Graduate Course Descriptions

Spring 2024 Course Descriptions

MONDAY:

HISTORY531 (MA): Colloquium in African Diaspora History/HIST802 (PHD): Advanced Readings in African Diaspora
Herbert Brewer

This course, which exposes students to both the canon and the recent scholarship of African Diaspora history in preparation for the comprehensive exams, gathers multiple thematic and disciplinary perspectives to study and analyze the interrelated intellectual and scholarly issues and questions constituted by this subject. The course provides a deep immersion into the study of the African Diaspora, which entails a substantial volume of weekly readings.

HIST680: Revolutionary Womanhood and Masculinity
Sara Rahnama

This course uses its theme, gender and revolution, as a window into studying gender as a category of historical analysis. The course will introduce students to some of the canonical texts of gender history, then move on to the course theme across multiple geographic contexts to explore some more recent important texts. Assignments will offer students the opportunity to practice grant applications, public-facing articles, or course lectures. 

HIST808: Practicum in Oral History
Alex Pavuk

Introduces students to both the theory and practice of professional oral history. Through course readings and weekly discussion, the seminar covers practical and tactical aspects of the interview process as well as historical-philosophical questions about the production of oral history itself.  The follow-up course, HIST 808 “Practicum in Oral History,” (for which 708 is a prerequisite) prepares students more fully to create and execute a full oral history project. HIST 708 requires a mid-semester paper on an assigned oral history topic and an actual student-produced  'mini' oral history by the end of the semester.

TUESDAY:

HIST 618: North Africa, America, and the World
Lawrence Peskin

This course examines the relationship between the United States and North Africa generally with a specific focus on Morocco, from 1776 to the present.  It will focus on cultural concerns as well as diplomacy and politics.

HIST632: African Americans after 1900: Race, Policing, and Racial Capitalism in America
Menika Dirkson

This course will explore urban black life in America following the Civil Rights Movement by looking at migration, housing, education, policing, mass incarceration, poverty and social activism in major U.S. cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

HIST705: Civil Rights on the Ground: Writing Narratives of Community Struggle
David Terry

WEDNESDAY:

HIST 599: Historical Writing
Linda Noel

This course will involve discussions of historical texts with particular attention paid to different styles of academic writing and conventions.  It will include practice with crafting the standard types of academic writing, and peer review.  Students will write book reviews, a review essay, and a very short research paper using assigned course readings and databases.  

History 715: Advanced Readings in Twentieth Century United States History
Dr. Daryl Scott

Through this course, the doctoral student will become grounded in the literature-of the history of the United States in the Twentieth Century including “classics” and publications on the cuffing-edge of contemporary scholarship."  The course will examine the long twentieth century from the Gilded Age through the Presidency of Barack H. Obama with an eye toward preparing students for the comprehensive examination.

THURSDAY:

HIST610: Doing Civil Rights History: Race, Politics and Commemoration in the Post-Sixties South
David Terry

HIST 641: US Urban History to 1900
Lawrence Peskin

This course examines the development of cities and urbanization in the United States from the colonial period to the end of the 19th century.  It pays close attention to race and gender as well as political and economic developments.