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.
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.
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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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