History Courses for Fall 2011
The History Department has produced this short "catalog" to help you, the student, choose your classes for Fall semester. In it you will find short descriptions of the content, objectives and, in some cases, requirements, for the classes. We have also listed the professors who are teaching these classes. You may want to contact them directly if you have questions or want more information about a course. Just go to the EIU history department's website and click on "Faculty."
HIS 1500: ROOTS OF THE MODERN WORLD: SOCIETY AND RELIGION
Drs. Lee Patterson, Ralph Ashby, and Joy Kammerling
This course examines the interrelationships between society and religion in the great civilizations of the ancient and medieval worlds. The emergence of distinct traditions in Egypt and the Near East, India, China, and classical Greece and Rome are examined, and the impact of the new, dynamic religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam spreading beyond their homelands through Europe, Asia and Africa are considered. By comparing the development of these different civilizations, we consider such questions as: What forces drive historical change? How do societies interact and influence one another? What is the role of environment? Of significant events and people? Of new ideas and beliefs? In shaping historical development?
HIS 1510: WORLD CIVILIZATION: SLAVERY AND FREEDOM
Dr. David Smith
Slavery as an institution has been a world wide practice. After discussing the idea of slavery and investigating some examples of slavery as practiced around the world, this course will focus on the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries — the largest forced migration of any group in human history. We will explore the origins and development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. including such issues as slave raiding, the middle passage, slave life and culture, slave revolts, bondage and emancipation, and the slave economy in the New World.
HIS 1520: ROOTS OF THE MODERN WORLD: GLOBALIZATION Dr. Roger Beck
This course explores many of the exciting factors contributing to the emergence of the modern world. From the end of the fifteenth century, people, goods, information and technology traveled around the world at an unprecedented pace. This is most clearly illustrated by the European explorations and conquests of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which revolutionized global dynamics with the 'discovery' of the New World and the subsequent establishment of European colonies across much of the Americas, Africa and Asia. In addition to examining the global race of colonialism, this course will introduce students to the great early modern empires of the Islamic World and East Asia. It will also engage such topics as the factors precipitating the Industrial Revolution, why it happened in Europe and not elsewhere, and its repercussions on the rest of the world. In the final weeks of the course we will turn to more recent global historical issues, including the rise of nationalism, its relationship to the decline of European colonialism, and its turbulent legacy today.
HIS 1590: ROOTS OF THE MODERN WORLD: SOCIETY AND RELIGION (HONORS)
Dr. Bailey Young
For University Honors students.
This course will explore the historical origins of the world's great religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We will study the lives of the "founders" of each faith, learn the central beliefs of each group, and analyze the conflicts (spiritual and political) that promoted changes of belief and practice over time.
HIS 2010: HISTORY OF THE U.S. TO 1877
Drs. James Schwartz, Martin Hardeman, and John McElligott
At its most basic level, this course is a survey of the political, social, economic, and cultural history of the colonial and post-colonial United States. Every professor, however, structures the course somewhat differently, sometimes relying on themes such as community and culture, other times emphasizing one particular historical thread (such as politics)to provide a framework for the class. No matter how it is taught, students are introduced to the use of primary sources and the interpretive nature of history, that is, how historians reconstruct past events to write history.
HIS 2020: HISTORY OF THE U.S. SINCE 1877
Drs. Jonathan Coit, Lynne Curry, Mark Voss-Hubbard, Terry Barnhart, and James Schwartz
"America grew up in the country then moved to the city," wrote one prominent American historian. A bitterly divided, largely agrarian country at the end of the Civil War, the United States grew to be a world power by the end of the nineteenth century. That power would only grow over the next 100 years--a time that could rightly be called "the American Century." But the pace of growth and development were not without consequences. Many Americans found themselves struggling to preserve and advance democratic traditions and individual opportunity. This course introduces students to the paradoxes, struggles, successes, and failures of American history, 1877 to the present.
HIS 2090: HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES TO 1877, HONORS
Dr. Nora Pat Small
The colonial period; the independence movement; framing and adoption of the Constitution; growth of American nationality; Manifest Destiny; the Civil War and Reconstruction.
HIS 2500: HISTORICAL RESEARCH AND WRITING
Drs. Edmund Wehrle, and Michael Shirley
This introduction to researching and writing history aims: (1) To develop ability to assess and think critically about historical issues and how people interpret those issues; (2) To develop familiarity with a variety of sources and the conventions of citing those sources in historical writing; (3) To develop skills in analyzing historical data and reaching informed conclusions about those data. There are a number of short assignments which build particular skills, and which are interrelated in that they help build towards a required, final research paper. The techniques and sources covered in the assignments are applicable to all history courses.
HIS 2560: EARLY MODERN WORLD HISTORY
Dr. David Smith and Newton Key
His 2650 begins with classical civilizations unraveling and ends with the threads of modernity; it moves from the global civilization of the previously nomadic Mongols in the 13th century to the export of the French Revolution to the rest of Europe and the New World circa 1800. The course introduces the rich source material of the early modern world, and helps refine your skills of analysis and synthesis. It also provides a broad narrative of events.
HIS 3100: HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 1066-1688
Dr. Newton Key
His 3100 examines early modern England - the age ruled by Tudor and Stuart monarchs, but shaped by many English men and women both commoners and aristocrats. Besides the political and religious narrative, we examine sources on specific intellectual, political, social, religious, and economic issues confronting the English (and Welsh, Scottish, and Irish) peoples. Course goals include: introducing (and general mastery of) a basic political and religious narrative of English history from the late 15th to early 18th centuries; and introducing and discussing various early modern sources.
HIS 3120: ANCIENT EGYPT
Dr. Lee Patterson
The course surveys the history, culture, literature, and institutions of ancient Egypt, beginning with the Predynastic period and finishing with the coming of the Romans.
HIS 3175: HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
Dr. Joy Kammerling
Survey course on origins and development of Christianity from Old and New Testament times to current churches and movements: Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, early communities, Middle Ages, Islam, Reformation, anti-Semitism, multicultural Christianity, American church history.
HIS 3255: COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA
Dr. Jose Deustua-Carvallo
Survey of Latin America to Independence, focusing on the rise of the great pre-Columbian civilizations, the political, social and religious structures of colonial Iberian American civilization, and the origins and process of Independence.
HIS 3330: MODERN EAST ASIA IN THE PACIFIC CENTURY
Dr. Jinhee Lee
This course examines the major historical transformation of East Asia from the nineteenth century to the present. Particular attention will be given to the most influential political, economic, and social phenomena that shaped the lives of the people in China, Korea, and Japan in the emergence of the Pacific Century. The course examines their historical relationships both within the region and across the Pacific with the U.S.
HIS 3415: WORLD WAR I
Dr. Sace Elder
A study of the background, course, and consequences of the first world war.
HIS 3520: MEDIEVAL HISTORY
Dr. Bailey Young
How did civilizations grow, develop, and interact from their earliest emergence, in the Middle East around 3000 B.C., through the Fall of the Roman Empire around A.D. 500? How can we understand and interpret the history of such distant times, and what has been their impact on the modern world? This course will focus primarily on classical Greece and Rome, and students will be introduced to the problems of using original sources to understand such phenomena as the origins of democracy in Greece and the strange triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
HIS 3555: MODERN WORLD HISTORY
Drs. Sace Elder and Jinhee Lee
This course explores the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students will examine the rise of industrialization and the international division of labor that served as the basis for vast global empires in the nineteenth century. They will explore the nationalist movements that brought down those empires, the challenges of nation-building in the post-colonial world, and the competing modern ideologies that inspired and shaped those nation-building projects. Nationalism, both productive and destructive, will be contrasted with the internationalism arising from the ashes of the two world wars in the form of new institutions such as the UN and the European Union. At the end of the course will be George Bush, Sr.'s "new world order" and the challenges to Western dominance presented by the Muslim world and China as students consider globalization at the beginning of the twentieth century.
HIS 3600: THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AND THE NATION
Drs. Lynne Curry, Martin Hardeman, and Jonathon Coit
History 3600 explores the legal issues that shaped the development of United States government, and the relationships of citizens to that government. The U.S. system is based on a written constitution that gives the government power and legitimacy. The course helps students understand the development of the ideas behind the Constitution and rule by law by analyzing the myriad ways that judges, lawyers, legal scholars, politicians, and ordinary citizens interpret the document. The "readings" of the Constitution by these groups often conflict, and in many instances their interpretation has changed over time. This makes it difficult to decipher the original intent of those who drafted the Constitution. Based on primary sources including the Constitution, amendments, state and federal legislation, and Supreme Court decisions, students realize how little the Constitution has changed over time but how much its interpretation has evolved to meet the demands of U.S. citizens, historically and today.
HIS 3750: AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY: A SURVEY
Dr. Martin Hardeman
A general survey of African American history from 1619 to the present. The course will include both primary and secondary readings and will explore such topics as slavery, Reconstruction, the Great Migration and the Civil Rights movement.
HIS 3760: THE AMERICAN SOUTH
Dr. James Schwartz
A history of the American South with emphasis on social and cultural developments and the deviation between North and South.
HIS 3770: NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY
Dr. Ralph Ashby
Explores the history of Native American peoples from prehistory to the present.
HIS 3810: THE HISTORY OF ILLINOIS
Dr. Charles Titus
The state of Illinois has a fascinating past which stretches from the era when pre-historic peoples created vibrant, flourishing cultures to the struggle for empire during the French and British colonial eras to contemporary times when the Prairie State serves as one of the industrial and agricultural centers of the nation. History 3810 traces these developments and examines the social, cultural, political and economic aspects of our state from pre-historic times to the very recent past. Students will read both scholarly and popular accounts of Illinois history and will examine and analyze primary documents which help explain why the state developed as it did. Students will read both scholarly and popular accounts of Illinois history and will examine and analyze primary documents which help explain why the state developed as it did.
HIS 3900: WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Dr. Debra Reid
This course surveys the history of women in America from precolonial times to the present, with special attention to the ways in which gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, and region have shaped this history. The course also introduces students to the theories and methodologies historians have developed to examine the lives of women in the United States. Essay examinations and a term paper are required.
HIS 3920: MILITARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
Dr. Charles Titus
The military has been an important factor in the nation's history since the colonial era. History 3920 examines the military experience within this larger context of United States history. The course surveys the origins, strategies, tactics, logistics and consequences of selected American wars. The role of technology, military professionalism, and social views toward war and the military as these matters have affected United States history are also examined in the class.
HIS 3930: THE CIVIL WAR ERA
Dr. Mark Voss-Hubbard
A survey of the causes of the Civil War, the War years, and the period of Reconstruction, with major emphasis on the socioeconomic, cultural, and political differences between North and South.
HIS 4350: THE DR. HEBERT LASKY SEMINAR IN THE EARLY NATIONAL HISTORY OF THE US
Dr. Charles Foy
The Early National era (1787-1815) saw Americans write their Constitution, fight their first major war, and engage in intense political and cultural battles over the meaning of their Revolutionary heritage. In this rigorous seminar, students will explore in depth the history of America?s diverse founding generation. Restriction: Restricted to Junior and Senior History majors.
HIS 4400: INDEPENDENT STUDY
Various Instructors
For the advanced undergraduate student who would like to work intensively on a particular research topic under the supervision of a professor in the field. May count towards the History Major as an elective. See the Department Chair (Anita Shelton) for more information.
HIS 4444: HONORS INDEPENDENT STUDY
Various Instructors
Open to those who have been accepted into Departmental Honors (which culminates in the writing of an Honors thesis and an Honors diploma). May count towards the History Major as an elective. See the Departmental Honors Coordinator (Sace Elder) for more information.
HIS 4555: HONORS RESEARCH
Various Instructors
In consultation with a faculty member, the student designs, executes, and writes the results of an original piece of research. Any methodology may be utilized.
HIS 4775: NATION OF IMMIGRANTS
Dr. Jonathon Coit
Study of historical topics not typically presented in standard courses.
HIS 4775: AFRICA TO 1400
Dr. Roger Beck
Study of historical topics not typically presented in standard courses.
HIS 4775: HISTORY OF CHICAGO
Dr. Ralph Ashby
Study of historical topics not typically presented in standard courses.
HIS 4775: NAPOLEON
Dr. Ralph Ashby
Study of historical topics not typically presented in standard courses.
HIS 4850: MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN
Dr. Jose Deustua-Carvallo
This course focuses on the relationships among the following issues in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean: racial and ethnic identity; economic development; political structures, and migration.
HIS 4960: CONTEMPORARY AMERICA
Dr. Edmund Wehrle
This course will examine the social, political, and cultural history of the United States from World War II to the present. In order to impose some structure on this complex and diverse period, the course will be divided (somewhat artificially) into four parts. The first section, entitled “Consensus,” examines the 1940s and 1950s and stresses binding forces of prosperity and anticommunism. In our second section, focusing on the 1960s, this consensus comes under fire, especially by young people. By 1968, the consensus of the 1950s lay in ruins and a period of political, economic and social chaos commenced, constituting our third unit of analysis. Beginning in the 1980s, the United States entered into an uncertain period of revival—our fourth period—but questions about America’s diversity, role in the world, and political and economic direction remain hotly debated.
The following courses are open to graduate students only:
HIS 5000: HISTORIOGRAPHY
Dr. Edmund Wehrle
This course introduces graduate students to the craft of history, from its professionalization in the 19th-century to current scholarly departures in European, United States, and non-western history. Through comparative secondary readings, students consider the methodological and theoretical concerns at the heart of historical writing over the last century, and explore changes over time in the profession's explanatory models and analytical categories. Several short essays and one longer paper. Several guest speakers. Required of all History M.A. students.
HIS 5010: ADMINISTRATION OF HISTORICAL ORGANIZATIONS
Ms. Patricia Miller
Intensive study and research into special topics relating to the management of historical sites, museums, and archives.
HIS 5020: HISTORICAL RESEARCH AND INTERPRETATION FOR PUBLIC AUDIENCES
Dr. Terry A. Barnhart
An introduction to the research methods and interpretive strategies used in the development of effective public programs at museums and historical societies.
HIS 5060: HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Dr. Nora Small
Introduction to the practice, theory and history of the field of historic preservation.
HIS 5110: HISTORY MUSEUM EXHIBITS I
Mr. Rick Riccio
A study of the role, function and development of history museum exhibits as a part of the interpretation process. Students will research and design a temporary exhibit.
HIS 5112: DIGITAL APPLICATIONS IN MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES I
Mr. Rick Riccio
This two-semester sequence course will teach students current standards in digitizing museum and archival collections and provide hands-on experience in digitizing two and three-dimensional objects. HIS 5112 is offered in the fall semester and will cover planning, preservation, and standards.
HIS 5160: US BETWEEN WWI AND WWII
Dr. Lynne Curry
Intensive study of special topics in American history, to be determined by the instructor.
HIS 5250: SEMINAR IN THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION
Dr. Newton Key
An intensive study of a particular revolution or a comparison of two or more revolutions so as to demonstrate the characteristics and patterns of each or their common similarities and differences.
HIS 5330: MATERIAL LIFE IN AMERICA
Dr. Debra Reid
An historical overview of the significance and methods of studying artifacts made, purchased, and used by Americans from the early 1600s to the present. Topics include the ways material evidence reflects human adaptation to the environment, to social and cultural influences and to the rise of consumerism.
HIS 5370: SEMINAR IN EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY
Dr. Charles Foy
An intensive study of selected topics in Colonial and Revolutionary American History. This will be a reading and discussion course. The readings will cover both standard historical works and new research. Grading will consist of class discussion, weekly writing assignments, and historiographical essays.
HIS 5444: CHURCH AND SOCIETY IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
Dr. Bailey Young
This course offers a topical introduction to the study of the Middle Ages, treating such topics as feudal society and chivalry, Papal Monarchy and Heresy and Church Reform, social structure and transformations in town and countryside, the impact of economic growth and the money economy on society and civilization. Readings balance original sources in translation with modern interpretative studies from a variety of methodological and historiographical viewpoints.
HIS 5951: NON-CREDIT THESIS
Dr. Edmund Wherle
The purpose of this course is to allow a graduate student to remain continuously enrolled as an auditor and access services required to complete the thesis after completing the maximum number of hours of credit for thesis [5950], research [5900], and independent study [5990] in a thesis option.
HIS 5990: INDEPENDENT STUDY
Staff
Special permission of the department.
HIS 5991: NON-CREDIT INDEPENDENT STUDY
Staff
Special permission of the department.
