Krieger Hall

Fall 2023

Course Title Instructor Region(s)
204A 2nd-Year Research Seminar Coller, I.  

Part one of a two-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students during the second year of the program; not required for M.A. students. Includes primary research and writing a research paper, often related to a future dissertation topic.

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only.

205 Approaches to History Morrissey, S.  

This course introduces graduate students to some of the most foundational ideas and debates that have shaped historiographical practice over the past half-century. Surveying historiographical models or theoretical provocations that have commanded the attention of a broad range of historians working across the various subfields, this course explores questions at the heart of the historical discipline, including: what is time and how, exactly, do historians grapple with issues of change or continuity? How do historians establish temporal and spatial boundaries for their narratives, and how those choices reflect different theoretical and interdisciplinary interventions? And how do historians approach primary materials to understand experiences of difference and embodiment? Though not an exhaustive survey, the readings raise fundamental questions about how historians imagine the past as they try to write about it, how they constitute it as a domain of study, how they can claim to know it, and how (and why) they argue about it. The aim of the course is to explore these questions as clearly as possible and to encourage you to make your (provisional) answers to them as explicit as you can. 

210A History in the Professions Mitchell, L.  

Part one of a three-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students during their first year of the program. History in the Professions is a year-long colloquium for first year graduate students. Students, faculty members, and guests will gather for 90-minute sessions five times each quarter for a variety of presentations, hands-on workshops, and guided explorations. This colloquium centers conversations and topics that illuminate the hidden curriculum of graduate school, explore the political economy of labor in the university, and provide students a foundational introduction to the historical profession. 

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only. 

240 Global Radicalism Robertson, J.  World

In the second half of the nineteenth century the world underwent a far-reaching and transformational process of spatial integration. The final waves of European imperial expansion, the thickened interweaving of world markets, the proliferation of telegraph, railway and shipping networks all structured a new global order that facilitated the mobility of people, capital and ideas to a historically unprecedented degree. A defining element of this era was the emergence and global diffusion of radical doctrines of anarchism, socialism and anti-colonial nationalism. Although products of this age of globalization, they also came to be its most ardent critics, challenging the asymmetries of power, wealth and prestige to which global capitalist modernity had given rise. 

What accounts for this explosion of radical thought? How do we trace the diffusion, adaptation and morphology of ideas and ideologies across diverse geographies, cultures and languages? How do we move beyond Eurocentric accounts that mark Western Europe as an active transmitter of radical ideas and Asia, Africa and the Americas as merely passive receptors? 

Reflecting on these questions, this seminar uses the history of radical political movements to examine the methodologies and theoretical paradigms of global history. Reading across a geographically and thematically diverse set of examples, we  will consider the global not just as an analytical framework of historical investigation, but as a generative scale of human experience that conditioned the formation of modern radical thought.

250 Archive (Il)logics in Latin America O'Toole, R. Latin America, World

This course prepares participants to challenge, disrupt, and enrage the silencing, fragmenting, and destroying archive that constitutes the basis of legal research and judicial argumentation in Latin America. Whether it is a repository of state secrets, a catalog of corporate violence, a precious collection of kinship connections, an archive is constructed for purposes rooted in time, place, and socio-material conditions. Archives, this course poses, are not logical, but they have narratives that when unlocked, reveal traumas, painful legacies, and entry points to the stolen goods of the past. Foundational to legal practice and critical legal analysis, archives, and their administrators, are simultaneous sources and gatekeepers for evidence, data, and information. In this course, we learn the history and the theory of archives as an essential tool of critical legal practices while developing a praxis of archival engagement, creation, and confrontation.

Seizing on the work of Marisa Fuentes, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and Kirsten Weld, this course encourages participants to ascertain the archive as a violent location, but one that must be challenged. Pairing theoretical work with ethnographic “on-site visits” of southern California and as well as imperial digital archives, we will learn practical tools while critiquing the institutional archival structures. The seminar pairs discussion of assigned reading with virtual or actual engagement with a targeted archive. Participants will meet and discuss the theoretical debates of how archives silence the past, reproduce colonizers’ categories, and execute the violence of enslavers. The seminar meeting, and preparation, will be paired with an archival practicum. Participants will employ archives under scrutiny to produce two essays or a longer paper/project.

280 Modern China Baum, E. Asia

This course will introduce students to new themes and publications in the history of modern China. Readings will establish a genealogy of the field, asking how research topics and approaches have changed in recent years and speculating about the future of China studies in the new geopolitical environment. Students will be evaluated on the basis of their active and informed participation in seminars, short reflection papers, and a longer state-of-the-field essay. Some classes will feature the authors of recently publishes books. 

 

Winter 2024

      
Course Title Instructor Region(s)
200 The Pull of Memory: Implications for Historical Inquiry Farmer, S.  

This course explores the tension between the pull of memory and the demands of history that informs much current historical inquiry. How do we remember and how does this inform the history we write? We will explore approaches, sources, and methods, developed by those who bring the study of memory to historical inquiry. We start out considering that we remember the past as individuals and as members of groups. For example, writers of autobiography, biography, and scientists who study the biological bases of memory, think of memory as the property of individuals. On the other hand, historians and sociologists often approach memory as a social phenomenon -- something elaborated in groups (the family, religious groups, state-based institutions, ethnic or racial communities, etc). Geographers draw connections between the physical world and historical experience. Psychologists and cognitive scientists speak of embodied memory. We will keep front and center, the practical and theoretical implications of such approaches for historical inquiry. Topics include: autobiographical memory, social memory, traumatic memory, memory and place, monuments, material history and the transmission of memory. 

202A 1st-Year Research Seminar McLoughlin, N.  

Introduction to historical methodologies and preparation for the first-year research paper. Required of all first-year doctoral students and M.A. students.

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only.

204B 2nd-Year Research Seminar Coller, I.  

Part two of a two-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students. Taken during the second year of the Ph.D. program; not required for M.A. students. Includes primary research and writing a research paper, often related to a future dissertation topic.

Prerequisite: HISTORY 204A

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only.

210B History in the Professions Mitchell, L.  

Part two of a three-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students during their first year of the program. History in the Professions is a year-long colloquium for first year graduate students. Students, faculty members, and guests will gather for 90-minute sessions five times each quarter for a variety of presentations, hands-on workshops, and guided explorations. This colloquium centers conversations and topics that illuminate the hidden curriculum of graduate school, explore the political economy of labor in the university, and provide students a foundational introduction to the historical profession. 

Prerequisite: HISTORY 210A

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only. 

240 Gender & Transnational History Tinsman, H. World, Gender

This class explores transnational studies of gender and sexuality as methodologies for world history. It surveys key feminist literatures on capitalism, colonialism, labor, commodities, and popular culture that bridge area studies fields and contribute to historical understandings of global dynamics. The goal of this class is to strengthen students' analytical and writing skills and to introduce new analytical tools (research questions, methods, conceptual models) that may be useful for students' own research and broader understanding of developments in transnational studies/world histories. Required assignments include weekly written responses, two 7-page papers, and in-class presentations. 

250 The United States and the Caribbean: Intersectionality, Empire, and the Longue Durée Jean-Louis, F. Latin America, U.S.

 

 Today, the United States is the economic, political, and culture hegemon in the Caribbean, this however, has not always been the case. This course explores the more than two century relationship of the United States and the Caribbean, from later’s emergence as the first American colony to break from the European Metropole, its rise to a regional power, through its post-cold war position as the lone global superpower post-cold war. This course departs from the position that U.S. empire wasn’t always evident, and that even at its most powerful, it was never omnipotent. As such, the course materials cover the realities of those who lived in the region, from the end of the 18th through the twenty-first century. It emphasizes their agency and looks at the ways they assisted, resisted, and used the United States to shape their lives parallel and in relation to the expansion of North American influence and power. The readings will draw into relief the ways in which race, class, gender, and sexuality shaped both the drive to empire and its reception. This course defines the Caribbean in the broadest possible terms, inclusive of all countries that have a border onto the body of water and the global north destinations of its migrants. It will also show how the praxis of empire is driven by the twin urges of militaristic dominance and capitalist expansion and guided by theories of racial superiority. This course is useful for students of the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, race, and gender. Students will become familiar with the concepts of intersectionality, empire, and the longue durée as well as the shifts, contests, and evolution of US hegemonic urges. The materials will explore the relationship across time, but will be drawn from across the disciplines incorporating monographs from critical literature, American studies, cultural, and gender and sexuality studies

Students will be asked to come to class having read the assigned material for the week. They will be asked to produce five (500-600 words) reviews of the texts across the semester. Once during the quarter, they will be charged with leading the discussion. Finally, they will have to deliver a review of the literature of their choosing as it relates to any aspect of the course.

260 Twentieth-Century U.S. Highsmith, A. U.S.
This graduate seminar offers an introduction to the history and historiography of the United States in the twentieth and early and early twenty-first centuries. The course explores key themes, debates, interpretations, and modes of historical inquiry in the field of modern U.S. history with particular emphases on race, gender, sexuality, and political economy. Students are required to read approximately one book and one or more articles or book chapters per week, engage in thoughtful discussions of course materials, lead at least one electronic and in-class discussion, and complete a variety of written assignments, including weekly reading responses and a final historiographical paper on a topic of their choosing. The class will also include short readings, discussions, and activities related to professional development (e.g., creating an academic CV, proposal writing, and publishing).

 

Spring 2024

Course Title Instructor Region(s)
200 Marx, Marxism, and Marxist Histories Chaturvedi, V. World
This class introduces key ideas and concepts for the writing of historical materialist analysis. It begins by considering some of Karl Marx's seminal writings as a way to explore the nexus between Marxist theory and historical methodology. It also considers how scholars interpreted historical materialism over the twentieth century to provide a critical theory of Marx's ideas and concepts, which remain important for historians in the twenty-first century. This class provides a foundation for the debates in contemporary social theory and contemporary history. 
202B 1st-Year Research Seminar McLoughlin, N.   

Research and writing of a paper demonstrating command of historical methods explored in HISTORY 202A. Required of all first-year Ph.D. students and M.A. students.

Prerequisite: HISTORY 202A

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only. 

210C History in the Professions Mitchell, L.  

Part three of a three-quarter sequence required of all Ph.D. students during their first year of the program. History in the Professions is a year-long colloquium for first year graduate students. Students, faculty members, and guests will gather for 90-minute sessions five times each quarter for a variety of presentations, hands-on workshops, and guided explorations. This colloquium centers conversations and topics that illuminate the hidden curriculum of graduate school, explore the political economy of labor in the university, and provide students a foundational introduction to the historical profession. 

Prerequisite: HISTORY 210A & HISTORY 210B

Restriction: Graduate students only. History Majors only. 

250 19th Century Americas Borucki, A. Latin America

This course will examine different approaches to studying nineteenth-century Latin America, particularly its multifaceted relations within the United States. Indeed, the new republics of Spanish America became "Latin" when confronting forerunners of the U.S. Empire in Central America in the mid-19th Century. We will examine monographs centered on nation and nationalism, gender, literature and print culture, subaltern participation, popular politics, race and slavery, among other subjects. 

260 Trans/Pacific Histories Wu, J.  U.S.
This course explores emerging scholarship that centers the Pacific and the crossing of the Pacific to bring into conversation Asian American, Pacific Islander, and U.S. histories of empire. How do these fields develop historiographically and in what ways do they overlap and/or contest one another? In what ways do they center islands and water and shift the way we prioritize continents in organizing history? How might we gender the study of the Trans/Pacific to deepen our understandings of Indigeneity, Migration, and Empire?
290 Nature, Culture, and Colonialism Nath, N. Environmental History

This seminar will explore the entanglements of nature, culture, and colonialism. How did colonial knowledge production about nature enable the expansion of capitalist and colonial control over land? What are the ways in which colonial discourses of nature articulated or reinforced essentialist understandings of gender, race, caste, and indigeneity? And how have anti-colonial thinkers and movements disrupted the colonial nature/culture binary? Seminar readings will draw upon works by environmental historians, feminist geographers, indigenous studies scholars, and historians of empire. 

 

Directed Reading

To register for a Directed Reading, submit the Directed Reading Contract (download here) with a reading list to Graduate Program Coordinator, Aryana Valdivia, by:

  • Fall 2023: Friday, September 8, 2023
  • Winter 2024: Friday, December 8, 2023
  • Spring 2024: Friday, March 8, 2024