Graduate Courses
The MA curriculum reflects the diverse intellectual interests and research specialties of the History Department faculty, which has won numerous awards over the years for outstanding teaching. We regularly offer a mix of courses on traditional subjects and topics along with innovative thematic seminars in social, cultural, and women's history. HIS 5000 - Historiography, required of all MA students in their first semester, introduces students to the methodologies and theoretical frameworks that historians employ, and serves as the foundation for subsequent course work, independent research and/or thesis preparation. Our current MA course offerings are briefly described below.
Note: Course offerings are highly variable from semester to semester. Prospective students are encouraged to contact the Graduate Coordinator, Dr. Edmund Wehrle (efwehrle@eiu.edu) for the most current information regarding course availability and scheduling.
History Graduate Course Descriptions, Spring 2010
HIS 4775 Ancient Near East
Dr. Lee Patterson
This course offers a survey of the remarkable pre-Islamic civilizations that flourished in the Near East for thousands of years. From prehistoric beginnings to the coming of Alexander the Great, we will consider the histories and cultures of Egypt, Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, Hatti, Mitanni, Elam, Urartu, Persia, and others. Along the way we will ask important questions about, among other things, how we should use our primary sources, reconstruct chronologies, account for the rise and fall of civilizations, assess the construction of identity, and evaluate the legacy of these civilizations.
HIS 4775 Japanese Empire
Dr. Jinhee Lee
This course examines the emergence of Japan as a modern empire and its political, economic, and cultural dynamics under the influence of imperialism and colonialism since the 1870s. How did modern nation-state building and empire-building projects manifest in the context of Japanese society? How did the culture of empire influence and shape people’s everyday life both at home and abroad during and beyond the era of formal colonialism? What kind of mutual influence was there between the metropole and colonies? What were the legacies and consequences of industrial modernity? What roles did women, the colonized, and ordinary people play in the making of Japan as a multiethnic empire? These are questions we will grapple with through various forms of historical evidences including primary sources translated into English and theoretical pieces concerning empires, imperialism, post-colonialism, and the process of historical knowledge production.
HIS 4800 Renaissance and Reformation
Dr. Joy Kammerling
(description forthcoming)
HIS 4890 History of Ireland and the Irish, 1600 to the Present
Dr. Newton Key
Course focuses on twentieth-century issues and events in Ireland but roots these in the Anglo-Scot settlements of the seventeenth century, the romantic nationalism of the late-eighteenth century, and the rural conflict and famine of the nineteenth. It also examines the Irish diaspora outside the isle, as well as modern Northern Ireland. In addition to undergraduate requirements (exams and papers), graduate students will be expected to map major schools of Irish historiography, and include in paper presentations the relation of their particular subjects to world history themes (as might be presented in lower-division or junior college course).
HIS 4820 Twentieth Century World
Dr. Roger Beck
"Twentieth Century History, H 4820, is a broad review of the major people,
events and ideologies that shaped the twentieth century, including Freud and
Einstein, both world wars and the Cold War, "isms" from Communism to
Post-Modernism, art from Picasso and Chaplin to Andy Warhol, and the great
changes brought about by technology, urbanization, the civil rights
movement, and globalization. There are two exams, a research paper, and
three book reviews required."
HIS 4900: Historical Publishing
Dr. Michael Shirley
The official catalog description is simple: "Writing, editing, and producing professional journal articles, book and exhibit reviews in history for a journal and newsletter in print and online." In practice, what it means is students produce a call for papers for Historia, Eastern's student-written and student-edited history journal, read the submissions, choose which papers to publish, and edit them for publication. Students also edit the History Department's annual newsletter. Graduate students have extra editing duties, acting as editors-in-chief of Historia, and write an extra essay on the history of a particular scholarly journal.
HIS 4960: Prosperity, Power, and Problems: Contemporary America
Dr. Edmund F. 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.
HIS 4970: History of Ideas in America
Dr. Jon Coit
This course will provide both an introduction to some of the major figures in American intellectual history, and to the theoretical and methodological questions which have influenced the development of the field.
Throughout the course we will examine the nature and importance of intellectual work as a subject of historical study. While the course is geared towards examining writings of authors who fit neatly in commonplace definitions of the word “intellectual,” these individuals and their works yet pose ample questions about the historical enterprise. What is the relationship between intellectuals and the social, cultural, political, and institutional contexts in which they lived and worked? What do historians of intellectual life gain (and lose) by foregrounding such a context? To what extent can intellectuals act in this context, or act independently of it? Is there a distinctive “American” intellectual tradition, and how might such a tradition be best described?
This course examines the emergence of Japan as a modern empire and its political, economic, and cultural dynamics under the influence of imperialism and colonialism since the 1870s. How did modern nation-state building and empire-building projects manifest in the context of Japanese society? How did the culture of empire influence and shape people’s everyday life both at home and abroad during and beyond the era of formal colonialism? What kind of mutual influence was there between the metropole and colonies? What were the legacies and consequences of industrial modernity? What roles did women, the colonized, and ordinary people play in the making of Japan as a multiethnic empire? These are questions we will grapple with through various forms of historical evidences including primary sources translated into English and theoretical pieces concerning empires, imperialism, post-colonialism, and the process of historical knowledge production.
HIS 5030: ARCHIVAL METHODS
Dr. Terry Barnhart
Study of the purpose, content, and organization of archival collections and of editorial techniques involved with historical materials.
HIS 5050: HISTORY AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE
Ms. Nora Small
The course acquaints the student with the development of architecture in this nation from its European roots to the recent past, emphasizing how style and form reflects cultural, economic and technological changes in our history.
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 5113: DIGITAL APPLICATIONS IN MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES II
Mr. Rick Riccio
Digital Applications in Museums and Archives II. (0-1-1) S. Museum Digital Applications II. 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 5113 is offered spring semester, during which students will apply knowledge gained in the fall to a collection.
HIS 5160 Atlantic World
Dr. Charles Foy
This course introduces students to the variety of approaches and themes that comprise one of the newest and fastest-growing fields in our discipline. The Atlantic World provides a useful conceptual and methodological framework in which to analyze the development of European empires, the creation of American colonial societies, and the emergence of trans-imperial networks in the early modern period (roughly 1400-1800) and beyond. We will read a selection of major works that have defined the field, identify different perspectives and approaches, and trace the development of the historiography. We will also consider the challenges involved in comparative, cross-cultural historical research, and the limits of an Atlantic approach.
HIS 5160: RACE & DEMOCRACY IN 19TH CENTURY US
Dr. Mark Voss-Hubbard
This is a research and readings seminar in the history of race and democratic practice in the United States. Assigned readings will range broadly across US history, from the Colonial period to the early decades of the 20th century, but special attention will be placed on the northern states in the decades surrounding the Civil War, a crucial period during which Americans of various racial, regional, and ethnic backgrounds re-negotiated racial thought and policy. Along the way we will examine the category of race in light of its historical, social and especially political construction through time. Students will gain a valuable introduction to important historical literatures on slavery and antislavery; race and racism; whiteness and the legal construction of race; and US politics and racial policy broadly defined. The major writing assignment will involve a research project based in part on primary sources on some aspect of race, slavery and democracy in Illinois, or the Midwest generally.
HIS 5350: 20th Century American Cultural and Social History
Dr. Jon Coit
This version of 5350 focuses primarily on historians’ debates about race and ethnicity in the twentieth century. As historians have moved beyond recovering the history of subaltern individuals and groups in U.S. history, they have struggled with several thorny conceptual issues. What is the process by which racial or ethnic identity is socially constructed? What is the relationship between race and class? What is the structure of dominant racial identity, and how is it impacted by, among other influences, immigration, economic change, and social movements? Are racial identities stereotypes constructed by relations of domination, social identities which emerge from commonalities in lived experiences, or a series of performances which position the subject in discursive fields?
History 5444: Church and Society in the Middle Ages
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 5700: DEBATES IN MODERN MIDDLE EAST HISTORY
Dr. Ali Yaycioglu
This course is an introduction to the history and the historiography of the modern Middle East for graduate students. It covers the period from the late eighteenth century until today and focuses on key issues, events, and figures as well as major historiographical debates in Middle Eastern Studies. The themes include the crisis of the Ottoman Imperial system in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; regionalisms and nationalisms in the Balkans and Middle East challenging the Ottoman Empire; the politics of notables and Ottoman reform politics; disintegration of the empire and formation of the Arab states and Turkey; population movements and construction of the national histories, memories, spaces, culture; Nation, Islam, and Orientalism; colonial control in the Middle East; decolonization of the Arab world; formation of Israel and emergence of the Arab-Israeli conflict; Arab, Turkish and Iranian nationalisms; Cold War in the Middle East; Oil and the Gulf states; secularism, socialism, conservatism and Political Islam; Gender, Family and Popular culture; and America in the Middle East. No prior knowledge of Middle Eastern history is assumed or required.
