Graduate Courses

Empire & Internationalism

Historians have fruitfully juxtaposed empire and nation, metropole and colony as conjoined categories of analysis to make sense of Europe in the long nineteenth century—taken here as the period between the 1780s (“the Age of Revolutions”) and the 1920s (the early interwar years). But they have also grappled with how to write the history of European empires amidst imperatives to fundamentally rethink Eurocentric narratives and methods. This readings seminar presents a set of scholarship that considers the relationship between empire and internationalism as a way of evaluating the place of Europe in the wider world—and vice-versa. By thinking across metropolitan, imperial, and international sites and scales, we will evaluate how historians have adopted the approaches of entangled, comparative, and global history to study Europe. Themes of sovereignty, governance, political economy, science, race, and labor feature prominently, interspersed through a sequence of overarching questions: What possibilities for collective action has internationalism facilitated, and what alternatives has it occluded? How have visions for imperial and international integration shaped one another? Lastly, how can we conceptualize and trace the mutually constitutive relationships between small-scale, local sites and broader, international developments?

T 1:20PM – 3:15PM | 5245 Mosse Humanities | Instructor: Geoffrey Durham

Dissertation Chapter Writing

History 710 functions as a writing workshop for dissertators. Participants can be at any stage in the dissertation-writing process, but must commit to presenting at least one chapter for peer review at some point during the semester. The course will focus on practical writing issues, including questions of style, structure, narrative, and argument.  We will examine how to structure a chapter effectively; how to compose efficient and powerful introductions and conclusions; and how to fashion narrative that marshals evidence and analysis in an approachable and convincing way.

T 1:20PM – 3:15PM | 5257 Mosse Humanities | Instructor: Emma Kuby

Designing Courses

This seminar is designed as a one-semester workshop on course design for History and HSMT graduate students. Each week, we will discuss one element of course design. In some weeks, we will discuss basic concepts or frameworks in teaching and learning and ask how these can help us design courses that better fit our goals as teachers. By the end of the semester, each student will design and develop a course syllabus, learning activities, and an assessment plan. Students will also develop one full module (or equivalent).

W 3:30PM – 5:25PM | 5257 Mosse Humanities| Instructor: Daniel Ussishkin

Historiography of Modern Korea

This course provides a survey of the major issues and debates in the English-language historiography of modern Korea, from the late nineteenth century to the present.  Topics include the opening of Korea; complex interactions between Koreans and Japanese within the space of empire; colonial modernity; liberation and division; Korean War; and Cold War Korea U.S.-Korea relations.  No previous knowledge of Korean history or language is necessary, but basic knowledge of twentieth century East Asia is helpful.

T 3:30PM – 5:25PM | Online | Instructor: Charles Kim

CIA Covert Wars & U.S. Foreign Policy

Designed for undergraduates and graduate students with some background in U.S. diplomatic history or international relations, the course will probe the dynamics of CIA covert wars through case histories over the past 75 years. By focusing on world regions such as Europe, Latin America, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, the seminar will explore the central role these covert wars played in international history during the Cold War and its aftermath. These clandestine interventions often succeeded brilliantly from a U.S. perspective. But they sometimes left behind ruined battlegrounds and ravaged societies that became veritable black holes of international instability.

After several sessions reviewing the origins of the CIA and its distinctive patterns of clandestine warfare, the seminar will apply a case-study approach to covert wars in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America including, the anti-Mossadeq coup in Iran, overthrow of Sukarno in Indonesia, Lumumba’s murder in the Congo, and the protracted war in Afghanistan. Reflecting the significance of Southeast Asia to CIA operations, the seminar will devote four sessions to this region, including anti-Sukarno operations in Indonesia, anti-communist pacification in the Philippines, counter-guerilla operations in South Vietnam, and the secret war in Laos, arguing that the latter two operations are central to understanding more recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.

Through the sum of such content, students should finish the seminar with knowledge about a key facet of U.S. foreign policy and a lifelong capacity for critical analysis of international relations. Beyond such an approach, the course will give students sharpened analytical abilities, refined research tactics, improved oral presentations, and better writing skills. [Meets with Hist 600]

T 11:00AM – 12:55PM | 5257 Mosse Humanities | Instructor: Alfred McCoy

US-Mex Gendered Migrations

This seminar invites students to explore the history of gendered migrations across the US-Mexico borderlands during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will analyze the social, political, labor, economic, and legal debates surrounding ethnic Mexican gendered migrations and their effects on migrants and their families. The assigned readings include books and articles that utilize diverse methodologies including memory, archival research, and oral history. Students will engage in the process of conducting archival research and oral histories. To do so, students will engage in readings about diverse intersectional methodological approaches as a way of introduction to begin their own research.

T 3:30PM – 5:25PM | 5255 Mosse Humanities | Instructor: Marla Ramírez

American History 1900-1945

This is an advanced seminar on American history from 1900 to 1945, a period of momentous social change and corresponding efforts at social amelioration. Understanding the Progressive Era, the 1920s, and New Deal has challenged historians for decades. We’ll read some classic, sweeping interpretations of various aspects of reform as well as a variety of recent monographs. Reform movements appeared in various guises in the early decades of the twentieth century, representing conservative, liberal, and radical ideologies.

From social gospeler to fundamentalist, trust buster to New Dealer, settlement house volunteer to professional altruist, diverse movements arose as America became a more urban, industrial, and diverse nation. We’ll explore the rise of corporate America, immigration, race relations, and a variety of culture wars. The latter include cultural battles over temperance and prohibition, church and state, war and peace, and capitalism and the regulatory state. We’ll also study the trans-national dimensions of reform as America became an imperial, world power.

M 1:20PM – 3:15PM |5255 Mosse Humanities| Instructor: William J. Reese

Race & Nationalism

This graduate seminar examines race and nationalism as they interact in several different geographic settings over time.  It aims to cultivate a nuanced understanding of how race and nationalism have not only been “factors” in national histories, but also how they have shaped the past in the societies we will study.  Our readings and discussions will prompt us to probe how race and nationalism inflect colonialism, racial orders, gender, cultural politics, and foreign relations.  Most of our authors are historians but we will also sample selected work in the humanities and social sciences to achieve an enhanced understanding of the many ways that scholars have studied the race and nationalisms nexus.

T 1:20PM – 3:15PM | 5255 Mosse Humanities | Instructor: Brenda Plummer

The Atomic Age in the US and Japan: Legacies of the Bomb

When America dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, the world entered the nuclear age. The implications were global, putting every person and nation under what the peace activist Lenore Marshall called “nuclear sword of Damocles –the constant threat of nuclear annihilation or at risk for the “slow violence of environmental harm and nuclear contamination. But nuclear weapons hold special meaning for Japan and the United States–nations transformed through their development and use. This course will explore the history of their special relationship with the bomb, as well as the broader significance of the nuclear age on science and society.

The course is divided into three parts, each dealing with a separate dimension of the atomic bomb. Part One (weeks 1-4) examines the development of atomic weapons and decision to drop the bomb, both the real time context that led up to August 6 and 9, 1945; and the debate over the ethics and necessity of this decision that broke out in the immediate aftermath and continues to the present day. Part Two (weeks 5-10) looks at the atomic bomb in culture and memory, comparing the construction of meaning around the bomb in the United States and Japan. We also examine how both countries dealt with the possibility of nuclear energy as well as the medical and environmental impacts of nuclear power. Part Three (weeks 11-14) focuses on the larger legacies of the bomb for international politics and security, touching on issues such as nuclear proliferation and brinksmanship, the peace movement, the nuclear taboo, nuclear diplomacy and other aspects of our atomic age.

F 1:20PM – 3:15PM | 5257 Mosse Humanities | Instructors: Louise Young and Devin Kennedy

Early Scientific Collections (903)

This seminar examines early modern scientific collecting in terms of sites and spaces (curiosity cabinets, botanical gardens, scientific societies; correspondence networks, journals, ships); technologies of making, stabilizing, and circulating scientific objects (travelers’ questionnaires, practices of preservation, serialization, and standardization); and actors who worked to cumulate scientific materials, whether tangible or conceptual.

We will also likely devote one or two seminar meetings to consider the long history of the materials assembled by the 18th-century physician and Royal Society Fellow Hans Sloane, which served as the founding donation for the British Museum (1759) and were later dispersed in part to the Natural History Museum (1881) and the British Library (1973). This case study will provide seminar participants with a focused opportunity to assess the methodological and curatorial issues implicated in contemporary efforts to reconstruct the conceptual, economic, and political structures that enabled early modern scientific collecting and continue to shape its legacies for the present day.

Readings will represent a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and geographical/cultural areas. The writing requirement for this seminar will be tailored to students’ particular needs in their respective programs of study.

W 1:20PM – 3:15PM | TBD | Instructor: Florence Hsia