History Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Fall Quarter
| Dept | Course No and Title | Instructor |
|---|---|---|
| HISTORY (F24) | 12 HISTORY OF HORROR | ROBERTSON, J. |
| Since the birth of cinema, audiences have been captivated by the horrific, the frightful, and the grotesque. From the somnambulists of German expressionism and the city-crushing monsters of Cold War Hollywood, through to the slashers of the 1980s and the zombie contagions of our present era, horror cinema continues to exert a power on our collective imagination. But horror is much more than a genre of entertainment. Throughout history horror has been central for creating ideals of the beautiful; through spectacles of violence, it has served to challenge or maintain political regimes; by evoking the figure of the monster it has helped regulate our understandings of normal and abnormal, healthy and pathological, good and evil. Horror, and its uses and abuses, offers us a unique insight into the aesthetics of power. This course will introduce students to a conceptual history of horror in the West. It will focus on the ways in which the aesthetics of horror – and its adjacent categories: the tragic, grotesque, sublime, and gothic – have overlapped with and shaped the politics, culture and philosophy of Europe and the United States. Why do we create horror? What functions does it serve? How have its expressions and meanings changed over different historical periods? And how can we study it as an object of historical concern? Note: The course will require students to view horror films that contain scenes or themes of violence, gore, sexuality, the occult, etc. that may be discomforting for some. If you are concerned about this, please contact the instructor in advance to see whether this course would be appropriate for you. (GE: IV) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 15A NATIVE AMERICAN HIS | STAFF |
| This course will present a survey of Native American history from pre-contact to the present, examining the consequences of Indigenous interactions with Euro-Americans and Native efforts to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. The dynamics of contact, conquest, accommodation, assimilation, and resistance is ongoing, and will be examined from both Indian and non-Indian perspectives. The means by which Native Americans have preserved their identities and cultures is the key to the course, rather than emphasizing the many tragic aspects of their histories. Students will also explore methodological and ethical issues pertaining to the research and writing about Native American history. (GE: IV, VII) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 15C ASAM HISTORIES | FUJITA-RONY, D. |
| This class will give students the tools to understand the major issues affecting Asian Americans up through the 1980s, particularly in regards to race, class, gender, ethnicity, community, and nation. In addition, this class also will enable students to explore how we produce historical knowledge through three major themes, with integrated discussions of different kinds of texts, images, and other sources. With the first theme, “Empire and Nation,” we will investigate the relationship of the United States to the Pacific, particularly regarding colonialism, race, class, and the economy. The second theme, “Labor, Migration, and Place” will examine the importance of urban and rural sites for Asian Americans during this era. The third theme, “Whose Voice? Whose Vision?” will address the importance of community formation and cultural representation through focus on the building of Asian American spaces in the United States. ((III or IV) and VII ) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 16C RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE | MCKENNA, J. |
| G.E. class and one of three main courses in UCI's world religions series. Two hundred students. No prerequisites. Lots of discussion on ten provocative topics in religion, a different topic for every week in the term. The course is event-oriented and requires attendance for all sessions. Absences are discouraged and penalized. Since the word ‘dialogue’ appears in the title of the class and the word ‘discussion’ is appears in discussion section—you’ll be expected to speak and to listen when others speak. Here’s the method: Every Tuesday there’ll be a detailed lecture introducing a new provocative topic. Then every Wednesday there’ll be small-group discussions on the topic with your TA. Then every Thursday there’ll be full-class discussions on the topic in the lecture hall with many student volunteers going on stage to speak and receive questions from the audience. And so it will go each week, with a new topic introduced each Tuesday. No topic is ever settled or resolved, and there is much disagreement among students. We must learn to manage permanent tensions that exist on matters of religion. Though everyone is asked to speak with absolute candor, it will be our policy to attempt civil, amicable exchanges. Course work is as follows: Tuesdays: weekly short readings from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (via links; no books to purchase) and weekly short written summaries of those readings; Wednesdays: weekly short essays on 'thought questions’ pertaining to the week’s topic; Thursdays: weekly short essays concerning some aspect of the previous Tuesday lecture. No tests. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 21A WORLD: INNOVATIONS | RAPHAEL, R. |
| How does the legacy of human evolution affect our world today? How have technological innovations shaped human societies? How have human societies explained the natural world and their place in it? Given the abundance of religious beliefs in the world, how have three evangelical faiths spread far beyond their original homelands? This class follows the major themes of world historical development through the sixteenth century to consider how developments in technology, social organization, and religion—from the origins of farming to the rise of Christianity—shaped the world we live in today. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 36A EARLY GREECE | BRANSCOME, D. |
| A survey of ancient Greek civilization from its origins in the Bronze Age to the mid-Archaic period. Examines political and social history, as well as literature, art, religion, and archaeological remains. Same as CLASSIC 36A. (IV) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 37B ROMAN EMPIRE | ZISSOS, P. |
| A survey of Roman civilization from Augustus’s consolidation of power following the civil wars of the first century BCE to the crisis of the third century CE. Includes social history, literature, art, architecture, and religion. (IV) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 40C MOD AM CLTR&POWER | HIGHSMITH, A. |
| Important themes in U.S. history in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Topics include corporate capitalism, empire, immigration, race, gender, consumer society, World Wars, Progressiveness, New Deal, Great Society, civil rights, women's movements, Vietnam War, conservative politics, and economic stratification. Prerequisite: Satisfaction of the UC Entry Level Writing requirement. (GE:IV) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 40C MOD AM CLTR&POWER | HIGHSMITH, A. |
| Important themes in U.S. history in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Topics include corporate capitalism, empire, immigration, race, gender, consumer society, World Wars, Progressiveness, New Deal, Great Society, civil rights, women's movements, Vietnam War, conservative politics, and economic stratification. Prerequisite: Satisfaction of the UC Entry Level Writing requirement. (GE:IV) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 70C AFR AM HIST TO 1877 | MILLWARD, J. |
| This class serves as a critical introduction to major themes in African American history from arrival to the outbreak of the US Civil War--specifically gender/family, law and power. Questions to be explored include: What was the experience of enslavement and freedom prior to the Atlantic slave trade? How did gender shape the experience of African descended people in the US? How did early African Americans resist and survive enslavement? How did free black communities persist despite mechanisms designed to curtail their success? This course is designed for History majors and students with an interest in African American Studies and/or Ethnic studies. The class will be run as a lecture course with written assignments and take home exams. (GE: IV) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 70D LATAM COL CITY&RACE | O'TOOLE, R. |
| Race & Colonialism in Latin America’s Cities From Mexico City to Lima to Buenos Aires to Manila, the Spanish and Portuguese empires attempted to rule by imposing an urban racial logic throughout their realms. Called “the lettered city” by the Uruguayan scholar Ángel Rama, the concept presents us with our first skills lesson: history is an interpretation, an argument, or a claim and not a list of facts. This class, therefore, argues that the colonial Latin American urban grid was the method of Iberian racial colonization contested by its inhabitants. Demanding tribute, forcing labor, and segregating Indigenous peoples of the Americas, enslaved Africans, and Asian migrants, colonizing Iberians justified their dominance by declaring themselves as the literate rulers from the lettered city. This is an introductory course to the history of Latin America and the practices of history. Each week we are going to take on a new city while advancing our historical skills. We will employ evidence from the primary and the secondary sources provided in the readings, lectures, and discussions to distinguish and explain how Iberian empires attempted to control inhabitants based on racial categorization, discrimination, and exploitation. In turn, we will collect evidence to argue that Indigenous, African, and Asian people with their descendants included, negotiated, and resisted the colonizing and enslaving lettered city by developing their own forms of legality, literacy, and honor to fashion their own places in the colonial cities. Course assignments include 10 short written assignments, reading quizzes, discussion section participation exercises, and lecture attendance activities. (GE: IV, VIII) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 70E MODERN MIDDLE EAST | BERBERIAN, H. |
| The course explores the historical roots of the contemporary Middle East, covering the most important themes in the history of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries Middle East within a global context. It will focus on several events -- the partition of the Middle East in the first world war, genocide, the Iranian Revolution to name a few -- that shook and changed the Modern Middle East. The aim is to explore larger concepts and contexts that have shaped Modern Middle Eastern history but to do so through the study of specific key episodes. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 70F FIRST ENCOUNTERS | SEED, P. |
| Arriving in the New World for the first time, Europeans encountered scores of different people and cultures that they had never imagined even existed. The course traces the history of first contacts from 1492 through present-day rendezvous with inhabitants of remote areas including Brazil and Papua New Guinea. (GE: IV, VIII) | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 100W HISTORY WRTNG CRAFT | KONGSHAUG, E. |
| "The Craft of History Writing" will emphasize the teaching of "History Writing" from a writer's rather than from a historian's perspective. Each week we will read one fully-realized historical essay, published in a contemporary, peer-reviewed historical journal and also one chapter from a book-length historical narrative, The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century, by Martha Hodes. And each week, through these works (all drawn from US history), we will focus on a different element of "craft" through which we can approach the different language, argument and research skills necessary to compose a compelling and academically credible essay in historical inquiry. Your own writing will consist of focused reading responses, in-class exercises, and two essays. Your first essay, developed from response drafts, will be based on analyzing elements of craft exemplified by two or several of the class readings; the second essay will be devoted to applying these elements to a historical subject/text/period/area of your own choosing/specialization (which need not be drawn from US History); this second essay will be workshopped, substantially revised and resubmitted for a third grade. History 100W fulfills the upper-division writing requirement for UCI and the historical writing requirement for the History Major with requirements that are set by the school and the department. Prerequisite: Satisfactory completion of the Lower-Division Writing requirement. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 100W CITIES TO SUBURBS | FARMER, S. |
| One of the great historical transformations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the shift, for many people, from the countryside to cities and suburbs. This course studies this development close to home by examining the urban and suburban history of southern California. We will look at the physical form of the city of Los Angeles and Orange County suburbs and the forces that shaped the ways in which they were laid out and inhabited, paying attention to geography, economic factors, class, and experience. The purpose of the 100W for historians is for students to develop skills essential the study and writing of history. We will analyze and practice how historians approach a topic, examine evidence, formulate questions, and create arguments. For example, when reading secondary sources, we will learn to recognize the historical argument being made. A key goal of this class is for you to identify a historical question, having to do with cities and suburbs, that you find interesting. The assignments for this class, week by week, are designed to lead you there. The final project is to formulate a research question and propose sources and an approach for answering it. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 100W CHICANA/O/X ACTIVSM | ROSAS, A. |
| No description available | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 114 CULTURES OF FASCISM | ROBERTSON, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 120D FRANCE:WAR & WORLD | FARMER, S. |
| Topics include the French experience in the Great War, resistance and collaboration during the Second World War, empire and decolonization, immigration, French responses to “Americanization” and globalization. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 132E ARMENIANS MODERN | BERBERIAN, H. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 134A AFRICA SOC&CULTURES | MITCHELL, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 135A SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTN | RAPHAEL, R. |
| An examination of early modern European science from 1500-1700. Includes primary readings from central figures (Copernicus, Harvey, Bacon, Descartes, et al.); themes include the impact of printing, humanism, patronage, technology, and discussion of the term "revolution" in this context. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 140 MEDIA & US ELECTION | PERLMAN, A. |
| This course will trace the evolving relationships between media history, political communication, and election campaigning in the US across the 20th century and into the 21st century. We will pay particular attention to changes in political journalism, political advertising, and campaign finance reform regulations. We also will examine the impact of new communication technologies (radio, broadcast TV, cable TV, websites, and social media platforms) on the act and practice of running for public office. As this course will take place during the 2024 election, we will be attentive to how the history of US media and US elections can help contextualize our contemporary political moment. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 150 19C BLK MOVEMENTS | DE VERA, S. |
| This course explores Black organizing traditions that continue to inform movements today. Students will familiarize themselves with the strategies employed by nineteenth-century Black activists, organizers, enslaved and formerly enslaved people to undermine slavery, challenge racist legal codes, sustain their communities, and mobilize politically. By looking at insurrections, emigration, vigilance and equal rights committees, the Colored Conventions movement, Black women’s clubs, and many more, this course highlights how the Black radical tradition shaped the long nineteenth century. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 150 IDEA OF AMERICA I | CHANDLER, N. |
| Employing a multidisciplinary approach to the understanding of American society, culture and history, from the 15th century to the early 20th century, this course will provide a new introduction to the very idea and the founding history of America. With touchstone attention to Asia (notably India, Japan, and China) in the idea of America, the diverse sources of its people, African, European, Native American, and more, this course takes the history of matters African American as a central guide. Modern slavery, and then too modern imperialism, modern colonialism, and the coming of the great modern revolutions are central references. The central or guiding question of the course is the doubled matter of the dignity and the denigration of the “human.” The course aims to cultivate a perspective that is at once historical and “cultural,” and thus also comparative, in all of its practices. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 165A REV&MEMORY LATIN AM | O'TOOLE, R. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 169 MIGRATN& EXCLUSN LA | AGUILAR, K. |
| This course examines the movement of people to and from Latin America from the pre-colonial era through the twenty-first century. It explores the personal and structural motivations for migration and how such movements informed notions of human rights, national identity, and exclusion in Latin America over time. The course will focus on the regional migration of Indigenous peoples, the various waves of European migration to the Americas, the transatlantic slave trade, as well as the ongoing movement of people caused by political, economic, and environmental factors during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The course will juxtapose these histories with Latin American migration to other parts of the world, with special attention to the United States. Using primary and secondary source materials, the course will analyze migration regimes to determine why they emerged, how they impacted everyday people, and how such histories inform contemporary calls for migrant and refugee justice throughout the Americas. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 169 GLOBAL LATIN AMER | DUNCAN, R. |
| Religion has deeply influenced the course of Latin American society and culture. It has served not only as a source of individual identity, but as a basis for a collective one as well. This course will survey the development of religious thought and practice over five centuries of Latin American history. Lectures will examine the clash of diverse religious traditions beginning with the great “encounter” between Europeans, indigenous peoples, and Africans in the New World. An analysis will follow of the fundamental—and sometimes controversial—role of the Catholic Church in the region as well as non-Christian faiths. Themes will include indigenous religious practice, Christianization efforts, the role of religion in politics and revolution, liberation theology, Afro-Latin American faiths, Judaism, and the recent rise of Pentecostal denominations. Students are expected to attend lectures and complete all assigned readings. Videos and primary source materials will supplement the lectures. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 169 RELIGION:LATIN AMER | DUNCAN, R. |
| No description available | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 171E CHINESE 1800-1949 | BAUM, E. |
| This course will introduce students to major themes in the social, cultural, political, and economic history of China since 1800, with a focus on key events including the Opium Wars and Boxer Uprising, the 1911 Revolution and overthrow of the Qing dynasty, the Second World War, and the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party. Themes include political and ideological change from the late imperial period to the communist takeover; changing gender roles; urbanization and rural development; foreign imperialism and popular resistance; and the growing pressure to "modernize" China's politics and culture. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 173G KOREAN HISTORY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 180 PUBLISH GLOBAL PAST | MITCHELL, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 183 CAPT COOK'S VOYAGES | MARCUS, G. |
| This course traces the three famous voyages of Captain Cook in the Pacific Ocean during the later 18th century and through their contacts with diverse island peoples provide a perspective on how islands came to be occupied through technologies of sailing and navigation, how these people formed their own cultures, and how ocean and island ecologies affect their character even up to the present day. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 190 GLOBAL ANARCHISMS | AGUILAR, K. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 190 SLAVRY&AFR DIASPORA | MILLWARD, J. |
| Food ways. Slang. Dress. Hair styles. Radicalism. Worship. Mannerisms–all of these and so many others are similar among Black people across the world. This class introduces students to how and why people separated by continents, enslaved labor regimes, and colonial powers, nonetheless are very similar–at least at the outset. The course is designed for students interested in learning research methods related to people and places of the African Diaspora from Ghana to Jamaica to Latin America and The United States. Some of the questions explored include but are not limited to the following: What is Diaspora? What were the precursors of contact between Africans and the rest of the modern world prior to chattel slavery? How did Africans survive the harrowing middle passage? How did African communities form in the various parts of the Atlantic world? What were the gendered differences between enslaved men and women in the Diaspora? Where was resistance to slavery most prominent? And what can a presumed absence of armed rebellion also tell us about the Diaspora? How did slavery and Diaspora inform conceptions of colonialism and nation? Assignments: Students will have four primary assignments all leading to the final project of either a research paper or recording their own podcast. These assignments include: a book review, an annotated bibliography, a research proposal/podcast treatment, and the final paper or podcast . These assignments are designed to assist students as they continue research on peoples of African descent. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 197 HISTORY INTERNSHIP | NATH, N. |
| Students learn to “do history” by working with professionals who work as public historians in settings other than the formal classroom. “Doing history” does not mean memorizing past events but involves research, critical reading, analysis, and presentation of material. This internship program allows students to “do history” in public settings and in dialog with public audiences. It will improve students’ abilities to research and analyze historical questions and then to communicate them effectively in oral, visual, and written forms. Students will select an internship from several partners with which the History Department collaborates. They will each work in this partner institution with professionals who may be archivists, researchers, teachers, project advisers, or exhibit curators. They will also participate in weekly on-campus workshops, where they will interact with their peer group to reflect on the kinds of histories being produced in their internship experience and thereby to deepen their understanding of historical analysis and modes of historical presentation. This course is for elective credit only and does not satisfy a major requirement. Apply at https://forms.gle/jaQ6NGGaWYiRYy9HA. Contact Undergraduate Program Coordinator, Michelle Spivey, at spiveym@uci.edu regarding application. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | MITCHELL, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| HISTORY (F24) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
