Examples of Honors College History Classes

This course is the first of a three-quarter sequence designed as an "Introduction to Historical Thinking in a Global Framework." Our main concern this quarter will be a comparative socio-cultural history of some of the major societies of antiquity. We will begin with a consideration of the early river-valley civilization in the Middle East (Mesopotamia, Ancient Israel, Egypt). Then we will move east to the early empires and cultures in China and India. From there, westward to the Mediterranean to study first the Imperial city-states of the Greco-Roman world and then the feudal society that formed as the Roman empire was in decline. We will conclude with a study of the rise of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula and its spread westward across North Africa and into Spain and eastward through the Middle East and into South Asia.

Throughout, our purpose will be to ask historical questions, to understand socio-economic, political, and cultural forms not as static entities, but as the evolving means by which human beings satisfy their needs, order their affairs, and attempt to make sense of their worlds. We will also try to understand the causes of historical change. The dual aim of thinking historically is to learn how past civilizations evolved and how to ask historical questions about, and enhance our understanding of, our own evolving civilization. Our goal is to paint a portrait of each society: its modes of material reproduction, the economy; its social order including class and gender divisions; its political institutions; and its cultural forms. Through an analysis of socio-economic and political forms, we will attempt to reconstruct modes of behavior and the tone of daily life; and through an analysis of art and literature, religion and philosophy, we will attempt to understand how members of those cultures viewed themselves, their society, and their relation to the natural and supernatural.

Class meetings will be a combination of short introductory lectures and detailed discussions of the readings which include: The Epic of Gilgamesh, and selections from the following: The Hebrew Bible; the New Testament; the Analects of Kongzi (Confucius); the Mencius; the Tao Te Ching; the Vedas; the Bhagavad-Gita; Aeschylus, The Oresteia; Plato's Dialogues, the Christian Bible; the Koran.

In this second segment of our year-long course, we examine the beginnings of modernity and the confrontation of the cultures and polities of Europe with those of the world. We will focus especially on changing conceptions of scientific, ethnographic, and philosophical evidence and changing structures of epistemology. We will continue to work on analytic and compositional strategies and begin to look forward to the research paper next term. Readings include: Miguel Leon-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico; Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre; Margaret Cavendish, Paper Bodies; René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, First and Second Discourses. Please purchase the editions of these works available in the UO Bookstore.

This rendition of the third segment of the world history sequence will use the concept of empire to analyze the development of the modern world over the last two hundred and fifty years. The formal empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries set many of the boundaries of the contemporary world. Between the land-based empires of China, Russia, the Ottomans, Austro-Hungary, the United States and the seaborne empires of the French, Dutch, British, Portuguese, and Spanish, nearly the entire globe was carved into pieces. The legacies of this imperial framework are still very evident in today's world.

Using the past as our experimental laboratory, our class will consider what empire means and debate whether it is really a sufficient framework to understand the last two centuries or so, starting from about 1750. Many of the most important "isms" of the modern world-nationalism and communism, among others-gathered strength as reactions to imperial tendencies, while the industrial revolution morphed into a tool of empire. Our approach to empire will incorporate both the high politics of empire and the experiences of individuals living with those policies. We will look at different forms of empire, colonialism, and imperialism-studying formal and informal empires; the internal consolidation of nations; cultural, economic, and ecological imperialism; and notions of the civilizing mission. We will finish with a focus on the transformation of the formal empires into postcolonial societies, accompanied by increasing globalization.

A major focus of the class will be the production of a work of original research among primary sources, using the questions and concepts raised in class to investigate any imperial topic of your choice in greater detail. This paper will be 10-15 pages, and students should expect several preparatory assignments along the way. To further prepare for writing this paper, historical approaches and method will often form part of our class discussion.

Other assignments will include two short essays in the first half of the term and occasional response writing on the reading throughout the quarter. There is no midterm or final exam, but students should expect in-class quizzes, and to write a concluding short essay at the end of the course.

Already ordered at the bookstore: Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Stephen Howe); World History in Brief (Peter Stearns); the play Death and the King's Horseman (Wole Soyinka); other texts TBA.

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