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Senior Seminar in History (HIST 400)

In Spring 2019, history department faculty will offer three senior seminars.

Section 1

Marriage, Family, and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe
Professor Megan Moran

This senior seminar will examine perceptions and experiences of marriage, family, and sexuality in early modern Europe, from approximately 1400-1800. The course will trace the themes of marriage, family, and sexuality as both ideals and realities that shaped European society. Students will explore topics such as gender roles in cultural and literary debates, constructed conceptions of masculinity and femininity, family formation, the role of the family in political, economic, and cultural life, the practice of courtship and marriage, the experiences and varieties of sexuality, as well as the lived experiences of men and women in everyday life in early modern Europe.

Section 2

Inequality in Modern America
Professor Shannan Clark

This seminar will provide students with an opportunity to research some historical aspect of economic, social, or political inequality in the twentieth-century United States. Topics for examination will include: the inequality inherent in employment relationships; the causes of poverty; employment discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender; housing discrimination; inequality in public education; environmental inequality; unequal access to political power; and the role of public policy in both mitigating and maintaining various forms of inequality.

Section 3

Histories of Environmentalism
Professor Ezra Rashkow

This senior seminar explores the varieties of environmentalism that have existed throughout history and around the world. Rather than assuming that our experience of environmentalism in the US today is the global norm, the course offers a comparative history of environmentalism over time and across space. We begin by looking at the ideas that ancient religious traditions contained environmental messages and that indigenous communities were natural environmentalists. From there we consider subjects as diverse as the differences between first and third world environmentalisms, radical vs mainstream environmentalisms, Gandhi’s environmentalism, and the environmentalism of the poor.