HIST 195 - Topics in History for First-years and Sophomores

FDR: HU
Credits: 3 credits in Fall or Winter; 4 credits in Spring
Planned Offering: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.

Prerequisite: Varies with topic. Selected topic or problem in history. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2015 topic:

HIST 195: Introductory Seminar on Thomas Jefferson (4). A seminar focusing on the life and times of Thomas Jefferson: planter, slave owner, husband, father, author, legislator, diplomat, Secretary of State, Vice President, President, sage. It devotes much of its attention to his two terms as president and also examines his life before his election to the presidency in 1801 and after the expiration of his second term in office. We analyze his strengths and weaknesses, his successes and failures, and his legacy. Includes readings in primary and secondary sources, discussion, weekly essays, and optional tours of Monticello and Poplar Forest. (HU) Merchant.

Fall 2014 topics:

HIST 195A-01: Introductory Seminar: Three Men Who Might Have Been President: John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster. (3). This seminar focuses on the public lives of three 19th-century Americans – Calhoun, Clay, and Webster – who wanted very much to be President of the United States but did not transform their dreams into reality. It analyzes their strengths and weaknesses, their successes and failures, and their legacies. Students read both primary and secondary sources; discuss their reading in class; locate, evaluate, use primary and secondary sources; organize and integrate sources into coherent narratives; and speak and write accurately, clearly, and concisely. (HU) Merchant

HIST 195B-01: Doomsday Science Then and Now. (3). In recent years, scientific doomsday literature has surged, along with popular publications of a similar kind. A preoccupation with global catastrophes, past and future, and related to the study of contemporary local and regional floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the like, has a long history in Western culture. This course looks at doomsday science and scientists from the past two and a half centuries, examining late-modern theories of global catastrophe, and explores why, in the course of the 20th century, neo-catastrophism has given renewed legitimacy to fears of “our final hour.” (HU) Rupke.