Topics in History (492-0-20)

Topic

African American History to 1865

Instructors

Leslie M. Harris
847/491-3153
Harris Hall - Room 340

Meeting Info

Harris Hall room 101: Mon 2:00PM - 5:00PM

Overview of class

This course examines the work of academic historians who have and continue to transform what we know about the history of people of African descent in the United States. Open to historians and non-historians, this course reviews works that use historical methods to uncover US histories of enslaved and free people of African descent and their experiences and shaping of institutions such as slavery, freedom, the US legal system, structures and ideologies of gender and sexuality, and political activism against slavery and for the development of racial equality between the Revolutionary Era (inclusive of the "American" Revolution but also the revolutions in human equality in the Atlantic World); and the United States Civil War.

Registration Requirements

Graduate Students Only, Attendance at first class mandatory

Learning Objectives

1. History: Learning and understanding some of the ways people of African descent understood their experience and expressed their knowledge of Colonial North America, the United States, and systems and ideas therein; as well as understanding how the US classified people of African descent.

2. Historiography: Learning about the ways historians have dealt with historical sources produced by people of African descent.

Evaluation Method

At least two presentations; at least two book-review length essays; possibly one final essay on a theme rooted in 3 or more books.

Class Notes

History Major Concentration(s): Americas
History Minor Concentration(s): United States