Courses

Interdisciplinary introduction to the Civil War Era (roughly 1848-1877) in American history. Student is introduced to the basic history of the Civil War, with an emphasis on the fundamental causes of the war, the war years themselves, both at home and on the battlefield, and Reconstruction period. Assigned readings include a mix of primary sources and a basic survey text. History majors may count CWES 205 as a major course.

An exploration of the complex, contentious and frequently contradictory ways that memories of the Civil War have reverberated in American culture from the immediate postwar years through the present day. Taking race, politics, and commemoration as primary lenses, the course will devote significant attention to the ways historical figures used the diverse landscapes of public memory – including battlefields, works of art, monuments & memorials, cultural programs, fiction and film – in an ongoing struggle to define the meaning and legacy of the war.

This course has two objectives: firstly, to conduct an interdisciplinary investigation of the various ways that the medical profession, patients, and the state narrate illness; secondly to chart the history of medicine and public health, paying particular attention to the changing roles of doctors, the history of disease causation, and how these two phenomena overlap especially in the mid to late nineteenth century. While this course covers a broad chronology, it focuses on the Civil War era, which gave rise to sanitary principles and provided the foundation for the bacteriological revolution at the end of the nineteenth century. CWES 212 and HIST 212 are cross-listed.

This course introduces students to the study of warfare from an interdisciplinary context. Students will approach the subject of war through five distinct perspectives: the philosophy of war; the history of war; the experience of war; war, culture, and society; and the memory of war. The overall goal of the class for students to develop a sophisticated approach to the study of war through an interdisciplinary way of analyzing conflicts both in the past, but also, in our present. By the end of the semester, students will endeavor to answer the following questions: what is war; how does war affect participants/victims; how do societies remember war?

This course examines American visual culture in the Civil War period, encompassing painting, sculpture, prints, and photography. It treats works that directly depict aspects of the conflict, and those that address how everyday life and perceptions of what it meant to be American were shaped by the war and its aftermath. We examine how the making and circulation of images shifted during this pivotal period.

Despite the ratification of Constitutional amendments after the Civil War, which provided Black people with both citizenship and voting rights, there has been both legal and customary efforts to block Black people from gaining access to these rights. This course examines those prohibitions but it also centers how Black people have responded; and in so doing it charts the rise of Black protest from the Reconstruction period to Black Lives Matter.

Exploring the diverse, complex, and coercive forms of enslavement from European contact to the beginning of the American Civil War---This is the line of inquiry that runs through this course. Recovering the experiences of the enslaved offers students an opportunity to see how systems of oppression did not mute black voices. Primary sources, especially memoirs, are essential to this class. Material and visual culture of enslaved people also figures prominently in class research projects. Racial theory provides students a chance to see how ideologies of oppression arise out of specific, but changing historical circumstances, a critical learning goal of this course. CWES 240 and AFS 240 are cross-listed.

Study of the role of Civil War history and mythology in America's self-understanding and its continuing problem of race. Integrating Civil War Era Studies, Literature, Film Studies, and Political Science, the class seeks to understand the Jim Crow Era, the Civil Rights Movement, and the elections of 2008 and 2016. The class centers on the book and movie, Gone With The Wind, but will view other significant films pertaining to "race and reunion."

An exploration of Abraham Lincoln’s life as a way to understand the many facets of the Civil War era. Students will examine Lincoln’s formative years in Kentucky and Indiana, his political and legal maneuverings in Illinois, and his presidency in Washington. How Americans have remembered Lincoln, and the ways in which his image has served a wide variety of political agendas will receive attention. Reading Lincoln’s own words will also be a major component of the class. CWES 246 and HIST 246 are cross-listed.

Topics course in Civil War Era Studies

Using artifacts associated with the American Civil War as a lens for exploring museum collections, this course will introduce students to the history, methods, and practices of interpreting and preserving Civil War collections across a spectrum of disciplines (including art, history, archaeology, and ethnography). It will also explore the methods used to understand the significance of objects and collections, the techniques used to bring them to light in the exhibit environment, and the principles and practices that ensure their longevity for future visitors and scholars. CWES 285 and IDS 285 are cross-listed.

his course examines how physicians throughout the British and American empires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries depended upon populations of dispossessed people of color in Africa, the Caribbean, the American South, India, Latin America, and other parts of the world to advance new theories about the cause of disease transmission. CWES 305 and HIST 305 are cross-listed.

This is a course designed to give students and understanding of the nature of war on a global scale during the nineteenth century. Students will study the history of specific conflicts – their origins and nature – but also the ways in which war changed and transformed over the course of the ‘long’ nineteenth century. The hope for this course is that students who are interested in the American Civil War can gain further appreciation of the political and military changes associated with an age marked by conflicts of state formation and imperial expansion.

This is a course that will examine, primarily, two conflicts in modern history and their lasting representations in cultural history and literary memory. Wars have long cultural legacies. Both the American Civil War and First World War changed not only the ‘war generation’ of each conflict, but also, demonstrate case studies of the representation of war and the polemics of memory within nation states. In this class students will engage with the cultural and military histories of two different conflicts and compare their lasting impact in our contemporary perception of war and society. As such, the ‘experience of war’ will be our broad topic of consideration. We will access this theme by examining memory sources that detail and represent these experiences over time. The class’s methodological themes will address the following: conceptions of victory and defeat, the memory of participants and their representations of war, the writing of history and the mythologies created by conflicts and their chroniclers. By studying the cultural history of combat and its aftermath, students will learn something about the way history is written and historical events depicted over time. Through interdisciplinary representations of war in film and literature, it is hoped that students will gain an understanding of the changing perceptions of wars, within the conception of modern memory.

An exploration of the various aspects of Reconstruction, including political conflicts over how the defeated South would be treated, the struggle over civil rights for African Americans, an overview of Reconstruction historiography, the contested nature of Civil War memory, and the enduring legacy of this vital yet often overlooked period of our past.

Soldier in the Confederate Army, Connecticut Yankee, friend of U. S. Grant, favorite speaker at Grand Army of the Republic Reunions. Mark Twain called himself "not an American, but THE American." No American author wrote more incisively about race, war, reconstruction, and the American Way. Mr. Clemens fought his own personal civil war against Mark Twain, and lost.

Study of the experiences of women and men during the Civil War era (app. 1840-1870s), with particular attention given to the following questions: How did the public role of women evolve during these decades? How did the experiences of women and men vary according to race, class, condition of servitude and location? How did the war illuminate or challenge existing gender roles? How did the military experiences of the war shape notions of masculinity? Offered as staffing permits. CWES 352 and HIST 352 are cross-listed.

Individualized tutorial counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F.

Individualized research counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F.

Internship counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F.

Summer Internship graded S/U, counting in the minimum requirements for a major or minor only with written permission filed in the Registrar's Office.

Half credit internship, graded S/U.