History 394CI - Ideas That Changed History

This class is about 1. Ideas that have chagned the discipline of history. 2. Ideas that have changed the larger flow of history. 3. Ideas that have changed you, the student, and your relationship to history. 4. Ideas that have changed your personal history.Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Hist majors. (No credit after History 391G).

This course is open to Senior & Junior History majors only. This IE class seeks to uncover some of the folk history of the American past. Folklorist Simon Bronner dubbed the United States a "folk nation" because of the ways in which the American past is a complex mix of actual events and imposed meanings. Some of the latter were once dismissed as mere tall tales, though skilled humanists know that surface narratives are seldom the deeper story. This course will look at American historical tales, legends, visual images, and material culture with an eye toward analyzing how 'meaning' is created and recreated. It will also probe the use of unconventional historical sources, ideological constructions of heritage, and hidden subtexts within master narratives