[Histmaj] History's Junior and Senior Seminars for Winter 2025!!!

[HISTORY UNDERGRADUATE ADVISORS via Histmaj]

Historians-
We have just started Autumn 2024, but it is already time to think about Winter registration for History Junior Seminars and Senior Seminars.  If you intend to take a History Junior or Senior Seminar, now is the time to ask for an add code for the course you would like to take!  I know that both Tracy and I have said to almost every new major that you need to plan ahead to get an add code for these class, since they fill up so quickly.  Now is the time!
Here are descriptions (below) from the faculty of each Junior and Senior Seminar offered in Winter 2025 to help you make registration choices.  The full Winter Time Schedule should be live starting tomorrow (October 11th).
We recommend students have completed at least two 300-400 level History courses before taking HSTRY 388.  Students need to have taken HSTRY 388 before they are eligible to register in HSTRY 494 or 498.
If you want to add one of these courses, email the History Advising address (histadv at uw.edu<mailto:histadv at uw.edu>) to be given an add code or to be put on the waiting list.  Please remember to give clear information about which section you want to add, and also include your name and UW student number.  These classes fill VERY quickly, so request your add codes sooner than later.

Junior Seminars:
HSTRY 388  A
TOPIC: Witnesses to the Mongol Empire
SLN: 15725
Wednesdays 10:00-12:50
Prof. Matthew Mosca

This course examines the rise of the Mongol Empire, which came to dominate much of Eurasia in the thirteenth century, and particularly the cross-cultural interaction it facilitated.  Many in the sedentary world began to take a close look at nomads - their lifestyles, economy, and cultures.  By force or the lure of conquest and conversion, travelers set out across the Mongol Empire, through lands unknown to them.  For Europeans, the new knowledge of Asia afforded by travel in the Mongol Empire both expanded and transformed conceptions of the world.  This course is centered on two major primary sources written by European travelers in the Mongol Empire, which are compared with contemporary accounts of the Mongols by Chinese authors.

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HSTRY 388  B
TOPIC: Reimagining the Seventies: Historiography, Historical Method, and 1970s America
SLN: 15726
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-12:20
Prof. Julie Osborn


The United States in the 1970s is often considered the twentieth-century's most forgettable decade, a footnote between the tumultuous 1960s and the Reagan revolution. When remembered, it is often considered an anomaly, an era characterized by its distinctive popular culture and aesthetic choices but not worthy of much academic inquiry. In this class we will join a small chorus of historians who have attempted to take the decade seriously, as it was a period marked by important political shifts, economic restructuring, meaningful conversations about "morality," religion and sex/gender and a backlash that swiftly met these new ideas.



In this course we will operate with a dual purpose. In addition to looking at the historical events of the decade and why they mattered, we will approach those events by carefully considering historical methods and historiographical approaches more broadly. Each week we will consider a set of events through particular historiographical frames, we will attempt to disentangle the threads, and to reassemble them, building to an individual research project that applies one of the historical methods  to some aspect of American history in the 1970s.


The goal of this 388 is to use the 1970s as our shared temporal home base but to bring in each student's individual interests in terms of methodology and subfield. Students are expected to read widely in assigned course readings and the research materials relevant to individual projects and execute and manage all stages of a research project, including the formulation of a sound historical argument. Students are also expected to participate actively in discussions, group work, and any online work that is assigned. The goal of this 388 is to deepen your understanding of what it means to practice history, think historically, generate cogent historical questions, and produce sophisticated historical writing that engages primary and secondary sources on a novel topic."

***
HSTRY 388  C
TOPIC: Empire and Nationalism in Tsarist Russia
SLN: 15727
Wednesdays 1:30-3:20PM
Prof. Elena Campbell
Cultural diversity was a crucial factor in Imperial Russian history. How was the Russian empire held together, and what was the role of the "nationalities question" in its disintegration? How was cultural diversity articulated and manifested in politics? What were the Imperial approaches to different nationalities? We shall explore these questions through examining the issues of identity, nationality policies, and ideologies. Particular attention will be given to the development of the nationalistic discourse in Imperial Russia.
 We will analyze various primary sources translated into English, artistic and musical works, as well as theoretical and historical writings.
 The course is designed as an introduction to history by offering training in basic skills crucial to the historian's craft: the evaluation and use of various types of primary sources; examination of historians' approaches and interpretations; the practice of historical argumentation in discussions and writing.

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Seniors Seminars

HSTRY 498  A
TOPIC: Writing Prison History
SLN: 15731
Wednesdays 12:30-3:20PM
Prof. Mark Letteney

In this class we will read books that attempt to write the history of the prison - both "the prison" as a social institution, and histories of specific prisons in the medieval and modern world. We will focus on understanding how historians use disparate forms of evidence to make their claims, from architecture to letters to interviews to art depicting prisoners. Each week we will read one major study tracing carceral history, and at by the end of the quarter students will produce a prison history of their own, focused on a period or location of their choosing.

***
HSTRY 498  B
TOPIC: River History
SLN: 15732
Thursdays 1:30-3:20PM
Prof. Joel Walker

Rivers can connect or divide, obstruct or empower, nourish or destroy.  In many cultures, they carry rich symbolism. Rivers can evoke histories of captivity and death, including abandonment, drowning, or murder.  In other contexts, they are understood as places of escape, longing, or spiritual rebirth.  In this seminar, designed for senior History majors, we will explore human interactions with rivers across multiple eras and continents.  This inquiry will take us into the history of some famous rivers - the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges, the Columbia, and the Thames, among others.  Structured as a writer's workshop, the course will help participants sharpen their skills as writers and editors, while also learning about the manifold functions of rivers in global history.

***
HSTRY 498 C
TOPIC: Exotic Things: Objects, Wonder, and the Dawn of Globalism
SLN: 15733
Wednesdays 9:30-11:20PM
Prof. Benjamin Schmidt

This course approaches the history of globalism through material objects, especially the sorts of 'exotic' things that captured European and non-European imagination at the dawn of the first age of global encounter (1300-1800). Students study the past through 'curious' artifacts-material objects haphazardly encountered, carefully described, illegitimately seized, ardently collected, and vigorously disputed by early modern Europeans-as a way to understand the history of global encounter and its aftermath. Case studies include Marco Polo in China, Christopher Columbus in America, James Cook in Hawaii and the exotic objects and fraught encounters that materialized these entanglements, both for Europeans and non-Europeans. The course also features site visits to local museums and collections for hands-on sessions with expert curators.  And the course culminates with student projects on the 'curious' things they select, research, and present at the end of the quarter.



Mark Weitzenkamp and Tracy Maschman Morrissey
History Undergraduate Advising
University of Washington
Smith Hall 315
Box 353560
Seattle, WA 98195
vm: 206.543.5691<tel:206.543.5691> fax: 206.543.9451<tel:206.543.9451>
depts.washington.edu/history<http://depts.washington.edu/history>

Please click here to schedule an advising appointment! [outlook.office365.com]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/UWHistoryAdvising@cloud.washington.edu/bookings/__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!hepl5zsGyNtp8irH6BFU_vfzEDAVByBQeKGrA21TwwYy6eG5HGMceoCxsf_yemPn_ZqlOYzhtiOUSeGhRg$>

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