SPRING 2019UPPER DIVISION AND GRADUATE HISTORY CLASSES

AMERICAN LAW & DISORDER

HIST 301: David TanenhausSection 1: Monday/Wednesday 1:00-2:15 PM 3 credits

This course examines the relationship between American law and disorder from colonial times to modern times. It explores how Americans have reconciled their belief in the perfectibility of their society with conflict. Through lectures and discussions, the course will examine topics such as the American Revolution and its aftermath, political violence and the coming of the Civil War, the long civil rights movement and the Cold War, youth violence and the rise of mass incarceration, and threats to democracy and the rule of law.

REQUIRED READING:Honor Sachs, Home Rule: Households, Manhood, and National Expansion on the 18th-

Century Kentucky Frontier (Yale University Press, 2015)Joanne Freeman, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018).Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of Democracy (Princeton

University Press, 2011).Dashka Slater, The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime that Changed

Their Lives (Wren & Rook, 2017).Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018).

Grading will be based on class attendance and participation, short analytical essays, and two exams.

TOPICS IN PUBLIC HISTORYCREATING PUBLIC MEMORIALS FOR OCTOBER 1

HIST 302: Miriam Melton-VillanuevaSection 1: Monday/Wednesday, 11:30 AM-12:45 PM 3 credits

In “Creating Public Memorials for Oct.1” students will craft local history by designing memorials for the second anniversary of the October 1 Las Vegas shooting. In collaboration with our Las Vegas Healing Garden and Get Outdoors Nevada community partners, students will create public art aimed at building community through film, poetry, dance, and Mexican ofrenda projects for UNLV’s public spaces and wider publications. Together we will explore the way individuals and communities remember their pasts through entities such as archives, exhibits, memorials, and oral histories in order to plan meaningful events for October 1, 2019.

REQUIRED READING:

Erika Flo Doss. Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America, Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Sylvia Grider. “Memorializing Shooters with Their Victims” in Grassroots Memorials: The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death, edited by Peter Jan Margry, and Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, Berghahn Books, 2011.

Kristin Ann Hass. Sacrificing Soldiers on the National Mall. University of California Press, 2013.

Jonathan Scott Holloway. Lecture: “Whose Memories Matter? Race, Identity, and the Battle for American History.” Organization of American Historians, July 20, 2015.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJdeqYEQbLA&list=PLDE6EB3B5A4C5E698&index=18

Edward S. Said. “Invention, Memory and Place.” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 2 2000: 175-192. Jack Santino, ed. Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death, New York;

Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

THE HOLOCAUST IN ITS EUROPEAN SETTING

HIST 367: Norma Lisa FloresSection 1: Monday/Wednesday, 8:30-9:45 AM 3 credits

Among the biggest questions that arise from the study of Europe and the Holocaust, the most simplistic and yet hardest is Why? Why was the Jewish population of Europe targeted in the early twentieth century for exclusion, expulsion, and ultimately extermination? Why were the perpetrators primarily ordinary people? Why Germany? Why were so many states, institutions, and people unable to speak out? And why should we remember? In this course, we will explore the roots of these questions by examining the history and memory of the Nazi genocide that resulted in the deaths of both Jewish and non-Jewish victims throughout Europe. Topics will include a study of antisemitism and racism, collaboration and resistance (both Jewish and non-Jewish), ghettos and concentration camps, as well as the prevailing memory of the Holocaust including lessons and legacies in the twenty-first century. No prerequisites.

REQUIRED READING:Doris L. Bergen. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Third Edition. Christopher R. Browning. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final

Solution in Poland. Jan T. Gross. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.Marion A. Kaplan. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany.Primo Levi. Survival in Auschwitz.Chil Rajchman. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir.

Additional readings TBA.

HISTORY OF CASINOS

HIST 368: David SchwartzSection 1: Tuesday/Thursday 11:30 AM-12:45 PM 3 credits

This course will familiarize students with the historical development of casino gaming and present an accurate picture of the current state of the casino industry throughout the world. We will begin with a brief overview of the roots of casinos in European gambling, discuss several relevant trends in 19th century legal and illegal gambling and spend the bulk of the course considering the development of the American legal casino gaming industry, with a concentration on Las Vegas. We will consider the creation of the casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip, changes in the structure of casinos, the professionalization of the gaming industry, and the spread of casino gaming throughout the world, with an emphasis on recent developments in Asia and emerging forms of casino-style gambling.

REQUIRED READING:David G. Schwartz, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (Casino Edition). Las Vegas:

Winchester Books, 2013.Jack Sheehan, The Players: The Men Who Made Las Vegas. Reno: University of Nevada

Press, 1997.Additional articles will be available via WebCampus.Grading will be based on class attendance and participation, three essays, and two exams.

TOPICS IN SPORTS HISTORYRACE, SPORT, AND CULTURAL POLITICS

HIST 375: Todd RobinsonSection 1: Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00-11:15 AM 3 credits

Sports are a valuable vehicle through which to explore issues of politics, culture, race, ethnicity, gender, and class in American history. Indeed, a site of protest, power, and inclusion for racial minorities, sports convey American values, traditions, historical memory, and iconography. Using biographical essays, autobiography, film, cultural and labor history, as well as policy studies, this course considers the place of race in collegiate, amateur, and professional sports in American history and in contemporary culture. Students will use these sources, with particular attention to African American athletes, to study the profound impact of athletic competition and its relationship to the construction of race relations in twentieth-century America. REQUIRED READING:

Patrick B. Miller and David K. Wiggins, Sport and the Color Line: Black Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth-Century America (Routledge: New York 2004).

Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, African Americans: A Concise History, Volume Two, 5 th Edition (Pearson: New Jersey 2014).

Two additional books plus selected course articles

Conduct of the class will consist of lectures, class discussions, and video presentations.

Grading will be based on two exams, each covering approximately one half of the course material, weekly quizzes, discussions, and a final paper.

MILITARY HISTORY OF THE U.S. SINCE 1900

HIST 386B: John CarltonSection 1: Tuesday/Thursday 5:30-6:45 PM 3 credits

"The nation's military history is a constant factor in the evolution of American life. … The result is the average American cannot move without bumping into the country's military past. … At a thousand unnoticed points, America's military past impinges on his daily life. Far from being separate and apart from it, that history helps make his life what it is, has been, and will be." (Geoffrey Perret, A Country Made by War)

During this course, we will focus on America's wars and conflicts, campaigns and battles, strategies and tactics, and the human cost of combat, but not in isolation. As noted above, military actions are an integral part of the general history of this nation. Therefore, to provide a more complete perspective, to try to answer questions of how and why, we will discuss the United States' military history since 1900 in the context of political, economic and social conditions of the relevant period.

REQUIRED READING:Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, & William B. Feis, For the Common Defense: A Military

History of the United States, 1607-2012Thomas Cutler, The Battle of Leyte Gulf 23-26 October 1944Joseph R. Owen, Colder Than HellPhilip Caputo, A Rumor of WarSelected articles in the Course Reserves section of Web Campus for HIST 386B

RECOMMENDED READING:Jerry K. Sweeney, ed., A Handbook of American Military History, 2nd ed.

Conduct of the class will consist of lectures, class discussions, video presentations.

Grading will be based two exams, each covering approximately one half of the course material; short papers based on assigned readings, battle presentations; and classroom participation and attendance.

GREAT PERSONALITIESMARTIN LUTHER

HIST 388: Noria LitakerSection 1: Tuesday/Thursday 8:30-9:45 AM 3 credits

This course will examine the life and afterlives of Martin Luther (1483-1546) - one of Western civilization’s most influential, complex and controversial men. Five hundred years ago, this small-town German monk stubbornly challenged the beliefs and structure of most powerful authority in Europe, the Catholic Church. In doing so, he began the Protestant Reformation, a movement that irreparably splintered Western Christendom into multiple denominations and had a major impact on the political, social, and cultural life of early modern Europe.

To begin the course, we will explore Martin Luther’s background and world to understand why his theological ideas – such salvation by faith alone – were so radical and how they sparked a century of religious uprisings and warfare. We will also investigate the impact Luther’s writings, sermons and actions had in a wide variety of other areas including art and architecture, education, politics and gender and sexuality.

In the latter part of the course, we will examine how Luther has been remembered, re-interpreted, and commemorated around the world in the centuries since his death. Over the years, he has been called a pioneer for freedom of conscience and personal liberty as well as the German whose ideas sowed the seeds for Hitler’s rise and the Holocaust. We will unpack these claims and contemplate how Martin Luther is understood in 2019, over 500 years after the start of the Reformation.

Grading will be based on class attendance, participation in discussion, primary source analyses, a midterm exam and a final paper. The topic of the final paper will be chosen by the student in consultation with the instructor.

REQUIRED READING:Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (2017)

Additional selected articles and primary sources (texts, images, music, buildings etc.)

GREAT PERSONALITIESFITZGERALD, GATSBY, & THE JAZZ AGE

HIST 388: Deirdre ClementeSection 2: Friday 12:00-2:45 PM 3 credits

The 1920s loom large in the history of the United States, but why? This course considers the culture of the 1920s and its lasting legacy on American society. At the heart of this course is the man who termed the era “The Jazz Age” and wrote its definitive novel, “The Great Gatsby”: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s own life provides insight into a changing culture where women openly smoked, drank, and danced and where men transcended their social class via personal ambition. Along the way, students will study other “Jazz Age” personalities, including authors Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway, photographers Man Ray and Edward Steichen, and cultural literati such as H. L. Mencken and Carl Van Vechten. Each student will become the class expert on one person, selected from a list provided by the instructor. At appropriate times during the course, students will orally present information gathered during their investigations of

their Great Personalities. We will listen to jazz, read the era’s most important literature, watch a movie or two, and learn to dance the Charleston.

REQUIRED READING:To Be Determined.

Conduct of the class will consist of lectures, videos, student presentations, and class discussions.

HISTORY OF AMERICAN WOMEN, 1870 TO THE PRESENT

HIST 432B/632B: Joanne GoodwinSection 1: Online 3 credits

This course surveys the experiences of women in the United States from Reconstruction through the twentieth century. Using an intersectional lense, we will explore the diversity of women's lives overtime in public and private life. Special attention will be given to the expansion of women's rights; their involvement in public life; differences between groups of women; and changes in society's views of women, sexuality, and family life.

REQUIRED READING: Linda Kerber, Jane Sherron De.Hart, Cornelia Dayton, eds. Women’s America, Refocusing

the Past, 8th edition; VOL 2. Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780199349364

Vicki Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows: A History of Mexican American Women in the United States. (Oxford University Press, 2008) ISBN-13: 978-0195374773

Miriam Cohen, Julia Lathrop: Social Service and Progressive Government. (Westview Press, 2017). 978-0-8133-4803-2

Joanne Goodwin, Changing the Game: Women at Work in Las Vegas, 1940-1990 (University of Nevada Press, 2014). 978-0-87417-960-6

Nancy MacLean, The American Women’s Movement, 1945-2000 (Bedford/St. Martins, 2009). ISBN 0-312-44801-5

Additional Readings will be posted to Canvas. Graduate students enrolled in 632B will have additional readings on historiography and discussions with the instructor.

This class is cross-listed with WMST 432B.

TOPICS IN EUROPEAN CULTURAL HISTORY:URBAN SOCIABILITY IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

HIST 435C/635C: Gregory Brown

Section 1: Tuesday/Thursday 2:30-3:45 PM 3 Credits

This course will explore the patters of “urban sociability” in eighteenth-century culture. Taking such an approach, we will consider the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment not merely as a set of abstract ideas or as a body of works of art, but as a lived experience. Specifically, we will explore how the experience of intellectual creation in this age was understood to be fundamentally social and fundamentally urban.

While much social history of the modern era has been based on categories of 19th-cenury social analysis, notably class, which assumes a static social structure, the eighteenth century offers a much more dynamic world for the study not of fixed groups but of patters of social interaction, what historians call “sociability.” And while the romantics of the 19th century established the images of intellectual creation as a seminarian abstractly considering philosophical questions, or a scientist testing eccentric theories alone in a laboratory, or a creative genius in a studio, the Enlightenment considered sociability, particularly as it occurred in the public spaces of cities, to be central to the social, political and cultural changes of their era.

The readings in this course will approach this problem through secondary readings influenced by cultural anthropology, sociology and communications theory, on such topics as libraries, scientific academies, theaters, coffee houses, salons, Masonic lodges, and gaming houses. We will consider examples from the major urban centers of cultural life in the eighteenth century – London, Paris, Lisbon, Petersburgh and Philadelphia. Students will also work directly with eighteenth-century primary sources on urban sociability held in Lied Library Special Collections.

NB. Graduate students who enroll in HIST 635 will have supplemental meetings with the instructor to discuss the methods and theories for the study of urban sociability and to discuss the use of printed primary sources; consequently, graduate students considering research the 18th or early nineteenth century are particularly encouraged to enroll. Contact the instructor for the reading list. 

REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA, 1905-1921

HIST 447/647: Paul WerthSection 1: Monday/Wednesday 8:30-9:45 AM 3 credits

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was unquestionably one of the most significant events of the twentieth century and indeed world history. This course explores the sources, nature, and consequences of the revolution by intensively analyzing politics, society, and culture in late imperial and early Soviet Russia from 1905 to 1921. The course proceeds from the proposition that the revolutionary process may not be reduced to the events of 1917, but should instead be understood in terms of larger changes in political practices extending from the late tsarist period until the end of the civil war. The course also encourages active consideration of different historical interpretations of the Russian revolution. Students will adopt social, ethnic, religious, or political identities and follow the fate of "their" groups/individuals across the turbulent period from the first revolutionary tremor in 1905 until the end of the civil war in 1921. 

REQUIRED READING:S. A. Smith, Russian in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890-1928 (Oxford, 201). Mark Steinberg, ed., Voices of Revolution, 1917 (Yale, 2001).Richard Pipes, Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (Vintage, 1997)

GRADUATE READING:Other readings to be announced.

TOPICS IN JAPANESE HISTORY: KYOTO AND TOKYO

HIST 449C/649C: Ed WeirSection 1: Monday 4:00-6:45PM 3 credits

According to a 2018 poll, Tokyo and Kyoto were chosen as the world’s top two favorite destination cities by travelers. This semester we will explore these fascinating cities through the perspectives of history, culture, and literature. Part one of the course follows the development of Kyoto, the “capital of a thousand years,” from its founding in the eighth century through its cultural and political dominance in the Classical Age and beyond. In the second part of the course we will analyze the premodern foundations of Edo (present day Tokyo) as the capital of the Tokugawa shoguns into a modern city destroyed twice in the twentieth century, first by earthquake and then by war. We will then examine the Tokyo of today, the world’s largest megacity encompassing both the solemn traditions of the Imperial Palace and the seemingly frenetic world of “train pushers” and the ubiquitous culture of kawaii.

In this course we will seek to develop an appreciation of the fluidity of change in the stream of Japanese history. We will seek to identify both the source and the result of such change as Japan continues to develop its national self-identity within, maybe in spite of, a global context.

REQUIRED READING:Stephen Mansfield, Tokyo: A Cultural History.John Dougill, Kyoto: A Cultural History.Yasunari Kawabata. The Old Capital.Haruki Murakami. Norwegian Wood.

ADDITIONAL READING FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS:To Be Determined.

CAPSTONE RESEARCH SEMINARNINETEENTH CENTURY 1AMERICA

HIST 451: Michael AlaridSection 1: Tuesday 2:30-5:15 PM 3 credits

This course is designed to help history majors refine their critical research skills, with the goal of producing a 25-30 page research paper based on primary sources that will be a worthy writing sample for future professional applications. The theme of this course is Nineteenth Century America, with particular emphasis on violence and social conflict in American history. Although you will be asked to read and to think critically about violence and social conflict, your project can center on any aspect of the history of the United States, including the social, political, economic, and military histories of America in any century.

We will explore both qualitative and quantitative research methods and each member of the class will develop their research topic and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources relevant to their own research interests. The bulk of the semester will be focused on individual research and the writing process. The instructor and other members of the class will offer critique and guidance to each student; the process will culminate in an in-class presentation of research and a final paper.

Grading will be based on writing assignments related to our primary book, a series of graduated assignments intended to build toward the final paper, and of course the final paper itself. To pass this course, students must conduct primary research and situate their findings within the historiography of their chosen topic.

REQUIRED READINGS:Randolph Roth, American Homicide (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009)Randolph Roth, American Homicide Supplemental Volume, (Available online at the Criminal

Justice Research Center, Historical Violence Database)

CAPSTONE RESEARCH SEMINAR1EUROPE AND THE WORLD SINCE 1700

HIST 451: Cian McMahonSection 1: Tuesday 1:00-3:45 PM 3 credits

This course is designed to help history majors develop their skills in original research and analysis by writing a 25-30 page research paper based on primary sources. Your paper may be on any aspect of European history after 1700.

During the first three weeks of class we will explore research methods and each member of the class will develop his/her research topic and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The remainder of the semester will focus on writing your paper with input from the instructor and other members of the class, including critiques of drafts, individual consultation with the instructor, and an oral presentation.

Grading will be based on a series of graduated assignments leading up to the final paper, which will count for 50% of your final grade. Because of the nature of the course, class attendance is essential and unexcused absences will result in a substantial lowering of your final grade.

REQUIRED READING:The majority of the reading for the course will be defined in the bibliography for the final paper. We will also read articles in common in order to discuss historical method and research technique.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE

HIST 452B/652B: Jay CoughtrySection 1: Tuesday 2:30-5:15 PM 3 credits

Rise Against, a contemporary rock band, comments on its rise form cult status to mainstream success on an early LP, Appeal to Reason. The song “Entertainment” includes the telling line, “All we are is entertainment/Caught up in our own derangement.” Likewise, historian Leroy Ashby quotes Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, describing the point of his professional basketball franchise: “We sell fun. We sell the answer to, ‘What do you want to do tonight?’” “Sell” and “fun.” Both examples sum up the simplest understanding of American popular culture, i.e., entertainment that has historically migrated from the realm of folk culture (family, community, and region) to the marketplace, encompassing a large if not mass audience.

In this course, students will confront the many varieties of American popular culture from a variety of mainly historical/critical perspectives. After tracing pop culture’s origins in the marketplace revolution of the early 19th century, the class will examine the evolution and proliferation of popular culture forms over the last century. Critically analyzing films, television, music, sports, and the like, the class can begin to grapple with popular culture’s impact on the larger society and how that society’s dominant ideology and structures help shape popular culture. Indeed, in American society the terms “popular culture” and “culture” are increasingly used synonymously. How does popular culture reflect, refract, and ultimately shape that wider world? And ultimately what have been the consequences for Americans who spend so many billions of dollars and hours ostensibly “just having fun”?

REQUIRED READING:Leroy Ashby, With Amusement for All.Dominic Strainati, Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture.William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio.Jonathan Kirshner, Hollywood’s Last Golden Age: Politics, Society, and the Seventies Film

in America.Janis Joplin/Muhammad Ali biographies (choose one only)

TOPICS IN MODERN CHINA:CHINA, SOUTHEAST ASIA & THE PACIFIC IN WWII

History 455C/655C: Teddy UldricksSection 1: Tuesday 2:30-3:45 PM and Online (Hybrid) 3 credits

This course examines the Second World War in China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. We will explore the military, diplomatic, domestic political, ideological, economic and social dimensions of the conflict as well as its effect on the future of the region. This is a hybrid class which meets in the classroom on Tuesdays and on-line for the second meeting.

REQUIRED TEXTS:Teddy Uldricks, Global Conflict (available in “Files” in CANVAS)Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-

1945Eric Bergerud, Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South PacificJ. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs

against Japan

Graduate Students will have an additional assignment (see syllabus).

ROMAN CIVILIZATION

HIS 458/658: Mary WammackSection 1: Tuesday/Thursday 8:30-9:45 AM 3 credits

This course examines the history of Rome as it grew from an insignificant village in central Italy into an empire that by late antiquity was influential enough to boast that all roads led to Rome. The traces of those roads on the landscapes around the Mediterranean and Black Seas, through Europe and into the British Isles, stand as material remnants of a civilization that shaped the lives of millions of people in the ancient world and that continues to shape ours. Through lectures and discussions of primary sources (in translation) we’ll focus on the innovations, institutions, and mechanisms of power that characterized the history of the Roman Republic and Empire and also on the experiences of people who benefitted from, and those who bore the brunt of, Rome’s expansion. Toward the end of the course, we’ll consider the legacy of Roman civilization and its significance for European and American history.

REQUIRED READING:Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold (eds.), Roman Civilization: Volume I, The Republic and

the Augustan Age Virgil, Aeneid (trans. Robert Fitzgerald)Additional required readings will be distributed in class.

There will be more reading required of graduate students.

EUROPE: 1914-PRESENT

HIST 464/664: Jeffrey SchauerSection 1: Tuesday/Thursday 10:00-11:15 AM 3 credits

This survey of Europe during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries engages with the major themes and trends shaping political, social, cultural, and economic life on the continent. It also considers Europe's interactions with other parts of the world. We will explore some of the big events (world wars, revolutions, economic crises), crucial ideologies (liberalism, communism, fascism, social democracy, neoliberalism), and important processes (decolonization, federation, migration, deindustrialization). Students will have the opportunity to undertake some original research.

Success in the course will be evaluated based on participation in class discussions, exam(s), paper(s), and quizzes (as needed).

REQUIRED READING:Konrad Jarausch, Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century.Jeffrey Brooks and Georgiy Chemyavskiy, Lenin and the Making of the Soviet State: A Brief

History with Documents.Marla Stone, The Fascist Revolution in Italy: A Brief History with Documents.Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism.Joan Scott, The Politics of the Veil.Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die.

These core readings will be supplemented by scholarly journal articles and primary sources available on Canvas.

GRADUATE READING (beyond the titles listed above)To be determined in week one in consultation with students enrolled in 664.

TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES‘70’S FILM AND SOCIETY

HIST 487R/687: Jay CoughtrySection 1: Wednesday 2:30-5:15 PM 3 credits

This course uses film (as well as writings about film) as sources to investigate a specific historical period, the 1970s. The approach is primarily reflective. We are interested in what American films reveal about this complex period, that is, how filmmakers have consciously and unconsciously been affected by the defining events and zeitgeist of the period, a political/cultural era with roots in the 1960s that branches in both liberal and conservative directions in the

following decade. The major assumption behind our analysis, then, is tha t critical events and ideas such as the continuing rights movements and the Vietnam War (and opposition to it), feminism, Watergate, environmentalism, etc. (accompanied by a sharp political turn to the right will leave their mark on the cultural productions of the era and their creators. (The response time by filmmakers to these events may vary, of course, given the relatively long gestation period for films compared to other media.”

The relationships between what is going on in society and movies is often direct and relatively obvious. For instance, films made during the period 1967-1980 about the Vietnam War may reasonably be assumed to project an ideological point of view that arose out of the long varied public debate over the course of that conflict and its bitter aftermath. Less directly, such values and perspectives may infuse films made in the era about other military conflicts in the past, such as Korea and World War II. More obliquely, attitudes shaped by Vietnam (pacifism, patriotism, isolationism, etc.) may seep into films not directly dealing with warfare of any kind, making an analysis of such films even more challenging.

In addition, the decade of the 1970s is now viewed as the beginning of a great albeit brief period of positive change in Hollywood, “an artistic renaissance,” in one critic’s words, and the dawn of a “revolutionary decade,” according to another author. By then, critics and cinema historians argue, films as artistic creations were departing from earlier models, themes, values, and techniques, and were taking on many of the attributes we have come to associate with contemporary “independent” film fare. This brief trend waned late in the period, many analysts agree, to be largely replaced by special effects and star-driven action movies created by now-powerful producers eying the international box office and video markets.

Our reading list therefore includes a history of the 1970s, a social history of American film during the decade, and an account of the so-called “new Hollywood.” Our class time will be taken up with viewing, analyzing, and writing about several representative films of the era from a socio-historical (as opposed to purely artistic) perspective. Students will submit a brief paper on an important film director of the period and a short social/historical analysis of an approved film from this period not seen in class. In addition, there will be a midterm essay and an optional final essay.

REQUIRED READING:David Farber, The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960sPeter Lev, American Films of the ‘70s: Conflicting VisioinsBruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and

PoliticsPeter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll

Generation Saved Hollywood

TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIESFOOD AND CULTURE IN AMERICAN HISTORY

HIST 487R/687: Elizabeth Nelson

Section 2: Tuesday/Thursday 2:30-3:45 PM 3 credits

This course is an exploration of the ideas and practices that shaped the production and consumption of food in the United States. We will examine the culture of cooking and eating this course through the themes of health, immigration, class identity, regional difference and racial identity. Studying food practices offers an important way to trace the relationship of everyday practice to shifting cultural values. We explore the following issues: cultural encounters and exchange; formation of national identity; progress and industrialization; Technology and science; nutrition and cultural politics.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:Class Participation 10%Food Journal 10% Oral Interview 20% interview about family food traditions Cooking Project 20% Historical Menu Project 20% Final 20%

REQUIRED READING:Libby O’Connell, The American Plate: A Culinary History in 100 BitesSandra M. Gilbert and Roger J. Porter, eds. Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food

WritingJane Ziegelman, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant FamiliesJustin Spring, The Gourmand’s Way: Six Americans In Paris and the Birth of a New

GastronomyAnd Additional Primary Sources and Scholarly Articles

COMPARATIVE HISTORYWORLD HISTORY: THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CRISIS

HIST 489/689: John CurrySection 1: Monday/Wednesday 11:30 AM-12:45 PM 3 credits

This course aims to study the ecological, political and social crises that occurred over the course of the seventeenth century in a global and comparative perspective. In contemporary times, people throughout the world have become increasingly aware of the impact of climate change upon human societies. It is much less well-known, however, that we already have a historical example of such an event in the form of the Seventeenth-Century Crisis, which manifested across multiple geographical regions and societies and is comparatively well-documented in the historical record. At this time in history, a period of global cooling in many parts of the world led to food insecurity, political instability, and general misery in many parts of the world. By the time warmer climate returned, the process of adaptation had dramatically changed both the overall trajectory of world history and transformed the global balance of power.

Over the course of the semester, this course will introduce students to the ways in which they can undertake comparative global and environmental history. A plurality of our case studies will deal with the seventeenth century; however, we will not limit ourselves to just this period, as analogous events took place in ancient and medieval times as well. In so doing, we will compare the history of China, Japan, the Middle East, and Europe, in addition to other potential case studies. Therefore, participants may choose to examine events or themes that link people and places across regions of the world.

The ultimate goal of the course is to gain experience and acquire skills in comparative analysis of different global regions. Participants are expected to contribute regularly during class discussions and to complete a series of assignments that will lead up to the creation of a research study.

REQUIRED READING: (provisional list)Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeteenth

Century (2013)1Eric H. Kline. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2014)Ronnie Ellenblum. The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean: Climate Change and

the Decline of the East (2013).Medick, Hans and Benjamin Marschke. Experiencing the Thirty Years’ War: A Brief

History with Documents (2013)Additional articles and primary source readings as required; which can be found on my

course website at http://curryj5.faculty.unlv.edu/

Graduate students enrolled in HIST 689 will follow the same trajectory in the course, but with the expectation that they will undertake a more in-depth set of readings for the development of their own project.

RESEARCH SEMINAR IN AMERICAN WESTERN HISTORY

HIST 727: Maria CasasSection 1: Tuesday 4:00-6:45 PM 4 credits

The research seminar in American Western History is an intensive researching andwriting class. This seminar focuses on any topic related to the history of the AmericanWest but with special emphasis on Borderlands, Mexican-American and Latinx themes . Participants may write on any promising topic that falls within the broadchronological and topical parameters of the course. During the first three weeks of the semester we will discuss recent scholarship in the field, research methodologies,ethics and responsibilities of research, students work in progress and the anticipated finished products. Students will also meet regularly on an individual basis with the instructor. The end product of your labors should be a paper of 25-30 pages and of publishable quality. As part of the process, you will formulate a research question, produce an annotated bibliography, and be required to submit a full draft of the paper three weeks before the final due date. The paper drafts will undergo a rigorous peer review before the final draft is due.

COLLOQUIUM IN VIOLENCE AND THE CRAFT OF HISTORY

HIST 730: Michael AlaridSection 1: Thursday 4:00-6:45 PM 3 credits

The United States has long held the dubious distinction of being the most homicidal nation among affluent world democratic societies, with a rate four to ten times higher than comparable nations. Violence, especially homicide, has been endemic in the U.S. since the earliest European colonization of the Americas and scholars have long struggled to explain why the United States in particular has remained so homicidal. These same scholars have proposed numerous theories, which include America’s abundance of guns, America’s long history of racial strife, and America’s poverty, which was caused by centuries of unchecked capitalism. However, none of these theories have proven sufficient. In this course we will examine the latest theories that seek to explain why Americans are so violent. We will consider the social, political, and economic factors at play, in addition to how the legal system and lawmakers have attempted to deal with America’s homicide and violence problems. Students will be expected to master basic quantitative methods and to implement the skills they learn in a final project.

Our journey will take place across time and space: from the 17th to the 21st centuries and from the eastern United States, to the American West, to the islands of Southeast Asia. Ultimately, our goal will be to search for patterns in both the history and structure of the United States to uncover why violence is so endemic in American culture.

 SAMPLE READINGS:

William Thomas Allison, My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2012)

Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon

Books, 1986)Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-

American War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Gary LaFree, Losing Legitimacy: Street Crime and the Decline of Social Institutions in

America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998)Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim, Eds., On Violence: A Reader (Durham: Duke

University Press, 2007)Randolph Roth, American Homicide (Cambridge: Harvard Belknap Press, 2012)

RESEARCH SEMINAR IN EUROPEAN HISTORY

HIST 733: Elspeth WhitneySection 1: Thursday 4:00-6:45 PM 4 credits

In this seminar students will produce an original article-length research paper (25-35 pages) on a topic in European history using extensive primary and secondary sources. Class time will be devoted to research techniques, discussions of methodology, good writing and editing practices, consideration of sample articles, and periodic formal presentations of research findings. The middle portion of the semester will be devoted almost exclusively to individual research with only limited classroom time. The instructor will work closely with each student at all stages of student projects. Additional consultation with other faculty may also be available, depending on your topic. Of critical significance is the early identification of a viable topic, and interested students should feel encouraged to consult with me before the formal start of the semester. My email is: elspeth@unlv.nevada.edu.

REQUIRED BOOKSWayne Booth and Gregory Colomb, The Craft of Research, 4th ed.Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations,

Ninth Edition, 9th ed.

HISTORIOGRAPHY: EUROPEAN CULTURAL/INTELLECTUAL

HIST 740H: Michelle TusanSection 1: Monday 4:00-6:45 PM 3 credits

Historiography is the study of writing about history. This course is intended to introduce you to some of the most influential theories and methods drawn from history, literature, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology and sociology used by historians to help them assemble, synthesize and transmit stories about our past. By understanding these approaches and how they are used it is hoped that by the end of the semester you will be able to answer the question, ‘What kind of historian do I want to be?’

The course begins with a consideration of the state of the history profession today at the intersection of teaching and research. We then examine important trends that have shaped cultural and intellectual history and some of the big ideas that inform contemporary historical approaches. The next part of the course focuses on examples of history writing about people and institutions that rely on these methods and assumptions. We end with an exploration of new ways to use and deploy cultural history methodology.

This class will be conducted as a discussion. Weekly attendance and participation are essential. Students will lead discussion each week and will be required to write two short papers that count as 30%. Your midterm which is meant to simulate your qualifying exam is 30%. A 12-14 page historiography paper due at the end of class will count as 30% of your final grade. 10% of your grade will be based on weekly participation in class.

REQUIRED READING:Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso, 2016 (revised edition). Craig Calhoun, ed. Habermas and the Public Sphere, MIT, 1993. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes, Routledge, 2003 (revised edition).

Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Vintage, 1995. Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History, University of California, 1989. Thomas Laqueur, The Work of the Dead, Princeton, 2015.Karl Marx (Intro by Eric Hobsbawm), Communist Manifesto, Verso, 2012. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, Vintage, 1994. James Scott, Seeing Like a State, Yale, 1999. Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, Columbia, 1999. *Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking, Temple, 2001.

*Please note that we will be reading the Wineburg for the first day of class

COLLOQUIUM IN TRANSNATIONAL HISTORYECONOMIC HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF CAPITALISM

HIST 741: Austin DeanSection 1: Wednesday 4:00-6:45 PM 3 credits

This readings seminar will introduce students to a number of topics in economic history and the history of capitalism. The first part of the class will deal with a classic, important, and controversial topic: Why did the Industrial Revolution (IR) begin where and when it did? Simply put, how have various authors explained why the IR happened in England and not China, India, or the Middle East? The second part of the class will deal with work in the newly emergent field of the History of Capitalism. However, as we shall see, scholars trained in economics point out a number of problems with this recent work. One big question we will investigate is how economists and historians can form a productive relationship. The class has several goals. First, it will familiarize students with the contours of the field should they wish to do a M.A. or PhD field in the subject. Second, it will provide practice for preparing and taking comprehensive exams by training students to think about how books relate to each other and how the historiography of a question or event changes over time. Third, we will cover basic accounting, finance, and economic topics to establish knowledge and skills should students want to conduct research in this area.

REQUIRED READINGS: David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial

Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to present (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2001)

Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (Princeton University Press, 2016)

Jacob Soll, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (Basic Books, 2014)

Sven Beckert. Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Knopf, 2014)Robert E. Wright, Corporation Nation (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton University Press

(Princeton University Press, 2011)Barry Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-

1939 (Oxford University Press, 1996)Ajay Mehrota, Making the Modern American Fiscal State: Law, Politics and the Rise of

Progressive Taxation, 1877 1929  (Cambridge University Press, 2013).Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise

(Harvard University Press, 2010)Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford

University Press, 2009)Bart Elmore, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (New York: W.W. Norton,

2014)Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (New York:

Viking, 2018

Additional article assigned throughout the semester

This course will mostly consist of short weekly written assignments and a longer historiographic essay of each student’s own design.

MUSEUMS AND AMERICAN CULTURE: NATIVE AMERICA

HIST 751: William BauerSection 1: Friday 9:00-11:20 AM 3 credits

This course provides a theoretical and practical introduction to issues involved in history museums. This semester, we will do so by exploring the fraught relationship between American Indians (and Indigenous People broadly) with museums. We will explore the evolving role of museums in American society; organizational, ethical and interpretative issues; and the tension between power and the production of knowledge and memory. The course will be devoted to three themes: Representations of American Indians; Collecting and Displaying American Indians; and Decolonization. Assignments will include exhibit review, on-line exhibit review and artifact analysis.

REQUIRED READING:Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.Jean M. O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New

England.L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933Tony Platt, Grave Matters: Excavating California’s Buried Past.Carolyne Larson, Our Indigenous Ancestors: A Cultural History of Museums, Science

and Identity in Argentina, 1877-1943.Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples.Orin Starn, Ishi’s Brain: In Search of America’s Last “Wild” Indian.Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and

Tribal Museums.Susan Sleeper-Smith, Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives.Ruth B. Phillips, Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums.

Additional book chapters and articles