HIST 409G-201Causes of the Civil War, 1828-1861 Instructor: Lex Renda (renlex@uwm.edu) Meets: No Meeting Pattern All historians see the conflict over racial slavery as the fundamental cause of the Civil War. They often disagree with each other, however, over why and how slavery caused such divisions in American society, and they also distinguish the causes of the conflict over slavery from the reasons why that conflict resulted in a civil war, for it is not always the case that a conflict produces a war. Disagreements existed over slavery long before 1861 (when the Civil War started), and the federal union of states surviving for as long as it did with as divisive an issue as slavery is in some ways a more remarkable fact than the eventual breakdown of that union in 1861. And so, the questions we ask as historians are 1) in what ways did the institution of slavery divide Americans and how and why did the sources of those divisions change over time?, and 2) why was the political system able to confine such divisions to peaceful channels for so many years, and yet fail to confine it to such channels in the final analysis? This course, taught online, will provide you with different points of view on the answers to these questions, and in the process, enable you to come to your own conclusions.
HIST 595G-201The Quantitative Analysis of Historical Data Instructor: Lex Renda (renlex@uwm.edu) Meets: No Meeting Pattern This is a “how to” course. It teaches you how to use (and not use) statistics to answer questions, and it provides you with a solid introduction to the application of quantitative methods to history. I do not assume that you have knowledge of statistics or any math beyond basic algebra, and your calculator will perform all of the computations. Your job will be learning how to interpret the results of those computations. While the questions, data, and applications we shall examine will usually be drawn from the disciplines of history and other social sciences, you will be able to use the skills you learn to analyze all types of quantitative questions. These skills will be important to you if you pursue graduate training in history or other social sciences, and they will be equally useful if you pursue a career in business, government, or teaching. I also use several “everyday” examples of statistical inference that will enable you to understand the use and abuse of statistics, regardless of your chosen career. This course is being taught online, asynchronously. This course satisfies the university's QL-B requirement and (for students who entered the university prior to the fall 2022 semester), the History major's method requirement and method course prerequisite to Hist 600.
HIST 840-001Colloquium on Global History: Food, Culture, and Power: Role of Food in History Instructor: Martha Carlin (carlin@uwm.edu) Meets: T 4pm-6:40pm FOR COURSE SYLLABUS, GO TO PROFESSOR CARLIN'S WEBSITE AT:
http://people.uwm.edu/carlin/
AND CLICK ON "COURSES" (DROP-DOWN MENU)
(If the course syllabus is not yet available for the coming semester, click on the most recent syllabus for the same course, which will be very similar to it.)
HIST 950-201Seminar on European History: Antisemitism after the Holocaust Instructor: Lisa D Silverman (silverld@uwm.edu) Meets: T 7pm-9:40pm After the Holocaust, antisemitism became a mainstream taboo. Yet, antisemitism persists today in ways that are more violent, explicit, and widespread than they have been in decades. Why? And how does antisemitism relate to racism, sexism, and other forms of hatred? In this online graduate course, we will focus on exploring the ways in which an age-old paradigm of Jewish difference remains deeply embedded in European and other cultures after 1945. Issues examined will include the development of theoretical frameworks used for analyzing antisemitism in a wide variety of historical sources including speeches, trial transcripts, letters, films, drawings, and photographs.
HIST 971-001Seminar on the History of American Urban Problems Instructor: Amanda I Seligman (seligman@uwm.edu) Meets: R 4pm-6:40pm This course examines how historians understand urban problems. Cities have been described as consisting of “clusters of problems,” and this course aims to unpack some of those specific problems with an eye toward understanding the history of cities more broadly. A major purpose of the class is for students to understand how historians produce their scholarship; this is achieved through extensive archival (or other appropriate primary source) research and writing a 5000-word research paper in several discrete stages. By reading and discussing several examples of historical scholarship, students will prepare to write research papers and present their findings to others in the class. The assigned readings focus on the United States, but students are by no means obligated to confine their research to North America. Urban Studies students enrolled in this course should plan to present their papers at the USP Student Forum in the spring of 2024; graduate students from other programs are also welcome to present at the Forum.