Spotlight Courses: Spring 2010
* HSTY 277: GAY/LESBIAN/BISEXUAL/TRANSGENDER (GLBT) RIGHTS IN AMERICA. T/TH 1:15-2:30pm
In recent years, such issues as same-sex marriage, the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, and adoption by gay couples have moved to the forefront of U.S. political discourse galvanizing voters & captivating mass media audiences. Yet rarely have discussions of these issues been informed by an understanding of the historical processes that have led to the growth of the contemporary GLBT rights movement. This course will bring that history to light by drawing upon recent scholarship to examine the history of GLBT rights struggles in this country. We will explore such topics as the role of government & popular culture in creating, perpetuating, and/or challenging the privileged status of heterosexual identities & relationships; the influence of GLBT community formation on the emergence of identifiable GLBT social movements; and the effects of diversity within the GLBT & allied community upon the development of competing strategies across a diverse range of GLBT rights organizations. 
For more information, contact dr.lisa.hazirjian@gmail.com
*HSTY 328/428: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON MUSEUM AND ARCHIVE HISTORY AND PRACTICE. M/W 9:00-10:15am.
This course offers you the chance to compare the history and background of museums and archives in the United States with those in Turkey. Students in HSTY 328/428 will work directly with students from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, via a live interactive video link. Bilkent is an English-language university with over 10,000 students (see www.bilkent.edu.tr for more information about Bilkent). A course project will link each CWRU student with a Bilkent student in a detailed examination of a museum or archive in Cleveland with one in Turkey. Students will compare their findings via the live classroom link as well as over the internet. History 328/428 provides an important opportunity to learn about the history and latest developments and issues in museums and archives both here and in Turkey. More importantly, it provides an opportunity for each CWRU student to build a link and perhaps a new friendship with a student in Turkey. For more information: john.grabowski@case.edu.
*HSTY 329/429: MUSEUMS IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD (A New Course with Johns Hopkins University!) Wednesdays 3:00-5:30pm
Today Museums are everywhere dynamic spaces. Historically designed as centers for research, and agents of public education and community formation in Western industrial societies, they have become sites of development and cultural controversy on a global scale. From Cleveland and Paris to Athens and Dubai museums figure in urban redevelopment, national identity formation, conflicts between religion and science, and global tourism. Questions we will consider in this course: what are the fundamental features of museums as institutions? What ties have linked them to wider national and international communities of academics, NGO's and business? to political, economic and social concerns? How do museums in Asia, Africa the Middle East and Latin America figure in the current international contention over heritage rights? This is an innovative course offered jointly by Johns Hopkins University and CWRU using virtual web-based technologies that allow students from CWRU and Hopkins to collaborate on projects, engage with guest lecturers from U.S. and abroad and access museums across the globe. For more information: miriam.levin@case.edu.
*HSTY 399: ADVANCED READINGS IN BLACK HISTORY: THE AMERICAN PRISON: A HISTORY OF RACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. M 3:00-5:30pm.
The United States, above all other nations, maintains the world’s highest rate of imprisonment,with one out of every 100 adult American in jail or prison. With 2.2 million people in prison and nearly 6.5 million people either in prison, jail, or under the auspices of the criminal justice system (via probation or parole), the United States now imprisons one third of all African American men and one in seven black adult males has lost the right to vote as a result of felony disenfranchisement. Latino communities have suffered similarly high rates of incarceration, as African Americans now make up more than fifty percent of the US prison population and Latinos nearly a third. How did the United States come to have the world’s highest rate of incarceration and one so sharply racially disproportionate? This course traces the development of what some have termed a “prison empire” by viewing American history from the 18th century to the present through the lens of its prison system. The course is designed to provide a unique and engaging perspective on American history by taking students past prison walls and into three key periods of prison reform and subsequent eras of riot and retrenchment. By studying the history of the American prison and ideas concerning punishment, students will consider three distinct periods of prison reform: 1) the origins of the antebellum penitentiary; 2) the Progressive era of “scientific treatment” and the “new penology”; 3) the post-World War II focus on the rehabilitative and therapeutic ideal. The course will also focus on periods of reaction, revolt, and retrenchment and how the American prison has shaped racial formation, particularly the development of convict labor in the New South; the prison riots of the 1920s, 1950s, and 1970s; the rhetoric of “law and order” America and the “war on drugs” in the post-Civil Rights era; and the “prison-industrial complex” of our own time. The course will therefore span the whole of American history by focusing on the tension between prison reform and subsequent eras of reaction and revolt. Students will consider the meaning of social justice movements and how prisons are social and state institutions that simultaneously reproduce and challenge societal notions of class, race, and gender. Although we will read a number of historical monographs and articles, this course will also consult a wide variety of first-person narratives, particularly through film, documentaries, inmate letters, and prisoner, warden, and guard memoirs. For more information: Robert.t.chase@case.edu
NEW Spring 2010 Courses:
*HSTY 241: INVENTING PUBLIC HEALTH. T/TH 10:00-11:15with Professor John Broich
*HSTY 292: ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY, 1750-2010. T/TH 1:15-2:30 with Professor Peter Shulman
*HSTY 388: THE UNITED STATES IN THE WORLD. T 10:00-12:30 with Professor Peter Shulman
