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Course Description for Spring 2009
HISTORY History 391-0: Lectures In History
Please scroll down to see all descriptions for this course.
History
391-0-20: Lectures In History : Civil Rights & Anti-Colonial Movements
Instructor: Anthony Hazard
Office address: Harris Hall
1881 Sheridan Road
Room 19
Phone: 847-491-5523
E-mail: a-hazard@northwestern.edu
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 40
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines the connections between two historical developments often treated separately: the US civil rights struggle and African anti-colonial movements. By placing these two movements in a transnational framework, the course explores the global challenge to the racialized world order of the 19th and early 20th century. How did civil rights struggle gained momentum in the aftermath of World War II? What was the longer history and role of “Black Nationalism” in the transnational struggle? What were the connections between the civil rights movement and contemporary independence movements in Africa and Asia? One of the central goals of the course is to show how we can expand our understanding of US history by reaching beyond the interaction between the US government and other nation –states tot examine political and cultural change.
PREREQUISITES: None
TEACHING METHOD: Lecture and films
EVALUATION METHOD: Short papers, exams
READING: *Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 2001;
*Rod Bush, We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century. New York: New York University Press, 2000;
*Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.
NOTE: AREA OF CONCENTRATION: Americas; Africa/Middle East
History
391-0-21: Lectures In History : Mexican American Histories Since 1848
Instructor: Geraldo Cadava
Office address:
Phone:
E-mail:
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 40
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Recent debates about immigration from Mexico have often led to the misperception that peoples of Mexican descent are only now transforming communities in the United States. One goal of this course is to debunk this myth by demonstrating the ways in which Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Mexico have, for more than a century, played an important role in U.S. history. Topics include the legacies of the U.S.-Mexico War during the mid-nineteenth century, changing ideas about race, working-class political activism in the United States, the effects of Mexican migration within the United States, ongoing citizenship debates, histories of sexuality, and divisions within and between Mexican and Mexican American groups. Assigned texts will include fiction, journalism, film, and scholarly works
PREREQUISITES: None
TEACHING METHOD: Lecture and discussion; primarily lecture
EVALUATION METHOD: TBA
READING: TBA
NOTE: AREA OF CONCENTRATION: Americas
History
391-0-22: Lectures In History : The Age of Imperialism in East Asia 1840-1945
Instructor: Stephen Halsey
Office address: Humanities
Phone:
E-mail: s-halsey@northwestern.edu
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 40
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This lecture course examines the origins, evolution, and liquidation of imperialism in East Asia in the century after 1840 from a transnational perspective. We will evaluate the integration of China, Japan, and Korea into a global system of nation-states in the nineteenth century, their efforts to adjust to this new order through domestic reform, and the collapse of territorial empires in Asia at the conclusion of the Pacific War in 1945. Lectures and course readings will emphasize three principal thematic elements: the intimate linkages between imperialism and state-making during the modern period, the importance of cultural perceptions and racial ideology in shaping international relations, and the centrality of warfare to the history of the Asia-Pacific region. In the first section of the course, we explore the dissolution of the China-centered world order in the mid nineteenth century and the imposition of unequal treaties on China and Japan by the European powers. We then appraise the reform policies undertaken by indigenous governments as colonial competition among Western states intensified in East Asia in the years before 1914. In the final third of the class, we describe the continued development of the Japanese empire after World War One, its eventual clash with the United States, Britain, and France during the Pacific War, and the end of imperialism as an organizing principle of international relations in East Asia in 1945.
PREREQUISITES: None
TEACHING METHOD: Lecture and discussion
EVALUATION METHOD: Midterm (20%); Paper (25%); Final Exam (40%); Class Participation (15%)
READING: *Akira Iriye, After Imperialism;
*John Dower, War Without Mercy;
*Immanuel Hsu, Rise of Modern China;
*Walter LaFeber, The Clash: US-Japanese Relations Throughout History (New York: WW
Norton, 1998)
NOTE: AREA OF CONCENTRATION: Asia/Middle East
History
391-0-23: Lectures In History : Women's Economic History in Modern Europe
Instructor: Jana Beth Measells
Office address: Harris Hall
Phone:
E-mail: j-measells@northwestern.edu
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 40
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Across Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, large-scale shifts associated with industrialization, two world wars, and political revolution dramatically altered women’s economic roles and opportunities, bringing to the fore a changing and contested terrain of ideologies of gender and economy. This course surveys two centuries of conceptions and realities of European women’s economic activities. How did European women respond to economic circumstances created by industrial capitalism, war, revolution and regime change? How did the changing realities of women’s work intersect with gendered conceptions of production, reproduction, and consumption? How did liberal, socialist, and fascist understandings of economy and definitions of ‘economic’ activity enhance or limit women’s participation in the workforce and rights as workers? Through a consideration of primary and secondary sources, we will examine the evolution of women’s paid and unpaid labor in the broader context of economic and ideological changes in modern European history.
PREREQUISITES: None
TEACHING METHOD: Lecture and discussion
EVALUATION METHOD: Mid-term exam (30%); one short (5 pp) response paper (20%); class participation (20%); final exam (30%)
READING: TENTATIVE READING LIST:
*Slavenka Drakulic, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed;
*Maria Dolors Garcia-Roman and Janice Monk, eds. Women of the European Union: The Politics of Work and Daily Life;
*Pat Hudson and W. R. Lee, eds., Women’s Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective;
*Alexandra Kollontai, Love of Worker Bees;
*Michele Pujol, Feminism and Anti-feminism in Early Economic Thought;
*Louise Tilly and Joan Scott, Women, Work and Family
NOTE: AREA OF CONCENTRATION: Europe
History
391-0-25: Lectures In History : Modern Japan
Instructor: Charles W. Hayford
Office address: 1881 Sheridan Rd
Phone:
E-mail: Chayford@aol.com
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 40
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Japanese created Asia's (and the Third World's) first industrial economy and international power. How did they do it? What happened to it? This course emphasizes several themes 1) Political changes from feudal militarism to parliamentary democracy 2) The experience and impact of the Pacific War and the Occupation 3) post-war economic development and its results for ordinary people 3) How Japanese grappled culturally with the effects of these changes especially in fiction and film.
Chronologically, the course first sketches the revolutionary changes of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), then the problematic 1920s and 1930s, when prosperity and electoral party government gave way to depression, militarism, imperialism, and the “fifteen year” or Pacific War (1931-1945). We spend most time on the postwar period: American Occupation, when leaders built on pre-war foundations and also forged a new political economy; the wave from bubble to bust, when Japan went from being a miracle to needing one; we finish with the 1990s and early 2000s, asking if they were “bust” or “burp.”
PREREQUISITES: None
TEACHING METHOD: Lecture and discussion
EVALUATION METHOD: Brief essays; take home hour exam; final exam or essay in lieu of final
READING: TENTATIVE READING LIST:
*Duus, Modern Japan (Houghton-Mifflin 1998);
*Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (Norton 1999);
*White, Perfectly Japanese (California 2002);
*Course Reader: Empire, War, and Bubble;
*A selection of novels and films.
NOTE: AREA OF CONCENTRATION: Asia/Middle East ** Attendance at first class is mandatory.
History
391-0-26: Lectures In History : The Nascent State of Israel
Instructor: Elie Rekhess
Office address:
Phone:
E-mail:
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 40
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The first part of the course discusses the question of National Identity. It is being explored through an analysis of the proclamation of Independence, a discussion of the debate between different schools of the historians regarding narratives pertaining to the establishment of the State of Israel (“Post Zionists”; “New Historians”); and an overview of the inherent tension between the Jewish-religious outlook and the democratic liberal values, as it emerged in the nascent State of Israel.
The course then proceeds to examine in its second part the Nation-building Process: the transformation from “Yishuv” to sovereignty, the formation of state institutions (executive, judiciary, legislative – Knesset), the Electoral system (parties, ideologies, voting, elections).
The third part of the course explores Israel’s Multi-Cleavage Society. It deals with the ingathering of the Exiles (The Law of Return, the waves of “Aliya”, and the complexity of absorption), and the three major ethno-cultural cleavages: Mizrahim-Ashkenazim (dominance of Ashkenazi Jews, Impact of Israel’s absorption policy; the resurgence of Sepharadi heritage), Religious-Secular (the role of religion, the religious sects; the religious-secular struggle; religious coercion) and Arab-Jewish (divided loyalties between Israel and the Arab world; Israel’s policy toward the Arab minority; Israelization vs. Arab nationalism).
PREREQUISITES: None
TEACHING METHOD: Lecture and discussion
EVALUATION METHOD: Mid-term and final take-home exams.
READING: TENTATIVE READING LIST:
Howard Sacher, A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 2nd Edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000;
Course pack of selected readings.
NOTE: AREA OF CONCENTRATION: Asia/Middle East
[Course Descriptions for Spring 2009] [Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences] [HISTORY History]