Same as Asian American Studies 15C.

Treats major themes of world historical development through the mid-seventeenth century, focusing on the Eurasian world, but with secondary emphasis on Africa and the Americas.

Same as Classics 37A.

This course is the first part of a three quarter sequence on American history. It focuses on the social, cultural, political, and ecological dimensions of colonial America, pre-contact to 1800. Topics include Native American societies, European imperialisms, culture contact, independence movements, and relations of race, class, and gender.

This course explores the relationship between conspiracy and revolution in American history. From the colonial Committees of Correspondence that plotted revolt against the King of England to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s warnings of a Communist “conspiracy so immense,” we’ll investigate the notion of conspiracy and its role in political ideology, and look at how radicals and reactionaries used the idea of conspiracy to organize political mobilizations. We’ll also consider how historians have assessed allegations of conspiracies, and think about the use and meanings of evidence in interpreting conspiracy.

Students will complete a number of short writing assignments and an 8-10 page essay.

The theme of this course: "From Silk Roads to World History". Explores themes important to understanding how the study of Asian history came to be, where its been, and where its headed, through the subject of the "Silk Road." We will explore the fabled trade routes of antiquity, the societies that developed them, and the cultures that grew from their traffic. We'll explore the fables, too, and what they tell us about ways the so-called "West" has conceptualized the "East". From there, we will look to new ideas that finally put ro rest longstanding theories of Asian decadence, and place Silk Road societies at the center of history's first world economy.

In-class assignments, midterm and final exam, geography quizzes, and a final paper.

This course will examine the origins of the Roman Empire as imagined by Romans of the first and second centuries BCE and CE. We will ask what these imagined origins meant for defining Romanness, Roman relations with non-Romans and the character of Roman imperialism itself. We will pay particular attention to questions of ethnic, political, religious and gendered identities as they were understood in the Roman world. Readings will include works by Tacitus, Livy, Cicero, Josephus, Suetonius, Vergil, Juvenal, Clifford Ando, Greg Woolf, Maud Gleason, Jonathan Hall, Daniel Sherman, Pierre Nora and Mary Louise Pratt, among others.

Survey of English history from ca. 400 to ca. 1200. Topics include the Anglo-Saxons, the Viking settlement, the Norman Conquest, the Angevin Empire, and the development of royal, legal, and administrative mechanisms.

Same as History 116A.

This course examines the history of Russia from the First World War to the present. We will investigate the many radical changes in political and economic structures Russia experienced in this tumultuous century. Themes will include the revolutions of 1917, the establishment of the Soviet state, the Stalinist purges, World War II, efforts at reform, and the collapse of the Soviet system. We will also examine the course of Russia after the end of communism

In addition to a short research paper, midterm and final exams, you will be asked to provide regular written responses to a variety of primary and secondary sources.

Please contact the History Department Undergraduate Program Coordinator (llesher@uci.edu) for course information.

Origins of Zionism in the nineteenth century, Arab-Jewish conflicts in Palestine, emergence of Palestinian nationalism, the formation of the Israeli nation after 1948, and the development of the Palestinian movement. Focus on Palestinian and Israeli society and culture. Formerly History 177.

This course will consider the issues, candidates, and trends in the 2008 presidential election in the context of American history: topics include changes in voting rights, the formation of the New Deal coalition and the Reagan “revolution,” past political strategies, and the role of money, the media, and the courts in elections since WWII.

Midterm, final exams.

This course will survey the history of working people’s political strategies from the Civil War through the 1970s. We'll examine the shifting alliances among unions and parties, from Republicans and Democrats to Socialists and Communists, and consider how unions and parties competed for workers’ loyalties. We’ll pay special attention to the development of the modern American state, and how its contours shaped workers’ ideologies and unions’ tactics. And we’ll trace debates within unions and among workers about immigration policy, the proper role of the state, and equal rights for working women and workers of color.

Students will be required to write several response papers, a take-home essay, and participate in class discussion.

This course investigates historical and present forces that have shaped what is known as the Pacific Rim from the mid-19th century to the present. In the past few decades, the old paradigm has been quietly but steadily disrupted, as the Pacific Rim has become the center of gravity in our increasingly globalized world. Contributing significantly to that change, the so-called “rise of China” is one of the central events of the late 20th and the early 21st centuries. This course takes a close look at that growth and examines its implications for fast changing Sino-American interactions and for Chinese Americans. While China’s contemporary economic development remains an important focus, we will also look at a wide range of non-economic issues from historical perspectives. Topics include the following: pre-20th century contact between China and America; China's struggles in trying to remain relevant in early 20th-century world affairs and in dealing with its internal problems; turning points late in the 20th century; China's current economic, political and social interactions with the United States; China seen in the eyes of Americans; the Changing Chinese economy during the 20th and 21st centuries and its implications for Chinese Americans; meanings of citizenship in the age of globalization; and what is means to be “Chinese” and “American.” We will look at big events and trends as well as case studies, and we will compare the experience of Chinese Americans with that of other Asian Americans. In short, we will adopt a historically grounded and multidisciplinary approach in an effort to better understand changing relationships between the United States and China– a phenomenon that will help to define the Chinese American experience in the 21st century.

Mid-term and final exam.

This class will look at some of the major, often times competing, ways of seeing the history of “things legal” in the United States during the 20th and early 21st century. It will look, for example, at law as a set of social-economic tools; as a guardian of rights and liberties; as a valuable prize for political and social movements; as a powerful bulwark of state power and the status quo; as the special domain of uniquely trained professionals; as an emblem of “the American Way of Life;” as an object of popular scorn and ridicule; and as an increasingly valuable commodity, “lexitainment,” for the commercial entertainment media.

Students will be graded on the basis of loyal and faithful attendance; several brief, open-book quizzes; a take-home midterm exam; and a take-home final exam.

Coffee is one of the world's most valuable internationally traded commodities and caffeine the most popular legal drug. For more than five hundred years coffee has tied together diverse parts of the world. This course will examine the history of coffee consumption and production over that span as it began in Africa,, migrated to the Middle East , Asia and the Americas and found favor in Europe and the United States. Produced on five continents and many islands and consumed almost everywhere, it is a case study of "globalization", colonialism and imperialism, revolution, state building and development. We will try to understand why the literature on coffee's history (ies) resembles the blind men describing an elephant, with some considering it modern, democratic and progressive and others blaming it for backwardness and oppression.

The nature of demand for coffee changed as it went from a food and a drug, a symbol of hospitality, a religious rite, a sign of distinction and refinement, bourgeois life style and modernity to a mass beverage and youth drink as well as a site for sociability. It became a commodity and therefore the source of livelihoods, imperial revenues, and corporate profits. Coffee had profound consequences for the movement and settlement of peoples while reshaping the environment.

The brew that has been closely associated with the rise of capitalism, often used decidedly non-capitalist labor systems. Workers were controlled by using race and gender to divide them. Families played a central role in the production process. Empires and states and societies were built on foundations of coffee as were political movements.

There are no prerequisites. We will have three lectures and one section discussion meeting per week. There will be a midterm and final exam as well as three short papers (three to five pages).

Same as International Studies 179.

Latin America encompasses a vast region of diverse cultures, economies, and political actors. This course is designed to introduce students to the complexities of the region­its commonalities as well as its distinctiveness. We will examine Latin American history thematically with an emphasis on how history helps to understand and explain contemporary issues. Specifically, we will start with the colonial roots of Latin America and then proceed to investigate topics such as the environment, urbanization, social upheaval, economic development, and human rights. We will discuss these issues in terms of class, gender, and race. The course will reveal how choices made in the past continue to have repercussions today--­a situation especially relevant in an age of increased globalization.

Students are expected to attend lectures, attend discussion sections, and read all assigned materials. The lectures and assigned readings will be supplemented with videos.

Introduction to the histories of China, Korea, and Japan from the earliest states to about 1600. Topics include: state formation and dissolution; the role of ideology and how it changes; religious beliefs and values; agriculture, commerce, and industry; changing family relations. Formerly History 178A.

A study of major themes in the social, cultural, political and economic history of China since 1800. Themes include the aims and growth of the state, and the transformation of the government's goals and capacities (first by various 19th century crises, later by the communist revolution); changing patterns of family life, gender roles, and generational conflict; economic changes and their environmental consequences; popular culture and conflict in village society; the various forms of peasant protest and resistance against both traditional and modern regimes; and the growing social, economic, and cultural gap between different regions, and between city and countryside,since the mid-19th century.

History 171D is helpful, but not required.

Topics in the rise of modern Japan include the relationship between centralization and imperialism, democracy and fascism, industrialization and feminism in the context of the complex and competing forces that shaped Japan's experience in the modern world. Formerly History 171B.

Please contact the History Department Undergraduate Program Coordinator (llesher@uci.edu) for course information.

The course uses food as a vehicle for understanding changes in both the U.S. since the early twentieth century and ethnic/immigrant communities and individuals. While trying to measure the transformation of the nation, we will take a look at the issues under discussion from both global and local perspectives. In so doing, we will take a close look at individual cuisines and communities, such as Chinese Americans and their culinary traditions. We will also investigate the impact of ethnic food on ethnicity. Topics will include the following: national and individual identity, cultural authenticity, social memory; perceptions/representations of food in the public sphere; food activities in the private sphere; myths and science about food; consumption patterns and volumes; and research methodological issues.

A research paper; small projects.

Please contact Professor Daryaee (tdaryaee@uci.edu) for course information.

Medieval European women who were able to convince their contemporaries that they received divinely inspired visions exercised considerable influence within their societies. This course will examine the role played by visions in medieval society, the special role attributed to women's visions by their supporters, and the criticism leveled against women visionaries by those who resented their influence in order to better understand the relationship between theories of vision and gendered authority in medieval Europe.

Please contact Professor Seed (seed5@uci.edu) for course information.

For most of human history in almost every corner of the globe, the most enduring form of government has been that system of rule known as monarchy. Characterized by social inequality and status hierarchies, hereditary succession, and elaborate etiquette in which the household of the ruler also encompasses the administration of the state, such systems spawned court societies whose denizens had no function other than to serve the monarch. From the monarch’s point of view, his most important task was to continue his dynasty. (Female monarchs were few and far between.) For this he needed the military might, financial resources, and support most often supplied by men, but at the most basic biological level, he needed women. Although most dynasties were reckoned exclusively through the male line (Southeast Asia saw exceptions), women did far more than simply serve as borrowed wombs for the purpose of bearing sons. The requirements of hereditary rule put women right at the center of power with intimate access to the monarch most men could only envy. What they made of that access and how monarchs and other men tried to restrict what they could do with it provides one way to differentiate monarchical systems. This course will compare monarchies around the world, primarily from early modern times to the present to answer questions such as why do monarchies persist, what functions do they play in state and society, and what brings them down.