Spring 2023 Graduate Course Schedule

Students from departments outside of History must receive approval from the instructor prior to enrolling in a History course. Please upload an email with the instructor's endorsement to the Spring 2023 permission code form, along with your request for a permission code. If you want to enroll in an independent study, please complete the Spring 2023 independent study form. For additional information about a specific course, please contact the professor directly.

File of the Spring 2023 course schedule.

*Please view Albert for the most accurate information. Schedule is subject to change Albert.

Below are the literature of the field courses that will be taught during the Spring 2023 semester.

Barbara Weinstein and Alejandro Velasco
M 4:55-7:35pm
KJCC 607
CLQ

This course will explore the history and historiography of postcolonial Latin America. Particular attention will be given to state formation and questions of citizenship, to the emergence of new social groups pressing for political inclusion and economic rights, and to new cultural forms and practices. Whereas the colonial and independence periods can be readily organized into thematic categories, the postcolonial historiography, dominated by the rise of nation-states, is obviously more challenging in this regard. At least some of our discussions will require knowledge of country-specific historical narratives, but for the most part the course will focus on themes and questions that are not confined to one specific national context. And while we will certainly discuss some of the “great events” of postcolonial Latin American history (e.g., the Mexican and Cuban Revolutions), the readings generally give more weight to longer, less dramatic processes. 

Below are the approaches courses that will be taught during the Spring 2023 semester.

Edward Berenson
T 9:30-12:15pm
15 Washington Mews Room B03
SEM

This course is designed for all PhD students in all fields, especially those in their first year who want to fulfill the department's requirement to write a scholarly research paper. For our purposes, we will define such a paper as one that intends to make an original contribution to the historical literature in 7,000-10,000 words, not including the notes. To help you prepare these papers, we will examine examples of excellent historical writing in a variety of fields and time periods, paying particular attention to how those writings are constructed and especially to the question of what makes them work. We will consider, in particular, the argument or arguments advanced and the evidence mobilized to support them. We also examine the structure of these works and the quality of their prose. In doing so, we will cover the mechanics of good non-fiction prose: strong topic sentences, cohesive paragraphs, transitions from one paragraph to the next, as well as key elements of sentence and paragraph structure such as end-focus, progression from known information to new information, and topic chains in which the same subject appears in most sentences in a given paragraph.

Since the main purpose of this course is to give you the opportunity to produce your own original work, reading assignments will be relatively light and largely confined to the first half of the semester. I'll provide examples of works that have provided models for me at various stages of my career, and I'll ask each of you to do the same: provide an article or book chapter that you have found particularly helpful, either because you've learned a lot from it, or because it seems to you a model strong historical writing. We'll examine these writings in class, and you'll provide a couple of short (300-500 words) analyses of them. 

You'll also be asked to contribute one primary source especially useful for the paper you are writing. We'll examine these documents in class.

The second half of the semester will mostly be devoted to the preparation and peer review of your individual papers. Early in the semester, you will have submitted a paragraph describing the subject of your paper, and by mid-semester, a short précis and annotated bibliography. The next step will be to submit a brief outline of the piece and by week 10 a solid first draft, about which I'll give you detailed feedback. You'll then make revisions and share your second draft with all members of the seminar. In class, you'll each offer friendly, constructive critiques of your colleagues' work. We'll conclude with a discussion of what revisions, additions, and elaborations you would need to turn your second draft into a publishable piece of work.

Below are the workshop courses that will be taught during the Spring 2023 semester.

Nicole Eustace
R 12:30-1:45pm
KJCC 607
SEM

This half-credit course, offered each semester, provides an informal graduate-student forum for M.A. and Ph.D. students with research interests in Atlantic history from departments across NYU and around NYC.  Student members present work-in-progress in a supportive community atmosphere and may take the class for credit or audit it informally.  Students are generally expected to attend the public workshops on alternate weeks with the graduate forum.  We have recently been able to accommodate both actual and virtual attendance.

Below are the graduate courses that will be taught during the Spring 2023 semester.

Karl Appuhn
T 3:30-6:15pm
Casa Italiana Room 203
CLQ

Historians of the Italian Renaissance have long argued that one of the signal developments of the late Renaissance period was the emergence of modern forms of historical writing and thinking. This historiographical tradition argues that a small group of (mostly Florentine) thinkers broke away from the medieval chronicle tradition as well as the imitative constraints of humanism to invent a new way of thinking about the past and its relationship to the present. In so doing, the argument goes, these thinkers not only established new norms of historical thinking, but also mobilized history as a tool for making prescriptive judgements in the realm of politics. This course will evaluate these claims through close readings of three of the most important authors in this new tradition—Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Botero. In the first part of the course we will look at some key texts in the Chronicle and Humanist traditions. In the second part we will look at Machiavelli and Guicciardini’s efforts to invent a new way of writing about the past (both recent and distant) and in the last part of the class we will see how they, joined by Botero, translated history into prescriptive political theory.

Jennifer Homans & Meredith Martin
R 2:45-4:45pm
1 E 78 St, Room 119 Sem Room
SEM

There are moments in history when art and life seem to change dramatically and all at once. This seminar explores the art of European dance -- in art and in performance -- from the baroque to contemporary eras. It focuses on several key moments when the movement, representation, and conceptualization of the human body is profoundly transformed in light of social and political change as well as scientific and philosophical developments. Topics to be discussed include the relationship of dance to absolutist and totalitarian regimes; colonialism and constructions of race; war, revolution and nationalism; and new ideas of gender and the self. We will also discuss the idea of metamorphosis as an artistic and historical concept. Where possible, we will visit museums and attend performances, in addition to inviting scholars and artists to present their work. Students will produce a 15-20 pp. research paper or a creative project. Reading knowledge of French is recommended but not required.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat
W 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 701
SEM

This course examines the Second World War in a global framework. We look at the social, cultural, military, and political contexts of the war from many national perspectives, from its pre-history in Asia, to Fascist aggressions in Europe that caused mass mobilizations, to the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan that led to its end.

Kevin Kenny
T 3:30-6:00PM
Ireland House 101
CLQ

No other European country in the modern era lost so high a proportion of its population overseas as Ireland. Counting those who went to Britain as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, about 10 million Irish men, women, and children emigrated from Ireland since 1700. That number is about twice the population of the Republic of Ireland today and it exceeds the population of Ireland at its historical peak on the eve of the great famine. This course will begin by considering the conditions in Ireland that led to emigration on such a massive and sustained scale. On that basis we will examine different models of migration – as voluntary departure, exile or banishment, and diaspora – and proceed to analyze the principal themes in the history of the Irish abroad, including labor, gender, religion, politics, and nationalism.

Daniel Juette
W 2:00-4:45pm
KJCC 717
SEM

Historians are used to working with textual sources. How can images complement and deepen the process of historical inquiry? And which challenges are bound up with the use of visual material? This graduate seminar caters to history students from all periods and fields. We will start with key theoretical and methodological texts that originate in neighboring disciplines such as art history, visual studies, and anthropology. In a second step, we will read and discuss select studies that utilize visual material to make a distinctively historical argument. Most of these studies focus on the medieval and early modern period, but you are welcome to expand your reading and to choose any other historical period for your final paper. Whatever topic and period you elect, we will all depart from the same basic premise: images are not mere ‘illustrations’ of historical events, but rather cultural artifacts that encapsulate historical processes with all the attendant ambiguities and contradictions.

Stefanos Geroulanos
R 2:00-4:45pm
60th Fifth Avenue 823
SEM

What is intellectual history today? How does it blend and work constructively with other fields—including imperial and gender history and history of science, but also in comparative literature, political thought, sociology, and other disciplines? In this course, we examine key approaches from the history of intellectual history (Cambridge, Bielefeld, poststructuralism), as well as newer approaches (historical epistemology, colonial and decolonial intellectual history, sociology of intellectuals, conceptual+metaphorical history today), which we will read in conjunction with key primary sources from the twentieth century. The goal will be to juxtapose primary and texts in order to foreground different practices and enable students to take up different, complementary, and at times contrasting ways of working. Methodological readings will include Canguilhem, Koselleck, Skinner, Daston, Pietz, Surkis (but this is a very partial and tentative list). 

Yijun Wang
W 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 717
CLQ

This seminar introduces how historians, anthropologists, and sociologists try to make sense of the history of science, technology, and the environment in East Asia. In this seminar, we will read basic theories and methods in the history of science and technology, as well as basic debates and questions that bother scholars working on the history of science, technology, and the environment in non-western context. In addition to scientific ideas, our scope of discussion will extend to everyday technologies and practices from how to grow rice to how to protect the environment. The readings challenge the ideas about the autonomy of science and technology and encourage students to think about the relationship between knowledge, nature, culture, society and power. We will explore how society, culture, and politics affect knowledge production and people’s engagement with nature, and how these interactions, in turn, shaped society, culture, and politics.

Jennifer Homans
T 2:00-4:45pm
KJCC 717
SEM

A life is a history.  It has a chronological order -- birth to death -- and it is marked by events and a social and historical context. But the inner life has a different and stranger history, difficult to access and convey. Sources can be slippery, even in a memoir: memory does not always serve, and people lie -- especially about themselves. In the case of an artist, the question is even more complicated since the relationship between life and art, or inner and outer worlds, is rarely direct or causal.  A convincing life may not be a true life.  The medium we use to tell a life imposes additional constraints, not to mention the entanglement of the biographer’s own life with her subject.  

This course examines the question of how to tell a life through close readings of biography and memoir, film, art exhibitions, and curated events in music and dance (museum panels, for example, and the ‘retrospective’ choice and placement of art works, is a form of biography too).  Students will read, but also begin to write a life. Not their own, but someone else’s. 

John Shovlin & Susanah Romney
W 2:00-4:45pm
KJCC 701
SEM

This course is intended as a research and writing workshop for students working on an MA thesis in the Department of History. The history MA thesis is an article-length paper (c. 10,000 words) based on research in primary and secondary sources, making an original argument that speaks to the relevant historiography in the subfield it engages. The seminar seeks to foster a rigorous intellectual environment where students will learn how to devise a research project that is intellectually sound and practically feasible. During the first weeks, students are expected to refine their thesis topics, check in with their faculty advisers, develop a bibliography, and begin reading broadly in primary and secondary sources. Periodic writing assignments will target specific research goals, especially developing a strong sense of the existing scholarship in the subfield, and beginning to analyze primary sources closely in light of their context. Students should be in a position to write a section of the thesis by the end of the semester.

Edward Berenson & Liz Fink
W 9:30-12:15pm
15 Washington Mews Room B03
SEM

This course examines the history of French colonialism from the French Revolution to the 1970s. It considers the effects of imperialism and colonialism on both the colonies themselves and mainland France. We will examine slavery and abolition, liberty and liberation, conquest and violence, citizenship and subjecthood, race and racism, religion and empire, republicanism and identity, war and empire, decolonization and 1968. 

Michele Mitchell
R 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 701
SEM

The focus of this course is the research and writing of gender history. Not only will we discuss the overlap and tensions between the fields of women’s history and gender history. We will also consider histories of sexuality and the body. Along these lines, we shall explore the methodological issues that arise in researching the history of gender, transgender, bodies, and/or sexuality. Class meetings and readings will emphasize methodologies and practices of gender historical research and writing, including: the definition and delineation of sources (primary, secondary, or hybrid); the challenges of narration; and the process of learning to read our own texts both critically and with attention to internal contradictions and/or silences. We will interrogate the work that tropes and binaries perform in shaping research and writing processes in gender history as well. We will additionally chart the historiographical development of gender, sexuality, and bodies as analytical tools. Course readings shall therefore draw upon now-classic statements as well as newer, cutting-edge scholarship. Whereas our common readings will generally focus on the modern period—not to mention “the West”—we will read work on other periods and geographical regions, too. As much as we will all be reading outside of our own areas of expertise at several junctures this semester, you should feel free to take intellectual risks, to consider how or whether approaches by scholars in other fields might inform your own approach[es] to histories of women, gender, and/or sexuality.

Ayse Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
M 4:55-7:35pm
194 Mercer Room 201
SEM

This seminar aims to engage graduate students with the literature (both primary and secondary) produced on the early modern Ottoman state and its institutions (roughly from the 1300s to the 1750s). The formation and subsequent transformations of the Ottoman state and society in this highly critical period and the social, political, cultural, and economic changes that accompanied this process will constitute the central focus of this course. Topics to be examined will include the notion of frontier society and the role of gaza, state building and resistance, expansion and imperial ideology(ies), mechanisms of governance, religion and law, inter-communal and inter-imperial relations, the interplay of social statuses and gender, urban institutions and culture, the organization and transformation of economic life, and social unrests and rebellions.

Anne O'Donnell
R 4:55-7:35pm
KJCC 607
SEM

Course Description TBA

Irvin Ibarguen
M 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 701
SEM

This course explores the governance and lived experience of migration in the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather than proceed with a global, dislocated, and confused history of migration, it is anchored in the U.S., the nation most synonymous with migration. It mixes in attention to other sites around the world—Northern Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia—to arrive at a comparative perspective. Key themes broached in the class include the root causes of migration, the centrality of race to immigration policy, the building of borders, the role of sending states, migrant strategies of resistance and adaptation, and the lexicon best suited to studying migration. The course is mainly historical in scope and methodology, but draws as well from related fields, such as sociology, anthropology and journalism.

Below are the Archives and Public History courses that will be taught during the Spring 2023 semester.

Mary Kidd
W 4:55-7:35pm
KJCC 717
CLQ

The Digital Archives course addresses the role of archivists across the life-cycle of digital archives and articulates challenges, best practices, and standards associated with the creation, appraisal, acquisition, storage, and provision of access to digital archives. Students design basic workflows for digitization of analog material and maintenance of digital objects, and identify risks and threats to the successful preservation of digital archives in various file formats. The course also enumerates important considerations in institutional policies and plans related to collection development, intellectual property rights, preservation, access, and overall sustainability.

Ellen Noonan
T 4:55-7:35pm
KJCC 701
CLQ

Public historians build bridges between the work of academic historians and the interests of diverse public audiences. Through readings, media analysis, visits by working public historians, and project work, students explore intellectual, political, and pragmatic issues in public history. A semester-long project requires students to work collaboratively to conceptualize a public history project and write a complete funding proposal for it.

Ellen Noonan
Independent Study
M 4:55-7:35pm
CLQ

The Internship Seminar is designed to accompany a 120-hour internship work experience at a selected archival repository or public history site. Students will have opportunities to report on and discuss their internship experiences with each other and the instructor. The course will also address various aspects of the professional practice of public history and archives, including organizational structures, leadership, professional societies, and funding sources, with presentations by professionals in the field.

Ellen Noonan
Independent Study
R 4:55-7:35pm
SEM

In this capstone seminar course, students are expected to undertake an original research project that relates to either the archives or public history field.  The final product may take several forms:  1) a 30-50 page, article-length, research paper that might be submitted for publication in an academic journal;  2)  a public history or archives project, which has been worked out with a cooperating institution, that might result in such products as a consulting report, finding aid with recommendations for handling or treating particular types of material, or collections survey; 3) an online project that contextualizes a body of historical source material and brings it to broader public attention.

Ellen Noonan
Independent Study
N/A

CLQ

This course consists of directed individual or small-group readings concerning a selected topic involving public history or archival theory and practice, developed in conjunction with the course instructor. In order to take this course, please contact the instructor for approval.

Independent Readings in Public History and Archives is available as an option any semester.

Independent Studies are offered for the Spring 2023 term. You must complete an independent study form to be enrolled in the course. Please note that all independent studies have the DGS as the instructor listed in Albert although the instructor whom you complete the course with will provide the final grade.

John Shovlin
IND

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
IND

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
IND

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
IND