Special Topic and Theme Courses - Spring 2010

HIST 350.001 with Dr. Diamond
Title: Gender and Empire
From the politics of Mahatma Gandhi and debates about sexuality, to the Miss World pageant, India and Britain have provided rich historical material to study gender in the British Empire since 1750. This course will introduce you to the historical debates about gender and empire, examining the impact of violence, colonialism, and nationalism on the lives of women and men. The assigned readings will provide historical background and further insights, and include speeches, memoirs, film, and literature. A background in Indian history or the British Empire is not required.

HIST 350.002 with Dr. Pierce
Title: Democracy Since 1776
During the twentieth-century, democratic regimes have come to represent more than half of all governments. Such growth has not come without serious challenges and contradictions. This course will chart the growth of democracy worldwide since the American Revolution, comparing the development of democratic political systems worldwide. major themes of comparison include evolutionary vs. revolutionary democracy in different areas of the world.

HIST 336.001 with Dr. Megan Moran
Title: Italian Renaissance
This course introduces students to the political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and gender history of the Italian Renaissance. We will evaluate the concept of the Renaissance in a variety
of contexts to see how historians have constructed this time period. We will look at the Italian city-states beginning in the late Middle Ages, with Florence and Venice, for issues of social life, marriage, family, and sexuality as well as the large intellectual developments such as humanism, art, and architecture that developed during this time period. A common theme will be grounding larger ideas associated with the Renaissance in the context of the social and cultural lives of the Italian city- states.

HIST 241.001 with Dr. Bryan Ganaway
Title: World War II
What did it mean to live through a total war? WWII killed 400,000 Americans and wounded over 1,000,000 more. This staggering loss of life only hints at what happened elsewhere. The best estimates are that the conflicts killed between 15,000,000-20,000,000 million combatants and at least twice as many civilians. These include 6,000,000 Jews and perhaps as many as 20,000,000 Soviet citizens. In this country the conflict established the US as a world power, set the stage for civil rights, provided women with new opportunities, and ironically helped create unprecedented material prosperity. It also led Americans to inter their fellow citizens in concentration camps, gave us atomic weapons and inaugurated the decades-long Cold War. Moving beyond the American context, we will see that the war obliterated Europe to the point where it had to be politically, economically and morally reconstructed from the ground up. It legitimated the USSR as a world power in surprising ways and ironically created the conditions for Japan’s economic and democratic rebirth. From a vantage point of 2007, it is clear that the war incubated the planet’s next super-power, the People’s Republic of China. In other words, it completely changed how we make sense of the world. This course explores how real people experienced this catastrophe. These include soldiers, workers, women, politicians, generals, perpetrators and victims.

HIST 241.002 with Dr. VanMeer
Title:Visions of 'America' in Europe
E ver since Columbus, Europeans have debated the promise ‘ America’ held out for their future. We will investigate these visions for the twentieth century (from ‘Buffalo Bill’ to ‘Bill Gates’). Especially, when Europe became the site of world wars, the United States emerged as the leader of the ‘free West.’ US production methods, consumer items, music, movies, science and technology, etc. gained a growing significance in Europe. How then have Europeans tried to understand, use, celebrate, transform, or reject such manifestations of ‘ America’? Has Europe become ‘Americanized’, why or why not?

HONS/HIST 391.000 with Drs. Bodek/Peeples
Title:"HORROR!" is one of the interdisciplinary courses that students can take to graduate as honors students at the College of Charleston. Focusing on horror and fear in European and American Culture from the Enlightenment to the present, we will explore things, ideas, events, groups, tales and films that put fear in the hearts of Americans and Europeans since the Eighteenth Century. We will also look at theories of horror, fear, the sublime, the 'other', and the 'uncanny' to try to put our material into context.

HIST 640.090 (graduate)with Dr. Delay
Title: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Europe
In this seminar, students will engage in a detailed exploration of gender and sexuality in modern European history (c. 1800 to the present). Topics covered include the meanings and significance of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between sexuality and the state, gender and war, fertility and the family, and the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality. In this course, students will gain not only a greater knowledge of gender and sexuality in European history, but also an understanding of the centrality of such themes to the study of history.

HIST 670.090 (graduate) with Dr. Piccione
Title: Life and Times in Ancient Egypt