HIST 395
Note: HIST 395 is an Undergraduate Seminar in History; several different courses use this course number. Scroll down to read course descriptions for different sections of HIST 395.
Undergraduate Seminar in History (United States): Cultural Identities in Colonial America
Kathleen DuVal
This seminar will consider the early interactions among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans on the North American continent. Why did these peoples come together? How did they make sense of one another? How did they change one another’s lives, religions, political and economic systems, social structures, and assumptions about themselves, others, and their places in the world?
In this course, you will write a major research paper on some aspect of cultural identities in colonial North America. You will choose the specific topic and conduct primary and secondary research. The paper should be 20-25 pages long, including notes and bibliography. Because researching, writing, and editing a paper of this length requires time, the course includes steps along the way to help you start early. Here are the objectives for your research paper, which are also the guidelines I will use in grading them:
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pose a significant analytical question
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use and analyze primary sources
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present a coherent historical argument
The final paper, the assignments along the way (some P/F and some graded), and class participation will compose your grade for the class. There will be little assigned reading. Most of your reading will be primary and secondary sources that you find for your project.
Undergraduate Seminar in History (United States): Bodies on Display: Perspecitves on the Body in American Culture
John Kasson
This seminar is intended to study aspects of the human body as it has been viewed, exhibited, and objectified in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the topics we will consider are: P. T. Barnum and the exhibition of human oddities; fugitive slave narratives and the history of pain; the Parkman murder and trial of 1849; Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave and the female nude in art; Mathew Brady and the body as evidence in photography; Harry Houdini and popular dramas of manliness; adolescent girls and their bodies in the twentieth century. Each student will also devise a research topic on the body,, and proceed step by step through the research, drafting, and completion of a successful twenty-page essay.