Instructor: B. Pryor
Remote
This is not your high school history class. We won't ignore presidents and generals but we will also push beyond them to look at ordinary people, popular culture, and the unexpected ideas that shaped American history from Native American settlement to the aftermath of the Civil War. We will pay particular attention to the interaction among Europeans Africans and the Native Peoples of the New World. We will also explore historical methodologies, practice critical thinking, and discuss how this history has shaped the country we know today. We will use film, music, and compelling stories to show that history is not just a list of names and dates; it is a gripping drama of individuals and groups from foot soldiers to farmers striving to create a new nation. USH
Instructor: P. McDevitt
Remote
This first-year seminar probes the recent history of soccer to analyze larger social, political, cultural, and economic processes. The main concerns of the course are wide-ranging, and include exploring the relationships between sports and politics, popular culture and national identity, gender and equality. We will explore the following questions: How and why did soccer become the world's most popular sport? How has the growth and professionalization of the sport influenced the construction of race, gender, and national identities? How has soccer reshaped debates about human rights, equality, and citizenship? And, how do debates over the team composition, designation of home locales, and even playing styles of the U.S.'s men's and women's national
squads reflect, and potentially recast, larger conversations about citizenship and national identity?These questions signal the need to think broadly and historically about the ties between sport and society. They are intended as starting points, and will be complemented by new questions and concerns that students will raise in discussions and individual assignments, group presentations, and research papers. The aims for this course are threefold. First, students will strengthen critical reading and writing skills through weekly assignments designed to sharpen written and oral communication. Second, students will acquire first-hand historical research experience through the production of an original research paper. This process immerses you in the thick of scholarship, and will enhance awareness about methodology and historiography. And, finally, in framing this course in an "Americas" perspective, I invite students to think about the interconnected and transnational arenas through which ostensibly local (and national) histories of soccer play out.
Instructor: J. Barclay
Remote
This course explores the history of the Old South from the colonial period until the Civil War (1600-1860). Topics to be covered include: the development of the chattel slavery, the creation of sectional identity and the idea of the southern exceptionalism, the rise of "King Cotton," southern cultural and religious practices, the plantation community, and proslavery ideology. This class considers the construction of southern identity though the experiences of white and black southerners, both slaves and free, as well as experiences particular to women. The class will combine both lecture and small group discussion. USH
Instructor: N. Mbah
Format: Remote
Islam and Christianity entered African societies which were saturated with indigenous religions, belief systems, and ritual practices, and further connected to complex political and economic systems. Africans made Islam and Christianity their own through “translation,” “articulation,” “acculturation,” “adaptation,” “syncretism”, “conversion”, “revival,” and “revolution.” Muslim and Christian communities provide key avenues into the gendered social, political, and economic histories of Africa. This course examines Islam and Christianity in various contexts such as African state formation, international trading networks and diasporas, slavery, abolition and emancipation, European imperialism and colonial modernities, nationalism, social revolutions, and fundamentalist movements. The course begins with a survey of early Christian and Muslim communities in Africa, traces the expansion of Islam across North, East and West Africa, examines the indigenization of Christianity in Central and Southern Africa in the 16th century, explores select African Christian and Muslim diasporas, and evaluates scholarly approaches to the study of African Islam and Christianity between the 19th and 21st centuries.
*This class is cross-listed with GGS 402/560