Fall 2013
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
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659
691L
Approaches to World History
Public History
Censorship in U.S. History
J. Higginson
J. Olsen
J. Fronc
691NE
691P
Global Labor
Intro to History
B. Laurie
B. Krauthamer
692M History, Memory, and Modernity in Modern Europe J. Wald
771 Seminar-Art & Technique of Biography M. Miller
You may take two courses outside the department that will count toward your degree. Check
Spire to see graduate course offerings of outside departments.
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Under the University Numbering System, M.A. students wishing to enroll in an upper-level undergraduate course (at UMass or on one of the Give College campuses) 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. signed by the faculty member teaching the course (turn this in to Mary Lashway in Herter 612).
Check SPIRE for the listings of undergraduate courses.
There are forms available in Herter 612 describing the additional work to be bperfromed for graduate credit; these must be signed by the instructor. Students will be responsible for discussing the course requirements with 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.
Students may enroll in independent studies as either History 696 (reading independent study) or
History 796 (research/writing independent study) with a faculty member overseeing the plan of study.
To enroll in History 696 or 796 pick up an independent study form from Mary Lashway in
Herter 612. This form must be filled out including name, student number, course number (696 or
796), credits, a detailed description of the plan of work for the independent study (e.g. research paper, book reviews, historiography, essays, etc.), and signed by the professor overseeing the independent study. After it has been filled out and signed it needs to be returned to Mary
Lashway to be entered on Spire. Only two independent studies may be counted towards completion of the M.A. degree.
John Higginson
Wednesday, 3:35pm-6:10pm
Our course begins with a glance at the world before the dramatic geographical shift of the lines of power and wealth that precipitated the rise of the North Atlantic countries of Western Europe at the close of the fifteenth century. There was no single reason for the shift from the countries bordering the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to those on the northern coast of the Atlantic
Ocean. Nor did it happen all at once. But by the end of the eighteenth century, from the vantage point of European observers like Adam Smith, it appeared to be permanent and
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indelible. Meanwhile Qen Lung, the Qing Emperor of China, thought it hardly worthy of notice. What made for such a disparity in perspectives? Much of our work this semester will be focused on such questions. We will also be concerned to examine the historiography of global or world history since the publication of Fernand Braudel’s La Mediteranee. The course ends with an examination of the world since the practical application of powerful forces such as fossil fuels, nuclear power, microprocessing and genetic engineering. At its conclusion, the course will pay particular attention to the challenge that North Pacific Asian economic performance and a global resurgence of Islam offer to continued western dominance of global affairs. This course satisfies the historiography requirement for M.A. students.
Jon Olsen
Wednesday, 2:30pm-5:00pm
The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the world of Public History - both the ideas and questions that make it tick, and the practical, on-the-ground concerns that confront public historians in a variety of professional settings. The course will turn on five key concept areas that inform the world of public history: History and Memory; Shared Authority and/or Inquiry;
Agendas and Audiences; Legal and Ethical Frameworks; and Economics and Entrepreneurship.
We will examine issues that are particular relevant to public historians who work in museums, historic sites, historic preservation agencies, archives, new media, and documentary film. Note:
This course is required for those seeking the Graduate Certificate in Public History.
Jennifer Fronc
Tuesday & Thursday, 2:30pm-3:45pm
This course will explore the legal, political, and cultural responses to movements for censorship in the United States. Special attention will be paid to the censorship of motion pictures, live theater, reading material, and popular music. Students will be expected to write several short response papers, in addition to a longer, primary-source-based paper.
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Bruce Laurie
Thursday, 4:00pm-6:30pm
This course begins with of the political economy of the United States from World War I through the
1970s, with some attention paid to Europe along the way. It then pivots more sharply to the rest of the world in or to capture the acceleration of global capitalism in the context of neoliberalism with the accent on labor policy and the related matters of inequality, race and gender relations, and so forth. Sources include several texts, possibly a volume of primary sources, and certainly some handouts. Students are responsible for two or three (depending on class size) thematic papers plus a final paper.
Barbara Krauthamer
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.
Jim Wald
Tuesday, 6:00pm-8:30pm
Scholars are accustomed to using the term "history" in the dual sense of both "res gestae" and
"historia rerum gestarum": historical events and historiography. In recent years, they have also turned increasingly to the relationship between "history and memory": as the journal of that name puts it, "the manifold ways in which the past shapes the present and is shaped by present perceptions." The course explores some of the ways that groups and individuals have recalled, interpreted, and appropriated the past, primarily in modern and contemporary Central Europe.
Probable topics include: cultural landscapes, the formation of national cultures and identities, the
First World War, the Holocaust and the vanished Jewish communities of Europe.
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Marla Miller
Tuesday, 2:30pm-5:00pm
Professional historians have long been torn about the practice of biography, but one glance at the best-seller list or bookstore shelves, or at cable TV, shows how avidly the public today consumes this particular approach to historical subjects. This course will explore the art and craft of biography. We will consider the unique challenges of writing about people who left tremendous amounts of documentation and have been the subjects of multiple studies, as well as others who have left little or no trace in traditional archival sources. A key component of the course will be a series of class periods in which we workshop biographical works in progress, by members of the faculty and grad student community as well as students in the course. Students in this course must produce a 25-30 page paper of original research in this mode.
— 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.
Some courses of interest are offered regularly through the University’s 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. Fall 2012 courses include Max Page’s History and Theory of Preservation (meeting alternate Friday afternoons), and U.S.
Architectural History. For details on how to enroll, contact the Graduate
Program Assistant in Herter 612.
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