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Graduate Programs

Graduate Seminars - Fall 2008

*NOTE This List is Subject to Change.

520/20th Century Europe: Societies, Citizens, and Violence in Two World Wars/Sophie De Schaepdrijver/M6-9
569-001/Latin American Social History,1500-1900/Matthew Restall/T6-9
592/19th Century Pro-Seminar on Modern History/William Blair/M6-9
592/19th Century Pro-Seminar on Modern History/Kumkum Chatterjee/W6-9
592 S4/19th Century Pro-Seminar on Modern History/Philip Jenkins/R6-9

• History 520 – 20th Century Europe: Societies, Citizens, and Violence in Two World Wars

252 Ag Engr Building/Mondays 6:00-9:00pm

Sophie De Schaepdrijver

scd10@psu.edu

This is a historiography seminar meant to acquaint you with a body of outstanding research and reflection on societies and war. This is not a course in military history. Our readings deal with the cultural and social impact of war on societies and individual lives, with particular reference to 20th-century Europe in World Wars One and Two (but with some excursions to other regions and eras). Our discussions will touch upon questions of citizenship and belonging, coercion and consensus, defiance and compliance, "sacrifice" and victimization. Other subjects are the uses of language and the ways in which the world wars were remembered (including in the media).

Sample readings:
Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland, 2nd ed. (1998)
Jonathan Petropoulos and John Roth, eds, Gray Zones: ambiguity and compromise in the Holocaust and its aftermath (pbk ed 2006)
Victor Klemperer, The language of the Thrid Reich:LTI-Lingua Tertii Imperii: a philolgist's notebook (2006)
Alf Ludtke and Bernd Weisbrod, eds,No Man's Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century (2006)
James Sheehan,Where have all the soldiers gone? The transformation of modern Europe (2008)
Martha HannaYour death would be mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War (pbk ed. 2008)

Guest speaker(s):

TBA

• History 569-001 – Latin American Social History,1500-1900

415 Weaver Building/Tuesdays 6:00-9:00pm
Matthew Restall
restall@psu.edu

This seminar in the field of colonial and nineteenth-century Latin American social and cultural history is designed to be useful to Latin Americanists, Early Modernists, students of the early United States, and Mesoamericanists. The seminar's scope is all of Latin America, but with an emphasis on Spanish America. The seminar is in four parts: the New Conquest History; the ethnohistory of colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes; the "Afrohistory" of people of African descent in the colonies; and the nineteenth century. Students will read a mixture of secondary works and primary sources in translation. They will write and present a set of three journal-style book reviews, and can choose to write one or two papers, either historiographical or research-based.

Sample Readings:

Laura E. Matthew and Michel R. Oudijk, eds.,Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica (2007)
Matthew Restall, Lisa Sousa, and Kevin Terraciano, Mesoamerican Voices: Native-Language Writings from Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Guatemala (2005)
Jane G. Landers and Barry M. Robinson, eds., Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America (2006)
Joan Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (2007)
Paul Sullivan, Xuxub Must Die: The Lost Histories of a Murder on the Yucatan(2004)
Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia, 1795-1831 (2007)

Guest speaker(s):

George Reid Andrews,Marixa Lasso

• History 592– 19th Century Pro-seminar

106 Ag Science Institue/Mondays 6:00-9:00pm
William Blair
wab120@psu.edu

This is a readings seminar focusing primarily on nineteenth-century U.S. history, but with occasional forays into trans-national or comparative history. The period covered is roughly from the early Republic to World War I. Classes will involve discussion of at least a book a week and sometimes additional articles. A different student each week will present the various interpretations historians have offered for the topic under discussion. The goals of the seminar are to expose students to the different ways historians have addressed problems, understand the periodization of U.S. history, become acquainted with various methods and trends within the broader profession, and enhance a student's critical analysis of works through both verbal and written expression.

Sample Readings:

Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities
Foner, Eric, Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished Revolution (Perennial, 1988)
Genovese, Eugene, Roll, Jordan, Roll (Vintage, 1976)
Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988)
Rogers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings (Belknap Press, 2000)
Woodward, C. Vann, Origins of the New South (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1971)

• History 592– 19th Century Early Modern History Pro-seminar

252 Ag. Engineering/Wednesdays 6:00-9:00pm
Kumkum Chatterjee
kkc1@psu.edu

This pro-seminar is designed to provide students with an over-view of early modern history. The course will emphasize broad trends - political, cultural, social and economic - in the history of the early modern world both with respect to individual regions of the world as well as to sustained and large-scale interactions at a global level . The aim is also to provide students with an exposure to trends in the scholarship of the early modern era. The materials for the pro-seminar will include books, articles and selected primary sources. The course is designed around interactive discussion. Students will be required to write short critiques of books/articles discussed in class and a term paper at the end of the semester.

Sample Readings:

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Explorations in Connected History. From the Tagus to the Ganges, ( 2004, Oxford University Press)
Nancy Shoemaker,A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth Century North America, (2004, Oxford University Press.)
Richard Drayton, Science, Imperial Britain and the 'Improvement' of the World, (2000, Yale University Press.)
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World, (2001, Stanford University Press.)
Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, (2006, Cambridge University Press.)
Irene Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions. Peru and the Origins of the Civilized World, (2004, Duke University Press.)

• History 592 (S4) – 19th Century Pro-seminar on Modern History

3 Ferguson/Thursdays 6:00-9:00pm
Philip Jenkins
jpj1@psu.edu

This seminar provides a foundation for scholarly work in modern history, c.1890-2000. The course will focus on the development and changing contours of the field, and will obviously not attempt to be an exhaustive overview. Readings will explore changing views of topics like war and social change; the peak and decline of imperialism and colonialism; revolution and dictatorship; nations and nationalism; racial awareness and conflict; reinterpretations of gender, family and sexuality; globalization and technological change; consumerism and mass culture; modernism and post-modernism; and the reassertion of religion, the "revenge of god." As far as possible within the limitations of a single course, we will be striving for the widest possible global coverage.

Sample Readings:

Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (Verso, 1998)
Kate Brown, Biography Of No Place (Harvard University Press, 2005)
Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (Reissue edition Vintage Books, 1992).
Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Mariner Books; 1st Marine edition, 2000)
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Tear Off the Masks: Identity and Imposture in 20th Century Russia (Princeton University Press, 2005)
Sabine Fruhstuck, Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan (University of California Press, 2003)