Civil War Era Studies

Courses Taught

• CWES 310 War in the Nineteenth Century
  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.
• ENG 101 Introduction to College Writing
  Course develops students' ability to express themselves in clear, accurate, and thoughtful English prose. Offered regularly. Fulfills first-year writing requirement. Open to first-year students only.
• FYS 121-3 Soldiers’ Tales – Reading and Writing War
  War is a subject of fascination in our society; but it is an experience only truly understood by participants. War literature is one of the means of conveying the experiences of war to broader audiences. Writing is a way in which soldiers try to convey and contextualize their memories in print. This seminar is an opportunity for students to read and reflect upon some of the literature of modern war. In reading non-fiction and fiction recollections, by discussing the themes and contexts of war books, and through writing reflective and thoughtful papers, students will learn something of the history of modern war from the point of view of the participant. Students will learn history through literary memories and, it is hoped, will gain the methodological skills to approach literary and historical sources for analysis. For first year students, this seminar will introduce them to the methods of research writing in the humanities, through reading about war.
• FYS 191-1 Fact, Fiction, and Fascism: George Orwell’s Life and Our Times
  George Orwell was born into a world that appeared to be collapsing. European nations and once great empires were reduced to rubble through two costly world wars. Political polarization led to authoritarian dictatorships, ones that murdered millions in the name of their ideologies. The world economy became increasingly volatile; periods of boom and bust led to economic disparity and the exploitation of millions of workers across the globe. The old imperial order foundered under the weight of nationalist movements yearning for freedom. As the world grew more dangerous and disenchanted in the 1920s and 1930s, a unique and unusual voice emerged to become the chronicler of the disposed, disenchanted, and victimized. That voice was laser-focused on what he called ‘the power of facing unpleasant facts.’ In this seminar, students will learn about Orwell’s life and times as a window to understanding our own.
• FYS 191-4 Through the War-drobe: the words and worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
  Good versus evil. Unlikely heroes. Impossible quests. Epic battles. Hobbits eating. The fantasy worlds of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have inspired generations of children and adults since they were penned. This seminar will examine the lives and writings of Lewis and Tolkien within the historical context of their times - the period of the two Great Wars. Students will immerse themselves in both the real and imagined worlds of these two influential writers and emerge from their quest with greater understanding of each author and their works.
• HIST 110 The Twentieth Century World
  Historical change in the global setting, from the ascendancy of the pre-First World War empires to the present. Topics include technological development, imperialism and decolonization, world wars, political revolutions, social and economic forces, and the reshaping of thought and the arts in the diverse cultures of humanity. Offered annually.
• HIST 203 History of the British Isles
  Survey of British history from ancient times to 1800. Includes Ireland, Scotland, and the overseas empire. Offered every other year.
• HIST 204 History of the British Isles
  Survey of British history from 1800 to the present. Includes Ireland, Scotland, and the overseas empire. Offered every other year.
• HIST 219 The Great War
  One hundred years ago Europe’s Great Powers went to war. The resulting conflict forever altered the nations that fed its human destruction. This course examines the First World War’s history, cultural legacy, and memory from 1914 to the present. It does so through both traditional study of the examination of the causes, conduct, and consequences of the war, but also, investigates the Great War as a cultural experience, one that went far beyond the battlefields of Europe, its legacy deeply felt to the present day. Students will learn not only the history of the war itself, but how war’s change people, how they alter notions of identity, how their legacies develop and change over time. Through detailed study of the war’s history, cultural production, and by problematizing its lasting memory, students will understand not only the history of a conflict important in world history, but lenses for understanding war itself, that go far beyond the years 1914-1918. Offered every other year.
• HIST 300 Historical Method
  Course introduces majors to the techniques of historical investigation, considers the nature of history, and examines the relation of history to other fields of study. Prerequisite: Two courses in history. Offered annually.
• IDS 216 Introduction to War Studies
  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?
• IDS 315 The Muse of Fire: War Stories and Culture
  This is a course on war stories. It is based on a simple concept: that war has long been a muse for writers, artists, and filmmakers and that representations of war have a lasting cultural legacy. War stories profoundly influence our understanding of violence. They create myths – important social and political narratives on the past – that help us understand and justify violence in history. In this course, students will read a broad sampling of war literature and study thematically corresponding war films to learn how to conceptualize and contextualize war stories. More broadly, students will also learn how war stories are constructed as sources of memory and how they, in turn, become powerful memorial expressions for veterans, ones that influence the way that societies interpret violence over time.
• IDS 320 Aftermath: The Experience of War and ‘Modern’ Memory
  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.