be assigned two class presentations.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course is required for all students declaring a Major in history, students must earn a "C" or higher to have it count on the history major.
HISTORY 2800 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course is designed for history majors. History 2800 introduces history majors to the field of history, and particularly to the historian's craft. In our exploration of the ways in which historians investigate the past, we will look to different purposes for studying history, a wide array of sources that are used in examining the past, and the diverse approaches that historians embrace.
This course hopes:
- To provide students with an opportunity to develop reading, writing, and analytical skills.
- To help students fine-tune their abilities to present oral presentations and actively participate in class.
- To expose students to the historian's craft, as well as to introduce important terms, concepts, and methodologies
- To develop critical thinking, to learn to locate and review evidence
Time Meeting Days Instructor
8:00-9:20 WF Judd
Assigned Readings:
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men
Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History
Josephine Tey, Daughter of Time
Kevin Boyle The Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
Assignments (tentative):
Précis, book review; bibliography, prospectus
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course is required for all students declaring a Major in history, students must earn a "C" or higher to have it count on the history major.
HISTORY 2800 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course introduces students to the discipline of history by analyzing four approaches based on four theories about human experience generally—Marxist, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and narratological. To that end students will read and analyze these theories at their source and then critically evaluate applications of them in contemporary historical works—two of them my own. These evaluations will concentrate on the strengths and weaknesses of these methods, that is, what do they reveal about the past and what are they unable to reveal. In addition to some short readings of pure theory, students will also read assigned works that illustrate these respective approaches in practice and are the subject of student written evaluations. I also run a writing workshop that clarifies mechanics of writing to be refined in these papers.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 WF Kern
Assigned Readings:
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology
Rudolph Binion, Hitler Among the Germans
Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space: 1880-1918
Stephen Kern, The Modernist Novel: A Critical Introduction
Assignments:
Attendance and participation in discussion of primary and secondary sources.
Four short papers on each of these works.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course is required for all students declaring a Major in history, students must earn a "C" or higher to have it count on the history major.
HISTORY 2800 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
How do historians study the past? This course introduces students to the methods and disciplines of historical inquiries. Through readings, discussions, documentaries, films and archival materials, students will be introduced to the methods and disciplines of historical inquiries. We will explore, for example, the ways in which historians use written, oral, archival and archeological sources to develop historical arguments. We will also explore the strengths and weaknesses of each of these sources. By the end of the quarter, I expect students to have acquired adequate skills for analyzing, developing and presenting historical arguments appropriate for undergraduate history majors. Organized in seminar or workshop format, this course will be discussion-driven. As such, success in the course will invariably depend on the student's active and informed participation, as well as timely completion of assignments.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:35-10:55 TR Kobo
Assigned Readings (Tentative)
Conal Furay and Michael Salevouris, The Methods and Skills of History.
Robert Harm, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade
***Level-appropriate Journal articles on historical methods
Recommended readings:
William Kelleher Storey, Writing History: A Guide for Students
Mary Lynn Rampola, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History
Assignments (Tentative)
3 Reaction papers (3-5 pages each)
A book review
Bibliography
Paper outline précis
Final paper (10-15 pages)
Prerequisites and Special Comments
This course is required for all students completing a Major in History. Students must earn a C or higher to have it count on the Major. It may not be used for the GEC Historical Study requirement.
HISTORY 2800 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course is designed to introduce undergraduate history majors to the discipline and some of the methods of history. The successful completion of the course will result in your gaining firsthand knowledge of how historians work. We will achieve this objective by examining and analyzing historical documents, by reading, studying, and dissecting (critiquing) published historical (and fictional) works, by learning the mechanics of historical production, and by writing historical essays.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 TR Shaw
The specific topic of this class is Nat Turner's rebellion. In 1831, Turner, a Southampton County Virginia slave, led a revolt designed to overthrow the institution of slavery. The revolt has been reconstructed by historians, fictionalized by novelists, and even translated onto film. Almost every generation recreates Turner anew. We will look at available documents on this incident, the different interpretations of them, and draw our own intelligent conclusions about what definitely happened, what probably happened, and what we can never really know. We will also try to account for the different views that exist and the conclusions that cannot be verified (and were probably false).
The point of these analyses is not simply to know all we can about Turner's revolt, but to think about the discipline of history. We will examine other primary documents from the period to aid us in this process as well. We will read and write book reviews, review historical journals, and spend some time looking at new technologies and resources for conducting historical research. We will also pay attention to problems and pitfalls of historical research and writing. In the process, we will look at and think about "driving forces" of history, whether history is objective or subjective, and the role of the historian in history. We will talk about "good" history and "bad" history, how to use sources, what "facts" are, and whether or not history can be scientific. Altogether, our goal is to become better historians through critical reading and thoughtful analysis of original and interpreted sources.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: This course is required for all students declaring a Major in history, students must earn a "C" or higher to have it count on the history major.
HISTORY 2800H INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will introduce honors students planning to major in history to history as a discipline and a major. The course is designed to give students practice in the analysis of historical sources and in developing logic and clarity in both written and oral assignments.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-2:05 WF Stebenne
Assigned Readings:
Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time (1951)
James Romm, Herodotus (1998)
E. H. Carr, What is History? (1961)
David Cannadine, ed., What is History Now? (2002)
Elliott Gorn, Randy Roberts and Terry Bilhartz, Constructing the American Past, 6th ed., Vol. 1 (2007)
Assignments:
Discussion of the assigned reading; three chapter summaries (précis); book review and oral presentation of the results; journal analysis and oral presentation of the results; history based on primary documents and oral presentation of the results.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course is required for all honors students majoring in history.
HISTORY 4212 READINGS IN LATE ANTIQUITY
3 Cr. Hrs.
"Daily Life in Late Antiquity"
Late antiquity (ca. 300-700 CE) was an epoch marked by fundamental changes. The geopolitical fragmentation of the Roman Empire resulted in the subsequent creation of new barbarian kingdoms in the West and the focalization of imperial power around Constantinople in the East. The rise of Christianity led to the demise of certain ancient traditions (e.g. polytheism; gladiatorial combat) and the emergence of a new set of religious and social values. Meanwhile widespread economic downturns and environmental crises (e.g. the Justinianic plague) placed unprecedented strains on human activity. In this course, we shall examine how some of these profound macro-level changes in political structure, religious world-views and socio-economic conditions transformed the experience of daily life for individual men and women. Following several introductory sessions on late antique history and current methods of interpreting ancient sources, students will read numerous late ancient primary sources (all in English translation), such as the life of a saint living in a war zone; imperial legislation on marriage, divorce, and adultery; a caustic treatise on the cruelty and vicissitudes of the late Roman 1%; and a salacious expose of the inner court life of a late antique emperor. In addition to consistent class participation (including several in-class presentations), students will write two short (6-8 pages) critical papers on assigned topics.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
1:55-3:55 T Sessa
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills a requirement for the history major.
HISTORY 4250 READINGS IN MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
Migration in Modern Europe
This course will examine different perspectives on migrations within, out of, and (back) to Europe from the late eighteenth century until the present. The course will explore these population movements within the context of political struggles, border changes, economic conditions, demographic realities, family structures, gender roles, and cultural expectations, comparing and contrasting developments in the eastern and western parts of the European continent and its overseas colonial possessions. The course will engage theories of migration, diaspora, citizenship, nationality, and empire and study how notions of citizenship, national belonging, and state control influenced and were influenced by the evolution of migration movements within Europe.
Some of the topics covered include seasonal labor migrations in the pre-industrial period; migrations connected to marriage and the formation of new family and kin structures; war, conquest, and colonization in the military borders of empires; rural to urban migration and urbanization; the effects of industrialization on the movement of people; the transatlantic migrations from the mid-19th century and the return waves of Europeans back from the Americas; colonial migrations associated with the New Imperialism of the late-19th century and the creation of European racial hierarchies overseas; the East-West labor migrations and the political migrations resulting from the revolutions and national movements in long 19th century; the world wars, displacement, population exchange, ethnic cleansing, and genocide; Cold War political, labor, and ethnic migrations; decolonization and the transformation of Europe into a continent of immigration; Islam in Europe; and changes in the citizenship and asylum regime in Europe in the context of globalization.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
12:45-3:40 W Dragostinova
Required readings:
This is a tentative list; you may expect 7-8 books and additional articles on Carmen.
Leo Lucassen, The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005).
Saskia Sassen, Guests and Aliens (New York: New Press, 1999).
John Torpe, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Mark Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Zahra, Tara. The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe's Families after World War II. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2011.
John Bowen, Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
Buchi Emecheta, Second-Class Citizen (New York: Braziller, 1975).
Julie Mertus, ed., The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Assignments:
3 reviews of the assigned readings
Annotated bibliography
Final 12-page paper
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills a requirement for the history major.
HISTORY 4250 READINGS IN MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
Men, Women and World War I
This course focuses on the history of World War I. However, if your primary interest lies in military history, you will probably be disappointed. This course pays only scant attention to warfare and strategy, politics and diplomacy. Instead we will explore historical writing about ordinary men and women, focusing on the ways in which World War I impacted their lives both during and after the hostilities. We will also investigate the impact of World War I on gender arrangements more broadly, seeking to determine the long-term social and cultural effects of wartime upheavals.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-2:05 T Soland
Assigned Readings:
The required readings for this course will consist of a series of book chapters and journal articles. All reading materials will be made available on Carmen.
Assignments:
Two short papers (3-5 pages) and a final paper (15 pages).
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills a required course for history majors.
HISTORY 4525H RESEARCH SEMINAR IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
Oil!
The Politics, Cultures, Economics & Diplomacy of Oil in Modern History
Oil: Big business, vital commodity, black gold. Oil has played a critical role in world events from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania to the present day. In this course will examine how and why oil has become the world's largest industry. We will discuss the ways that the competition over control of the world's oil has impacted international relations, global and regional politics, and the world's economy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After spending the first two weeks gaining a general overview of the topic of oil in modern history, we will focus in on a number of key moments and players in the world wide competition for oil hegemony up to the oil crisis of the 1970s and the nationalization of the oil industry in Venezuela. We will be reading scholarly monographs and articles, historical fiction, works of political science, and popular history, and will discuss the relative merits of each genre for the study and understanding of history.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-5:15 T Siegel
Assigned Readings: (tentative)
The reading list will include several of the following:
Black, Brian. Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom.
Brown, Jonathan C. and Alan Knight (eds.), The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century.
Heiss, Mary Ann. Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950-1954.
Tinker Salas, Miguel. The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela.
Venn, Fiona. The Oil Crisis.
Vitalis, Robert. America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier.
Yergin, Daniel. The Prize.
Assignments:
One in-class presentation on the author(s) of the week, placing the week's reading within its historiographical context.
One 4-6 page document analysis paper
One research paper, approximately 15-20 pages in length
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills a required course for history majors.
HISTORY 4550 READINGS IN MILITARY HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
The Wars of the French Revolution & Napoleon
History 4550, The Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, addresses the changes in the theory and practice of war brought about by the French Revolution and its most prominent military exponent, Napoleon. Beginning with an overview of ancién regime theory and practice, the course addresses changes in training, organization, recruitment and tactics during the pivotal early Revolutionary period. The course then proceeds to a critical examination of policy objectives, strategies, tactics, and campaigns in the wars of France, 1792-1815, emphasizing the social, economic and political context within which military operations were planned and conducted. The course pays particular attention to the role of technology, and to guerrilla warfare, logistics and the war of economic attrition.
Assigned Readings:
Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (Bloomington, IN: 1980) [required]
David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York, 1966) [optional]
John A. Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791-94 (Urbana, Illinois: 1985) [optional]
Assignments:
Course requirements include a seminar presentation & a 15-20 page research paper. Texts are available at Barnes & Noble.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
8:00-10:55 T Guilmartin
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills a required course for history majors.
HISTORY 4650H SEMINAR IN WORLD HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
European Encounters with the Wider World, 1400-1750
The class will examine original documents (in English) as well as articles and books about the encounters between the Europeans and the rest of the world from the perspective of both sides: Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs; Vasco da Gama and the seafarers of Malabar; Oda Nobunaga and the Jesuits; and so on. By comparing these contradictory (and often incompatible) accounts of the same events, we will gain a better understanding of the process of European expansion and assess the strengths (and limitations) of historical sources. This course fulfills the Senior History Colloquium requirement for all History Majors.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:15-5:00 M Parker
Assigned Readings:
1. S. B. Schwartz, ed., Implicit Understandings. Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chapters assigned week by week
2. Course pack of sources assigned week by week:
Assignments:
1. Two pages of commentary and questions concerning the readings for five of the meetings: 10 pages: 30% of the total grade.
2. A 20-page paper presenting "symmetrical" documents that examines an encounter between Europeans and "others" between 1400 and 1750 not covered in the coursework. The topic will be chosen in consultation with the instructor: 40% of the total grade.
3. Attendance at and participation in all weekly meetings of the class: 30% of the total grade.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Senior honors history majors; non-honors majors may speak with the instructor if they wish to enroll in this course.
HISTORY 4650 READINGS SEMINAR IN WORLD HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
The History of Violence
The course will study the history of violence from the earliest human societies to the present, focusing on theories that scholars have developed to explain violence in its various forms (homicide, genocide, terror, war, sexual assault, etc.). We will study historical, scientific, and social scientific debates over the causes of violence, as well as the techniques historians and forensic archaeologists use to estimate the nature and extent of violence in particular societies. We will spend some time on specific historical events, but our main purpose is to consider the historical and biological causes of violence and nonviolence.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:10-12:30 WF Roth
Assigned Readings:
Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking, 2011. (ISBN-10: 0670022950, ISBN-13: 978-0670022953)
William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. (ISBN-10: 0226526801, ISBN-13: 978-0226526805)
Jonathan Spence, God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. (ISBN-10: 0393315568, ISBN-13: 978-0393315561)
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York. New York: Vintage, 1999. (ISBN-10: 0679740759, ISBN-13: 978-0679740759)
And selected essays on Carmen
Assignments:
Quizzes: There will be a quiz every other week on the readings in the course. The quizzes will ask you to report fully and accurately on the content of readings in the course.
Precís and Notes: You will be asked to write a two-page précis (concise summary) of the theory of violence in one of the books we will be reading, and to take detailed notes on a particular chapter in that book. The purpose is to learn how to identify the essential information in a work of history and communicate that information effectively.
Book Review: You will be asked to write a critical book review on one of the books we will be reading. The purpose is to learn to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular historical argument.
Historiographical Essay: You will be asked to write an essay (5 to 6 pages in length). It should reflect on a major problem in the history of violence. You should devote these essays to an analysis of a particular historical debate, and weigh the merits of the arguments and evidence that historians have put forward on behalf of their respective theories of violence.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills a required course for history majors.
HISTORY 7900 COLLOQUIUM IN THE PHILOSPHY OF HISTORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY,
3 Cr. Hrs. AND THE HISTORIAN'S SKILLS
Oriented around Carl Lotus Becker's little classic, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932), this version of the graduate colloquium on historiography and the philosophy of history might be subtitled "The Decline and Fall of the Enlightenment." For, among other things, this colloquium proposes examine the role of subjectivity in written history by investigating how a personal loss of faith in the Enlightenment on the part of this Progressive historian entered into the making of a book that itself articulated the theory of historical relativity in a modernist mode. Having done that, the colloquium will "cover" the history of written history by considering Becker's assertions about the ancient, medieval, "enlightened" and nineteenth-century scientific mindsets or "climates of opinion" against the evidence of selections from histories written during these periods, for example Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—a book recently revived, by the way, by John Pocock's many volumes on the subject. From there the colloquium will examine what has happened to the genre of "intellectual "history since Becker's time, particularly the restatements of the thesis of relativity under the influence of post-modern or structural philosophers as Michel Foucault and Jean-Françcois Lyotard. Along the way, the colloquium will not fail to consider such apparently opposite alternatives to intellectual history as quantitative history or the French Annales-school history as exemplified in Fernand Braudel's classic on the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World during the Era of Philip II.
Although a week-by-week syllabus for this course awaits construction, it is safe to say to say that the colloquium's format will be weekly discussions punctuated by occasional mini-lectures on the basis of the assigned readings from primary and secondary sources. Besides active contributions to these discussions, the chief requirements will consist in weekly précis of the readings culminating in a paper about an historian or a chosen problem in the philosophy or methodological practice of history.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
3:00-5:15 W Van Kley
Prerequisites and Special Comments: Graduate standing.
HISTORY 7905 PEDAGOGY & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course is the first of two courses (the other being 7910) in professional development for graduate students in history. The course has two purposes:
1) History 7905 will introduce students to various objectives, strategies, and techniques, for the teaching of college history. It will prepare students to make a contribution to the Department of History's teaching mission as teaching assistants, and also ready students for teaching their own independent classes after passing general exams.
2) In addition, History 7905 will introduce students to a) locating sources of funding to support various graduate school and professional activities, b) tracking and presenting your professional accomplishments to others, c) introducing the grant and related decision-making processes, and d) skills needed to produce winning applications for funding and other professionally competitive purposes.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
5:30-7:25 Thursday Brown/Ugland
WOMEN'S HISTORY
History 8600: Research/Writing Seminar in Women’s/Gender/Sexuality History
Why write alone when you can have the benefit of a supportive intellectual community?
This research and writing seminar provides the opportunity to start and hopefully complete a major research project (such as a M.A. paper, a dissertation chapter, or an article) related to the fields of women’s, gender, and/or sexuality history.
Our course will begin by examining a selection of historical scholarship and, if possible, conversing with the authors to help us:
- conceptualize a viable research topic;
- identify appropriate sources; and
- develop methodological approaches and interpretive frameworks to analyze these materials.
Prof. Wu also will share her experiences in becoming a co-editor of Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, which will be housed at Ohio State University in the History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Departments for the next five years.
The remainder of the course will allow time for research, writing, and rewriting. Students will gain the benefit of receiving regular constructive feedback from a supportive and collegial intellectual community. The course will conclude with an optional mini-conference to provide an opportunity to present your work in a professional academic setting.
If you are interested in taking this course or have questions, please get in touch with me so we can discuss how the seminar can best support your intellectual endeavors.
Time Meetings Days Instructor
2:20-5:15 Thursdays Professor J. Wu (wu.287@osu.edu)
WORLD HISTORY
HISTORY 1681 WORLD HISTORY TO 1500
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course examines the major issues that have shaped the human experience from the beginnings of human civilization (ca. 3500 B.C.) to ca. A.D. 1500, when the European voyages of exploration were beginning to tie the world together more tightly than ever before in a new pattern of global interrelatedness. Before 1500, societies in different parts of the world had far less contact with each other. In particular, Afro-Eurasia and the Americas remained almost entirely cut off from each other. For this reason, the main emphasis of History 181 is the comparative study of civilizations. Secondarily, the course will emphasize patterns of integration that linked different civilizations at regional and hemispheric, if not yet global, levels.
Time Meetings Days Instructor
8:10-8:55 MWF
9:10-10:05 MWF
Assigned Readings (tentative):
Richard W. Bulliet, et al., The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, 4th ed.
HISTORY 1682 WORLD HISTORY 1500 TO PRESENT
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will explore the emergence of the modern world. From the late fifteenth century, the world witnessed a rapid progression in the mobility of people and information, and an unprecedented tightening of the bonds connecting far-flung civilizations. This is most apparent in the European maritime explorations and conquests of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which led to the establishment of European colonies across much of the Americas, Africa and Asia. In addition to examining European colonialism and imperialism in various manifestations across the globe, students enrolled in this course will be challenged to think critically about the global repercussions of such historical phenomena as the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. In the final weeks of the course we will turn to more recent global historical issues. These include the rise of nationalism, its relationship to the collapse of the European colonial empires, and its turbulent legacy today.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
11:30-12:25 WF McDow
10:20; 11:30; Tues or Thurs (recitations)
12:40 Tues
Assigned Readings:
Readings will include a textbook, a collection of primary sources, and two short books.
Assignments:
Assignments will include a midterm and final examination; regular reading responses; several short quizzes; and two short papers.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
English 110.xx. Not open to students with credit for 1680 or 181.
HISTORY 2500 20th CENTURY INTERNATIONAL HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course will examine the political, economic, and military relations between the major countries of the world from the origins of the First World War to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The first half of the course will take us to the end of the Second World War. Starting from the collapse of the nineteenth century international system in 1914, we will examine the reasons why the system that was constructed to replace it failed in 1939. We will explore from a multinational perspective the ways in which the dominant nation-states competed for both power and security in what was perceived to be the new world order. We will seek to understand the ways in which the Great Powers attempted to balance their national needs for economic and military security with their desires for international prominence and stability. In addition to the causes and courses of the two world wars that bookend and shape this period, we will examine a number of broad topics in this semester. They will include: (1) the rise of anti-imperialism in the 20s and 30s; (2) the successes and failures of international communism; (3) the globalization of the post-war economy; (4) the evolution of US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere; and (5) the rise of Japan.
The second half of the course will trace the Cold War from beginning to end. Starting from the foundations of the Cold War in the wartime alliances and conduct of the Second World War, we will look at the origins of the Cold War in Europe and Asia. We will trace the expansion of the Cold War from its origins in Europe to its extension to the peripheral states in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Some further themes that we will cover will include: (1) the importance of the proxy conflicts as both Cold War front lines and Cold War determinants; (2) decolonization and the end of the modern European empires; (3) the rise of China and the significance of Sino-Soviet competition; (4) the nuclear age and the arms race; (5) the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union; and (6) the struggle to construct the post-Cold War international order.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-3:40 TR Siegel
Assigned Readings:
The reading will include several of the following:
Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon.
Neiberg, Michael S., ed. The World War I Reader.
Troung Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir.
Walker, J. Samuel. Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the use of atomic bombs against Japan.
Assignments:
Weekly readings and class discussions.
Midterm and comprehensive final.
Four map quizzes.
One or two short analytical papers based on the assigned readings.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
This course fulfills Group Global, post-1750 for history majors.
HISTORY 2650 THE WORLD SINCE 1914
3 Cr. Hrs.
This course looks from a global perspective at major issues that have made, or are making, the world we live in today. The lectures explore major themes or examples illustrative of those issues. Additional exercises will explore a variety of alternative approaches to understanding the world around us: films, works of literature, the pictorial record created by artists and photographers, or simulations of real-life situations. The goal of the course is not only to convey factual knowledge about the twentieth-century world, but also to provide an interpretive framework in which this knowledge can be set, and to help us all become well-informed and responsible citizens of a world that is now at a critical turning point in its history.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
9:10-10:05 WF Findley
9:10 Tues (recitation)
8:00; 9:10; Thurs (recitations)
Assigned Readings:
Carter V. Findley & John A. M. Rothney, Twentieth-Century World, seventh edition,
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Alan Paton, Cry the Beloved Country
Naguib Mahfouz, Midaq Alley
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2012
Assignments:
Probably a midterm and a final, plus a short analytical paper based on assigned readings. Exams may combine objective and essay questions. Comprehensive final.
Prerequisites and Special Comments:
Interested students are encouraged to contact Professor Findley by e-mail: findley.1@osu.edu. Please mention "History 2650" in the subject line so that your message still stand out and be recognized as pertaining to the course.
HISTORY 7650 STUDIES IN WORLD HISTORY
3 Cr. Hrs.
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a small and relatively obscure nomadic people emerged from their isolated homeland in the steppe north of China to forge what would quickly become the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world. While the Mongol Empire is long gone, it had a profound and undeniable impact on the trajectory of world history. The destruction of the Mongol conquests was overwhelming, but that relatively short period of trauma was followed by a lengthy recovery under the Pax-Mongolica: the Mongol Peace. For several decades, Eurasia witnessed an unprecedented rise in the movement of people and a corresponding rise in the transcontinental exchange of commodities, scientific knowledge, religious and cultural traditions, and even disease pathogens. This course will introduce students to the social, cultural and political history of medieval Central Eurasia, paying special attention to the quite regular, occasionally turbulent, but never dull interactions of pastoral-nomadic and sedentary peoples.
Time Meeting Days Instructor
2:20-3:40 T Levi
Assigned Readings:
To be assigned. Readings will be available on reserve.
Prerequisites and Special Comments: Graduate students only.