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ACADEMIC YEAR 2008-2009
SPRING 2009
History 2514/LAS 2514
Introduction to Latin America
An overview of Latin American
history from pre-Hispanic civilizations through the Spanish and Portuguese
colonial periods and nationhood to the present. Organized both
chronologically and thematically, the course probes such issues as the rise
and fall of political systems; matters of race, gender, and class; the
economic conditions of work and survival; and patterns of social and
cultural change. Methods of instruction include paperback readings, the
internet, and video clips.
History 3870/LAS 3810 Topics in
World History: The Mexican Crisis
Over the past thirty
years Mexico has gone through an extended crisis, a time of insecurity and
suspense in both the public and private lives of its citizens.
The dramatic changes that the country has experienced in recent decades--the
opening of the electoral system; the incorporation into the North American
Free Trade Area (NAFTA); and the substantial increase in labor migration to
the United States--have not yet delivered a way out of the crisis.
Mexico's current difficulties illustrate many of the dilemmas facing
humanity in the early twenty-first century. The course will examine
the post-1980 time of troubles and its relationship with the earlier era of
stability and prosperity that prevailed in the decades after 1940.
Students will read some of the new historical scholarship that has emerged
on post-1940 and post-1980 Mexico and engage with the issues of writing
contemporary history. Instruction takes place through discussion,
lecture, film, reading, and computer projection.
FALL 2008
History 3811/LAS 2010 World Economy Since 1945.
Economic
globalization profoundly transforms many longstanding patterns of human existence. Public
discussion about globalization, nevertheless, remains often shallow and misleading. This
course aims to offer a deeper perspective on the present by examining the experience of
the world economy over the formative period since World War II. It concentrates on two
basic questions: 1) How did the domestic and global foundations of the current world
economy come into being over the last half century? and 2) What are the implications of
this historical process for our immediate and future lives? The World Economy Since 1945 assumes a lively
student interest in learning about broad historical trends, in analyzing the
issues of political economy that envelop our lives, and
in developing intellectual skills. In addition to discussion, lecture, and common
readings, methods of instruction in the course include use of a computer-assisted
classroom to provide image and text projections, video clips, and internet linkages.
MWF 11:40-12:30. TL 403A
Honors History 2970 Mexican Migration to
the United States.
Although immigrant bashing will probably not dominate this fall’s
presidential campaign as once seemed possible, illegal immigration remains a
volatile and divisive question for the United States. To some significant
extent, the issue stems from the rapid growth of the number of undocumented
Mexicans inside the U.S. at a time of widespread public anxiety over matters
of physical and economy security. According to the Pew Hispanic Center,
Mexicans constitute nearly 60 percent of all undocumented immigrants, a
proportion unlikely to diminish in the immediate future. Amid the
denunciations of a supposed “silent invasion” and the construction of walls
to “secure the border,” most discussions of illegal immigration
ignore—willfully or otherwise—the extensive history of Mexican migration to
the United States. We will examine the pervasive influence of that history
upon the present as well as the tight connections that exist between Mexican
labor migration and phenomena that most U.S. citizens prize—the spread of
American culture and influence abroad, international political stability,
reliable domestic economic growth, and the availability of inexpensive goods
and services. The dilemmas involved in Mexican migration to the United
States echo Bill Ong Hing’s comments in Defining America Through
Immigration Policy (Temple University Press, 2004): “We are a nation of
immigrants. However, the simplicity of that statement conceals the nation’s
consistent history of tension over whom we collectively regard as `real
Americans’ and, therefore, whom we would allow into our community.” MWF
9:40-10:30. TL 403A
SPRING
2008
History 3201/LAS 3201 California Dreams,
California Nightmares.
A studies in race course.
Over the century
and a half since California was forcibly incorporated into the United States, it has
exercised a powerful role upon the imagination and reality of every generation. California
has been, at once, the golden gate of opportunity and the grapes of wrath of the
downtrodden, social mobility and the policy of incarceration, the glamour of Hollywood and
monotony of tract housing, the high-tech of Silicon Valley and the high-sweat of
agricultural labor, the eden of natural bounty and the ecological disaster of sprawl and
smog. From the beginning, California's complex interplay between historical image and
reality has been heavily racialized. This course concentrates on the
historical role that categories of race have played in defining by whose
means, to whose benefit, and in whose image California's wealth would be
produced and consumed. California Dreams, California Nightmares offers a mix of primary and
secondary sources, emphasizes the interaction of multiple causal factors, and encourages
students to interpret and to write analytical historical arguments. In addition to discussion,
lecture, and common readings, methods of instruction in the course include use of a
computer-assisted classroom to provide image and text projections, video clips, and
internet linkages.
Tuesday 5:40-8:10 main campus
History 4698/LAS 4698 Revolutionary Mexico
A Writing-intensive course.
The revolutionary characteristics of Mexico constitute this course
in three ways: 1) México revoltoso or the long-term rebellious quality of
Mexican society (currently represented by the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas); 2) the
great popular Revolution of 1910-20; and 3) the challenges that Mexico poses to
existing forms of political and economic organization and systems of knowledge.
Particular emphasis will be devoted to the issues of the twentieth century and the
conflicts inherent in the remaking of Mexico from a rural, agrarian society into an
industrial, urban member of NAFTA. Attention will be given to questions involving
the United States, especially in the realms of culture, the border, migration, narcotics,
and economic life. Instruction emphasizes discussion and analysis of readings, the
use of audio-visual and computer equipment, and critical evaluation of sources in writing
assignments.
Tues-Thurs 11:40-1 main campus
RECENT PAST
History 121/LAS 170
Introduction to Latin America
An overview of Latin American
history from pre-Hispanic civilizations through the Spanish and Portuguese
colonial periods and nationhood to the present. Organized both
chronologically and thematically, the course probes such issues as the rise
and fall of political systems; matters of race, gender, and class; the
economic conditions of work and survival; and patterns of social and
cultural change. Methods of instruction include paperback readings, the
internet, and video clips.
History 122/LAS 303
Latin American Social Struggles.
An
examination of Latin America’s contemporary history from the Cuban
Revolution in 1959 through the end of the Cold War to the present. The
course explores such matters as revolution and counter-revolution; human
rights and institutional accountability; city life and social change; the
movement of people, narcotics, and goods; and new forms of political and
cultural conflict. Methods of instruction include paperback readings, the
internet, and video clips.
Honors History H195 Settling Accounts: Latin America in an Age
of Anguish (Latin America Post Revolution).
Description:
What constitutes justice during and after an era of revolutionary and
counter-revolutionary conflict? As Subcomandante Marcos of Mexico asks,
“Who should ask for pardon, and who should grant it?” Who should be held
accountable for the terrible abuses of human rights—the arbitrary violence,
the disappearances of loved ones, the executions, the torture? What
constitutes justification for the use of force—the maintenance of order, the
need to combat subversion, the imperative of overcoming age-old forms of
exploitation? Whose historical memory sets the standards for rendering
justice over the abuses of the past? Whose version of the appropriate
society should prevail? These are some of the questions we will explore in
looking at Latin America’s attempts to establish “normality” in the midst of
the pervasive social inequalities that continue to generate injustice and
violence. We will read selections from a variety of different types of
texts deriving from the history of the last half century in Latin America:
official reports (e.g. Amnesty International bulletins, truth commission
reports); works of fiction (e.g. Ariel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden);
personal testimonies (e.g. Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell
without a Number; María Eugenia Vázquez Perdomo, My Life as a
Colombian Revolutionary); the narratives of observers (e.g. Lawrence
Weschler, A Miracle, a Universe); Michael Taussig, Diary of a
Limpieza); and scholarly studies (e.g. Jorge Castañeda, Compañero.
The Life and Death of Che Guevara; Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop;
Margaret Popkin, Peace without Justice; Steve Stern, The Memory
Box of Pinochet’s Chile).
Approach to Teaching:
In addition to readings, we will use the internet, computer presentations,
and film to examine the connections between historical events and questions
of justice in Latin America since the advent of the Cuban revolution a half
century ago. Tuesday classes will concentrate on the presentation of
historical context via lecture, the computer, and film; Thursdays will
devote themselves to debating the issues of justice at stake in the readings
and the historical conflicts under examination. In conjunction with the
instructor, students will exercise the responsibility for shaping the
framework of Thursday’s classes and guiding the discussions.
History C062. Modern World History
Over the last 500 years,
the world has become an intensely interwoven and interdependent place. While the world has
become considerably more unequal and conflictive, it has also more receptive to the
influence of mass actions of ordinary people. We will examine the global forces that have
made this happen, looking at some "facts" but mostly paying attention to
relationships among areas of the world, among types of historical factors, among varieties
of people, and among periods of time. Particularly important will be the issues of
equality and stability. Four focal points will guide the course across the semester:
1) the material basis of life; 2) the organization and maintenance of human communities;
3) the impact of science and technology; and 4) the operations of the international
relations system.
History 476 Studies in
Latin American History (fall 2006 version)
History 476 fall 2006 will examine the issues involved in considering Latin
America's conflictive experience over the last half century as historical
subject matter. As an exercise in contemporary history, the course begins
with issues of interpretation concerning the Cold War and the Cuban
Revolution before moving on to other matters concerning urbanization,
violence, economic development, race, ethnicity, politics, and global
migration. Each week the course will read and discuss a recently published
English-language book plus additional shorter reading materials.
History 8505 Studies in
Latin American History (fall 2007 version)
The approaching dual
anniversary in 2010-two hundred years since the start of Mexico's
independence movement and one hundred years since the outbreak of the
Revolution of 1910-offers a propitious moment to examine how much recent
history writing has transformed and enriched the basic narrative of Mexico's
nineteenth and twentieth century history. Studies in Latin American history
will examine the most interesting developments in Mexican historiography
over he last generation and place them in a comparative Latin American
context. Main 4:40-7:10 M |