The Schedule of Senior Seminars

 

History 4499, the Senior Seminar, is one of three upper division courses required of all History majors.

 

Prerequisites : 

History 2275 - Themes in History (titled "Local History Research" through summer 2007)

History 3376 - Historiographical Debates (titled "Problems and Philosophies of History" through summer 2007)

Both must be passed with a grade of "C" or better.

 

 

Seminars Scheduled

Below are the seminars scheduled as of June 17, 2008.

Instructors’ names are provided, with an email link for students who have questions about the seminar.

 

 

 

 

Fall 2008

 

 

Seminar Title: America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era MW 3:30 PM-4:45 PM
Instructor: Dr. David B. Parker (dparker@kennesaw.edu)

Course Description: This chronological course covers American history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Topically, the course is broad, examining political, social, cultural, intellectual, and economic matters, as well as foreign policy. The first six weeks of the course will be based on discussions of common readings, giving students the necessary background for their senior theses. During the remainder of the semester, students will research and write their theses, which can be on any aspect of America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. We will meet regularly to critique drafts and discuss individual research.

 

 

Seminar Title: The Influence of Sport on World History and Culture TTH 6:30-745PM
Instructor: Dr. Elsa Nystrom (enystrom@kennesaw.edu)

From the ancient word to modern times, sport has played an important role in many societies. In this course we will look at how many societies used sport as both entertainment and method of social control; moving from ancient Greece and Rome to 20th century Europe, Latin America and Africa.

 

 

Seminar title: The Cold War (c. 1947-1990) - 11:00 AM-12:15 PM

Instructor: Dr. Gerrit Voogt (gvoogt@kennesaw.edu)

 The Cold War (c. 1947-1990) stands out as an ideologically and economically determined power struggle between two political systems and ways of life, with fighting taking place mostly in the form of proxy conflicts due to nuclear deterrent. This conflict was a world war: it was fought on all continents (and in space), and on many different levels which we will explore in this class. During the first weeks we will lay the groundwork by studying and discussing common readings on the whole period, providing the context and orientation for the construction of the senior thesis. Then the students prepare and write their theses, meeting regularly to critique drafts and discuss individual research.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring 2009 

 

 

Seminar Title:  A History of American Suburbs

Instructor:  Dr. Thomas A. Scott (tscott@kennesaw.edu)

 

Course Description:  The majority of the U.S. population now lives in suburban areas.  But it wasn’t that way until relatively recently.    While suburbs can be found in America as far back as 1820, the movement to suburbia reached tidal proportions only about fifty or sixty years ago.  In his 1985 classic, Crabgrass Frontier:   the Suburbanization of the United States, Kenneth T. Jackson defines suburbanization “as a process involving the systematic growth of fringe areas at a pace more rapid that that of core cities [and] as a lifestyle involving a daily commute to jobs in the center.”  Even in 1985, the latter part of that definition had become limiting, as jobs moved out of the inner cities to the suburbs, as suburbs became demographically diverse, and as the fringe areas increasingly took on urban characteristics.  This course will examine how America became a suburban nation, how American suburbs have evolved over time, and how suburbs in the U.S. compare to those of other parts of the world.  The class will read a number of books and articles, including Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier, Dolores Hayden’s Building Suburbia:  Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000, and Matthew Lassiter’s The Silent Majority:  Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South.  Students will write an original research paper using primary sources.

 

 

Seminar Title: England under Elizabeth I

Instructor: Dr. Paul Dover (pdover@kennesaw.edu)

 

An examination of reign and realm of Elizabeth I of England (1559-1603).  Extensive reading in the debates surrounding Elizabeth's style of rule, conduct of foreign affairs, and religious policy.  Students will produce an original research essay on the course's subject matter based on their treatment of primary sources. Reading and writing intensive.

 

 

 

 

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Previous Senior Seminars

 

 

 

Seminar Title: The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Instructor: Dr. John Turner (jturner@kennesaw.edu)

 

Course Description:  Beginning with the rise of Zionism in Europe in the 1890’s, we will explore the conflict over Palestine through the mandate period and the ensuing wars up to the present day. We will focus on the struggle for political control and the development of national identities in response to and as part of this conflict. We will examine the course of events as a way of reflecting upon and deriving an understanding of current events. As part of this, we will engage in an in-depth study of the historian’s craft. We will consider primary sources, interpretations of those materials and the constructions of historical narratives based on them. In this process the students will each write a senior thesis based principally on primary sources. The professor will aid in the identification of suitable source materials. The course is designed to expose students to the competing claims and arguments and to enable them to engage intellectually in the discussion of those arguments. Neither prior experience with the Middle East nor knowledge of Middle Eastern languages is needed.

 

 

Seminar Title: European Intellectual History of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Instructor: Dr. Katya Vladimirov (kvladimi@kennesaw.edu)

Course Description:  The course will concentrate on some of the most significant intellectual movements and important conceptual categories that shaped the Western world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The course differs from other history courses in that it emphasizes intellectual matters, e.g., ideas, discourses, debates, and schools of thought. We will analyze ways in which some European thinkers addressed the nature and practice of historical analysis and history writing. In so doing, we will discuss such topics as imperialism, industrialism, anarchism, socialism, emancipation, and racism, among others. The course will be based on the reading and analysis of primary sources as well as their interpretations, which will, in turn, help students prepare to write their senior theses.

Seminar Title: The “Roaring Twenties:” The United States in the 1920’s

Instructor: Elsa A. Nystrom (enystrom@kennesaw.edu)

 

Course Description:  This course will utilize a variety of methods to generate topics for senior seminar papers.

The decade of the twenties has a checkered and varied history providing ample material for students to research. During the first five weeks of class, we will explore a variety of topics dealing with the 1920’s including politics, diplomacy, radicals and labor, the women’s movement and popular culture through reading, lecture and film. During this period, the students will have ample time to select a paper topic. In the sixth week of the class, students will begin work on their topic, meeting every week to discuss problems dealing with writing, style and research with their peers and the instructor. During the last weeks of the course, students will share the knowledge gained through their research with the other class members.

 

 

 

Seminar Title:  Restless Freedom: Popular Movements of the 20th Century.

Instructor: Dr. Katya Vladimirov (kvladimi@kennesaw.edu)

We will be reading and studying  Bakunin, Makhno and Mexican revolution materials, Spanish revolution and Lincoln Brigades, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King and Gandhi, and more French, American and African civil rights and revolutionary activists.

 

 

Seminar Title:  The Confederate Experience

Instructor: Dr. J. D. Fowler (jfowler2@kennesaw.edu)

Course Description: This course will examine the history of the Confederacy and some of the ways in which historians have chosen to study and interpret it. The primary goal will be to help students select topics for their senior thesis grounded in sources written by people--black and white, men and women, soldiers and civilians--who lived during the era of the Civil War. The range of possible topics will be limited only by available sources. Students will be encouraged to pursue their interests in questions related to either military or nonmilitary aspects of the Confederate experience.

The first five weeks of the course will be devoted to common background readings and discussion in class, during which time students will select topics. For the remainder of the semester, students will conduct their research and write their papers. The class will continue to meet to discuss their progress, critique drafts of papers, and assess how their research as a group relates to existing scholarship on the Confederacy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seminar Title:  The South Since World War II

Instructor:  Dr. Randall Patton (rpatton@kennesaw.edu)

Course Description: This seminar will offer students an opportunity to examine the recent history of the American South in depth.  The seminar will open with several weeks of common readings so that students will be able to place their research within a broader context.  Students will first become familiar with the broad interpretations of the South’s history—continuity versus change, the search for a central theme, etc.  Students will then engage in a series of selected readings on various topics of interest within the broader field of southern history—race, economic development, politics, etc.  Some of the common readings will be drawn from the general historiography of the South since the Civil War.  Students will choose paper topics that emphasize events/developments during or after World War II.  After the introduction to historiography, students will conduct research and write a major paper based chiefly on primary sources.  The class will continue to meet so that students may share their progress and exchange ideas.  

 

 

 

 

 

Seminar Title: Daily Life and Culture in the Old South

Instructor: Dr. John D. Fowler (jfowler2@kennesaw.edu)

This course is designed to acquaint students with the everyday life in the Antebellum South and guide their selection of a senior thesis topic.  The readings will cover a variety of subjects, including myths and facts about southern society and culture, slavery, and the strengthening of southern distinctiveness.  Although political and economic events will be discussed, this course will focus primarily on the social and cultural dimensions of early southern society. Therefore, in order to understand this society’s evolution, we must explore the needs, desires, and experiences of the region’s various ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups as well as the role of gender.  We will devote the first weeks of the course to class readings and discussions laying the groundwork for the selection of research topics.  For the remainder of the semester, students will conduct their research and write their papers. The class will continue to meet on a regular basis to discuss the progress of their research and writing, critique drafts of their colleagues’ papers, and assess how their individual research relates to the larger issues in the scholarship of Southern history.

 

 

Seminar Title: Fairy Tales and Popular Folklore: Historical and Cultural Analysis.

Instructor:  Dr. Katya Vladimirov (kvladimi@kennesaw.edu)

A comparative study of the folk and fairy tales from around the world (British, German, Asian, Scandinavian, Spanish, Russian, and others). This course provides a simultaneous introduction to the folklore and fairy tale genres and the interpretation of fairy tales and the folklore in historical context. Both genres have been documented widely across history and geography, facilitating a comparative perspective on historical change. Folklore and fairytales have been persistent in form and content and they continue to be recycled in an enormous range of contemporary cultural forms. While all tales are based on a traditional foundation of narrative themes, motifs that are arranged into tale types, the specifics of each re-telling are historically and culturally bound, and a comparison of the differences as well as the similarities across telling and across time and space can reveal complicated discourses on gender and familial relationships, class structure, and sexuality. A goal of this course is to analyze the origins and function of the tale, their role in socialization, to extract patterns and to locate British, German, Russian, Japanese, Scandinavian and other folk and fairy tales in their social and historical contexts. Among the topics we will discuss heroes and villains, wonderful beasts and goblins, vampires, magic and magicians.

Selected Readings

Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy

Tales.  New York: Vintage, 1977.
Briggs, Introduction to British Folktales New York: Pantheon, 1977.

Ellis, One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales

Chicago: University Press, 1983.
Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the

Wild Woman Archetype.  New York: Ballantine, 1992.
Hearne, Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale.  Chicago: U

of Chicago Press, 1989.
Lüthi, the European Folktale: Form and Nature.  Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1982.
Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales New

York: Methuen, 1979.

 

 

 

 

Seminar Title: The Black Death

Instructor: Dr. Paul Dover (pdover@kennesaw.edu)

Course Description: A semester-long examination of the course, causes and consequences of the catastrophe that killed upwards of half of the Eurasian population in the late Middle Ages. Extensive reading in the many debates surrounding the disease's epidemiology and its effects on social institutions and cultural mentalites. Students will produce an original research essay on the course's subject matter based on their treatment of primary sources. Reading and writing intensive.

Seminar Title: America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Instructor: Dr. David B. Parker (dparker@kennesaw.edu)

Course Description:  This chronological course covers American history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Topically, the course is broad, examining political, social, cultural, intellectual, and economic trends, as well as foreign policy. The first six weeks of the course will be based on discussions of common readings, which will give students the necessary background for their senior theses. During the remainder of the semester, students will research and write their theses, which can be on any aspect of America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. We will meet regularly to critique drafts and discuss individual research.

 

 

 

 

 

Seminar Title:  History of Higher Education in the United States

Instructor:  Dr. Thomas A. Scott (tscott@kennesaw.edu)

Course Description:  A semester-long seminar on the evolution of American colleges and universities from the small liberal arts schools of the colonial era to the proliferation of research institutions, state universities, and junior colleges in the late twentieth-century.  We will use John Thelin’s History of American Higher Education as a textbook.  In addition we will read selections from a wide variety of books and articles posted on Vista or available online.  Students will write an original research paper using primary sources.        

 

 

 

 

Seminar Title: The History of Sport in America from Colonial Times to the Present

Instructor: Dr. Elsa A. Nystrom (enystrom@kennesaw.edu)

In this seminar students will look at the influence of sport and sporting events in American history through selected readings, film and discussion. Topics covered will include individual and participatory sports in the 18th and 19th century such as hunting, horse racing, bicycle racing and pedestrianism, the growth of team and spectator sports in the 19th and 20th centuries and the creation of fan culture. In addition, we will look at the impact of the Olympics and the concept of patriotism and sport, cheating to win, and the role of the media in sports promotion. We will also watch and discuss a selection of the most outstanding American sports films. Students will write their seminar paper on a topic selected from one of these areas.

 

Seminar Title: History through War Cinema

Instructor: Dr. Katya Vladimirov (kvladimi@kennesaw.edu)

Course Description:  This course will introduce some of the most famous war films, and some less familiar ones, from the US and Europe. Each war has developed its own kinds of war movies, from World Wars I and II to the Vietnam conflict and the wars in the Balkans and in Chechnya. Each country has developed its own cultural understanding and interpretation of a war as part of its history through these movies.

The films will be used to introduce how to “read” films as part of cultural history and think critically about their content. Scenes from each war will be compared to the "real history" behind the film, to pose questions about how history can be written and rewritten in films. Topics to be addressed include: cultural stereotypes of heroes, villains, and victims; different countries’ takes on the same war experience; adaptations; the politics of war films; rewriting history through war movies; anti-war films;  how to read point of view and cultural perspectives out of movies.

Movies:            

1.      The White sun of the desert (Russia)

2.      The Cuckoo (Finland)

3.      The Bridge (German)

4.      Mr. Klein (French )

5.      Das Bout (German)

6.      The Dawns are quiet (Russian)

7.      The Cranes are flying (Russian)

8.      Welcome to Sarajevo (international)

9.      The Thin Red line (USA)

10.   Apocalypse now(USA)

11.  The Prisoner of the mountains (Russian)

 

 

 

Spring 2008

(Two Seminars offered)

 

Seminar Title: The Confederate Experience

Instructor: Dr. J. D. Fowler (jfowler2@kennesaw.edu)

 

This course is designed to acquaint students with the history of the Southern Confederacy and guide their selection of a senior thesis topic.  Although the birth and death of the Southern Republic was a political and military event, political decisions grow out of the needs and experiences of ordinary people.  We will, therefore, be paying close attention to the experiences of soldiers and civilians, whites and blacks, and men and women of all social classes, emphasizing regional, racial, class, and gender conflicts within the republic. Therefore, students will be encouraged to explore a broad range of potential research topics in both military and  nonmilitary aspects of the Confederate experience.  Indeed, the range of possible topics will be limited only by available sources.  We will devote the first weeks of the course to class readings and discussions, laying the groundwork for the selection of research topics.  For the remainder of the semester, students will conduct their research and write their papers. The class will continue to meet on a regular basis to discuss the progress of their research and writing, critique drafts of their colleagues’ papers, and assess how their individual research relates to the larger issues in the scholarship of the Confederacy.

 

 

 

Seminar Title: Women and War: Personal accounts of wars and conflicts in the 20th century.

Instructor: Dr. Katya Vladimirov (kvladimi@kennesaw.edu)

 

             Most of the good history being taught and written today looks at the whole range of human activities, making an effort to place them in solid historical context. Since the historical doings of women have been often overlooked, or ignored, or poorly researched, we mainly have had a history which is seen through only “a half-opened window”.  This class is an effort to flesh out the historical reality the lives of the half of humanity which has to be thoroughly researched and written about.

            Rather unfortunately wars have been a permanent part of human history. Women were rarely passive observers. Victims and guerrilla fighters, war heroes and martyrs, nurses and pilots, dissidents and activists, mothers and daughters, they were an important and often essential component. Who were these women? How did they see themselves? What did they think about violence and war? Were their roles assigned or adopted? How did their lives change afterwards and how did it