2017-2018 University Catalog 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
2017-2018 University Catalog archived

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HIST 229 - Topics in European History


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


A course offered from time to time depending on student interest and staff availability, on a selected topic or problem in European history. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2018, HIST 229A-01: The History of Poverty in Britain from the Tudors to the Tories (3). This class explores the history of poverty in Britain from the 16th century to the present. We begin with changes to poor relief wrought by the Protestant Reformation and end with contemporary debates about the scope and function of the welfare state. Along the way, we examine Enlightenment ideas about labor and wealth, the Industrial Revolution, the development of class consciousness, debtors’ prisons and the rise of workhouses, issues of crime and punishment, and modern intersections between race, poverty, and policy. Throughout, we pay close attention to the experiences of those living in poverty. As we trace the varied ways that British culture has depicted, caricatured, and treated “the poor”, this class asks how such depictions have shaped both British social policy and our own assumptions and attitudes. (HU). Brock.

Winter 2018, HIST 229B-01: The Scientist as National Hero (3). We discuss the place of science and its practitioners in Western society, from the time of the Victorian professionalization of science until today, and focus on the formation of a 20th-century elite of Nobel laureates and their role in national politics and, to a lesser extent, international affairs. How/why have some scientists gained extraordinary leadership status in our culture? How/why have some become national heroes, a few even international ones? Can scientists provide the moral and political leadership to deal with the challenges in society that their very successes have created? (HU) Rupke.

Winter 2018, HIST 229C-01: Animal Behavior and Human Morality (3). We trace 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 until the present day. Often, tentative connections have been made between the ways animals behave and how humans conduct themselves, thus conferring legitimacy on shared traits. Issues of gender and sexuality traditionally have been at the forefront of these considerations. Animal examples have also been used as the basis of arguments for and against institutions of marriage, family, slavery, systems of government (monarchy, republic, etc.), war, aggression, altruism, and more. (HU) Rupke.

Winter 2018, HIST 229D-01: Nazism and the Third Reich (3). Common readings introduce students to some of the most lively debates among scholars about the causes of the failure of democracy in the Weimar Republic, the mentality of Nazi leaders and followers, the nature of the regime created by the Nazis in 1933, the impact of the Third Reich on the position of women in German society, and the degree to which the German people supported this regime’s policies of war and racial persecution. (HU) Patch.




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