HIST 481 Topics

"“The Cold War and American Culture"

This course examines the Cold War as a political, ideological, economic, and military contest through a cultural lens. Though it gives special attention to the US role and experience, both at home and abroad, the course also investigates how other nations influenced Americans’ understanding of the Cold War’s larger meaning. Through cultural products like film, television, magazines, and comics, we will explore how popular culture became central to a growing awareness of an existential threat to the nation and how these products helped create a Cold War reality for many Americans. Through the use of primary sources and secondary literature, students will develop an argumentative thesis and write a polished original research paper that accords to disciplinary standards.

"Cuba and Its Streets"

This course examines the history of modern Cuba from the perspective of its streets. Focusing primarily on the twentieth century, our study will explore processes of urban development in the capital city of Havana. It will highlight the construction of infrastructure, transportation, and community spaces like plazas. We will also consider the various social encounters, forms of labor and commerce, political protests and revolutions, and religious and patriotic processions through which Cubans have negotiated their place in society. Finally, students will write an original research paper that draws on primary and secondary sources.

"Paris at War in the 20th Century"

Using a case study approach, this course examines the social, political, economic, and cultural effects of total war on the Parisian population during WWI, WWII, and the Algerian War. Students will read, discuss, and write analytical essays on primary & secondary sources related to each case study. Students also will draft and revise a research paper on a topic related to one of the case studies and give a final 10- minute presentation on that project.

"Encounters and Conflicts in the U.S. South"

While borderland studies seek to examine the geographical and sociopolitical interactions that occur in the spaces between cultures and people groups, it often overlooks some of the most intense conflict that took place within those same intersections. In this course we will examine more than just the spaces between societies, we will also look at how those spaces might have impacted each of those respective societies as well. The interactions between Indigenous people, European colonists, and African slaves in the U.S. South produced many of the intercultural and intracultural encounters and conflicts that shaped U.S. history. Students will examine a range of topics covering both intercultural and intracultural encounters and the conflicts that often occurred. This will allow us to consider how the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras might be viewed through a similar Borderlands lens as Indian Removal and Westward Expansion. Students will familiarize themselves with both the timely and relative scholarship, as well as the primary sources available, and will produce an original research paper over a related topic of their own choosing.

"Becoming American (on their own terms): U.S. Immigration and Ethnicity "

Immigration has become a hot political topic in recent decades. It’s not what people know about immigration that concerns me; it’s the things they “know” that simply aren’t true. This seminar presents an opportunity to explore a variety of topics, among them the sources and persistence of ethnic identity across two centuries; its interaction with issues of race, religion, wars and politics, language, education, and social mobility; immigrants’ images of America and Americans or vice versa; various nativist and anti-immigrant movements; contrasts and continuities between contemporary immigration patterns and those of earlier eras. Students can take the opportunity to explore their own ethnic heritage, but this is merely an option. There are sufficient primary sources that have been translated into English that no heritage language competence is necessary. Students will develop an original research paper in this writing-intensive (W) course.

"The Vietnam War/The American War"

This is a writing-intensive course that introduces students majoring in history to the craft of the profession through a variety of strategies and techniques, such as lectures, discussions, work with primary and secondary sources, writing laboratories. All these will help students in their successful completion of a research project related to the subject of the course – the wars in Vietnam in the twentieth century. The course will cover history of the foreign involvements in Vietnam in the twentieth century as well as Vietnamese internal conflicts that contributed to these wars. It will consider origins and development of hostilities, wartime societies, culture, collaboration, resistance, colonialism, nationalism, and the outcomes of the wars. The course will also address effects of the war on the United States as one of the major players in the armed conflicts in Vietnam. The final product of the course will be a research paper that will bring together students’ skills developed in both parts of the course.