HIST 5102: Archives and Narrative of Global History
Yuko Miki, T 5:30-8pm
This course investigates the relationship between global history and particular forms of knowledge production. We will discuss classic and cutting-edge scholarship on the archives and how scholars have grappled with their possibilities and limitations. We will also consider how different ways of narrating history can attend to the silences and revelations of our sources. The interdisciplinary group of authors whose work we will discuss may include Shahid Amin, Natalie Zemon Davis, Brent Edwards, Saidiya Hartman, Lisa Lowe, Carina Ray, Ann Laura Stoler, and Zeb Tortorici. Students will alsocreate their own research projects over the course of the semester.
HIST 5203: Medieval Hagiography
Scott Bruce, F 2:30-5pm
This research seminar introduces graduate students to the challenges and pitfalls of using saints’ lives and other writings related to thecult of the saints (miracula, translationes, canonisation proceedings, etc.) as sources for medieval history. It aims to familiarize students with competing historical approaches to these genres and to provide a practical guide to the scholarly resources necessary to exploit them as historical sources. Topics of inquiry include gender and hagiography, the process of canonization, the Legenda Aurea, forgery and failed saints, the enterprise of the Bollandists, and the legacy of medieval hagiography in modern literature.
HIST 5568: Stalinism: Life and Death in Soviet Russia
Asif Siddiqi, M 2:30-5pm
This graduate course will explore the enormous transformations in life in the Soviet Union under the rule of Stalin, one of the most ruthless dictators of the 20th century and the architect of massive social transformation that turned Russia from a predominantly agrarian nation to a powerful industrial state. We will take a broader perspective on this history by looking at the roots of Stalinist rule in the Russian Revolution and follow that story to the dismantling of the Stalinist system in the 1950s. During this period, Soviet society was engulfed in a series of massive traumas including: a brutal civil war, heavy industrialization, collectivization of farmland, widespread upward social mobility, the establishment of a labor camp system known as the Gulag, the Great Terror in the late 1930s, World War II, and postwar reconstruction. At its core, the students will interrogate the basic ideology, practices, and manifestations of “Stalinism” as a historical phenomenon within the broader vista of modern European history.
HIST 6731: U.S. Immigration and Ethnicity
Daniel Soyer, M 5:30-8pm
This course will examine several important issues that have engaged the attention of historians of immigration and ethnicity. These include such perennial concerns as the nature of the processes of settlement and Americanization, and the evolution of American views on citizenship and immigration policy. Also among the issues to be discussed are recent trends in thinking about the invention of racial identities and about ethnic diasporas and “transnationalism.” Finally, the course will cover several cases of the stresses of ethnic identity in wartime. Readings will include recentscholarly monographs and articles, as well as several examples of ethnic memoir literature. Note that the course is organized thematically, and that readings have therefore been chosen because they reflect on the themes under discussion. As a result, not all ethnic groups are covered adequately. Students will have a chance to deal with the ethnic groups of their choice in their independent work.
HIST 8110: Seminar: Church Law and Medieval Society
Wolfgang Mueller, TH 5:30-8pm
Continuation of HIST 7110