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Topics Courses:

HIS100-01 Warfare in Ancient Rome and Greece

This course is designed to explore goals, motives, and methods of warfare in the ancient world as well as people’s thinking about war. By reading primary texts and secondary texts, and looking at images of ancient weaponry, you should be able to develop a complex understanding of the multifaceted phenomenon of ancient warfare, its causes and consequences, and its interaction with social, political, intellectual, and economic phenomena.

HIS100-02 The Fall of Rome

This course will explore the transformation of the Mediterranean world, from the crisis of the Roman empire in 3 rd century and the reign of Emperor Diocletian (284-305 AD) to the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests (6th -8 th centuries AD). The main themes include: the triumph of Christianity, the “Barbarian” invasions, the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the formation of “Barbarian” kingdoms, the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), and the rise of Islam.

HIS120-01 Modern Europe

This course is designed to give students an appreciation for how the history of Europe unfolded from the Enlightenment to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. More so than traditional “western civ” surveys, my course seeks to explore the contact, interactions, connections, and influence Europe had with the rest of the globe. I pay particular attention to three themes: the role of chance and contingency is history, the power of social forces, ideologies, and economic developments have in changing our world, and the profound ways in warfare have acted as dynamic of change.

HIS130 Vikings and Mongols in Film and Fact

Based on the study of primary sources and secondary literature, students shall explore and evaluate a number of films about the Vikings and Mongols for their historical accuracy and context of political, social, economic, material, spiritual, and martial culture of the period.

HIS165-01 Gender and the Body in US History

This course examines the historical development of the United States from the early colonial period to the present day through the lens of gender. While the actions, words, and lives of American women will form the basis of our inquiry, we will also explore the construction of manhood and womanhood in the past. Though often treated as immutable facts, the meaning of manhood and womanhood in the United States has fluctuated significantly over the course of four centuries. These categories are crosscut by other identities, such as race, class, sexuality, language, and national origin. Students will use primary sources and secondary readings to understand the how gender informs the historical experience of a diverse group of Americans and shaped the meaning of citizenship, politics, social roles, identity, and national belonging.

HIS165-02 and -03 Disease and Health in US History

This course will explore changing American understandings of what it means to be healthy or sick, and how the quest to promote healthiness and avoid disease shaped American history and culture from the colonial era to the 21^st century. Using a variety of sources and an interdisciplinary approach, we will examine the relationship of health and environment, disease outbreaks and the responses to them, and battles over health policy. Topics will include the role of disease in American aboriginal depopulation, the catastrophic outbreaks of Yellow Fever and Cholera in the Early Republic, the doctor-patient relationship, the role of medicine in sustaining slavery, movements for dietary and health reform, the effects of urbanization on American health, debates over quarantine and immigration policy, and the role of the media in spreading information and misinformation about preserving health.

HIS165-04 The Vietnam War

This course will cover the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1975, beginning with the French occupation following World War Two and concluding with the final phase in 1975 and the war’s aftermath in the American consciousness. The reading material will cover a broad spectrum, from autobiography to journalism to fiction. Particular attention will be paid to the socioeconomic status of the soldiers, the political climate in the United States during the era, and the cultural texts produced about the war. This course will seek to enhance the understanding and appreciation of students for one of the more contentious moments in American history.

HIS220: Themes in Ancient History: Africa and the World

This course examines the history of Africa‘s connections with the outside world, from the period of earliest human societies to 1800. Using primary sources, it investigates how visitors to the continent understood African societies, as well as how Africans made sense of themselves and places beyond the continent. The course emphasizes the use of primary sources in studying history. Students will work not only with documents, but also with ritual objects, oral narratives, and archeological sources. This course also develops research, writing, and historiographic skills central to the field of history.

HIS230: Themes in Modern History: The City

 Since the earliest civilizations, humans have created built environments as centers of housing, commerce, government, and culture. A hallmark of the modern historical era (1500-present) has been the increasing urbanization of the globe. This course will study global history through a series of case studies of major urban centers in North and South America, Asia, Europe and Africa, such as New York, London, Potosi, Johannesburg, and Prague. We will explore various ways urban historians have sought to understand the dynamics of cities from class, race, and gender relations to architecture and city planning models.

HIS300: Democracy and Theater

Democracy (the rule of the demos) and theater (performance of tragedies and comedies at the annual festival in honor of Dionysus) are among the most
famous achievements of ancient Greek culture. In ancient Athens, democracy and theatre went hand in hand. We will read ancient plays, both tragedies and
comedies. Our discussions will focus on the cultural and political context of the plays and their reception by ancient and modern artists and audiences.

HIS365: Teaching Economic History

Broadly speaking, this class has three aims: first, it seeks to familiarize students with basic concepts central to understanding economic principles and thought. Second, it seeks to apply these concepts to American history and show how America’s history and society have been defined in large part by its economic development. Further, significant emphasis will be placed on connecting abstract economic concepts to historical issues and real-world situations. Lastly, the course will seek to address the issue of economic literacy and why economic literacy is an integral component of civic decision making and for any citizen living in a participatory democracy.
The course is intended for prospective social studies teachers and its ultimate and most important goal is to provide teachers with the means and knowledge to teach the economic course taken by all secondary students in New Jersey. Thus, considerable attention will be paid not only to the information itself, but ways to incorporate this content into a teachable framework that can make this material accessible and important for students. All the course’s projects and assessments, for example, have been designed with this goal in mind. For those not teaching economics, it is hoped that the historical component of the course will help teachers of American history incorporate new perspectives and methodologies in their own classes. Lastly, it should be the goal of all teachers to make their students economically and financially literate and this course will attempt to provide strategies and activities to help teachers accomplish this goal.

HIS390: Holocaust Testimonies

Through a special partnership with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, students in this course will learn about and practice methods of documenting and preserving Holocaust memory. As a class, we will study the history of the Holocaust, the concept of the archive, and the relationship between trauma and memory. Each student will design a research project that involves editing a transcript of at least one survivor interview and placing it in context of the larger history of the Second World War. Students can shape their projects around particular interests such as gender, sexuality, religion, and country of origin. The work produced this semester will make a lasting contribution to genocide studies and documentation.  Students must have instructor approval to enroll. Please contact Dr. Paces if you are interested in the course.  This class can be used to fulfill a Readings Seminar requirement or a 300-level requirement. Geographic region: Europe.

HIS456: Genocide in Rwanda

On April 6, 1994, genocide broke out in the African nation of Rwanda. Over the next 100 days, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandan were killed, most of whom belonged to an ethnicity known as the Tutsi. The genocide, planned by members of the Hutu political elite but largely perpetrated by everyday Hutus, had drastic, devastating, and long-term impacts not only on Rwanda, but also the region as a whole. This course, marking the 25th anniversary of this tragedy, will
examine the origins, events, and implications of Rwanda’s genocide. Some of the specific issues to be examined include the development of ‘Hutu’, ‘Tutsi’ and ‘Twa’ as ethnic categories, the racialization of these categories, the implications of colonial rule, the Rwandan Civil War, the rise of refugee populations in neighboring countries, the onset of genocide, the memories of both victims and perpetrators, the redevelopment of Rwanda post-genocide, the response of the United States and the United Nations, and the impact of the genocide on neighboring countries.

HIS460-01: Urban America

HIS460-02 Reforming the Republic

“America,” wrote the acclaimed author Robert Penn Warren, “has been full of reformers promoting everything from bloomers and Dr. Graham’s bread to Prohibition and Technocracy.” “Americans,” he added, “freely admit that such single-minded citizens may be noble and even socially valuable.” “But,” Warren then noted, “they also feel them somewhat inconvenient.” This course will address why America became “full of reformers” (even before the United States itself was truly formed). It will also examine how early reformers attempted to implement social, cultural, and political changes within the increasingly democratic framework of the new republic. In the process, the class will consider the dichotomy that these reformers were – as Warren alleged – “noble and even socially valuable” while, at the same time, “somewhat inconvenient.”