Queens College Department of History
Spring 2014 Graduate Schedule
Course
Class
Sec
Room
Description
Day
707
46256 01
Campbell
The First World War
710
39317 01
RZ 109
Alexander the Great
719
39319 01
PH 156
735
39322 01
PH 157
796
39324 01
KY 417
797
39325 01
PH 157
Visual Culture in Modern France
Studies in Modern German History –
Rise and Fall of the 3RD Reich
Advanced Research Seminar
(Only Open to History MA Students)
The Formation of Modern American
Culture
799
45735 05
PH 157
799
42816 04
PH 231
History of Modern Israel
Eastern Europe under Communist
Rule
799
39326 01
PH 157
The Holocaust in the Soviet Union
799
39327 02
PH 157
Italian-American Immigration
799
42814 03
PH 156
Studies in U.S. Labor History
Time
1:40T/Th 2:55
4:30M
6:10
6:30M
8:10
4:30Th
6:10
4:30Th
6:10
6:30M
8:10
4:30W
6:10
6:30W
8:10
4:30M
6:10
4:30T
6:10
6:30Th
8:10
Professor
Wintermute&
Sneeringer
O’Brien
Freundschuh
Sneeringer
Wintermute
ConollySmith
Alteras
Ort
Bemporad
Vellon
Freeman
NEW AND INFREQUENT GRADUATE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
History 719 01 (39319) VISUAL CULTURE IN MODERN FRANCE
France played an outsized role in the history of visual culture over the past few centuries,
even as French thinkers harbored deep reservations about the "spectacle of modern
life." With occasional forays into other parts of Europe and North America, this course
will explore some major developments in visual culture since Louis XIV. From landscape
design and urban planning to photography, World's Fairs, museums and movies, a
predominant theme of our investigations will be the relationship between form and
power. Another preoccupation will be the overlapping histories of modernism and
modernity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a period in which representations
of empire (whether Impressionist or cartographic) served to invent France as a
nation. And herein lies a key premise of the course: visual culture was in fundamental
ways constitutive of modern history.
History 735 01 (39322) STUDIES IN MODERN GERMAN HISTORY – RISE AND
FALL OF THE 3RD REICH
This course examines the Nazi Party's rise and rule in Germany from 1914 to 1945. We
will begin with the Weimar Republic, whose crises facilitated Hitler’s rise from obscurity to
mass popularity. We will then consider the Nazis' use of crisis to consolidate power, the
mechanisms of the police state, popular support for Hitler and the regime, the limits of its
popularity, Hitler's war, race war, and daily life under the swastika.
History 797 01 (39325) THE FORMATION OF MODERN AMERICAN CULTURE
(“FORMAC” -1)
This course charts the development of American cultural values and practices from the
onset of modernity through the immediate postwar period. We will read both primary
texts (including lengthy excerpts from Middletown; the writings of the Harlem Renaissance
and the Lost Generation) and secondary analyses. An equal emphasis will be placed on
“high” and “low” (or “mass”) culture as we engage issues of consumerism, art,
propaganda, advertising, sports, film, and youth culture, as viewed through the lenses of
race, ethnicity, class, and gender. A sequel (FORMAC-2, 1950s – present) is planned for
the future.
Turn Over
History 799 05 (45735) HISTORY OF MODERN ISRAEL
This course will focus on the events, circumstances and personalities that led to the
establishment of the State of Israel beginning with the rise of political Zionism at the
End of the 19th century and culminating with the vreation of the Jewish State in May 1948.
Special emhasis will be placed on the arab-Israeli conflict, the peace between Israel and
Egypt, Israel and Jordan as well as the prospects for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. In addition, the major role played by the United States in bringing about the
creation of the State of Israel and its crucial support for its existence since 1948 will be
analyzed.
History 799 01 (39326) THE HOLOCAUST IN THE SOVIET UNION
This course will focus on the persecution and destruction of the Jews of Eastern Europe, in
particular in Nazi-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union, from 1939 to 1945. It will explore
the process that led to the shift from “ethnic cleansing” to “Final Solution” in the context of
the war against “Judeo-Bolshevism.” It will study the different methods of extermination
employed in this region by the Germans, and see how and why the Holocaust actually
began in the Soviet Union. Using three case studies (Warsaw, Lodz, and Minsk), this course
will analyze patterns of life and death in the ghettos of Eastern Europe. Finally, this course
will investigate the roles of non-Jews as bystanders, collaborators and rescuers in different
regions of Poland and the Soviet Union.
History 799 02 (39327) ITALIAN-AMERICAN IMMIGRATION
*Cross-referenced with Italian-American Studies
This course examines the historical aspects of Italian immigration to the United
States. The course begins with the period of mass immigration from the 1880s through the
1920s and covers why Italians left Italy, where they settled in the United States, and the
process of immigration. Further, we will explore how Italians adapted to their new
environment by examining immigrant labor, radicalism, institutions, culture, politics, and
family structures. In addition, Italian immigration will be placed within the larger context
of American calls for race based immigration restriction and discrimination. The impact
of race, class, and gender, as well as issues and themes such as World War I, World War
II, Fascism, inter-generational conflict, economic and social mobility, Black Power
movements, and political conservatism and ethnic backlash will be examined in
depth. Toward that end, one of the central themes of the course will be how the external
and internal pressures of Americanization influenced the construction of a unique identity
as Italian, and over time Italian American and white. The course will examine the
historiographical changes within Italian American history, as well as the larger field of
American immigration.
History 799 04 (42816)
EASTERN EUROPE UNDER COMMUNIST RULE
Prior to World War II there was little to suggest that the states of Eastern Europe would
soon be governed by Communist regimes. On the contrary, Communism was not very
popular in the eastern half of Europe where the industrial working class was small and
politics dominated by conservative elites. How, then, did it happen that after 1945 every
country in the region (Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria,
Albania, as well as East Germany) became Communist? What made these societies
suddenly receptive to the ideology? Or were they ever really receptive to it? And what was
it like to live under the regimes established in these states? How did they transform the
economy and society of the region? How did they maintain themselves in power? And why
did they unexpectedly collapse in 1989-90? This course takes a close look at these and other
questions concerning the approximately 40-year era of Communist domination of Eastern
Europe. It examines the means by which Communist regimes were established in the years
after World War II, their sources of strength and legitimacy, their strategies of rule, and
finally their fatal weaknesses leading to their collapse in 1989-90.
History 799 03 (42814) STUDIES IN U.S. LABOR HISTORY
This course will provide a selective examination of the history of labor in the United States
since the early nineteenth century. Among the topics that will be discussed will be artisanal
production, the creation of a wage labor workforce, factory production and scientific
management, union organization, industrial conflict, labor radicalism, racial and gender
discrimination in the labor market and worker organizations, and labor law. The course
will be built primarily around reading in secondary sources, including classic studies of
workers and unions and examples of recent trends in the historiography of labor.