If you could teach any course...

[HMD243]

I figured we could all use a fun game to distract from the crushing anxiety of waiting for admissions decisions, so let's each make up a course title and some fields or authors covered in the curriculum!

 

I'll go first. I would love to teach a history course on the intersections of gender, sexuality, and medicine. Just a few topics to be covered include:

• history of syphilis
• historical representations of women and homosexuals as agents of disease (specifically using French Indochinese case studies)
• the changing history of "sexual disorders" (lots of Austrian, German, and French psychology examples)
• the history of cosmetic surgery (overlapping with dis/ability studies, post WWI and II examples)
• the history of sex reassignment/affirmation surgery
• reproductive health

 

If anyone has an idea for a course title for that, preferably containing a pun, please let me know.

 

I'd love to see what other people come up with! 

[Catria]

Introduction to Particle Cosmology:

 

• Grand unification era
• Inflation
• Baryogenesis
• Electroweak symmetry breaking
• Hadron and lepton eras
• Nucleosynthesis

Prerequisites: some knowledge of quantum field theory at the level of Peskin & Schroeder Chapters 1-7

[Way Out East]

Sports And Society. Goal of the course would be to show larger historical trends in modern history through sports. Ideally would be taught seminar style.

 

Three main course themes:

1- Sports and War- shows the effect war has on common people, disruption of everyday life. Also take a look at famous athletes serving in war, something that would seem almost foreign to American society today. WW2 would be a subtopic of heavy focus.

2- Sports and Race- emphasizes the historical role of sport as a vehicle for social change. Examples would be the breaking of baseball's color line, Rugby World Cup in South Africa, etc.

3- Sports and Politics- The interplay of sports and political issues. Topics of focus would be Islamophobia and Football (Soccer) in Europe, The "Miracle on Ice", etc.

 

 

I'm going to cheat and add two more (sue me). 1) A History Of Violence in the United States and 2) The Roosevelts, which would mostly focus on the two presidents but also delve into Eleanor, family history before them and after them. 

Edited February 20, 2015 by Way Out East

[dr. t]

My ideal course has several iterations because it revolves around texts, and each one would almost certainly take a semester to do correctly. It would ideally be a seminar in the classic mode, with several students slowly picking apart a short (ca. 10 pages) Latin text both historically and philologically, and pulling in readings to better situate it historically. Some texts I might center the course around would include:

• Pope Urban IV's rule for St. Claire
• The hagiography of Christina the Astonishing
• Several short papal texts - the Dictatus papae, the bulls Ad abolendam and Omnes utriusque sexus, etc.
• Some selections from the letters of Bernard of Clarivaux

Edited February 20, 2015 by telkanuru

[rising_star]

Way Out East, I got to teach a sports class a little while back and it was awesome. Got to use sports to talk about Latino immigration to the USA and it was super fun. Not quite a dream class but it was a good time. 

 

This is a fun thread though.

[disposableheroes]

I would also like to teach a class on Sports, but my focus would be Latin America. In a perfect world, I would like to teach:

 

Music in Modern Latin America

Monters and Myths in Latin America

Peru after 1960: Shining Path and Fujimori  

World History I&II (one that includes the Americas, Africa, Asia and even Antarctica, so far my World Civ classes have been to Eurocentric)

Public Health in Latin America

Nazis in Latin America

[Way Out East]

I would also like to teach a class on Sports, but my focus would be Latin America. In a perfect world, I would like to teach:

 

Music in Modern Latin America

Monters and Myths in Latin America

Peru after 1960: Shining Path and Fujimori  

World History I&II (one that includes the Americas, Africa, Asia and even Antarctica, so far my World Civ classes have been to Eurocentric)

Public Health in Latin America

Nazis in Latin America

I would sign up for Nazis in Latin America. A sports course on Latin America would be very cool. A professor at my university taught something along those lines (believe it was mostly on Football in Brazil) a few semesters ago.

[spellbanisher]

Here was my idea for a grad seminar. 

 

 

Seminar Name: The US during the Age of Empires

 

In the period from 1860 to 1930, many Europeans countries, along with North America and Japan industrialized.  In turn, these countries went out and colonized much of Asia and Africa.  The United States is often seen as anomalous industrial power in this period. By the early twentieth century it had the largest economy in the world, but in comparison to its economic predominance, its empire was relatively small. This seminar explores how international contexts and consciousness shaped US development in this period.

 

 

As for undergrad lecture courses, I would do something like Edmund Burke did at UC Santa Cruz in The Making of the Modern World Classes, where he looked at world history through commodities. 

 

Other possible courses. 

1. Debt in America

-From indentured servitude in the colonial era to installment plans to subprime mortgages, this course would explore how debt has figured in both the American economy and culture. 

 

2.  Crises of American Exceptionalism

-In every era of American exceptionalism, there are competing claims over what makes America exceptional and laments over its imminent demise. In the early Republic, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans quarreled over the significance of the revolution, with both sides claiming that the other represented a violation of the revolution. In the late nineteenth century, the purported threat to American exceptionalism was variously non-Anglo immigration, the end of the frontier, and the rise Trusts. In the early twentieth century it was the rise of Germany, and since World War II it has been variously the rise of Japan and Germany, the rise of Germany, creeping socialism, and declining educational achievement. This course looks at how Americans have conceived of American exceptionalism, and the consequences on politics and economics. 

 

3. The United States as a Developing Country

-This course would look at various interpretations of US wealth and power, from the Washington Consensus to the American system to that of exploitation. 

Edited February 21, 2015 by spellbanisher

[Josh J.]

Crises of American Exceptionalism would be an excellent course to teach.

[spellbanisher]

2.  Crises of American Exceptionalism

-In every era of American exceptionalism, there are competing claims over what makes America exceptional and laments over its imminent demise. In the early Republic, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans quarreled over the significance of the revolution, with both sides claiming that the other represented a violation of the revolution. In the late nineteenth century, the purported threat to American exceptionalism was variously non-Anglo immigration, the end of the frontier, and the rise Trusts. In the early twentieth century it was the rise of Germany, and since World War II it has been variously the rise of Japan and Germany, the rise of Germany, creeping socialism, and declining educational achievement. This course looks at how Americans have conceived of American exceptionalism, and the consequences on politics and economics. 

 

So many typos.    But the one that sticks in my craw is "in every era of American exceptionalism..." I meant to write, "in every era of American history" and I probably should have been more moderate and wrote, "In most eras of American history..."

Edited February 22, 2015 by spellbanisher

[ashiepoo72]

Aren't Americans in every era exceptional?

[dr. t]

Aren't Americans in every era exceptional?

 

Just not necessarily in the positive sense 

[spellbanisher]

Aren't Americans in every era exceptional?

We're exceptionally confident in our exceptionalism. 

 

Actually, there's nothing more banal than thinking your country is exceptional. 

[kblooms]

Climate change and history, show students how climate change, even anthropogenic climate change, is not a new phenomenon and has been going on for centuries.n

[BlackBear50]

History and The Self:

A seminar meant to introduce students to the nuances of what History is. Perhaps a course to take just before taking upper-division courses, or a first year grad seminar. This class would explore attempting to understand History via the project of writing an autobiography of the student's life. We would introduce the student to a myriad of historiographic means of understanding: class, sex and gender, race, ethnohistory, biography, etc. It would likewise introduce students to fields such as global history, environmental history, and comparative history. The purpose of the course would be to introduce students, at a foundation level, to a vast array of historiographic understandings and challenge them to ponder the many ways we can understand history whilst placing their own life in the context of world history.

 

The American Revolution

 

The Early Atlantic World: As Told By Seamen, Indentured Servants, Slaves, Savages, and Prostitutes:

(Savages just to catch people's eye). A look at the Early Modern Atlantic World from the point of view of the lower sorts.

Edited February 22, 2015 by BlackBear50

[tingdeh]

Gonna reply a little tongue-in-cheek. Here's a joke course description I composed for all my fellow Drake fan friends and Torontonians.

OVO424: Special Topics in Drizzy Studies: The 6ix.

This seminar course explores Drake in relation to his city and its culture. Students have an option between an intensive research paper and an event proposal for a Drake concert (service learning). Possible topics include: Drake and Degrassi, Aubreyotics, Young Money Macroeconomics, the cultural politics of the 6ix, ethical representations of Scarborough in pop culture, Comparative Forest Hills (with a special focus on J Cole), and translocal studies of Toronto and Memphis.

Edited February 22, 2015 by tingdeh

[knp]

The Early Modern World

- A fun period, so a survey I could really get behind. (Hi Black Bear).

 

There and Back Again: Human History through Travel, from Beginnings to Star Trek

- I've always loved travel literature, so I want to teach a class on the history of travel. This would be a very big survey! I would start with the archaeological evidence of early human migrations, long before the agricultural revolution. Topics that interest me include: the 'age of exploration' (see previous); narratives of 'discovery' (and discovery); the development of cartography and geographical vision of the globe; 'armchair travel' (John E. Wills Jr.'s article on this, written by a historian of China, is one of my favorite pieces of historical writing); the reception of travel; pilgrimage; travel in the Islamic world; and an abbreviated history of anthropology and writing about the 'other'. I don't know enough about travel by people from Africa and East Asia, but more of that, too. I would end with a discussion of Star Trek, Interstellar, or some similar science fiction, and what the desire to leave the planet/solar system tells us about the times and places when those stories were being told. I would not plan to have any Tolkien in it, I just like the phrase.

 

The History of Anthropology

- Since I could see myself expanding that piece into a whole course.

 

Hm, perhaps my "I'm a historian who still does read popular histories" tendencies are showing, since those are the first three courses that came to mind. I think I take it for granted that I will get a chance to teach at least a few excellent courses that are closer to my specialty; I hope for those in a way I am actually taking steps to accomplish, while I dream about getting to explore widely for things I'm not going to specialize in. I would also love to teach a course on historical writing, since I have had teachers approach it so badly, but it's such a helpful subject when it's done right.

 

And I would teach (or take!) a course along kblooms' lines. "The United States as a Developing Country" sounds really cool, too!

[kotov]

I'd love to teach a course on Southeastern Europe from 1389 to the Present, or a History of Socialism/Marxism/Communism type thing. Or something similar to my favorite undergrad class, which was Russia 1861-1939 (from emancipation to right before WWII, mostly focusing on the revolutionary movements and the February/October Revolutions and all the political shenanigans in the 20s). I'd also love to teach something on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I figure I'll probably end up teaching upper-division courses on Nazi Germany/the Holocaust and Russia/Soviet Union for the most part.

[knp]

I'll bite -- what happened in 1389? I assume I could google it, but I'm curious not just what happened, but why that's the most relevant date.

[kotov]

The Battle of Kosovo between Serbia and the Turks.

[Chiqui74]

The Early Modern World

- A fun period, so a survey I could really get behind. (Hi Black Bear).

 

There and Back Again: Human History through Travel, from Beginnings to Star Trek

- I've always loved travel literature, so I want to teach a class on the history of travel. This would be a very big survey! I would start with the archaeological evidence of early human migrations, long before the agricultural revolution. Topics that interest me include: the 'age of exploration' (see previous); narratives of 'discovery' (and discovery); the development of cartography and geographical vision of the globe; 'armchair travel' (John E. Wills Jr.'s article on this, written by a historian of China, is one of my favorite pieces of historical writing); the reception of travel; pilgrimage; travel in the Islamic world; and an abbreviated history of anthropology and writing about the 'other'. I don't know enough about travel by people from Africa and East Asia, but more of that, too. I would end with a discussion of Star Trek, Interstellar, or some similar science fiction, and what the desire to leave the planet/solar system tells us about the times and places when those stories were being told. I would not plan to have any Tolkien in it, I just like the phrase.

 

The History of Anthropology

- Since I could see myself expanding that piece into a whole course.

 

Hm, perhaps my "I'm a historian who still does read popular histories" tendencies are showing, since those are the first three courses that came to mind. I think I take it for granted that I will get a chance to teach at least a few excellent courses that are closer to my specialty; I hope for those in a way I am actually taking steps to accomplish, while I dream about getting to explore widely for things I'm not going to specialize in. I would also love to teach a course on historical writing, since I have had teachers approach it so badly, but it's such a helpful subject when it's done right.

 

And I would teach (or take!) a course along kblooms' lines. "The United States as a Developing Country" sounds really cool, too!

Joyce Chaplin from Harvard has a very interesting book on travel.  It's more about history of round the world travel than history through travel per se.  http://www.amazon.com/Round-About-Earth-Circumnavigation-Magellan-ebook/dp/B007EE4Y2K

Edited February 25, 2015 by Chiqui74

[knp]

Thanks for the recommendation!

[oflittlevisibledelight]

My dream course to teach is definitely History on Film.

 

Course Objectives

-Students will learn to question narratives presented in popular media and analyze artistic liberty, intent, and themes. 

-Additionally, students will look at the which, when, where, and why of popular genres. For example, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why were films depicting warfare so well received?

-To suck the joy out of watching a movie. 

 

Basic Course Schedule

-One day a week scheduled for movie viewing and two others for lecture/discussion

 

Course materials

-Movies, obviously. I imagine these would change from year to year, but I'm thinking Braveheart, some iteration of Joan of Arc, Titanic, Robin Hood, Man in the Iron Mask, Alexander, Marie Antoinette, Gone with the Wind, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. You get the picture. A wide variety of movies.

-Text: History and Film: Moving Pictures and the Study of the Past by Maarten Pereboom supplemented by various pertinent articles.

 

Grading 

-Grades will be based on weekly discussion, one paper per month (4) on one film the class had watched that month, and a final exam. 

[Chiqui74]

Iconoclasm 101, but I guess that already exists in the form of World History survey courses

[Chiqui74]

My dream course to teach is definitely History on Film.

 

Course Objectives

-Students will learn to question narratives presented in popular media and analyze artistic liberty, intent, and themes. 

-Additionally, students will look at the which, when, where, and why of popular genres. For example, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why were films depicting warfare so well received?

-To suck the joy out of watching a movie. 

 

Basic Course Schedule

-One day a week scheduled for movie viewing and two others for lecture/discussion

 

Course materials

-Movies, obviously. I imagine these would change from year to year, but I'm thinking Braveheart, some iteration of Joan of Arc, Titanic, Robin Hood, Man in the Iron Mask, Alexander, Marie Antoinette, Gone with the Wind, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. You get the picture. A wide variety of movies.

-Text: History and Film: Moving Pictures and the Study of the Past by Maarten Pereboom supplemented by various pertinent articles.

 

Grading 

-Grades will be based on weekly discussion, one paper per month (4) on one film the class had watched that month, and a final exam. 

I took a class similar to this in college. It was great.