HIST 295 - Seminar: Topics in History

FDR: HU
Credits: 3 in fall or winter; 4 in spring

Spring 2016, HIST 295-01: Introduction to Public History (4). Additional fee. An introduction to the history, theory, and practice of public history. During this course, students learn to engage with public audiences through a hands-on approach to public history projects. Students visit and critically examine Colonial Williamsburg, utilize easy-to-use software to create (collaboratively, with the Rockbridge Historical Society) a Lexington walking tour app, and evaluate the latest trends in New Media. Topics for this course include: the history of public history, interpretive writing, the creation (and contestation) of historical memory in monuments, museums and memorials, digital tools and exhibition, evaluation of cultural heritage sites, urban mapping, curation and content management, as well as oral histories and sites of conscience. (HU) Stillo.

Spring 2016, HIST 295-03: Science and Race, 1800 to the Present (4). What has been the role of science in debates about race, racism, and the rights of racially classified groups in society? We address this question by highlighting relevant aspects of the history of anthropology/ethnology, placing practitioners and their theories in the socio-political contexts of settlement expulsion-and-extermination of “savages”, of slavery, racial eugenics, and the holocaust. We explore a new narrative which does not primarily highlight the “villains” of scientific racism – as customarily has been done in the secondary literature – but instead features the “heroes” of anti-racism, including such early unity-of-humankind anthropologists as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Friedrich Tiedemann, James Cowles Prichard, and the scientific polymath Alexander von Humboldt. “The presence of the past” is explored throughout, bringing history to bear on current affairs about equality and rights. (HU) Rupke.

Spring 2016, HIST 295-04: The History of Ghosts (4). This course explores the history of ghosts within their wider historical, social, and cultural contexts and asks why the belief in ghosts continues to be vibrant, socially relevant, and historically illuminating. Through our readings, discussions, and collaborative projects, we consider how ghost beliefs and ensuing legends serve as vehicles for exploring and expressing historical memory, and the ways in which our continued fascination with ghosts shapes history in the public imagination. We begin with a survey of the history of ghosts from medieval Europe to modern America, and the course culminates with student-led oral-history projects about the ghost legends and lore right here in Rockbridge County. (HU) Brock. Spring 2016 and alternate years

Spring 2016, HIST 295-05: Making Sense of Southern Culture (4). This course connects the historical, racial, economic, political, musical, and literary dots that comprise the matrix of southern cultural identity. Introducing a comparative perspective that challenges preconceived notions of southern exceptionalism, it also encourages students to explore questions about the fundamental nature and sources of cultural identity itself and to appreciate it as a factor of truly global consequence. Students develop their skills in reading, interpretation, writing, and oral communication. (HU) Cobb. cobby@uga.edu

Winter 2016, HIST 295A-01: Science, the Paranormal and the Supernatural (3). In modern – especially late-modern – times, science has become the adjudicator of truth – truth in terms of fact and law-like rationality. The result has been a retreat of the occult, of many superstitions, and the uncovering of fallacies and frauds. Yet large sectors of modern society have remained enamored of the paranormal. Even scientific practitioners themselves, including Nobel Laureates, have kept alive a belief in telepathy, precognition and such-like phenomena. Equally persistent, especially in religious circles, has been the conviction that miracles do happen; and, again, great scientists and medical practitioners have supported these and similar notions. More recently, the study of “wonders” has emerged as a separate field of inquiry: anomalistics. This course explores the fascinating history of the uneasy relationship between science and its contested boundaries where fact and fiction overlap. (HU) Rupke.

Winter 2016, HIST 295B-01: Animal Experimentation and Animal Rights in Historical Perspective (3). In this course, we deal with the place of animals in Western society. More particularly, we trace the history of the use of animals as living objects of laboratory experimentation and explore the controversies that vivisectional practices have engendered. Do animals have rights? What to think of animal liberation activism? To what extent has animal experimentation been essential to the progress of science, especially medical science? We examine these questions in the wider context of humane movements, and of organizations/ societies that have been established for the prevention of cruelty to animals. (HU) Rupke.

Winter 2016, HIST 295C-01: Consumerism and Vice in the Age of Empire (3). This course explores how the China Trade shaped European and American culture during the early modern period. Students work with the faculty to create a digital exhibit, offering a unique opportunity for hands-on experience in exhibition development, historical research, and working with historic objects in a gallery/museum setting. Using a recently acquired collection of 18th - and 19th-century Chinese armorial game counters (similar to modern day poker chips), this class examines topics such as: early modern consumerism, gaming and gambling culture, global trading networks, and the use of coats of arms as a form of personal identification and family pride in Europe and America. (HU) Stillo and Fuchs.

Fall 2015, HIST 295-01: Animal Behavior and Human Morality in Historical Perspective (3). This course deals with the history of the study of animal behavior in its bearing on human morality, from the beginning of the professionalization of the subject around 1800 till the present day. Time and again, tentative connections have been and are being made between the ways animals behave and how humans conduct themselves. Issues of gender and sexuality traditionally have been at the center of these considerations, but also marriage, the family, slavery, systems of government – monarchy, republic, etc. – war, aggression, altruism and more have been argued for or against on the basis of animal examples. Students explore how animal behavior studies invariably have been shaped by the contemporaneous socio-politics of morality; or, conversely, that the elucidation, justification, and legitimation of human moral conduct by means of animal habits has been, by and large, a social construct. (HU) Rupke. Fall 2015 Planned Offering: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.