Fall 2012
Department of History
GRADUATE
Course Description Guide
University of Massachusetts
Department of History
Graduate Course Description Guide
Fall 2012
Advanced undergraduates are invited to inquire about enrolling in graduate courses. Such
enrollment depends on the permission of individual instructors who should be contacted directly.
Questions can also be directed to the Graduate Program Director, Marla Miller, at
mmiller@history.umass.edu.
659
Public History
R. Martin
691CS
Comparative Sanctities
A. Taylor
691P
Intro to History
J. Higginson/
J. Hernandez
693E
Early American History
B. Levy
693J
Comparative Memory
J. Olsen
697
History of Childhood and Youth
L. Lovett
791B
U.S. Women and Gender History
J. Berkman
You may take two courses outside the department that will count toward your degree. The
following may be of interest to you. Descriptions can be found at the end of this guide.
AfroAm 691C
Anthro 697X
English 732
English 755
Hm&FnArt 500
Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies
Historical Archaeology
Shakespeare
American Realism
Introduction to Arts Management
Allen
Battle-Baptiste
Arthur Kinney
Randall Knoper
Dee Boyle-Clapp
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History 597
Under the University Numbering System, M.A. students wishing to enroll in an upper-level
undergraduate course may do so under the special topics number, History 597, with permission
from the instructor and also with the understanding that instructors will require additional work
of graduate students in those courses. Check SPIRE for the list of Spring 2012 undergraduate
courses.
There are forms available in Herter 612 to be signed by the instructor for these courses. Students
will be responsible for discussing the course requirements with the instructors. Please see the
Graduate Program Assistant about registration to ensure that a grade will be submitted for you at
the end of the semester. Only two 597 courses may count as topics courses towards completion
of the M.A. degree.
659
Public History
Rachel Martin
Tuesday, 2:30pm-5:00pm
Public History is history that is seen, heard, read and interpreted by a popular audience. Public
historians expand on the methods of academic history by emphasizing non-traditional evidence
and presentation formats, reframing questions, and in the process creating a distinctive historical
practice. . . . Public history is also history that belongs to the public. By emphasizing the public
context of scholarship, public history trains historians to transform their research to reach
audiences outside the academy. History 659 introduces students to the Adistinctive historical
practice@ of Public History. The first few weeks of the course will examine the various public
images and uses of history, past and present. Topics include how versions of the past are created,
institutionalized and disseminated as the public history in civic celebrations, memorials and
monuments; in popular culture, including television and film; and in the landscape. We will also
consider the relationship of these public histories to more private versions of the past
communicated among family and friends (the relationship between public history and collective
memory). The remainder of the course will examine some of the particular issues confronted by
historians who work in public history settings such as museums and historic sites, historic
preservation agencies, archives, history-related web sites and documentary film. Note: This
course is required for those seeking an MA with a concentration in public history; it is highly
recommended for others interested in the place of history in modern American culture.
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691CS
Comparative Sanctities
Anna Taylor
Tuesday, 12:00pm-3:00pm
This course will examine the cultural construction of sanctity. Although the focus will be on the
pre-modern Christian west, we will also consider comparative examples, and students will be
encouraged to read and present in their own areas of interest. Readings will include general
works on religion and religious history as well primary sources (in translation) and recent
scholarship. Although historians of previous generations dismissed many aspects of the study of
saints, recent work has shown that they are a rich source for cultural history. No background in
medieval history is required. Topics and themes will include the creation and uses of holiness,
changing scholarly approaches to issues of religious belief and practice, sanctity and gender,
ritual, hagiography, relics and pilgrimage. Grades will be based on participation, in-class
presentations and writing (review, research) assignments.
691P
Intro to History
John Higginson/Jose Hernandez
Monday, 3:35pm-6:05pm
This course is required for all incoming graduate students. It seeks to introduce students to the
varieties of history and as far as possible, the range of research and graduate teaching interests of
faculty in the UMass/Five College Graduate Program in History. Through the study of scholarly
monographs and serious popularizations, we will explore the different modes of doing history
and the limits of competing ways of approaching the past. A preliminary reading list will be
sent to all incoming students over the summer.
693E
Early American History
Barry Levy
Friday, 2:30pm-5:00pm
This course is designed for students interested in research, writing, and some aspect of early
American history. It aims to develop a community of early American historians at Umass, while
developing students' abilities to use primary sources of various kinds to develop their hypotheses
and arguments concerning topics of their own interest. At the beginning of the course I will ask
all students to declare a specific interest (e.g. Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson's politics,
Native American monetary systems, slave trade in Rhode Island, rum-drinking in Boston,
etc.). He or she will be then responsible for that topic or area. Students may change his or her
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focus slightly or radically during the course. Students will explore each week a different kind of
primary source (probate records, court records, letter books, newspapers, material culture) and
how the use of such a source might develop an argument about his or her topic. I will assign
essays to offer some historiographical context and examples, but virtually all work will focus on
the relationship between primary sources and student topics. Students will write several short
papers (five to seven pages) developing their topics and the beginnings of a seminar paper (c. ten
pages or more), which some students can finish under an independent seminar in the spring.
693J
Comparative Memory
Jon Olsen
Thursday, 2:30pm-5:00pm
The phenomenon of cultures of memory has emerged over the past decade as a subject of serious
historical scholarship. The aim of this seminar is to discuss the problem of national memory
cultures since the Second World War. We will begin the semester by looking at theories of
memory and national identity since 1945. Although the primary thrust of our readings will deal
with remembering the Second World War, we will also delve into other areas of remembering.
The German concept of Vergangenheitsbewähltigung, or coming to terms with the past, and its
relationship to national identity will serve as our guiding analytical tool for our investigation into
this topic. We will look at a variety of nation-states in Europe as well as the United States and
Japan in order to compare and contrast national forms of memory culture and ponder questions
of universality versus distinct historical experience. We will also concentrate on the political and
cultural aspects that different national forms of remembering have had on the historical
development of these nations. Student evaluation will involve book reviews, class presentations,
and a research paper.
697Z
History of Childhood and Youth
Laura Lovett
Wednesday, 1:25pm-3:55pm
This seminar will consider the history of childhood and youth in its global context. Beginning
with the presumption that age is an important category of analysis, we will critically interrogate
changing ideals and experiences of childhood and youth across time through using a series of
historical problems and frameworks. Beginning with the recording of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child as a way to interrogate what kinds of historically- specific
frameworks emerge when we consider children as historical subjects, agents and frameworks.
For example, using studies of child soldiers in Africa and children in the American Civil war, we
will investigate the impact of war in different contexts. From comparative studies of child
policies in Europe, North America, and Asia, we will consider how and when different nations
have chosen to invest state resources in their children and what children have made for
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themselves. We will also draw on a rich historical literature on children?s culture to explore
shifting patterns of agency and authority in the wake of industrialization, modernization, and
now digitization. Students will leave this seminar with a broad understanding of this emerging
field of historical scholarship and its value to historical inquiry more generally. Using the first
meeting as an opportunity to define a series of three problems to explore, we will structure this
class in a way that allows us to integrate different research areas and interests. Interested students
are encouraged to contact the professor with proposed specific questions or time periods and
regions that they would like to advocate for consideration.
791B
U.S. Women and Gender History
Joyce Berkman
Monday, 6:45pm-9:15pm
This research seminar encourages research and writing on the history of women and/or gender in
America from 1600 to the present. The course requires the completion of a potentially
publishable paper or project, e.g. oral history project. During the first half of the semester, our
focus will be on historical methods, varieties of modes of historical writing, and writing
techniques. A few scholarly essays and other types of historical writing will be examined. The
second half of the semester is devoted to the first draft of your paper or project including class
discussion of your first draft and the revision process, culminating with your submission of a
final draft by the end of the semester. We will also meet with UMASS and Smith College
archivists concerning your research.
Select Continuing Education Courses
The two courses listed below are being offered through the University’s new partnership with Hancock Shaker Village.
Designed to support the curriculum of the MS degree in Design/Historic Preservation and run through the Continuing and
Professional Education arm of the University, seats in these classes are available on a limited basis via special
arrangement. For details on how to enroll, contact the Graduate Program Assistant in Herter 612.
Hey Marla,
This obviously is a mess right now. I never heard back from Max about the Hancock Shaker Village courses
being offered in the fall. I checked on their website, but they don’t have a course listing or course guide.
Maybe you would get a better response from Max? In the meantime, to get this out with the matching sheet,
maybe we’ll just need to send it without these courses listed.
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Additional Course Options
— enrollment requires instructor permission
You may take two courses outside the department that will count toward your degree. Below are
several that may be of interest to you. As always, please refer to SPIRE for the most current class
information, and contact the course instructor directly for permission to enroll. This is just a
sampling of courses from outside the History Department that may be of interest to our graduate
students. Please see Spire and/or departmental websites to see what other courses are available.
AfroAm 691C
Professor Allen
Wednesday, 12:00pm-2:00pm
Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies
This course will introduce you to some of the basics of what it means to read, think, and write as
an historian. We will explore what historians do and why as well as the "objectivity question,"
the development of African American history as an academic discipline, and one or two current
controversies. We also will learn how to locate and use the resources of the Du Bois Library
such as microforms, government documents, the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, on-line indices and
collections, as well as those of such important national repositories such as the Library of
Congress, the Moorland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University and the Schomburg Center of
the N.Y. Public Library.
Anthro 697
Professor Battle-Baptiste
Thursday, 1:00pm-3:00pm
wbbaptiste@anthro.umass.edu
Historical Archaeology
Historical Archaeologist have analyzed landscapes and mobile forms of material culture as key
sources of information about the exercise of power in the Post-Colombian world. Increasingly,
Historical Archaeologists have been involved in creating historical landscapes, indeed the very
practice of excavation makes an entry on the historical landscape of the world of the 21st
century. This course will survey the ways historical archaeology has recovered past landscapes
constructed at the intersection of the forces of White Supremacy, Capitalist Class social
Relations, Patriarchal Gender relations, and the construction of Nation States. It will then focus
on a number of cases, involving the quintessential piece of the historical landscape, the museum,
and archaeology’s relationship to it, by considering cases where archaeologists are critiquing
museum spaces, working with ongoing museums, and being asked to develop new museums.
Students will be expected to lead discussion sections on specific topics and develop a term
project that both fosters their graduate career and comes to grip with the forces of power
involved in the making and unmaking of our world’s historical landscapes.
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English 732
Arthur Kinney
Wednesday, 4:40-7:10
Shakespeare
We will read and discuss Shakespeare's works in chronological order, noting the
development of his career and his ideas in his comedies, tragedies, histories and romances in
relation to the historical, social, religious, and economic world of his time. We will also look at
how performance conveys and changes meanings for the audience.
English 755
Randall Knoper
Wednesdays, 4:40-7:10
American Realism
The topic of this course will be American fiction of the late 19th and very early 20th
centuries. “Realism” and “naturalism” are labels applied to much of the literature we will read,
and we will spend some time examining the tenets clustered under those labels. But we will also
read some literature that defined itself against the realism of the dominant literary culture. What
literature meant, and what it could do, became urgent questions as U.S. culture and society
underwent drastic changes: chaotic urban growth; immigration in a volume matched only
recently; the rise of corporations; financial panics and depressions; exacerbated class conflict;
post-Reconstruction struggles to redefine a racial order; unsettling changes in the roles of
women; revolutions in science, technology, communication, and transportation; controversial
imperialist adventures; the rapid development of consumer capitalism and commercial mass
entertainment; the spread of theories of evolution, “race science,” materialist psychology, and
new conceptions of body and mind—and more. Amidst new ways of investigating, observing,
knowing, and inscribing both reality and “the self,” the literature of the time repeatedly mutated
in its effort to comprehend its surroundings. We’ll try to track these changes in literary form
while we keep an eye on the turbulent society and culture of the period. Readings will (probably)
be: Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson; W. D. Howells, An Imperative Duty; Charles Chesnutt,
The Marrow of Tradition; Henry James, Portrait of a Lady; stories by Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary
Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sui Sin Far, and Abraham Cahan; Stephen Crane,
The Red Badge of Courage; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Theodore Dreiser, Sister
Carrie; Frank Norris, The Pit; Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, and Pauline Hopkins, Of One
Blood. Requirements: short weekly writings, a class presentation, and a final project (15-20 pp.).
Books ordered at Amherst Books
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English 747
Suzanne Daly
Wednesdays, 7:15-9:45
The Nineteenth-Century British Novel
This course will examine several canonical novels both as aesthetic objects and cultural
artifacts. We will explore questions of form, genre, style and structure, consider the demands and
imperatives of the literary marketplace, and read seminal analyses of the novel form by Bakhtin,
Jameson, Lukács, Miller, Said, Stewart, and Williams. Victorian cultural criticism by Arnold,
Carlyle, Cobbe, Linton, Marx, Mill, Newman, and Norton will provide historical and political
context. Novels may include Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Charles Dickens, Bleak House;
George Eliot, Middlemarch; Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, Oscar Wilde, The Picture
of Dorian Gray.
HM&FNART 500
Introduction to Arts Management
Dee Boyle-Clapp (On Campus Section)
Tuesday
Arts Managers perform the work that is required to bring the arts and cultural programs to
audiences, organizing programs such festivals and exhibits, performing arts events and film
screenings. This course will introduce you to the “business of the arts,” providing you with an
overview of the careers in arts management, the types of work that arts managers do, and the
current issues and trends now affecting arts management professionals. This course is designed
for individuals who are new to the field of arts management, are considering an arts management
career, or are interested in arts management principles for the purposes of starting one’s own
nonprofit. This course is a requirement for all UMass students joining the Arts Management
program who have no prior experience in the field. Please note: all course work is applied to
a case study organization, ideally one on campus. Please email aes@acad.umass.edu for a
syllabus for this class
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