Undergraduate Course Descriptions -- Spring 2015
A SPECIAL WORD REGARDING PROSEMINARS AND TUTORIALS
Please note that all Proseminars (497), Tutorials (498), are RESTRICTED classes. This means that enrollment is by consent of the instructor only, and that you CANNOT enroll in them simply by asking for a permission number. You must personally contact the professor so that he/she can determine whether your enrollment is appropriate given the particular content, approach, requirements, and level of the course. Before contacting the professor, be sure you have read the description of the class provided below. The professor will then decide whether to give you a permission number. Also, since these courses fill up quickly, DO NOT wait until your registration date (or even later) to contact the professor. Do so as soon as you have determined that you wish to take the course. Following these procedures will assist both you and your professors.
History 494SOC: Internship Program Arrange Dr. Jessica Kim
Three units of elective credit while you gain work experience, build your résumé, and start a career network. Consider working in a museum, a historic monument, an archive, in city government, in a community college, a non-profit agency, etc. this spring – or how about a summer in WashingtonDC or Deerfield, MA or a national park – in lieu of a traditional classroom experience? A minimum 120 hours’ work under professional guidance allows you to “try out” your dream profession. Open to upper division History majors and minors with demonstrated writing and reasoning skills. Graduate students in the History MA program may also participate. Contact Dr. Jessica Kim for an appointment:
History 497A: Proseminar W 1600-1845 SH 288 Dr. Jeffrey Auerbach
At its height, the British Empire was the largest empire in the history of the world, encompassing one-quarter of the globe and embracing hundreds of millions of men and women from Antigua to Zimbabwe. This course is designed to satisfy the proseminar requirement of the history major by giving students the opportunity to research and write an original essay on a topic of their choice based on relevant primary and secondary sources. Topics can focus on individuals (from famous administrators and explorers such as Lord Curzon and James Cook to less well-known men and women including Australian convicts and governesses); events (The India Mutiny of 1857, the discovery of gold in South Africa); political debates; art and advertising; music; economics (imports, exports, the slave trade); fiction; colonial resistance (or complicity); and decolonization, to list just a few possibilities. After several weeks of common readings, students will pursue their own individual research topics through a series of guided assignments including a book review, an annotated bibliography, a rough draft, and final polished essay. Prerequisite: successful completion of History 301 with a grade of C or better.
History 497B Proseminar: History of Los Angeles T 1600-1845 SH268 Dr. Josh Sides
In the History program, the function of the senior proseminar (497) is to introduce students to the principles of historical research as they apply to specific areas of history and historiography. In this proseminar, students will be introduced to the essential tools of urban historical research, and to the history of Los Angeles in particular. Students will become familiar with a sample of existing scholarship on urban history; become familiar with the research methods urban historians utilize to understand the history, present and future of American cities; they will apply knowledge and methods from “a” and “b” to the case of San Francisco, and they will write a culminating primary research paper. Prerequisite: successful completion of History 301 with a grade of C or better.
History 497D Proseminar: Jefferson’s America T 1900-2145 SH288 Dr. Jeffrey Kaja
This seminar will focus on the life and times of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a key figure in America’s transition from a collection of colonies to an independent nation to expanding empire. He was also a complicated, contradictory and controversial figure who embodied many of the virtues and vices of American society. Students will spend the first few weeks of the course reading primary and secondary sources about Jefferson and his world. They will then spend the remainder of the course producing an article-length paper based mainly on primary sources. Papers do not necessarily have to be about Jefferson, but they should cover themes raised in the class. Prerequisite: successful completion of History 301 with a grade of C or better.
History 498C Tutorial: The History of Iran MW 1100-1215 SH288 Dr. Rachel Howes
This class will examine some of the major themes in the history of Iran. The focus in this course will be on the intellectual and cultural interactions between people. This does of course necessitate some discussion of social, political and economic factors, but the focus will be cultural and intellectual. Using Roy Mottahedeh's The Mantle of the Prophet as a frame, we will examine pre-Islamic Iran, the Arab-Islamic conquests and their effects on Iran, the role of Iran as a key province in the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the emergence of a unique Persian Islamic culture between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, and its development under the Ilkhanids, Timurids and Safavids. Finally we will look at the interaction of this unique culture with Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In each section we will trace the developments and changes in Persian or Iranian identity and culture. Students will be expected to read a book a week, write seven short papers, and a final research paper of 10-15 pages. For more information contact Rachel Howes at rachel.howes@csun.edu. Prerequisite: successful completion of History 301 with a grade of C or better.
History 498C Tutorial: The Civil War Era: Southern Society, War, and the Home Front R 1900-2145 SH279 Dr. Joyce Broussard
This course will review some of the major scholarship regarding the impact of the Civil War and its immediate aftermath on both the northern and southern regions of the United States. Students will read and discuss appropriate literature; write précis on selected books; and produce a historiographic essay. Topics to be discussed include: death and suffering; the role of southern white women in Confederate defeat; insurgency among the enslaved; prostitution and sexual politics during and immediately after the Civil War; prayers unanswered; dealing with terrorism and occupation; destitution, disease and dependency among freedwomen and their children; spies and deserters; and why there was no peace when the war ended, among other issues to be explored.
History 498C Tutorial: The Enlightenment R 1600-1845 SH186 Dr. Erik Goldner
This course introduces advanced undergraduate students to the history of the Enlightenment. What was the Enlightenment? Why is it important? How “enlightened” was it really? And how was Enlightenment thinking related to social and political transformations that occurred in the period? Students will engage with these and other questions by reading some of the Enlightenment’s most famous works and discussing, analyzing, and writing about them in an intensive way.