Department of History
Summer 2016 and Fall 2016 Graduate Course descriptions
In Summer 2016, there are a few seats for MA students in upper-division undergraduate
courses in which the student are required to get permission from the instructor (GRADUATE
FACULTY ONLY), and agree to extra work to allow the course to count for graduate credit (for
example, Dr. Narrett’s American Revolution course Or Dr. Saxon’s Texas History). In addition,
we will offer one true grad colloquium this summer, the topic voted on by current students:
HIST 5363 “A Place in Time” – 19th Century US Social and Cultural History
Cole and Morris (Instructors)
Summer 11 week (June 6- August 11)
T/Th 1-3 p.m.
Course description: How did the rise of a commercial economy, rapid immigration, disastrous
political conflict, and westward expansion transform American society and culture over the
“long nineteenth century” (1787-1914)? In this reading colloquium, we’ll try to answer those
questions by discussing scholarship that focuses on place—on communities or regions from
across the United States—and the individuals who lived there as they encountered the many
transformations the century brought. Along the way, we hope to think about many different
types of history—from the history of manners and food to the social history of the Civil War to
the history of work—and the ways in which race, gender, class, and of course region shaped the
impact of these changes.
Course structure: Students should be prepared to read a book or more a week, participate in
bi-weekly class meetings, and write short reaction/response papers with one final analytical
essay. Professors Morris and Cole will share the teaching duties over the course of the
summer, with Professor Morris taking the first part of the course (~June), grading the papers
and participation for his part of the course. Professor Cole will take over in late June, and grade
papers and participation for the second part of the course.
We’ll likely choose the readings from among the books listed below, though some will either be
excerpted or rely on article versions of the research. Thus this booklist should still be
considered TENTATIVE.
Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order
Richard White, Railroaded (excerpts)
Altina Waller, Hatfield and McCoys
Seth Rockman, Scraping By
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Barbara Carson, Ambitious Appetites
Joan Jensen, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women
Paul Johnson, Shopkeepers Millennium
John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek
James Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the SW Borderlands
Charlotte Lewis, Ladies and Gentlemen on Display: Planter Society at the Virginia Springs
Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
Victoria Bynum, Free State of Jones
LeighAnne Keith, The Colfax Massacre
Sharon E. Wood, Freedom of the Streets: Work, citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City
Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City
John Kasson, Amusing the Million
Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre
AY 2016-2017 grad schedule (tentative)
Summary:
Monday nights:
HIST 5339 Historical Theory and Methods (Morris)
HIST 6365 French Revolution- Research Seminar (Reinhardt)
Tuesday nights:
HIST 5341 Archives I (Saxon)
HIST 5349 Intro to Transatlantic History – Colloquium (Zimmer)
Wednesday nights:
HIST 5364 Frontier Borders – Colloquium (Narrett)
HIST 5348 Museum Studies – Public History Topics (Thomas Smith – Adjunct)
Thursday nights:
HIST 5360 – Age of Transatlantic Revolutions – Colloquium (Garrigus)
HIST 6365 Native Americans and World: Trans-oceanic Histories of Indigenous Peoples –
Research seminar (Conrad)
At this point, the Spring 2017 schedule is TENTATIVELY planned as follows:
5340 – US Historiography – Salinas
5341 – Approaches to World History – Garrigus
5342 – Archives II - Saxon
5347 – Teaching College History – Cole
5361 – TA Colloquium – Urban history – Fairbanks
5363 – Colloquium: U.S. Civil War – Maizlish (Wednesday)
5364 - Colloquium on 19th century Borderlands - Haynes
6361 – Seminar TBD
6363 – Seminar on Cuba/Mexico – LaFevor
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Fall 2016 Course Descriptions (in numerical order)
HIST 5339-001: HISTORICAL THEORY & METHODS
TIME: Monday Evening, 7-10
Christopher Morris
[email protected]
CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: This course is a basic introduction to the discipline of history and is
required for all History M.A. and Ph.D. students. No prior knowledge of historiographical issues
is expected or required, and the course therefore should be accessible to students regardless of
their particular field of interest or concentration.
History is not just a craft; it is a way of thinking. It is an intellectual endeavor. This class is
designed to make students think, not about the past, but about how historians think about the
past. This we will do by jumping into some of the ongoing debates among historians over what
it is they do and how they ought to do whatever it is they do. We will consider broad
philosophical problems, survey some of the social theories underlying (explicitly and implicitly)
much of modern historical thought, and review recent trends in the discipline. We will discuss
current literary theories that question the whole enterprise of historical research and writing as
it has been practiced over the last century. As historians, you will not want to take any of this
lying down, so to speak, but will want to engage these important matters of life and death (for
the discipline of history) intelligently, well informed, and enthusiastically.
The course will be divided into the following sections:
PART ONE: WHAT IS HISTORY? OBJECTIVITY, SUBJECTIVITY, FACTS, REPRESENTATION
PART TWO: HISTORIANS AS SOCIAL SCIENTISTS AND THEORISTS
PART THREE: HISTORIANS AS STORY TELLERS
PART FOUR: HISTORIANS AND THE NATION STATE
In each section we will read about and discuss what it is historians do, or think they do, or say
they ought to do. And then we will explore some examples of history theory and method
applied to a particular topic. Historians disagree rather widely on what it is they do and how
they do it. Some, you may be surprised to learn, don't believe the past is knowable at all.
Others think it can be known, and know precisely. Some think the best histories tell good
stories. Others think stories are for novels, and history is about analysis and explanation. It's
enough to keep a good historian awake at night in existential insomnia. My intent is to give the
class a few sleepless nights.
TEXTS (Note: This list is not yet finalized and will have some changes):
Donahue, The Great Meadow
Sugata Bose, An Hundred Horizons
Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl
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Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time
Other readings will be available for you to download and print at your convenience and
expense.
ASSIGNMENTS:
Active participation in class discussions is absolutely essential. We will not be looking for correct
answers in this class, or to solve issues once and for all. Instead, what we encourage is a
willingness to grapple with complex and often contradictory ideas of what history really is, and
this we will do as a group, by asking questions of one another, offering possible answers,
suggesting new ways of looking at old issues, and of course suggesting entirely new issues.
Open, forthright, but also polite discussion is essential to this process. I expect to hear all your
voices (preferably not all at once).
In addition, each week selected students will be assigned to serve as discussion leaders. They
will summarize the readings and open class discussions by pointing out what they take to be the
essential points raised in the readings.
Written assignments will consist of short (2-3 page) essays, about 5 of them (one every other
week), based on assigned readings. All students will write papers for the final class. Students
will choose which class readings to address with their other papers. In each essay students will
be expected to: 1) identify the larger issue on which each reading offers a comment or point of
view; 2) assess the significance of that larger issue for the study of history; 3) offer a critical
evaluation of each reading’s comment on that larger point; 4) offer a point of your own,
perhaps by suggesting a perspective on the larger issue that might be worth considering more
fully (although you are not asked to consider your perspective more fully in these brief papers).
GRADING:
Participation and discussion leadership
Written work
History 5342-001
25%
75%
Principles of Archives and Museums I
TUES, 7:00-9:50pm
Dr. Gerald Saxon
Required Texts (These are being considered as of 3/12/16):
Two texts are required for History 5342. The texts will be supplemented with additional
readings on electronic reserve and the open web. The two texts are:
Millar, Laura A. Archives: Principles and Practices. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2010.
O’Toole, James M. and Richard J. Cox. Understanding Archives and Manuscripts. Chicago:
Society of American Archivists, 2006.
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Course Description:
History 5342, Principles of Archives and Museums I, is a three hour graduate course designed to
provide students with the intellectual foundation necessary for a career in archival
administration. Consequently, the course focuses on the historical evolution of archival
science, emphasizing the development of the archives profession, archival principles and
theories, appraisal and acquisition techniques, the laws affecting archives and their use,
programming and outreach in archival repositories, and administration of collections. History
5342 is the first course of the twelve hour archival certification program offered through the
Department of History at UTA. It is the prerequisite for History 5343, which emphasizes the
more mundane tasks of accessioning, arranging, preserving, describing, and cataloging of
archival collections.
Grading and Course Requirements (this is what is being considered as of 3/12/16):
There are five basic course requirements, and the student’s semester grade is based on the
average of the five:
The first requirement is a formal paper/essay focusing on a current (or even historical) topic in
archival science. The paper will count as 30% of your grade.
The second requirement is an evaluation and oral report focusing on an archival repository in
the DFW area. The report and presentation will count as 30% of your grade.
The third requirement is for each student to subscribe to the Archives and Archivists (A&A) List
on the Internet and to monitor the discussions on a weekly basis. During specified class periods,
some students will be assigned to report on the nature of the week’s discussions on the list and
to lead a classroom discussion on the content of the list for the week. Each student in the class
is expected to have monitored the list and be prepared to discuss the archival issues presented.
The student monitors for the week are expected to turn in a written report of the list’s
discussion topics for the week in addition to leading the classroom discussion. The report
should be brief, no longer than 5 pages. These reports and your participation in these
discussions count as 10% of your grade.
The fourth requirement is a brief 3-4 page paper (max.) about an archival and/or records issue
in the news. Each student will write a 3-4 page paper and prepare a brief Blog report about an
ongoing news story that relates to archives or records. Be sure to refer to the treatment of the
issue in the popular press/media. The issue must appear in at least three separate articles,
although the articles may be about separate events which discuss a common issue. Be sure you
cite the three articles in the paper, giving complete bibliographic details (and Internet links if
appropriate) so I can locate them easily. Do not use peer-reviewed or academic articles as
source material for this assignment. Also, make sure you include your own perspective in the
paper. The articles can come from newspapers, news magazines, news blogs/wikis, etc. An
excellent source for these types of articles is the many posts on the Archives and Archivists
Listserv by Peter Kurilecz. The paper and your Blog report will count as 15% of your grade.
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The fifth requirement is active participation in all class activities. Each student is expected to
attend each class, read the weekly assignments before class, engage in discussions both in class
and on the class blog, and complete all outside work on time. Your class participation (including
your blogs) will be graded, and will make up the final 15% of your grade.
History 5348 Museum Studies
Wednesday 7p – 9:50p
Thomas H. Smith
Course Description:
This course is an introduction to the world, profession and business of history museums. There
are many varieties of history museums in the United States: those thought of as traditional
museums, historic houses, historic villages, battlefields, archaeological sites, manufactured
villages, reconstructions, sports, doll, fishing, transportation, military, air craft, candy and the
list goes on and on. What they should share is a professional approach to management with a
focus on their missions and education components for the benefit of the general public. To
that end, this course will explore the many facets of the museum business including
management, planning, governance, law, finances, budgeting, fund raising, writing, research,
volunteerism, fund raising, marketing, audiences, exhibits, assessment, stewardship, collecting,
and other aspects of the profession.
There are scheduled 15 classes for this course. For each class students are expected to
complete assigned readings. Other assignments will be made that include research and writing
position papers to be discussed in class. The class will become familiar with the vast amount of
source material available to historians on the internet. Guest lecturers who are experts in their
fields will enhance classroom discussions.
The class will be organized into several companies and assigned tasks that replicate the
business of museums. Those tasks could include researching, writing, and designing an exhibit
on a specific topic, designing a comprehensive marketing program for a museum, exploring
museum exhibits that were controversial, the popularity and growth of thematic museums and
others. The reports resulting from these tasks will be discussed in class.
The Dallas/Fort Worth area has a rich variety of museums. A visit to a one or two would
be desirable. Because this is a night class working out the details for such a visit might be
difficult.
Grading will be based upon class attendance, student participation, company task assignments,
and two essay exams.
Readings: Tentative
Thomas Wolf, Managing A Nonprofit Organization (2012)
Helmuth J. Naumer, Of Mutual Respect and Other Things: An Essay on Museum Trusteeship.
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Others (TBD)
For summer reading:
While thinking of Museum Studies, for pleasurable reading this summer (but no credit), take a
look at:
Dean Krakel, Adventures in Western Art (1977) about building the collection for the Thomas
Gilcrease Institute in Tulsa, and the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center
in Oklahoma City;
Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad: A Novel (2006) about the Hermitage Museum in St.
Petersburg (Leningrad) during the German siege in WWII;
Robert M. Edsell, Monument Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt
in History (2009) and not the movie;
Nina Berleigh, The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and the
Making of America’s Greatest Museum: The Smithsonian (2004).
HIST 5349 – Intro to Transatlantic History
Tuesday 7-9:50 p.m.
Zimmer
This course is designed to introduce students to the broad outlines of Transatlantic History,
covering the period from 1492 to the present. It focuses on scholarship that examines the
interconnected, transnational histories of Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Students will read
and discuss seminal texts in Atlantic and Transatlantic History, as well as new research and
historiographical debates.
VERY TENTATIVE book list:
•
Samuel L. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New
York City, 1870-1914. ISBN: 978-0801488825
•
Brooke Lindy Blower, Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture
Between the World Wars. ISBN: 978-0199927586
•
Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of
1492. ISBN: 978-0275980924
•
April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century.
ISBN: 978-0812219975
•
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves,
Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. ISBN: 978-0807033173
•
Mary Nolan, The Transatlantic Century: Europe and America, 1890-2010. ISBN: 9780521692212
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•
Lara Putnam, Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz
Age. ISBN: 978-0807872857
•
Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. ISBN: 9780674002012
•
Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the
American Civil War. ISBN: 978-0807135594
•
John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800,
second edition. ISBN: 978-0521627245
•
Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 19371957. ISBN: 978-0801482922
•
Jace Weaver, The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern
World, 1000-1927. ISBN: 978-1469614380
HIST 5360 – Age of Transatlantic Revolutions
Thursday 7-9:50 p.m.
Garrigus
Course Description: This readings course surveys recent historical literature on the “Age of
Atlantic Revolution.” Topics will include “revolutions” in Britain, British America, France, Haiti,
and Latin America. Assignments will include a final interpretative essay and an introductorylevel GIS [Geographic Information Systems] project.
1. Klooster, Wim. Revolutions in the Atlantic World : a Comparative History. New York:
New York University Press, 2009. 9780814747889
2. Linebaugh, Peter, and Marcus Rediker. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves,
Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon
Press, 2000. 9780807050064
3. Pincus, Steven C. A. 1688: The First Modern Revolution. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2009. 0300171439
4. Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: A.A. Knopf,
1992. 9780679736882
5. Desan, Suzanne, Lynn Hunt, and William Max Nelson. The French Revolution in Global
Perspective. Cornell University Press, 2013. 9780801478680 [pbk]
6. Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution.
Belknap Press, 2004. 0674013042
7. Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton
University Press, 2006. 0691142777
8. O'Shaughnessy , Andrew. An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British
Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
9. Donoghue, John. Fire Under the Ashes: An Atlantic History of the English Revolution.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
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10. Inikori, Joseph E. Chapters to be announced in Africans and the Industrial Revolution in
England : A Study in International Trade and Economic Development. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
HIST 5364 – Colloquium in North American Borderlands and Frontiers
Wednesday 7-9:50 p.m.
Narrett
Course:
This colloquium examines major issues in recent historical literature on North American
borderlands and frontiers from the 1600s through the War of 1812 and its aftermath.
“Borderlands” connote territories in which boundaries were fluid, uncertain, and commonly
disputed between nationalities and empires. Our reading and discussion will focus on imperial
rivalries and colonial-native relations, frontier cultural interchange, and issues of individual and
group identity and allegiance. We will examine historical processes and geopolitical influences
with intersecting local, continental, and transatlantic dimensions.
Reading :
Articles:
Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and
the Peoples in between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104 (June
1999), 814-841. Read also the critiques of Adelman’s and Aron’s article—and their response:
American Historical Review 104 (Oct., 1999) 1221-1239
Kathryn E. Holland Braund, “The Creek Indians, Blacks, and Slavery,” Journal of Southern
History, 57 (Nov., 1991), 601-636.
Books:
(All books currently in paperback except for D. Narrett)
Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region,
1650-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in A Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower
Mississippi Valley Before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).
Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010).
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Claudio Saunt, A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek
Indians, 1733-1816 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Michael A. Bellesiles, Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on
the Early American Frontier (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993).
John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer
(New York: Macmillan, 1993).
David Narrett, Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida
Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
Rafe Blaufarb, Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast,
1815-1835 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005).
HIST 6363 – The French Revolution – Research Seminar
Monday 7-9:50 p.m.
Reinhardt
COURSE DESCRIPTION & REQUIREMENTS
The focus of this research seminar is the French Revolution, with particular emphasis on
its relation to other Atlantic Revolutions. During the first several class meetings, in-class
lectures and discussions of assigned readings will provide students with basic background
information, familiarize them with historiographic traditions, introduce the wider scope of
recent debates, and survey new research approaches to the Revolution.
Students will then select a research topic that centers on some aspect of the
Revolutionary period, prepare and present a research proposal, and then use primary sources
to write a research paper of approximately 20 pages (text) in length, exclusive of notes and
bibliography. We will reconvene as a group towards the end of the semester to discuss and
critique each other's first drafts in view of preparing a final revised version.
REQUIRED BOOKS
Censer, Jack R. and Hunt, Lynn. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Exploring the French
Revolution (University Park: Penn State University, 2001).
Kates, Gary, ed. The French Revolution. Recent Debates and New Controversies. 2nd ed. (New
York: Routledge, 2006).
Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt, and William Max Nelson. The French Revolution in Global
Perspective (Cornell University Press, 2013).
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HIST 6365 Native Americans and the World: Trans-oceanic Histories of
Indigenous Peoples – Research Seminar
Thursday 7-10 p.m. - Conrad
The relationship between Native Americans and the "Atlantic World” has generated significant
scholarly attention and debate in recent years. Scholars have varied from arguing for a “Red
Atlantic,” to questioning whether there was any such thing, to critiquing Atlantic history as
inherently Eurocentric and unacceptably prone to marginalizing Native histories. More than
ever before, however, an outpouring of new scholarship on Indigenous peoples' engagement
with global processes, including through mobility into and across the Atlantic and Pacific, is
likely to push this debate in new directions. This research seminar will expose students to the
latest scholarship examining such topics as Native slaves transported from the Americas to
Europe, trans-Pacific trades in slaves between East Asia and colonial Mexico, Native American
whalemen who traveled from New England to places like New Zealand, Native-European
encounters in maritime spaces, and the circulation of ideas about “Indians" and indigeneity
globally, among other topics. With this scholarship in mind, students will then research a topic
of their own choosing related to the theme of trans-oceanic Indigenous histories. Over the
course of the semester, my hope is that examining these themes will provide students with new
perspectives and new ways of thinking about both "Native American” and “Transatlantic”
histories.
Tentative booklist:
Nancy Van Deusen, Global Indios
Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier
Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance
Nancy Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World
Joshua Reid, The Sea is My Country
Maximilian Forte, ed., Indigenous Cosmopolitans
Jodi Byrd, The Transit of Empire
Plus influential articles analyzing the utility of oceanic frameworks for studying Native American
history by scholars such as Jace Weaver, Paul Cohen, and Juliana Barr