HST 495: Seminars for
Spring 2008

HIST 495F - TOPICS IN US HISTORY

"The Market Revolution and American Society"
This course studies the growth of market culture and its implications for American life from 1815 to 1860.

Prof. Michael A. Rembis
W 3:00-5:30 Modern Languages

History of Disability: A Global Perspective

For the educated or experienced observer living in Western Europe, North America, or Australia disability can be found in nearly every aspect of our daily lives. We see it in the news, on television sit-coms and dramas, in movies, and on the bus on the way to work. We read about it in books and magazines; we encounter it on the internet; and if we think hard enough, most of us know or have met someone with a disability. Beginning in the early 1980s, and due largely to the efforts of a global network of disability activists, important organizations and governments began to take notice of disability. Although much work remains to be done, especially in Central and South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, the result has been the increased visibility of persons with disability, improvements in education, accommodation, and access, and an (sometimes reluctant) acknowledgement of the civil and human rights of disabled people.

In this class, we will discuss the various meanings of disability that have emerged out of nearly 30 years of activism and scholarship and explore the ways in which those meanings have changed over time. Our focus will be on the interesting and complex history of disabled people in recent United States history viewed from a global perspective.

If you enjoy studying things like race and gender, social movements, and recent social, cultural, and intellectual history, you will enjoy this class!

Dr. Dana E. Weiner
Tu and Th 12:30-1:45 Room: TBD

Human Rights Activism in the United States , 1790-1930

In this class, we will examine American's efforts to improve their condition from 1790 to 1930. Among the course themes are race, gender, class, education, and work, whether slave or free labor. We will begin by discussing how to define the domestic human rights movement in this time period. We will read a variety of fundamental thinkers about human rights in the United States from 1790-1930. Readings and discussion will focus upon radical abolition, the women's rights movement, antiracist activism, the effects of Reconstruction, and the anti-lynching struggle, among other topics. Course readings will incorporate both primary and secondary sources, including the ideas and arguments of the eloquent writers, pamphleteers, and activists David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells, among others. We will ask, what kind of change did they seek and how? What were their arguments and methods? In the process, this approach to the topic will permit us to rethink activism and rights in American history, and give a new angle on the history of the United States throughout its youth and developing years.